God Loves Our Vulnerability Proper 20 Yr B Sept 20 2015

+I’m terrible at asking questions. A few years ago I shared with you the story of a class I had in graduate school—I was studying a form of psychotherapy that challenges our irrational fears. The assignment was to put ourselves in a public situation that we found anxiety provoking, the idea being that by “surviving” that situation we would realize how irrational our fear had been. I did very well in the class, but I must admit to not really learning the lesson very well. I can still tie myself into all kinds of knots before entering an unfamiliar situation, not because I have to be the best or the first, but because if I think people view me as incompetent I lose my mind. I feel vulnerable. And that triggers my anxiety big time.
Asking questions makes us vulnerable because to ask a question is to admit we don’t know something. And, if knowledge is, in our world, power then it follows that not knowing must indicate weakness, right? Any animal, including human beings, avoid being vulnerable because of te risk of being seen as weak. In this, the temporal world, weakness is used against us. It’s the basis of the survival of the fittest, so we rail against vulnerability at every turn.
We live in a “knowing” culture. Knowledge is The Thing. We know A LOT and we’re learning more and more all the time. So, “Knowing” is power, not knowing is weakness and admitting we don’t know is risky, counter-cultural and to many folks, unthinkable.
The disciples didn’t know and after last week’s outburst by Jesus, they’re not about to ask…

“Jesus was teaching his disciples, saying “The Human One will be delivered into human hands. They will kill him. Three days after he is killed he will rise up.’ But they didn’t understand this kind of talk, and they were afraid to ask him.”
They did not understand and they were afraid to ask him. They were confused, they were afraid and they were anxious.
You see, Christianity is pretty anxiety provoking. Think about it, this faith of ours encourages weakness. It promotes vulnerability. It’s confusing, its tenets irrational.
Christianity makes no logical sense:
a young boy from a rather unremarkable family grows up and is discovered to be the Messiah—the Son of God, the author of our salvation. A regular guy, from a regular town: The Son of God. And not only is he the Son of God he goes around TELLING people this. He’s also feeding thousands out of nothing, curing the sick, raising the dead and generally blowing everyone’s mind. Freaking them out. Scaring them.
Scaring them because who he was, what he was doing and what he was predicting would happen
didn’t make any sense…
It’s as difficult to understand now as it was then.
Jesus is spending this part of Mark’s gospel preparing his disciples for what’s to come. He’s readying them for the final trip to Jerusalem, his arrest, trial, crucifixion and resurrection. He’s preparing them for what we often proclaim without really thinking about: he ‘s going to die and then through his rising to life again, destroy death forever, giving each and every one of us the same promise: our bodily death doesn’t end life, it changes it. We are, by virtue of our baptism, assured of everlasting life.
We can forgive the disciples their confusion, their misunderstanding and disbelief.
What Jesus is saying still sounds ridiculous, irrational and impossible.
Yet here we are, believers in this very thing.
Do we understand it? No.
Do we have to understand it to believe it? No.
As a matter of fact understanding has nothing to do with it.
I stand before you today to admit that I don’t understand it and I can’t explain it.
Yet, each and every day I awake in sure and certain trust that what God has given us through Jesus the Christ is The Way The Truth and The Life.
Each and everyday as I live out my life I proudly, loudly and clearly proclaim,
“I believe.”
I believe in the unbelievable. I believe in the incomprehensible. I believe in the irrational. I believe in God. I believe God came to live among us as Jesus Christ. I believe Jesus was nailed to a cross and died. I believe he lay among the dead for two days and on the third day I believe he rose from that grave, exited that tomb and walked among us again.
I believe he ascended to heaven where, as part of the Holy and Undivided Trinity he walks among us still.
 I believe all of this without knowing how. But unlike my irrational belief that appearing vulnerable in an unfamiliar situation would be more than I can bear, our faith encourages our questions and our faith allows for our confusion.
Our faith expects our disbelief.
What our faith doesn’t tolerate so well, though, is failing to admit our questions, our confusion, our doubt.
This is why Jesus asks us to have faith like a child.
A child freely and openly asks the tough questions---why do people die? Why do we get sad? Why is the sky blue? Why why why why?
The author of our faith always wants us to ask why….. why is there pain and suffering in the world, why is my heart broken, why is my child ill, why is my bank account empty, why is my soul aching…
We may not get a clear and definitive answer, but we are always heard, our heartache is always His heartache and we never ever walk alone.
My prayer for us today is that we’ll approach our faith with the same innocence as the children in our midst. For it is only through the absolute open and honest vulnerability of a child that we can fully live our faith. Because when we start considering our faith from a rational adult 21st century Culture of Knowing stance, we lose the ability to simply and plainly Believe.


Our faith isn’t a faith of no questions, it’s a faith of one answer. And that one answer is God. Through God all things are possible. With God all things are doable. And from God all blessings flow.  Amen.