josephholubsermons


 

October 11, 2009 -  Pentecost 19
Mark 10:17-31

  Blessed Disturbance!

"Blessed assurance,” sings the old Fannie Crosby hymn, but if I were to rewrite the old hymn's lyrics to fit this  specific gospel passage for today, the lyrics might rather be "Blessed disturbance!” "Blessed disturbance, Jesus proclaims!"  This is a disturbing gospel passage! 

"What must I do to inherit eternal life?" a man comes to Jesus and asks. "You know the commandments," Jesus says, and the man said he had performed them with exceeding piety.  Mark then says, "Jesus looked at (the man) with love and said, 'You lack one thing; Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor… and come, follow me."  (Blessed Disturbance)

Mark says, "When the man heard this, he was shocked, and he went away grieving for he was rich."  Well, I would think so!  Who wouldn’t be shocked?  Even the disciples were shocked saying, "Well, who then can be saved." 

Astonishment is a good place to begin with this passage.  I think if we allowed ourselves to be astonished more often we might be more teachable; more open to new ideas; maybe even open to transformation.  As it is, because we often think we've seen it all, heard it all and know it all, wonders and miracles, challenges and insights can be exploding all around us, but we overlook them, ignore them, insulate ourselves from them; they don't stick to our well arranged teflon-coated lives because we don't want them to. We don't want our way of doing, thinking, living and being to be disturbed.  Nosiree!   We have spent a lifetime arranging our lives in a certain calculated way with which we have become comfortable and derive our identity and security.  Like this man came to Jesus, we may come to church hoping that our carefully arranged lives will be blessed by God.

I guarantee you that if this man would have known ahead of time what Jesus' response was going to be to his question, you can go to the bank on it that he never would have asked - no way!  He was looking for, "Congratulations my man, give me a high five, you have done well! Keep following those commandments."  For sure he didn’t expect Jesus to hand him a divestiture plan for all of his accumulated wealth. He came looking for blessed assurance and instead he received blessed disturbance! 

One cool thing about the disciples is that they were not above being astonished.  How about us?  Are we above being astonished, and then following our astonishment into new understandings and dimensions of our faith journey; moving into territory we never been before?  Or are we insistent on traveling a well worn and familiar path with which we have become accustomed and comfortable?

There are some things about the context of this passage we need to know to make sense and application of it.  In its original context this passage was a challenge to at least two prevalent theological beliefs in Judaism at the time of Jesus - two beliefs that are still with us today and are very much a part of some expressions of Christianity.

The first theological belief is salvation understood as afterlife as reward.  It wasn't until about 150 years before Jesus, at the very end of the writing of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), that a concept of an afterlife began to first emerge.  Up until that time, the people of ancient Israel did not have a clear belief in an afterlife.  To state the obvious "going to heaven" was not their motive for taking God seriously. 

However, by the time of Jesus a concept of an afterlife had emerged.  Where did that come from?  The belief in an afterlife in Judaism emerged out of a continuing long-running period of persecution, oppression and martyrdom.  People were being oppressed and killed because of their loyalty to God, and they were trying to reconcile a God of justice on the one hand, with the unjust oppression they were experiencing on the other hand.  Afterlife was initially understood as a reward for martyrdom and just compensation for the suffering they incurred as a result of their loyalty to God.  As time went on the idea expanded and became deeply embedded in their religious consciousness and salvation began to be defined strictly and exclusively as afterlife that was reward given to anyone who fulfilled certain requirements.  Hence, the man's question, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?"  

The second theological belief being challenged by this story was that material blessings were a sign of God's favor.  To put it is as succinctly as I can, if you were "healthy and wealthy" it was because you deserved it - and of course the converse also came to be a part of their belief system that if you were “not healthy and not wealthy" it was  a sign of God's disfavor.

So the man comes to Jesus looking for "blessed assurance" that he had done good.  Jesus begins with the man's belief system, the commandments.  But notice which commandments are mentioned.  With one exception it is a religion of "do-nots":  do-not murder; do-not commit adultery; do-not steal; do-not bear false witness; do-not defraud and then one that is not a do-not, "honor your father and mother." 

"I have kept them all," he said.  Thinking he had fulfilled the requirements for eternal (after)life he was now ready to receive Jesus'  "blessed assurance."  But instead, to his shock and astonishment, he received Jesus' "blessed disturbance”;  "You lack one thing; Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…and come, follow me."

Up until that point the man's religion had been what I call a "religion of omission."  His religion was defined in terms of what he didn't do; what he hadn't done.  His religion was about being a good little boy, keeping his nose clean and living confined within the parameters of requirements.  His religion was more about him and about how well he had kept the "do-nots."   I also call it an "easy-chair religion."  If you sat home and did nothing and had no contact with anyone, except your parents, you were a role model in this do-not religion.  In fact, staying home was the best strategy since it would be impossible to murder, defraud, bear false witness, commit adultery or steal if you minimized contact with other people and the world.   It was a religion that he could "do" by doing nothing!  It was religion of omission. 

Seeking "blessed assurance" for his low-risk, low-budget, low profile religion, he was instead shocked and astounded with "blessed disturbance":   "You lack one thing; Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor…and come, follow me."

In one fell swoop Jesus unraveled his tightly wound low-impact religion.  There is one more thing we need to know about context.  During the time of Jesus there was a huge disparity between the rich and the poor.  1% or 2% of the population controlled almost 70% of the wealth. And wealth in those days was measured not so much by the size of your bank balance, since there were no banks as we know them, but wealth was measured by how much land you owned - the size of your estate - real estate.  However, since land was ancestrally owned, the wealthy had to find means by which to pry tracts of land loose from their rightful owners.  The most frequent strategy employed was debt. 

The wealthy had enough economic influence to manipulate the markets.  They often intentionally manipulated market prices so that the small landowners could not compete, and to stay afloat incurred debt to the wealthy.  Using debt as leverage the wealthy landowners confiscated or purchased their property as payment of owed debt.   This pattern is known all too well by sharecroppers in U.S. history: goods undersold in the market by the large plantations precipitated a financial crises and deepening indebtedness.  The sale of one's land was necessary to avoid imprisonment or becoming an indentured servant.

When Jesus taught his disciples the prayer we call the Lord's Prayer, he told them to pray, "Forgive us our debts, as we forgive those indebted to us."  The word in Greek for debt (ὀφείλημα) means "financial debt" - not sins - not trespasses - but debts)  Jesus was exhorting his disciples to pray for the general forgiveness of financial debts that were often used by the wealthy as leverage to foster social injustice against the poor.  It was a prayer petition for new social order; a new way of doing business; the way of the Kingdom of God. 

In Jesus' time the wealthy would religiously legitimize their standing by claiming their wealth was a sign of God's blessing.   A similar attitude is still around today, and it gets woven into the fabric of Christianity and, in my mind, corrupts it.  A few years ago there was a very popular book that hit the market entitled, “The Prayer of Jabez."  During an uneventful time in Israel's history, a faithful man named Jabez prayed a simple, straightforward prayer and gained the favor and blessings of God.  Now, this small book has prompted millions of seekers to memorize and repeat the same prayer daily. After three thousand years of obscurity, Jabez has found surprising favor with the world.  This little book is a part of a larger "prosperity gospel" movement that declares there are formulas of belief that one can employ that will result in the blessing of God in materialistic, financial and self-serving terms.

Woven into the fabric of Christianity it creates what I call a narcissistic Christianity – Christianity without self-sacrifice; without self-denial; Christianity without taking up the cross and following.

 "You lack one thing; Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor… and come, follow me."  In one simple blessed disturbance Jesus pulled this man’s soft and comfortable rug of his religious belief right out from underneath him.  He invited the man to leave behind a low-risk way of believing and invited him into a high risk way of living and self-giving.  Jesus invited the man to follow him into Kingdom of God – and the Kingdom of God is not afterlife – the Kingdom of God is God’s vision for this life; God's vision for this world.  “Thy kingdom come on earth…” Jesus also invited his disciples to pray in his prayer. 

To enter the Kingdom of God is not a matter of correct low-risk beliefs, but a matter of letting go of old self-serving ways of living, thinking, being and doing to embrace new ways of thinking, living, being and doing.  What Jesus was telling the man was in order to follow him into an experience of the Kingdom of God, there were certain things he could not bring with him. 

He could not bring an attitude of privilege that sees material blessings as signs of God’s favor, nor could he leverage them over and against others.  In so many words Jesus told him that in the Kingdom of God those who have much have an obligation to empower those who have little. (“sell and give” Jesus invited him)   It’s not about being blessed because it is deserved, but it’s about empowering the powerless; and elevating  those who are last and least and lowest and have been victimized by power and domination, to first and foremost. It is about being a blessing!

The Kingdom of God is not about saving individuals for heaven, but about the creation of a new social and personal reality that begins in this life right now.  You could say that Jesus was inviting the man to be a part of the answer to the prayer, “Thy kingdom come on earth…”  (sell and give)

Finally Jesus was inviting the man into new kind of community.  In the final section of this passage Peter expresses concern about what are the rewards of discipleship.  Rather than pointing to  a glorious afterlife, Jesus grounds him even deeper into this life.  He says, “There is no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children of fields who will not receive a hundredfold now in this age” – receive what? – notice closely – “homes, brothers and sisters, mothers and children, and fields with persecutions.”  

There are two significant differences between the first list of things left behind and the list of blessings received.  In the second list “fathers” are omitted and “fields”  become “fields with persecutions.”  Metaphorically “fathers” symbolized absolute patriarchal power and hierarchy.  Mark’s Jesus is saying that the communities that would form around him would be characterized by an alternative set of values that radically departed from the hierarchical distinctions of relative worth that were prevalent and pervasive in the culture.  The kingdom of God where the last and least are elevated to equality was to be embodied in their community life together.  ("Thy kingdom come"  "Blessed Disturbance")

Of course, by embodying an alternative vision of community life they would be going against the flow of culture which would obviously invite conflict, rejection and even persecution from the culture and domination system of the time.

Jesus would not allow his disciples to escape this life with a risk free religion that left the world to its own oppressive devices.  But rather he invited them to follow him into the “blessed disturbance”  of God’s vision for the world. 

In the end they did follow him and communities did form around him that took seriously his invitation of blessed disturbance and high risk way of living and self-giving.  They did not follow because it was new requirement to fulfill in order to receive the reward of afterlife.  They followed because they trusted Jesus; that he was leading them into an experience of realizing their fullest humanity; into the fullest meaning of salvation: “to be made whole in love.”     

So what’s it going to be for you, me and for us, blessed assurance that leaves us comfortable, or blessed disturbance that shakes us from complacency?