Mark 10:35-45
Beloved and Invited to New Life
James Sledge October
21, 2018
I
read an column in The Washington Post
the other day entitled, “As Jesus said, nice guys finish last.” It quoted a
tweet from Jerry Falwell, Jr., president at Liberty University. “Conservatives
& Christians need to stop electing ‘nice guys’. They might make great
Christian leaders but the US needs street fighters like @realDonaldTrump at
every level of government b/c the liberal fascists Dems are playing for keeps
& many Repub leaders are a bunch of wimps!”[1]
The
column went on to note that it is hardly a new thing for religious folks to want
powerful politicians to support their agenda. For much of European and American
history, faith and power have had something of a symbiotic relationship. Rulers
made sure that the population participated in the faith, and the faith gave
spiritual blessing to the ruler.
This
sort of deal almost always ends up compromising and cheapening the faith. In
our American experience, Christianity ended up being used to buttress slavery,
sanction the genocide of Native Americans, and support imperialism in Africa
and Asia. More recently, evangelical leaders were singing the president’s
praises on the very day that thousands of migrant children were moved, under
the cover of darkness, to a detention facility in Texas.
This last event prompted The Washington Post columnist to write,
“This is disturbing and discrediting. How can anyone supposedly steeped in the
teachings of Jesus be so unaffected by them? The question immediately turns
against the questioner. In a hundred less visible ways, how can I be so
unaffected by them?”[2]
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Being
steeped in Jesus’ teachings yet remaining unaffected is nothing new. It happens
in our scripture this morning. The disciples have been with Jesus for a long
time. They’ve heard him teach about self-denial and taking up their cross.
They’ve heard him chastise them for arguing about who is greatest and tell them
that they must be servants of all. They’ve heard him teach about receiving the
kingdom as an unimportant, powerless child. They heard him say the first will
be last and the last will be first. And yet…
And
yet, once more the disciples act in ways completely at odds with the way of
Jesus. I suppose it is just as well that they are such bumbling disciples
because it means that Jesus repeatedly has to straighten them out and, in the
process, teach us about what it means to live as his followers.
James
and John come to Jesus, asking to sit at his side when he comes into his glory.
This is about a lot more that having the best seats at the table, although that
itself would have been counter to Jesus’ teachings. This is about being top
dogs in the new reign that Jesus will bring. They are asking to be his chief of
staff and prime minister.
Not
surprisingly, this doesn’t sit well with the others when they hear of it, and
based on what Jesus says next, it’s pretty clear that they’re not upset at
James and John’s failure to follow the teachings of Jesus. They’re upset that
James and John tried to jump in line ahead of them. No doubt some of them were
hoping to be head of staff.
But Jesus shuts the whole fuss down by
once more teaching them about how radically different his way is from that of
the world. For Jesus, greatness is not measured by having the best seats, being
in positions of authority, or having people jump to attention when you come
into the room. Greatness is measured by how well you serve others, by how you
give yourself to others. It is a radically, counter-intuitive way of living, a
way most fully embodied by Jesus himself, who will give his very life for
others.
____________________________________________________________________________
Regardless
of what you may think of his politics, Donald Trump is about as far as you can
get from this Jesus way of radical self giving. And for any Christian figure to
tout President Trump as a model leader directly contradicts the clear teachings
of Jesus. The obviousness of this is what led that Washington Post columnist to ask, “How can anyone supposedly
steeped in the teachings of Jesus be so unaffected by them?” But the moment we
feel the least bit smug compared to folks like Jerry Falwell, Jr. the Post columnist also asks, “In a hundred
less visible ways, how can I be so unaffected by them?”
For
many of us, our finances are an area often unaffected by Jesus’ teachings. He
may have said, “You cannot serve God and wealth,” that “where your treasure is, there
your heart will be also,” but according to statistics, you’d have a
hard time seeing this lived out in the financial lives of the typical
Presbyterian. This typical Presbyterian tends to be as focused on acquiring
wealth and the things wealth can buy as people outside the church. Very often,
we acts as servants to those need and share our treasure only from what little
time or treasure is left over after our pursuit of wealth and the things wealth
can buy.
As
I thought about how far the typical Presbyterian’s giving is from the teachings
of Jesus, I also thought about the vision statement recently crafted by our
Session and printed in the bulletin. Gathering
those who fear they are not enough, so we may experience grace, wholeness, and
renewal as God’s beloved. And I thought to myself, that talking about how
far our financial lives are from the teachings of Jesus must surely sound a lot
like, “You are not enough.”
If
Jesus operated by the ways of our world, that might well be true, but he
doesn’t. Those bumbling, stumbling disciples in our gospel reading are not with
Jesus because they are good enough or smart enough or accomplished enough.
Jesus has gathered them despite what appears to be a remarkable lack of
credentials.
The
difficult, demanding teachings of Jesus are not entry requirements. There is no
“If you do this, I will love you” quality to Jesus’ teachings. Rather, Jesus
loves and has chosen his disciples, and so he invites them into the sort of
life he knows to be true and full human life. And this life looks a lot like
the life Jesus lives.
You
are God’s beloved. Jesus loves you, and so he continues to teach, to invite you
into a life that the world and its ways cannot give, the life of a child of
God. This way of Jesus feels strange and odd to us who’ve been shaped and
formed by the ways of the world. But those ways of the world are the ones that
have left many of us stressed and tired and anxious and burned out. Jesus
promises that he knows a better way.
You
are God’s beloved. And so Jesus calls you saying, “Come, follow me.”
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