josephholubsermons


 

September 20, 2009 -  Pentecost 16
Mark 9:30-37

The Counter-Cultural Challenge of Discipleship

“Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”   Mark 9:35b

This has been the Year of Mark in our Sunday morning lectionary of gospel readings.  Last Sunday at Theo-Talk I shared with the group how this year I have personally invested myself and plunged into the deep water of Mark’s message.  It has been an amazing and unforgettable journey.  I can say that, for me, it has been nothing short of transformative and life-changing.  I have found myself, my values and my life-style challenged with the reading of and reflection on every passage, every story and every turn of the page. Like a splash of ice cold water in the face, I have been shocked and confronted with a message that promises to turn my life inside-out and upside-down, remaking me from the ground up.  (Impact!)

Each one of the four gospels is unique.  Each one presents a different picture or portrait of Jesus.  The gospels are each products of a different Jesus-centered-community, and each gospel articulates, in story form and metaphorical narrative, what Jesus meant for them.

Mark’s gospel has a twofold or a two-piece message; two concurrent themes, and the two themes are inseparable, much like heads and tales of a single coin. 
            The first theme is that for Mark and his community Jesus is the bringer, the announcer and the embodiment of God’s vision for the world.  That vision is called the Kingdom of God (Realm of God).  Mark sets up, from the first verse of his gospel, a contrast/conflict between the Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Caesar, the prevailing secular kingdom of Mark’s world.  For Mark, the Kingdom of God is what the world would look like, be like and live like if God were on the throne and not Caesar.  The Kingdom of God is God’s vision for the world.  In every chapter and passage Mark’s Jesus personally delivers and embodies God’s vision for the world.  
             The second theme of Mark’s gospel is a call to radical discipleship in this Kingdom as we follow in the way of Jesus.  Mark is clear that the way of following is costly and challenging and a counter-cultural journey.  I say counter-cultural because the path Jesus leads us on, for the most part, is the opposite of the path we normally walk every day; a path we have come to accept as normalcy.  So far this year, we have walked with Jesus a significant distance along this counter-cultural path and thus far we have seen and experienced that this path is a way that:

·         Sets people free from politically and religiously legitimated dehumanizing segregation.

·         Embodies a radical inclusivity that intentionally reaches out to and includes the marginalized, the scorned, and the rejected.

·         Lives life crossing political and religiously enforced  boundaries as if they didn’t exist; getting past labels to embrace the real people behind them.

·         Is committed to distributive justice that all have enough and challenges any system, political, economic or otherwise, that gives leverage to the powerful and affluent over the powerless and poor to minimize and oppress.. 

These weeks of the Year of Mark we have been walking not with a soulful-eyed, meek and mild Jesus of Sunday School pictures, but a Jesus on fire with the inclusive love of God and a passion to right systemic wrongs that divide the world up between the haves and have-nots and gives every advantage to the powerful.

It is amazing to me that the page of our bulletin this morning upon which this gospel passage is inscribed does shred itself into thousands of little pieces.  It is remarkable that it does not explode in our faces and fill the room with confetti!   

There is a tension in this gospel that is so strong and so conflicted that the page threatens to rend itself in two. I spoke of a conflict  that Mark sets up between conflicting  realms.  It is no more apparent than in this passage, and not merely this passage but in two other passages in Mark almost identical to this one – one in chapter 8 just before this and the other in chapter 10 just after this.   

In chapter 8  we read that Jesus told his disciples he was going to Jerusalem, and when he got there he would tortured and executed.  And what did Peter do but stop Jesus in his tracks saying in effect, “Say what?  No you’re not!  You got it wrong Jesus.  That’s not the way it is supposed to be.  You are not walking that path if I have anything to say about it.” 

You see, Peter and the boys were wired into the popular expectation that the messiah was to be a  triumphant  militaristic messiah who would lead the Jewish nation in a victorious military campaign throwing off their Roman oppressors and crush them with all of God’s power and might.  In fact, at the time when the Gospel of Mark was written the nation was in the midst a Jewish armed revolt against their Roman occupiers.  Peter and the boys, metaphorically representing this popular notion, could simply not entertain or embrace any other kind of messiah than one who would lead a victorious armed revolt against the Roman occupation.  However, Jesus’ response to Peter’s triumphant messianic notions was a severe and stern rebuke, “Get behind me Satan!” (“Hello!”  Wake up call #1)

Mark’s message is clear.  Mark would not allow his community to put a weapon in Jesus’ hand.  Mark would not allow his community to make Jesus into triumphant militaristic messiah.  Mark’s Jesus leads the faith community in a way of nonviolence and a path of sacrificial self-emptying love; a way of denying self and taking up a cross; a path of servant-hood. 

Unfortunately, it only takes a superficial glimpse of history since to see the physical and psychological violence that has been committed in the name of Jesus. Yikes! They must not have read the gospel of Mark!

Today’s gospel sets up the exact same contrast/conflict one chapter later. Again, Jesus talks about being executed.  This time they didn’t respond to him directly.  Mark says they were “afraid.”  (Well ya! – after the way he dressed down Peter in the previous chapter who wouldn’t be?  This time they kept their mouths shut!)  But Mark sets up the conflict in another way.  Right after this, while they were traveling on the road, the boys got into an argument about who was the greatest.  It sounds to me like they were having a conversation about hierarchy; which one of them was at the top of the pyramid; who was the most important; who was the most influential; who was the closest to Jesus; who could pull the most strings with Jesus; who was Jesus’ favorite.  The implication of their conversation was profound, for if they were concerned about hierarchy within their little community, that meant they also looked out at the world through hierarchical eyes and bought into the whole paradigm of hierarchy and the relative human worth ascribed to your ranking in the hierarchy; the idea being the higher up you are the more you are worth; the lower you are the less you are worth. 

When Jesus asked them what they were talking about on the road Mark says, they were “silent.”  Of course they were silent but their silence revealed that they each must have thinking to themselves, (“Oops, I think we messed up again boys.”) 

At this point Jesus exercised a great deal of patience with the boys.  The previous rebuking tactic employed with Peter obviously had not made much of an impression, so he resorted to show and tell – an object lesson.  They had just entered  the village of Capernaum, and there were some children playing in the dusty street, and Jesus goes over and physically picks up the smallest of the little gang, and in so doing he pulverized  their illusions and turned their self-centered hierarchical worlds inside-out saying, “Whoever welcomes once such child in my name welcomes me… and the one who sent me.”     (“Hello!” Wakeup call #2) 

You see, children were at the bottom of the hierarchy.  It was a hierarchical culture, religiously, politically and socially, and children were at the flat bottom of the pyramid with everybody else stacked above them, and they were being crushed under the oppressive weight.  So Jesus injects into their “who is the greatest” paradigm a real living, breathing, flesh and blood child,  and he declares in no uncertain terms in that Realm of God this child is the greatest. 

In other words, Jesus turned their stupid pyramid upside down!  In the Kingdom and Realm of God the most vulnerable, the weakest, and the powerless are first.  The highest priority of the Kingdom of God is about lifting up the most vulnerable.  The top agenda of the Realm of God is about setting free those who have been effectively entrapped and crushed by political, economic and religious systems that by their very nature favor the powerful and affluent.  It’s a counter-cultural challenge issued from the lips of Jesus.

Well all know that the nation is being shredded in the current debate on potential health care legislation.  I don’t have any simple solutions.  But, I hear a lot of people who rhetorically assert that we are a “Christian nation,”  which I think is more illusion than reality; for much of what passes as Christian is often scarcely  recognizable as such – at least to me. But if that is the case, I keep waiting for a strong prophetic voice from this so called “Christian” sector that will remind us that Jesus proclaimed and embodied God’s vision for the world  that lifts up the lowliest, weakest, poorest, most vulnerable and least powerful – those at the mercy of the leverage of the powerful; those at bottom of the hierarchy who are being crushed under its awful and severe weight.  I keep waiting for that “prophetic voice” to rise from out of out of the so-called “Christian sector” strongly, clearly and unequivocally, but what I mostly hear is a deathly silence.  Could it be, might it be that “Institutional Christianity” is taking it cues from the powerful health care lobbies rather than looking deeply into the message of the One after whom they are named?  Could it be?  Might it be? I don’t know, but I have to wonder. 

Mother Teresa said about a zillion profound things; and lived even more profoundly.  One thing she once said was this: “I slept, and I dreamed that life is all joy. Then I woke, and I saw that life is all service. Then I served, and I saw that all service is joy.”

I leave you with that thought.  The Kingdom of God (God’s vision for the world) is about serving the least and most vulnerable; lifting them up a and setting them free.  You and I, as followers of Jesus, are invited into that counter-cultural challenge and way – and somewhere along that way, as hard as it might get, and even with as much as it will call forth from us, we will know joy.