Subjects of the Risen Christ (Acts 5:27-32)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on April 28, 2019, Easter II)

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Subjected to Soccer and Gardens

I cannot remember this myself, but I am told that when I was only months old, and would wake my parents up in the wee hours of the night, my dad would regularly take me to the living room and subject me to watching soccer on the television.  A few years later, I would be subjected to watching my older brother play soccer every Saturday.  Is it any wonder I began playing soccer myself?

I remember in fourth grade how my teacher subjected the class to a reading of The Secret Garden.  At first I was bored.  How could a story about a garden fill up nearly four hundred pages?  How would I last?  But subjected to this story day after day, I unconsciously became hooked.  By the end of the book, several friends and I had already decided to try to plant a garden of our own.

A Subject is Subjected

Our society prizes independence.  The self-made man is a distinctly American myth.  The idea is that we are all free subjects.  And the subject—if you’ll remember from grammar lessons long ago—is the hero in a sentence.  The subject comes first.  The subject is the agent, the performer, the one in control.  The subject acts upon objects, rather than being acted upon.

But that is only half of the story of the subject.  The other half, which our society tends to forget, is found in the dictionary.  The dictionary tells us that subject is also a verb.  To “subject” something is to cause it to undergo an experience.  To be subjected to something is to be formed or shaped by something outside us, something over which we have little control.  To be subjected is how a subject is made.  A subject is subjected. 

The full story, then, is this.  There is no free, self-made subject.  All subjects are also the products of experiences and forces outside themselves.  This truth is at the heart of observations like, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” which is to say, children subjected to the habits of their parents or teachers often assume those same habits.  Or, “choose your friends wisely,” which is to say, we are subjected to the ways of our friends and if exposed to them long enough we may reproduce these ways ourselves. 

Peter and the Disciples: Subjects of the World

The last seven weeks, we journeyed through the gospel of Mark together.  One thing we noticed was how dense, how willfully obtuse, the disciples seemed at times.  For example, Jesus once told his disciples that welcoming little children was the same thing as welcoming him.  What do the disciples do the next chapter when people bring little children to them?  They don’t welcome them.  In fact, they do the opposite: they rebuke them!  Did they not remember what Jesus had just said?

Mark never tells us why the disciples are so uncomprehending, but I have a theory.  They were subjects of the world.  They had been subjected all their lives to stories about how important it was to have power and possessions and prestige.  As residents of an occupied territory, continually harassed and put in their place by the Roman empire, they had been subjected to dreams of overthrowing the empire and repossessing their land and reclaiming their pride.  When Jesus talked about the first being last, or about the great being the least and servants of all, or about welcoming little children, who were nobodies and nothings in the grand scheme of thing—when Jesus shared the gospel, they did not understand it.  They were subjects of the world, where first meant rising to the top, where greatness meant being above others. 

Peter and the Disciples: Subjects of the Risen Christ

But in today’s scripture, something has clearly changed.  In today’s scripture, the same Peter and followers of Christ who couldn’t understand Jesus in Mark, clearly understand him now.  When we find them in front of the Jewish religious leaders today, they have already been in prison twice for proclaiming the gospel. 

It is a dramatic reversal of character.  It is, in fact, the very definition of repentance, which in the Greek means a change of heart and mind.  They had once aspired to power.  But they now proudly bear chains for proclaiming a love that goes to the cross and beyond.

Perhaps it was having been subjected to the dramatic experience of Christ that transforms Peter and the disciples.  Perhaps having seen Jesus give himself in love to the last and the least and the lowly time and again, perhaps having seen how the power of such a love defied death—perhaps this is what changes them.  Now they are subjects of the risen Christ, proclaiming a gospel that would turn the world on its head.  Or as they put it, they are proclaiming “repentance and forgiveness of sins,” which is to say, a radical change of mind and a forgiveness that liberates us from the past and all that we have been subjected to.

Becoming Subjects of the Risen Christ

The dramatic change in Peter and the earliest followers of Christ has me wondering.  For  days—for months—the disciples had followed Jesus but not really understood his message.  Only after the cross and the risen Christ did they really understand.  Only then did they become subjects of Christ.

What about me?  I am a subject of this world in countless ways, not only as a soccer player in my youth or as a gardener in the fourth grade, but also as someone who has been taught the values of saving for the future (Jesus had a thing or two to say about bigger barns); as someone who has been taught the importance of keeping up appearances (Jesus had a thing or two to say about people who act for the sake of being seen); as someone who has been taught the need to compete with others to do well in this world (Jesus had a thing or two to say about trying to get ahead of others). 

What would it mean for me to become more fully a subject of the crucified and risen Christ?

Perhaps, to begin, it means that I need to encounter more fully Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection in the world around me.  I am reminded, for instance, how the most blessed and fulfilled people I know in my life are persons who bear scars but also great love.  Which is to say, they have borne the cross and they also bear witness to resurrection.  In their company, I am subjected to the crucified and risen Christ. 

Perhaps to become more fully a subject about the crucified and risen Christ also means to let go.  Paul continually talks of being “crucified with Christ,” which sounds like a way of saying that Christ helps us to realize some things do not matter as much as we think they do.  Christ liberates us from the concerns and worries that once subjected us.  Thus Paul also talks about the world being crucified to him.  Life no longer means what it once did; in Christ, everything is reordered. 

Today’s passage ends with Peter and the apostles proclaiming, “We are witnesses to these things” (5:32).  There’s a dark note of foreshadowing in that word “witness”; in the Greek, it is the same word for “martyr.”  And indeed, according to tradition, Peter and the apostles will become martyrs.  But I would argue that just important as their death is their life, which reflected a change, a new way of living. 

Today before we pray, I invite you to pause with for just one moment to ponder within.  What is one way that the world continues to subject you, to make you its subject?  (Maybe it has to do with a pattern of behavior; a relationship; the entertainment or news industry; money.)

What is one way that you might subject this part of your life to Christ?  What is one way that you might bear witness to the change and new life that his life calls for?

Prayer

Risen Christ,

Where there remains in us

The vestige of the world’s old ways:
Liberate us by your forgiveness,

And change our hearts and minds,

That we might live

Not as subjects of the world

But as subjects of your love,

In which we are all crucified

And risen to new life.

Amen.

This Is Not the End (Mark 16:1-8)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on April 21, 2019, Easter Sunday)

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Looking in Closets

When I was child, I would occasionally linger in closets, reaching behind coats, digging past shoes and boxes and bags, plumbing the room’s depths.  Could I touch the back wall?  Was it just me, or did it feel cooler behind the coats?  Did I feel the prickles of a pine tree, or was that just a loose clothes hanger jabbing me in the back?

I’m sad to share that in all my searching I never found Narnia.  Friends of mine have confessed similar quests from their own childhood with the same result.  I imagine there is an entire generation, if not two or three by now, who can identify with this experience. 

I still remember when I finished the final book of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia  series.  I lay on the edge of my bed, restless.  It was late afternoon in the summer after my fourth grade year.  With no more books left to read, no way to enter into the story, I felt empty.  Peter, Edmund, Lucy—all the characters whose adventures I had shared through hundreds of pages had entered into Narnia for the final time.  But I could not.  I was left in the real world. 

As If He Were Never There in the First Place

In the oldest copies of the gospel of Mark, the story ends at verse 8.  It is a remarkably unsatisfying ending, leaving us on a ledge, not giving us the closure we so desire.  It’s Easter morning, three days after Jesus’ crucifixion.  We go to the empty tomb.  We hear from an anonymous young man the news that Jesus has been raised and has gone ahead of us to Galilee.  Then we turn the page and it’s blank.  That’s it.  The end.

Just as unsatisfying as the nonappearance of the resurrected Jesus is the response of his followers.  Before the crucifixion, Jesus’ twelve disciples all desert him and flee the scene.  Here, after the crucifixion, the remaining few who are faithful hear the news, but instead of sharing it they keep silent out of fear. 

It’s hard not feel sympathy for the resurrected Jesus, wherever he is in Galilee.  He kept telling his followers about the way of love, which was also the way of the cross: how there would be suffering and even death, but also how there would resurrection and new life.  He even told them that he would meet them again in Galilee.  But as far as we can tell at this point in the story, his followers have all abandoned him now.  There will be no reunion. 

One of my students wrote a reflection on this final scene, and his words struck a poignant chord in me.  This ending, he writes, shows the loneliness of Jesus.  His disciples have all deserted him, and now he walks around somewhere in Galilee, but no one knows it.  It’s almost “as if he [were] never [really] there in the first place.” 

A Method to Mark’s Madness?

Since the gospel of Mark was written, readers have been unsatisfied with its ending.  The earliest readers added their own endings to Mark.  Two of these endings still exist.  Some Bibles include them both.  These endings give the story resolution.  They show us the risen Jesus, and they depict the disciples as willing messengers of the good news.

Today readers still betray dissatisfaction with the original ending of Mark.  They try to make sense of it in various ways.  Some have gone so far as to claim that the writer of Mark actually died before he had a chance to complete the story.  Others claim that he wrote a more complete ending, but that it was lost.

But there are others who wonder if perhaps this ending is purposeful.  Perhaps Mark is making a point.  Perhaps Mark writes a non-ending precisely to leave us unsatisfied, restless.  Perhaps Mark wants us to get up off the bed and start searching in closets, behind coats, past shoes and boxes, into the depths of our own world.  Perhaps Mark wants us to do what the followers of Jesus fail to do.  Perhaps “Go…he is going ahead of you to Galilee; there you will see him,” is an invitation to the reader, in which “Galilee” signifies the real world and the good news becomes that the risen Jesus isn’t found in heaven above but right here in the dirt and darkness of our world.  Perhaps we are invited to look for the resurrected Jesus in our own lives. 

Perhaps for Mark the story has not ended.  Perhaps now it leaves the page and becomes our story.

Not the End but an Entrance

Did you know that for the first thousand years of Christian history, Christ-followers who depicted the Easter event in art rarely depicted Christ on the cross?  They showed all the scenes around it, including the last supper and the Roman soldiers mocking Christ and then later the empty tomb.  But rarely do we do find Christ on the cross—and when we do, Jesus is clothed and crowned, alive and reigning from the tree, rather than eyes closed and body sagging.[1] 

In the early church, the proclamation of Easter was not death but paradise—and not paradise as a heavenly world somewhere else, but as this world blessed and transfigured by the Spirit of God.  In the Sant’Appolinare Nuovo Church in Ravenna, Italy, which was constructed in the 6^th century, there are 26 rectangular mosaics near the ceiling of the nave that tell the story of Jesus.  The tenth picture shows Simon the Cyrene carrying Jesus’ cross.  The next picture is not Christ on the cross but the scene of the women at the empty tomb.  Other pictures show the resurrected Christ and an earthly paradise of sheep, doves, shrubs, still waters, starry skies.  The focus, in other words, was not the death of Jesus.  The message was that Christ is alive, and all the world in him. 

Perhaps that is why Mark does not resolve the end of his story with an appearance of the resurrected Jesus or belief on the part of his followers.  For Mark, Easter is not a day to celebrate the end of the story.  It is a day when we are invited to enter into the story.  To trust the good news that God’s love is stronger than death and is redeeming this world at this very instant, transforming it one moment at a time into paradise, if you could believe it.

The Story Continues

That summer when I finished the Narnia series, I wanted so badly for the story to continue.  I began looking in closets.  I couldn’t help it.

This Easter when we come to the end of the gospel, what do we do?  Mark leaves us hanging.  Is that the end of the story?  Or could it be an entrance into the story?  Is it an invitation to go and see the risen Jesus in “Galilee,” which is to say, the everyday world that Jesus lived and breathed and ministered in.  “Galilee” is our world, our lives, the dust and dirt that we walk in everyday.  Would we dare seek the risen Jesus there?

The gospel is for us wherever we are.  Jesus sought out the sick and the hurting.  Jesus gathered around tables with the condemned and the rejected.  Jesus visited (and often unsettled) the homes of the privileged and the powerful.  And the message of today is that his love was not a failed experiment or a blip in history.  Rather it is alive, everyday crucified but everyday risen, insistent on turning this world into the kingdom of God.  It is with us still.

Today’s scripture leaves me with a question.  When I get to the end of Mark and close the book and return to my own world, what do I see: death or life?  Do I see only the cross, or do I see the resurrected Christ?  I wonder if sometimes the good news is better than we allow ourselves to imagine: heaven on earth, the kingdom come, if we would but trust.

Christ is risen.  Christ is with us.  Christ’s love is alive, stronger than any end, insistent on turning this world into the kingdom of God.  Come, friends, let us go to Galilee and seek the risen Christ.  Let us share his never-ending life and follow in his way.

Prayer

Dear Jesus,

Risen and waiting

For us in Galilee:

Make us restless

For glimpses

Of your resurrection.

Draw us

Out of ourselves

And into the never-ending story

Of your love,

From which springs

Heaven on earth,

The kingdom come.

Amen.

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[1] Cf. Rita Nakashima Brock and Rebecca Ann Parker, Saving Paradise: How Christianity Traded Love of This World for Crucifixion and Empire (Boston: Beacon, 2008), ix.

"Not Far from the Kingdom" (Mark 12:28-34)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on April 14, 2019, Palm Sunday)

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Why the Temple?

The conversation began like many conversations began.  The five-year-old boy had a question for everything.

“Why do we go to the Temple, daddy?”

“The Temple is where we worship God,” the father answered.

“But how do we worship God?” the boy asked.

“Prayer,” the father replied, “and sacrifice.”

“You mean the dead animals,” the boy said.

“Yes.  And the grain also.” 

“But why animals and grain?” the boy continued.

The father paused.  “Well, it’s what everyone does.  It’s our custom.  It’s written in our laws.  This is the way we say thank you to God and ask for God’s favor.  We sacrifice what is most important to us.  Worship is all about our relationship with God.”

Silence followed as the boy furrowed his brow.  Finally he tilted his head toward the sky and pondered aloud, “I wonder what God does with all those dead animals.”

Why Sunday?

Worship looks a lot different today than it did two thousand years ago in the Temple.  Gone are the dead animals and grain offerings.  (Which is a good thing, because I do not do well with blood!)  But much remains the same.  We gather weekly.  We pray prayers.  We sing songs.  We read scripture.  Some of the same words are repeated every Sunday.

The question that some little boy surely asked thousands of years ago, echoes still today.  Why?  Why do we worship?  Why do we come to church on Sunday?  Is it because that’s what our parents did?  Is it because we’re trying to score points with God?

Jesus went to synagogue on the Sabbath.  Jesus went to the Temple.  Interestingly, though, when the gospel of Mark shows us these occasions, we see Jesus continually shattering the Sabbath ceremony.  Repeatedly he heals on the Sabbath, which was certainly not in the order of service.  His disciples pluck grain on the Sabbath, contrary to the custom of the day, in which the potluck meal would be prepared ahead of time and no food preparation would took place on the Sabbath.  And it wasn’t only what Jesus did on the Sabbath that defied tradition.  Throughout the week, he flouted forgiveness formalities and table manners.  He ate with sinners and tax collectors, he forgave people whom the authorities had deemed judged and condemned by God.

We see very little of Jesus worshiping on the Sabbath—or at least, worshiping in the custom of his contemporaries.

More Than Just Sacrifice

When the scribe approaches Jesus in today’s scripture, we can imagine what is coming: another rebuke from a religious authority.  Most of the scribes and Pharisees have taken offense at Jesus’ inappropriate behavior on the Sabbath and beyond.

The scribe begins with a question: “Which commandment is first of all?”

Jesus responds with an answer that is not quite appropriate.  The question calls for one commandment, but he gives two.  The two commandments that Jesus cites are both commonly cited by other rabbis of his time: one from Deuteronomy, “to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength”; the other from Leviticus, “to love your neighbor as yourself.”[1]  What is surprising is that Jesus cites both commandments together.  While other rabbis commend each commandment, none that we know of spoke of the two commandments together as one and the same.[2]  It’s as though Jesus is saying here what he says elsewhere: “heaven must come to earth—there is no love of God except in love of neighbor.”[3]

Perhaps even more surprising is the scribe’s response: “You are right, rabbi,” he says.  “This is much more important than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices” (12:33).  For once, a religious leader gets it.  This scribe appreciates the revolution.  He sees that the rules and regulations of worship, the burnt offerings and sacrifices, can actually get in the way of true worship.  Shortly after today’s scripture, Jesus calls out one such obstruction of worship.  The religious leaders at the Temple apply taxes that effectively devour the homes of widows, he says.  In the interest of sacrifices and a well-run Sabbath service, the religious leaders take from the needy.  And heaven recedes from earth.

Loving God

If Jesus and this scribe have anything to say, worship is not about custom and convention.  Those things can become hollow, can become more about us, can actually distract us from what matters most.  Neither is worship a pep rally, where we score points with God and align ourselves with the winning team.  In effect, that’s how some people worshiped Jesus when he entered Jerusalem, waving palms and chanting his praise.  But the same crowds of people would be calling for his death days later.  The worship of power led the people away from worship of God.

Worship, for Jesus, is about loving God.  And here’s the twist that Jesus brings to everything: loving God is ultimately the same thing as loving one’s neighbor.  Is it any coincidence, then, that we see Jesus repeatedly shattering Sabbath and ceremony in order to speak to the troubled, to heal the sick, to forgive the condemned, to gather around tables with sinners?  Are not each of these things about the love of neighbor?  Are not these each acts of worship?

I don’t think Jesus was against institutions like the Temple or the Sabbath day.  I think what he was against was institutionalization: the tendency of institutions to forget their original purpose, so that protocol came before people, so that custom and convention were more important than the cry of the needful. 

Mischievous Ministry

Several weeks ago, I shared with you that I was pondering Jesus’ Sabbath example and what it might mean for the church today.  Today I cannot help but think that much of Jesus’ mischievous ministry—for that’s most certainly what it was for the religious authorities—is in fact his renewal of sacred institutions.  In response to the question, “Why worship?” Jesus’ answer was simple: to love God and love neighbor.  The two went hand in hand.  What better way to celebrate God’s liberation on the Sabbath than to liberate persons enslaved by illness and disease?  What better way to celebrate God’s love than to share it around a table with the unloved?

I wonder…could Jesus’ mischievous ministry be an example for the church today?  Could following Jesus mean occasionally leaving behind some of the familiar procedures and protocol on a Sunday so that we can touch the need of the world?  If the general behavior of religious leaders in Jesus’ day is any indication, the religious establishment loathes change.  But there is hope for us yet.  The scribe in today’s scripture shows us another response.  The scribe today confesses before Jesus that, yes, in fact worship is much more than burnt offerings and sacrifices.  Worship is as much love of neighbor as it is love of God—for aren’t they one and the same?

So I have an invitation.  Would you consider once in a while welcoming a disruption to our Sunday routine?  Not every Sunday, but just once in a while, so that we might follow Jesus’ Sabbath example and reach out to touch the needful among our neighbors.  Could we reach out one Sunday and hold the hands of our neighbors in the memory care unit across the street?  Could we sit another Sunday on a bench with the homeless and talk about…talk about whatever, so long as they knew that we see them as brothers and sisters in the family of God?  The forefather of faith, Abraham, lived a semi-nomadic life.  Could we do that too, not sheltering ourselves in this building but trusting and following God as we hop occasionally to other places in our community on Sunday, sharing the love of God and whatever worship would be appropriate with our neighbors in need?  Does the idea unsettle you?  Inspire you?  Jesus blessed the needful on the Sabbath.  Do you have ideas about how we could bless our neighbors on a Sunday sojourn of our own?  Let us know!

After reading today’s scripture, my enthusiasm for a Sunday sojourn is only made stronger.  For when the scribe sets his sights beyond the religious routine, beyond the burnt offerings and sacrifices of the temple, Jesus tells him where he is, and it’s where I want to be: “You are not far from the kingdom.”

Prayer

Jesus, our teacher,

Worship drew you nearer

To God and neighbor alike.

May your mischievous ministry

Inspire in us

The same spirit of worship.

Lead us today

Beyond symbols and ceremony

And into the kingdom of God,

Where we see in our neighbors

Your face.

Amen.

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[1] Cf. Deut 6:5; Lev 19:18.

[2] Vincent Taylor, The Gospel According to St. Mark (London: Macmillan, 1966), 488.

[3] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1988), 318.

Downwardly Mobile (Mark 10:13-16)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on April 7, 2019, Fifth Sunday of Lent)

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Childhood Memories

Recently my brother and sister-in-law had twins, Nathan and Matthew.  Last Friday, my parents and I went over and enjoyed our first extended visit with the boys.  It was an occasion marked with a little spit-up and a whole lot of love.

My mom had brought over my brother’s baby pictures so that we could compare father and sons.  My brother had this delightful smirk as a toddler.  It remains to be seen if either of his sons will pick it up, but my money’s on Nathan.

As we flipped further through the photo album, we stumbled upon an old clipping from the Times Dispatch from 1984.  It was a photo of my brother and his two neighborhood friends, Robbie and Heather, running a lemonade stand.  The three of them struck a priceless pose that only three little children could: my brother Curt smirking for the camera, his friend Robbie rom drinking his own supply, and Heather captivated by something else entirely, her eyes glazed over and looking off into the distance.

Not in the Way—They Are the Way

Today’s scripture is the second time in the gospel of Mark that Jesus welcomes little children.  The first time, his disciples are arguing about who among was the greatest.  In response, Jesus welcomes a little child and places it among them.  Little children were at the bottom of the social totem pole at that time.   Jesus is effectively overturning his disciples’ understanding of greatness.  Greatness is not in rising to the top, but in welcoming and living with those whom the world places at the bottom.

Maybe word of Jesus’ warm reception of children spread among the locals.  For in today’s scripture, just one chapter later, people are bringing their little children to Jesus in order that he might touch them.  And the disciples, fresh from their lesson of the previous chapter?  They haven’t learned one bit.  They rebuke the parents.  Jesus is too important for these little children.  Have these parents no sense of decency, no civility? 

When Jesus learns of this, however, it is the disciples who are rebuked: have they no understanding?  These little children are not disruptions.  They are not getting in the way of his message.  In fact, they are the way: “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” he says (10:15).  Jesus does not welcome little children in order to tell them to grow up and become world-wise adults like his disciples.  He welcomes them to tell his disciples that they must become like little children.

Adulthood…

It’s easy enough to hear what Jesus is saying in today’s passage: little children are model citizens of the kingdom of God.  But it’s a little more difficult to understand what he’s saying.  How are little children models for faith?  Does Jesus really want us to become like little children—temper tantrums and showboating for attention included?  What about the passages elsewhere in the New Testament where Paul talks about faith in terms of growing up, where he compares immature Christians to “infants” and laments that they are not yet ready for solid food (cf. 1 Cor 3:1-2)?

I wonder if Jesus and Paul are not actually saying the same thing, but in different ways.  When Paul tells the Christ-followers at Corinth to grow up, he discusses their behavior: “For as long as there is jealousy and quarreling among you, are you not…behaving according to human inclinations?” (cf. 1 Cor 3:1-2).  For Paul, the way of the world—the desire to come out on top, to get your own way, to win the approval of others—is comparable to the occasional behavior that we see in children.  But in today’s scripture, Jesus points out that in fact this behavior is characteristic of most adults!  For Jesus, if anyone is closer to the kingdom of God, it’s little children, not adults.  For Jesus, adulthood actually amplifies the selfish and destructive behaviors that begin to bud in childhood, even as it weans us off faith.

I think back to my brother Curt and his friends Robbie and Heather, presiding over their lemonade stand.  Theoretically they are sitting on the cusp of the adult world.  Theoretically they are learning what it means to be independent and capable, to make money and to get your way, to keep up appearances and make a good impression.  But in reality, they’re three little children having a good time.  There’s Heather captivated by a squirrel or a daisy or God knows what else, completely oblivious to the importance of showmanship and keeping up appearances.  There’s Robbie draining his own profit with every cup of lemonade that he slurps down.  There’s Curt smirking, as though he knows it’s all a charade, as though he knows they might not make a cent off this but who cares, they are together and laughing—and if Jesus has anything to say about it, they’re closer to the kingdom than we are.

…as the Antithesis of Faith?

Henri Nouwen, a Christ-follower who spent the last ten years of his life living in community with persons with intellectual disability, suggests that children are one of the ways that Jesus invites us to become downwardly mobile.  Our culture marches in the other direction.  At an early age, we are taught about the important of being independent and capable, of making a living and securing our future, of winning friends and influencing people.  Or in short: power, possessions, and prestige.

But as Nouwen points out, each of these upwardly mobile traits actually deprives us of the life of faith.  To be powerful, to be able to do it all on our own, also means not recognizing our need, not trusting others.  To chase after money and the means to make our own way, also means not taking the risk of love, where we are left vulnerable and exposed to the possibility that we might not get our way.  To keep up appearances and worry about what others think, also means not being faithful to a deeper call in our lives, to our deepest joys and desires and responsibilities.

Little children may have the odd temper tantrum or bout of showboating, but they are also exemplary of the life of faith in their great trust and need, in their vulnerability and love, in their simple faithfulness to the things that matter most, like friendship and hope and the fresh possibilities of each new day.

Lingering Reflections

I wonder what all of this means for us today.  I wonder if it means that the church should treat its children with the same reverence that it treats the Lord’s Table.  Are they not also sacraments, glimpses of the kingdom, invitations into the kingdom?

And I wonder what lessons we might learn from our children as we confront our own uncertain futures, as individuals, as a church (for all our futures are uncertain).  I wonder if we gather around this Table the same way Curt, Robbie, and Heather gathered around their lemonade stand, unconcerned about profit or appearance, and instead genuinely grateful for the gifts we have and joyful for the opportunity to share them.

I wonder what it means to be downwardly mobile.

Prayer

Little Christ,

Whom we so want

To be big—

Invite us anew

Onto this strange path

That you walk:

A path packed

With the least and the lowly,

A path where we are incapable,

Do not always get our way,

Do not always make a good impression:

A path of need and trust,

Love and vulnerability,

And faithfulness, whatever the cost.

Amen.

Getting It Right in the Wrong Way (Mark 8:27-38)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 31, 2019, Fourth Sunday of Lent)

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A Bad Defender, a Good Father

Running relaxes me.  The steady strides, the focused breathing, the outside world of squirrels and snakes and lakes and trees—all of this helps to clear my mind.  It is meditative.  I become attuned to the present in a way I am normally not.  Maybe for you, it’s not running but another activity: crafting, cooking, building something, gardening, washing dishes.  Whatever it is, I wonder if these mind-clearing activities are not sometimes forms of prayer.  I wonder if they don’t sometimes reset our mind in a good way—or perhaps even set our mind on divine things, as our scripture puts it today.

Last week as I was running-praying at Deep Run Park, I watched intently out of the corner of my eye a father and his son playing soccer.  The son, maybe five or six-years-old, was wearing a replica jersey of a superstar.  He was dribbling toward the goal without much control.  His father was playing defense—but not really.  When his son lost control of the ball, he did not swoop in and steal it as a good defender would have done, but rather he hovered in place and waited for his son to recover.  It was a delicate, loving dance.  At the end, of course, the son smashed the ball into the goal and wheeled away in celebration.

As I reflect on that tender scene, one in which I see my own childhood before me, I ponder a paradox.  There is such a thing as getting it right in the wrong way.  The father could have defended the goal much better.  He could have kept his son from ever scoring.  But to do that would have been getting it right in the wrong way.  To play to the best of his ability would have been to deny his son the opportunity to practice, to improve, to be encouraged.  It would have stifled his son’s dreams.  To be a great defender in that moment, would have been to be a terrible father.

The Right Words in the Wrong Way

Earlier this semester, I explored the book of Job with my students at VCU.  The book of Job is another example of getting it right in the wrong way.  After Job suffers great loss, his three friends come to share his grief.  For seven days, they sit with him in silence.  But when Job starts to air his grievances with God, they break their silence.  They answer each of his complaints with well-intended pious—today we might say “churchy”—comments.  Much of what they say, actually, bears close resemblance to what is said elsewhere in the Bible.  In other words, they get a lot of things right about God.  But what they say does not help Job one bit in his grief. 

We have all probably seen or experienced this in our lives.  Someone close to us dies, and a friend consoles us with well-meaning claims of faith: “He’s with God now.”  “You’ll see him again one day.”  “Things will get better.”  At the end of the book of Job, God intervenes and says to Job’s friends, “You have not spoken of me what is right.”  In other words, they may have been the right words, but they've been shared in the wrong way.  What Job needed was not pious consolation, but a companionship deeper than words—a companionship that his friends had shared with him the first seven days when they were silent. 

Satan Gets It Right

One of the curious patterns in the gospel of Mark is Jesus’ frequent admonition to his disciples and others to keep silent—not to spread the news. 

We see it in today’s scripture.  Jesus asks his disciples who people say that he is, and after a host of wrong answers, Peter gets it right: “You are the Messiah” (8:29).  In response, Jesus “sternly orders” them to not tell anyone.  Why in the world would Jesus want to keep the right answer under wraps?

We get a hint, I think, in the very next verse.  “Then,” Mark tells us, “he began to teach them.”  In other words, they need to be taught.  They have the right answer, but Jesus is afraid that if they were to tell people about him, they would get it right in the wrong way.  His concern is immediately confirmed.  When he tells his disciples that as the Messiah he will undergo great suffering and rejection and even death, Peter takes him aside and rebukes him.  “Jesus,” I imagine him saying, “You’ve got it all wrong.  The Messiah will bring our victory, not our defeat.” 

Jesus’ response shows just how wrongly Peter has gotten it right.  “Get behind me, Satan!”  The suggestion here is startling.  We all recognize Satan in the obvious shapes: greed, envy, pride, lust; racism, sexism, nationalism.  But here Satan takes the shape of the right answer.  Here Satan dresses up in his Sunday best, carries a Bible under his arm, quotes scripture with us, prays with us our prayers.  Here Satan gets it right—Jesus is the Messiah—but gets it right in a very wrong way.  The Messiah, according to Satan, means our success, satisfaction, security.  The Messiah, according to Satan, means we are on the winning side.

Call It Jesus Christ and the Way of the Cross

After Peter (or Satan) gets it right in a very wrong way, Jesus sets him and the disciples straight, which is to say he sets their minds not on human things but on divine things (cf. 8:33).  The Messiah, he says, is not about the self.  It’s not about us winning.  The Messiah is about the loss of the self for the sake of others.  Call it altruism, call it ego-death, call it selflessness, call it Jesus Christ and the way of the cross—call it whatever you want, but it’s the awareness that the self in fact makes life smaller, sicker, a shadow of death, and that the loss of self paradoxically makes life bigger, richer, and more abundant.  I think again of the father playing horrible defense, how on the level of the self he was getting it so wrong, and yet how on a deeper level he was getting it so right.  I think of a quarrel between friends, how winning an argument can satisfy the self and simultaneously strain the friendship of its joy and vitality, how we can get it right in such a wrong way.

In today’s scripture, Jesus values the way that we live over the words that we say.  In fact, at the very moment that Peter stumbles upon the right words, Jesus tells him to shut up because he knows Peter’s got it in the wrong way.  After that, Jesus teaches his disciples the right way and invites them to follow him.  He effectively counsels them, “Less talk, more walk.”

Of the Church’s Survival and the Kingdom’s Arrival

In Matthew’s version of this passage, Jesus famously declares that Peter is the rock on which he will build the church.  I wonder, then, if Peter might not serve as an example for the church today.  Could it be that Jesus calls the church like Peter to focus less on its words and more on its way?

Author and Christ-follower Philip Yancey tells the heartbreaking story of a down-and-out prostitute in Chicago.  She confided with a social worker just how bad things had gotten.  She had started using her two-year-old daughter to support her drug habit.  But now she had spent the last of her money and was unable to buy even a scrap of food for her or her child.  The social worker was stunned speechless.  He was legally liable and would have to report the woman for child abuse.  But even so, he looked upon the woman with compassion and asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for help.  “Church?” she asked incredulously.  “Why would I ever go there?  I was already feeling terrible about myself.  They’d just make me feel worse.”

It is noteworthy, I think, that the broken and hurting in our world flee less and less to church and more and more to humble AA gatherings, soup kitchens, and other special communities that reach out compassionately to persons in need.  Could it be that like Peter the church sometimes proclaims good news in a not so good way, because it proclaims love in a prideful, overbearing, and impatient register?

I know from my conversations with you that Gayton Road is different from this caricature of church that I’ve sketched out.  Many of you have shared with me that the reason you began coming to Gayton Road in the first place was the warm welcome and humble, unpretentious character of our church family.  Even so, I wonder if Jesus’ words to Peter and his disciples might issue a healthy challenge to us as well: namely, to worry less about ourselves and more about our way.  To worry less about the survival of the church—the building and the programs that it houses and how many people fill the pews—and to ask rather how we are loving and building up our neighbors, especially the needful among them.  The point, after all, is not for the church to survive, but for the kingdom to arrive.

Prayer

Self-giving God,

Whose love is

Not a doctrine

But a person—

Show us your way

Of selflessness

And save us

From ourselves,

That we might

Share life abundant

With others

In your kingdom. 

In Jesus, who took up his cross:

Amen.

Again (Mark 8:1-10)

(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 24, 2019, Third Sunday of Lent)

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How Can I Help?

This winter and spring I have had the opportunity to teach a course at VCU, “The Bible as Literature.”  Every Monday evening, I meet with around twenty students for three hours and we explore a passage in the Bible.  Three hours is a long time to spend with the Bible.  In the first class, as we were reading through the opening chapters of Genesis and we arrived at our first genealogy, one student moaned, “These lists are so boring!”  And not just the lists seemed boring.  I’ve discovered that one of the primary challenges of reading the Bible, for these students as well as for us, is to see that actually it’s not that different from our own world.  The story of the ancestral family—Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob—is not a stately portrait of pious heroes.  It is a messy sketch of the same joys and problems that fill our world: the laughter that accompanies baby bumps and new life mingled with the tears that flow from broken families and desperate futures.  It’s the paradox of God’s loving presence butting up against imperious human characters who are insistent on achieving their own will at any cost, by hook or crook.

In some of our classes, a spark will jump from the text and catch fire in the hearts of the students.  Such was the case when we read the story of Ruth.  Those who had suffered difficult loss in their own lives could feel the tragedy of Naomi and Ruth, who had both lost their husbands and lacked a real livelihood.  In the same way, they knew what the book of Ruth was talking about when it began referring to the force that would bring about new life, a force called “steadfast love,” which both Ruth and Boaz demonstrate, a force that is even stronger than death.

In other classes, however, there is no spark.  I look out on row upon row of impassive expression.  It feels like pulling teeth.  It feels like I’m in a desert with no morsel of interesting conversation to share.  How, I wonder, can I possibly help here?

How Quickly They Forget

I imagine we all feel this way from time to time.  Faced with what seems an impossible task or responsibility, we feel helpless, overwhelmed, incapable.  Someone in our family falls ill, and there’s nothing the doctors can do.  So what could we do?  Like the disciples in the desert facing the hunger of four thousand, we ask, “How could I possibly help?”  A friend of ours falls upon hard times, and we don’t have the resources to assist them in their difficulty.  Like the disciples in the desert, we ask, “How could I possibly help?”  Our vocation calls us into a circumstance where we know we are under-equipped or under-prepared for what is to come.  Like the disciples in the desert, we ask, “How could I possibly help?”

The curious thing about our passage today is that it has already happened once before in the gospel of Mark.  Two chapters prior to this one, Jesus feeds five thousand.  Today, Jesus feeds four thousand.  Many scholars have assumed that these two stories are simply variations on the same incident, that Mark rather carelessly included the same story twice.  But others have pointed out that Mark does not seem so absentminded.  He introduces his story by saying, “There was again a great crowd without anything to eat” (8:1).  He recognizes that the same thing that happened before is about to happen again.  But why, we might still ask, would Mark want to tell this story when we’ve already seen its truth demonstrated once before?

I think it has something to do with the disciples.  The gospel of Mark is filled with pairs of stories: two stories about crossing the sea, two stories about feeding a large crowd, two stories about welcoming little children.  The same things keep happening, again and again.  And in the second story of each pair, we see quite clearly that the disciples come off none the wiser.  In our story today, the disciples’ question—“How can one feed these people…?”—shows how quickly they forget what Jesus has done before, how quickly they become overwhelmed with the impossibility of the task before them. 

The first time they had asked this question, Jesus had shown them that the only thing that matters is being faithful to the need.  Then they had only had five loaves and a couple of fish, but that was enough to feed the crowd.  The miracle is that when we are faithful, it is always enough.  Today we see the same miracle performed again a second time, as Jesus takes seven loaves and a few small fish and distributes them among the crowd.  And it is enough.  Again and again, being faithful with what they have is enough.  But in Mark, the disciples never learn this.  Again and again, they despair instead of trust.

When We Are Faithful, It Is Enough

When I read these feeding stories, I cannot help but think of Rhonda Sneed and her blessing warriors who regularly distribute what food they have among the homeless in our city.  The task before them is impossible.  There is no way that they can feed all the homeless.  But they do not despair and give up.  They do not ask, “How can one possibly feed these people?”  They simply are faithful with what they have.  And the miracle is that somehow it is enough.  Again and again, it is enough.  More than once, I’ve heard Rhonda’s homeless friends say, “It’s not just the food, you know.  It’s that she asks about us and gives us hugs and wants to be with us.”  Even when supplies are less than satisfactory, for every person they see, somehow, for that one day, for that one night, their visit and their friendship is enough.  Again and again, it is enough.

At the end of one of those nights when teaching felt like pulling teeth, I was ponderously packing my materials and preparing to leave when the last student in the room stopped before my desk and said, “You know…I had always thought of the stories in Genesis as outdated and barbaric.  But tonight they felt real to me, like the kind of stuff I live through.”

For me, that moment has become a reminder.  On the nights when it feels like that classroom is a desert and I have no morsel of interesting conversation to share, instead of asking, “How could I possibly help here?” I try to remember that even though the task seems impossible, God is calling me not to succeed but simply to be faithful to God’s call with what I have.  For when we are faithful, it is enough.  Again and again, it is enough.

I imagine that if you think back to impossible moments in your own life, like when someone in your family fell ill or a friend of yours fell upon hard times, you may discover something similar.  You could not solve the problem.  But when you were faithful, when you visited and sat beside and listened to your friend or family member, somehow that was enough for them, for that day, for that night.

That is the good news.  The disciples witnessed it in their own lives again and again, but even so they continued to despair instead of to trust in the face of each new difficulty.  In our own lives, we too will face the impossible from time to time.  May we not despair but instead remember the little miracles of the past.  And may we trust in the good news that being faithful is always enough.

Prayer

Compassionate God,

Whose call we hear

In the cries of the needful around us:

Encourage us

In the face of difficulty,

And remind us

Of the power of your love,

That we might be faithful

No matter the circumstance,

Trusting that through your grace

It is enough.

In Christ, who gives us all he has: Amen.