Sermon: Getting Our Mojo Back

Mark 9:30-37

Getting Our Mojo Back

September 23, 2018                                                                                        James Sledge

I spent much of my childhood and youth in Charlotte, NC, back in the days when TV had a total of six or seven channels. Of these, the CBS affiliate dominated the local market and also owned the largest radio station. It had a number of high profile, charity events each year, but the one I recall the most vividly was an annual on air blood drive.

They advertised it heavily. Corporate sponsors provided food, refreshments, and gifts. Radio and TV personalities worked the event. CBS sent in stars from various shows, and all during the day they would have live broadcasts interviewing donors, talking about how easy is was, how almost painless it was.

The event was always a huge success with more than a thousand people donating blood. The Red Cross blood bank would be as full as it ever got, but this blood drive never seemed to convert many into regular donors. Year after year, most of those interviewed were first time donors, and year after year, it wasn’t long before the Red Cross was making pleas to the public about critically short blood supplies. The gifts, glitz, celebrities, and chance to be on TV drew in lots of people, but when it was all over, they went back to old patterns, ones that didn’t include giving blood.

A similar pattern showed up in the early Jesus movement. The gospels report huge crowds coming out to see this miracle working, charismatic, teacher-prophet-messiah. But by and large, the crowds saw the show, perhaps got a healing, and then went home to their old lives.

The early reflected this. It was a small movement, and you see that in the New Testament. In his letters, the Apostle Paul deals with questions about what parts of normal, civic participation are out of bounds for followers of Jesus, questions that arise because the Christians are a tiny minority. So too some of the gospels address communities struggling to remain faithful when doing so may get them ostracized from polite society.

We tend to think of the Bible as a public book, but the individual components of the New Testament – which didn’t really exist as we know it for a few hundred years after Jesus – were not understood that way. They were not used to spread the Christian message but to help existing Christian communities deal with issues that they faced. The books that would become the New Testament weren’t for the masses, but for the dedicated few.

It’s easy to see why the early Jesus movement tended to be small. While Jesus might have made a big splash and attracted a lot of gawkers, people hoping for a healing, or a political messiah to take on the Romans, many of Jesus’ teachings were not real crowd pleasers. The teachings we heard this morning are no exception.

In Mark’s gospel, Jesus makes three predictions in quick succession about his upcoming death in Jerusalem. In each case, the disciples struggle to understand. In the first instance Peter actually challenges Jesus, who then teaches that his followers must deny self, take up the cross, and be willing to lose their lives.

 Our reading this morning is the second of these predictions. Here the disciples don’t understand but are afraid to say so, instead engaging in an argument that demonstrates their failure to get Jesus. And once again, this prompts teachings by Jesus on the meaning of following him.

The teaching is not likely to be popular with the crowds. Want to be important? Then act like a servant, a slave to everyone. The part about a child echoes that. In Jesus’ day, children had no real status in the culture, quite unlike our day. No doubt parents loved their children, but childhood was short, with children expected to take on as much work as their small bodies would permit. They were non-entities in society until they became adults, and important people were unlikely to pay any attention to children who were not their own. For Jesus to command acting like a servant, even to children, was counter cultural in the extreme.

I’ve sometimes wondered if the Jesus movement didn’t lose a lot of its mojo when the Emperor Constantine made it the official state religion several centuries after Jesus. If you’re going to make everyone Christian, then you have to make it appeal to the crowds. It can’t be too counter cultural.

A number of years ago, my wife showed me a sermon she had downloaded from another church’s website. I don’t remember what it was about, but I do recall one tidbit from it. The preacher talked about someone who called himself an SPL Christian. I’d heard of C&E or Christmas and Easter Christians, but this was new to me. The preacher explained that it stood for Sing, Pray, and Leave Christians. Now that’s a Christianity that can appeal to the crowds.

But the Emperor Constantine is long dead and the era of Christendom he ushered in is well on its way to death also. Our culture no longer really expects people to be Christian. It varies somewhat from region to region, but we are moving steadily towards a day when being a Christian is purely optional.

That has created a lot of difficulties for congregations and denominations. With the loss of cultural incentives and support for church participation, membership, attendance, giving, and so on are declining in most all denominations and a majority of congregations. But as frightening as this is for institutional religion, I wonder if it may not create opportunities for the Jesus movement to get its mojo back.

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The other day, I stumbled across an online quote from Richard Rohr, the Franciscan priest who is something of a mystical guru and founder of The Center for Action and Contemplation. He’s had a big influence on me as well as many others, Catholic, Protestant, and even non-Christians. This quote speaks of Christianity as a lifestyle, which is exactly the sort of thing Jesus is talking about in our scripture today.

“Christianity is a lifestyle—a way of being in the world that is simple, non-violent, shared, and loving. However, we made it into an established “religion” (and all that goes with that) and avoided the lifestyle change itself. One could be warlike, greedy, racist, selfish, and vain in most of Christian history, and still believe that Jesus is one’s “personal Lord and Savior” or continue to receive Sacraments in good standing. The world has no time for such silliness anymore. The suffering on Earth is too great.”

We preachers often worry about sermons that focus on the lifestyle part of Christian faith, worry that sermons urging hard efforts can sound strident, devoid of joy and grace. But I wonder… in a world where we’re only as good as our last accomplishment, where adults work long hours and children are overscheduled and anxious, where there is so much pressure to make it and be part of the right group, where there is so much selfishness and greed, where there is so much hatred and anger, where there is so much suffering and violence and hurt, would it not be a wonderful gift to learn another, better way? What a wondrous, grace-filled, joyous calling for the church to show and share this better way with the world. And you know, that’s something that really just might give the church its mojo back again.