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Tattle telling disciples, refreshing cups of cold water offered to thirsty travelers gruesome and disturbing images of self-mutilation. I admitted to the worship planning team last week. And I'll admit to you that I was a bit

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salty. When I realized that I, I just preached last week, I could have preached on my favorite passage in the entire gospel of Mark. Maybe you know the one, the one that includes this

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truth. Whoever welcomes one such child in my name , welcomes me and whoever welcomes me, welcomes not only me but the one who sent me. I mean, come on with Christian educators right here in

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our midst. I could have preached a beautiful sermon on the Christian practice of hospitality. The promises we make at our baptism, the grace filled vulnerability of Children that open our eyes both to the wonders and

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the dangers of this world said here we are with threats of weighted millstones and odd sayings about fiery salt . Now, like many of you, I've had excellent worship professors first Stan hall and then Jen Lord

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who taught me to trust the spirit led wisdom of the leary and its menu where we feast on the word of God. Even when the course that we're served uses ingredients we would not have chosen. In

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her new book, a Faith of many rooms theologian Debbie Thomas, speaks of her experience as an immigrant daughter of an evangelical minister who served both as an associate pastor in a largely white congregation, as well

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as the pastor of her family's church. A small immigrant community made up completely of immigrants from Kerala, South India. She speaks throughout this book of the borderland Experience of Life between these two communities of faith

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. And throughout, she wrestles with the rigid confines that had been placed around her understanding of God and God's salvation and how later in life she needed to dismantle the walls that she and others had created around

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who was in and who was out in God's realm in order to make space for a life of faithfully following Jesus. She says, like Alice in wonderland , I tried to cram my alarmingly growing self into

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an ever shrinking space that her doubts, objections and fears kept spilling out and rejecting confinement in our gospel text. This morning, John two attempts to place rigid borders around appropriate and authorized access to Jesus and

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yet his ever abundant grace seems to spill out beyond any border or barrier that we could create as he claims audaciously that whoever is not against us is for us. And that one who does a deed of

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power in my name will not soon speak ill of me. One of our former board members, Jill Duffield says it this way in a climate in which we are constantly evaluating, who agrees with us,

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who aligns with our thinking, who checks off all of the boxes of righteousness and rightness? These words of Jesus are no less radical. And when he tells us to love our enemies and to pray for

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those who persecute us or when he says to sell all that we have and lose our lives. Those who are not against us are for us. If someone even gives you a cup of water, as

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you go about the work of the Lord, they will not lose their like Alice in wonderland and whose rapidly growing body quickly expands beyond the confines of the white rabbit's house that day, God's grace expands be

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beyond what John. And perhaps we can imagine or understand because you see John understands hierarchy. He gets official channels of power. As an authorized follower of Jesus, he has the divine stamp of approval to

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exercise demons. But that guy over there, he's not with us, Jesus. He's not our kind of Christian a few weeks ago in worship, Dean Margaret Amer spoke of a burnt out Jesus. Remember

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that a Jesus who felt the toll of his ministry of compassion and healing so deeply that he was exhausted . And when he was confronted by the CYO Phoenician woman and her need for her daughter's healing, he

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responded first out of frustration and resentment. And the Cyra Phoenicians woman's word of truth to Jesus challenged him , challenged even Jesus to expand his own understanding of his mission. And as we see this morning,

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her word continues to shape Jesus's expansive ministry. It shapes his words of challenge and caution to the disciples here in the first century and here today now he may or may not still be feeling burnt out.

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But I think it's safe to say he's exasperated this morning, Sarah. I don't know how else to show this to you in order for you to understand . Mrs Ward. My high school algebra two teacher

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said while shaking her head, completely exasperated with me . I had been in her classroom for after school tutorials for weeks. She had used every creative technique she could come up with. Even I remember she

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made up a skit about algebra two to help my numerically challenged brain. God bless educators. Don't you hear that same exasperation in Jesus this morning? It's like you're saying, how else can I show you

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for you to get it? Just before John rudely interrupts Jesus in order to tattle. Tell on someone healing. Jesus has picked up a child, placed that child in his arms and said to his disciples

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. Whoever welcomes a child, welcomes me, whoever welcomes me, welcomes the one who sent me and Mark never says that Jesus has set, set down that child. So I'd like us to imagine that

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as he speaks, he continues to hold in his arms, a vulnerable child, one who in the patriarchal and hierarchical society of that day was without any access to status or honor or power. And then

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says, if any of you, cause one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for you. If a great millstone were hung around your neck and you were thrown

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into the sea as he holds a vulnerable child in his arms, he extends a word of extreme caution to any of his followers who would cause a little one to stumble. Hm Just think, just think

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of the ways that little ones have had stumbling blocks put in their path. Even by those who follow Jesus. The ways that many have been taught to believe the lie that their gender identity or their sexuality

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, the place of their birth, the color of their skin makes them or anyone else unlovable. Taught to believe the lie that access to assault weapons keeps people in our communities safe to believe the lies like

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these and so many others that you are thinking of this morning that can begin as hateful rhetoric and then turn into hateful and horrific action, violence that we witness in our schools, our churches, our synagogues

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, our mosques, our cities and around this world . Just think of the ways that we have put stumbling blocks in their way as creation is destroyed. And we ignore the effects of our over assumption on

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this planet even while seeing the devastating effects of climate change on our neighbors and loved ones near and far too often, most dangerously affecting those who are already most vulnerable and at risk, we don't have to

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look too far. Just open our phones to our tiktok feed or open the newspaper and we see bombings in Lebanon genocide in Gaza. Disasters caused by human destruction of the earth. Children killed at school and

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at play. Yes, it can feel like the sheer weight of that pain and suffering is so heavy that we are rendered helpless as if a giant millstone were tied around our necks. And the hyperbolic statements

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that follow about self-mutilation for they serve to reinforce the seriousness with which Jesus wants us to take this life of following him and to return to Jill Duffield again , she says, better to get rid of my

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own hand foot or eye than to put up barriers that prevent someone else from knowing the love, justice , grace, mercy and peace of our Lord Jesus Christ. This is not cheap grace. This is

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costly discipleship. Jesus is exasperated. Jesus is salty with the disciples and he reminds them that a cruciform life requires discipline, humility and open mind and heart and salt that has not lost its saltiness. He

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reminds them in this passage that a life of faithfulness could very well look differently than one's own and yet a life of faithfulness is known by its fruit or perhaps its saltiness. God's healing, mercy and grace

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need no prior authorization. There's not a fence around who can and who cannot share the healing love of Christ. So instead of yucking someone else's yum, when you see the fruit of the spirit in the

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life of one another, instead work on your own relationship with the divine, restore your right relationship with others and with creation salt, your own food. Jesus warns that there are major even destructive consequences.

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Otherwise, you all know that in ancient culture, salt was very valuable. It was used both as a condiment like we might use it today as well as a preservative and used in sacrifices for religious ritual

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. It often was used with incense and symbolized purification . In second chronicles, God makes a pact with God's people with a covenant of salt, otherwise a permanent covenant and in some ancient rites of baptism,

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those preparing for baptism, the cat of humans would have salt placed on their tongues or salt placed in the very baptismal waters as a symbol of both preservation of the truth of the gospel and the newly baptized

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purification have salt in ourselves. Jesus says, preserve the truth found in the gospel of ever widening mercy . Mercy that does not require prior authorization and take care, take extreme care not to play stumbling locks

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before those in your path who are in the need of healing grace. Especially the little ones but work instead to be at peace living a life with salt that does not lose its saltiness. Thanks be to