Discipline of Disruption- Sermon to Transylvania Presbytery- 2015
Mark 2:23-3:6
Discipline of Disruption
Presbytery Sermon 2015
At the ordination of Hannah McIntyre,
I preached a sermon of this same name and using this same Scripture,
and it apparently resonated because I was asked to do something similar here.
However for the purposes of this particular audience, I have adjusted it quite a bit:
There is a book that is very popular in seminaries right now entitled, Practicing Our Faith, written by Dorothy Bass.
The premise of the book is that in the midst of our busy lives,
Christians must be deliberate about literally practicing our faith.
She argues that Christians from day to day have to intentionally try to do the things of our faith,
because those practices of our faith lead to a more fulfilling life.
The Table of Contents includes such spiritual practices as Hospitality,
Keeping Sabbath, discernment, forgiveness, healing, and so onand these are things that we are supposed to focus on from day to day…
Well, I would like to add a spiritual discipline that I believe we should all practice over and over again,
so that when it matters most,
we will be perfectly capable of rising to the occasion.
I chose to do this today because,
although it is a spiritual discipline that we should all possess,
it is particularly important for ministers of Word and Sacrament
(or teaching elders), and for ruling elders to possess this gift.
And this is not just my opinion, but rather is perhaps the discipline that best describes Jesus’ daily ministry.
As the name of my sermon betrays, I am describing the Discipline of Disruption.
You see, every organization, and especially, every church has a certain culture…a way about it.
You often here it described as, “well, this is just the way we’ve always done things” or “that’s just the way things are.”
When Jesus came to 1st Century Israel, he found that the Temple structure,
indeed the entire community had taken on a particular culture.
This culture was one of greed and legalism.
There was a power structure that left a large portion of the population struggling to get by, while a select few became wealthy.
The widows and the orphans were ignored.
The Hospitality codes had been replaced with the systematic disregard of anyone deemed to be different or less than….
anyone who dared to look different,
or act different, or think in a different way.
Because of the culture and the climate of the Temple worship,
Humanity had been made to serve the law, especially the Sabbath,
as opposed to seeing the law as a gift from God for the purpose of building up the community.
In short, the culture of the organization that Jesus encountered,
represented most frequently by the Pharisees and Scribes,
was no longer in concert with the Temple that God had ordained.
Do we not find ourselves facing a similar church today?
A church with no sense of itself aside from ego and money.
A church that is more interested in enforcing antiquated cultural norms than focusing on the command to go and feed and clothe and give drink.
A church that is more focused on telling us who and what to be afraid of,
because that is by far the easiest,
the least intellectually difficult,
and the most theologically boring thing to do.
To point and say…that’s who you need to be afraid of!
Is the culture of our church today not a broken institution?
This text from Mark is one of those rare moments where we don’t have to try to guess what Jesus “would” do,
because we can look and see what Jesus “did” do!
In our text from Mark, Jesus worked on the Sabbath…
right in front of the authorities.
He could have waited until the next day and then come back and healed the man with the withered hand, but he didn’t.
He purposely healed on the Sabbath as a way of disrupting a broken culture.
Jesus went into the Temple and drove out the money changers and called the holy Temple of Israel a Den of Thieves as a way of disrupting a broken culture.
Jesus touched the Lepers, thus making himself unclean,
as a way of disrupting a broken culture.
He ate with sinners, with tax collectors and prostitutes.
He spent time alone with a Samaritan woman of ill-repute.
He healed people and cast out demons,
and taught in the Synagogue and read from Isaiah, and said, “Today, this Scripture has been fulfilled”,
He did all of these things as a way of disrupting a broken culture.
To be a Disciple is to follow,
and so we must follow where Christ led and we must begin today by practicing the discipline of disruption.
We must allow our young ministers like Hannah to stand up and say
“to heck with convention”
and “to heck with ‘the way we’ve always done it” because the way we’ve always done it isn’t working anymore.
We must be willing to let our young ministers knock over some tables and, for the love God,
drive the people out who are turning our churches into dens for thieves and centers for legalism.
We must do this ourselves over and over again, day in and day out,
because one day the moment will come where it will be a matter of spiritual life and spiritual death.
We have to practice…literally to practice.
Friends, we have to practice the discipline of disruption, even in the little things,
so that when the big things come along,
we will instinctively stand up for what is right.
Every organization has a culture.
Some move too slowly, we need to get in there and speed things up!
Some move too quickly, we need to get in there and slow things down.
Some focus only on mission,
so we need to get in there and bring a bit of spirituality.
Some do no mission at all, and so we need to get in there and open their hearts.
Some are focused only on history,
we need to get in there and show them a newspaper.
Some focus only on the newspaper,
and so we need to get in there and show them a Bible.
Regardless of what the culture might be,
good or bad,
one of our Christian practices must be to disrupt that culture…
to shake it up a bit…
for that is what it means to be Reformed,
and to always be Reforming.
And you know what. Sometimes its painful.
Sometimes it causes people to become uncomfortable.
Sometimes it even causes people to leave.
By practicing the discipline of disruption, we might even dwindle to the numbers of our wildest nightmares.
In fact, it is a possibility that the PC(USA) might in fact die.
But, who cares?
Since when did it become our primary mission as Disciples to defend the institution of religion, at the expense of following our Savior?
The song says, “Lord, I want to be a Christian”.
Not, “Lord, I want to be a Presbyterian”
Our dwindling might in fact be the best thing ever to happen to the Presbyterian Church…
Because it’s there…on the margins of society,
when we aren’t quite so mainstream,
quite so status quo,
when we have shaken up the pews to the point that people can no longer sit quietly and watch the world float by,
It is there,
with the tax collectors and the prostitutes,
that we’ll find a man named Jesus, who beckons us to follow…
who calls us to speak truth to power…
who commands us to knock over tables…
who implores us to show radical hospitality and that crazy agape kind of love.
It is there,
when all that we thought we knew has been disrupted by the power of the Holy Spirit,
where we will sit at Table and see Him break the bread….
and recognize him for who he truly is.
Thanks be to God. Amen.
