A Season of Peace, Week 3: The Risk of Knowing Jesus

 

James 3:13-4:3,7-8a

Mark 9:30-37

I read a newspaper story about a young man named Oliver who had a secret he was so embarrassed about, so humiliated by, that he went to great lengths for many years to keep it hidden. The secret was that he could not read.

When he was in first grade he was suspended for a week, and when he returned to school he felt utterly lost, way behind. His home life was difficult, and school was hard, and he said nobody ever talked to him about why school even mattered. Oliver continued to struggle and never caught up.

Still, he was promoted from one grade to the next, year after year, until he graduated high school – and still did not know how to read.

He went out into the world, looking for a job that wouldn’t require reading skills. He couldn’t read a restaurant menu or a street sign or a text message, and he was ashamed. He lied in order to hide his secret, but his lies were always eventually discovered and then he was fired.

How difficult it can be for us to admit our weaknesses.

It is a little bit painful for us to watch the disciples trying to hide their ignorance when they didn’t understand what Jesus was saying. This is the second time in Mark’s gospel when Jesus tells his disciples that he will suffer and die. Just last week we heard him doing this, trying to help his disciples understand what they were involved in. When Peter had proclaimed the great revelation that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus wanted him and the others to really understand what it meant for them to say that about him: that he would be rejected by the religious leaders, that he would suffer and be put to death.

At that time, you may recall, Peter – who was feeling quite proud of himself for getting the right answer – took the opportunity to chide Jesus for being such a downer. Jesus let Peter know in no uncertain terms that he was out of line and way off the mark. Still, it seems as though neither Peter nor any of the others really got it. The lessons would need to continue.

So at some point later on their wanderings through Galilee, Jesus broached the subject with them again. Mark tells us they still didn’t get it. And what’s more, they were afraid to say so.

Judging from the conversation, or rather argument, that ensued, I guess they were a bit afraid of being seen as a loser. Isn’t that how it goes? They probably looked around at the others, trying to get a sense of whether or not they were the only dummy in the room who didn’t understand. We all know it takes a certain amount of courage to be the one person who raises your hand and says, “Teacher, I don’t get it. Please explain it to me.”

It was more than Oliver was able to do for many years while he struggled through school, then struggled to survive in the world without the ability to read. Year after year, he was afraid to ask for help; year after year, no one seemed to notice how much he needed help.

And so I could keep it real simple today, end it here, and just tell you there’s no such thing as a stupid question. Just like every school teacher has said at one time or another, it’s always worth asking questions. And while this is important and true, I believe there was something more going on in Galilee. I believe there is another important message for us to hear today.

A very odd thing that happened after Jesus said these things to them: the disciples began arguing amongst themselves about who was the greatest. And I think to myself, were they delusional? Because not a single one of them, up to this point, is looking great. Time after time, they have failed to understand Jesus. Again and again, they have failed to act in a way that would demonstrate they are growing in their discipleship.

I realize that progress often comes slowly. We improve not by leaps and bounds, but by millimeters – at least that’s the way I have felt about my shoulder during all these months of physical therapy – so I want to give the disciples credit for making some progress. If nothing else, they are sticking with him. They are trying. But are they great? Come on, by what standard is any of them great?

I do have to wonder if this is just a distraction for them, a way of denying the things Jesus is telling them simply because they cannot face the possibility that he is speaking the truth. They cannot face the possibility that the teacher they have decided to follow is headed down a path, not of triumph, but of humility.

They weren’t completely positive about this because they didn’t understand what he was saying. But they were afraid to ask because they sure didn’t want to know.

What if following Jesus really did mean taking up one’s cross? What if following Jesus meant letting go of your dreams of power and success? What if following Jesus meant everything you had been hoping for was actually wrong?

What if your standard for greatness was wrong?

Jesus asked them what they were arguing about and once again they were silent. They didn’t want to tell him, because while there were clearly a lot of things they didn’t understand, they did seem to understand that this argument was kind of dumb. Being caught out like this was as bad as having to admit that you didn’t understand his meaning when he talked about what the Son of Man would go through. Actually, being caught out like this was probably even worse.

But Jesus didn’t even say anything about it. Instead, he called to one of the children in the household. And he took that child and hugged him close. And he looked at his disciples and said, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”

To be a disciple of Jesus is to open your arms to those who have the least to offer. To be a disciple of Jesus is to lift up the ones who are weak. And to be a disciple of Jesus is to know that you, too, are weak.

For it is weakness that will lead to his persecution at the hands of the authorities. It is weakness that will lead to his death. But the thing these men have failed to understand is that in this weakness there is real strength. In this weakness there is true greatness.

What they don’t want to know, eventually will know: really knowing Jesus means knowing where true greatness lies and that it is not in the things that the world finds great. Really knowing Jesus means knowing that humility is a spiritual superpower. To really know Jesus means knowing that peace will never come from bringing the fight, but only from bringing the love. As the letter of James says, the wisdom that comes from God is pure, peaceable, willing to yield.

And it is risky to know these things. It is risky to commit your life to following Jesus in the way of peace, gentleness, humility. The world won’t understand it. They will call you sappy, soft – and those are the nice words they will use. The world might think it is actually kind of sad that you never achieved greatness – because the world does not understand what true greatness is.

The risk that you take in following Jesus is that you will really understand who he is and who he is calling you to be: peaceful, gentle, willing to yield, full of mercy and good fruits, without a trace of partiality or hypocrisy.

This is the risk the world is waiting for us to take.

A Season of Peace, Week 2: A Time to Speak

 

James 3:1-12

Mark 8:27-38

I used to have a friend, Jim. He was a kind and big-hearted man with a great sense of humor, but he also knew how to lay down the law. He liked to say, “I prefer peace over justice any day of the week.” Particularly in reference to his three children when they were bickering about something.

Jim was going to get his peace, which for him meant quiet, if those kids knew what was good for them.

We began our study group last Wednesday, talking about Five Risks Presbyterians Must Take for Peace. I asked the group what they thought of when they hear someone say they just want to keep the peace. And they said it means they just want people to be quiet. This is also what the phrase, “Hold your peace” means: Just don’t say anything.

The letter of James has a lot to say about the harm that speaking can cause, such that his message seems like it could be distilled to, “Just hold your peace. Keep your mouth shut.” But could that really be what peace is all about?

Defining peace is so much more complex than the simple notion of holding one’s tongue.

In Mark, as we continue following the story of Jesus and his disciples, we listen in on a fascinating discussion. Last week we left Jesus and his followers at the end of Chapter 7, where they saw Jesus cast a demon from the Gentile woman’s daughter, and then give a man the ability to hear and speak. They bore witness to the power of God working through him, seemingly without limits.

After that, they saw him continue to perform miracles – feeding thousands from a handful of loaves and fishes and giving sight to a blind man. And after all this, he asked the disciples a question: So what are people saying about me? And they told him: They say you are John the Baptist, you are Elijah, or some other prophet. These were all types they had seen before. But then Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?” and Peter gave the answer that no one had dared to speak.

Because the Messiah is a dream. The Messiah is the hoped for, but never seen. The Messiah is in a realm beyond anything they know.

For the church, our understanding of the Messiah is specifically as Jesus, as God taking on human flesh and blood, as the fully human, fully divine one. But that is not what it means to Israel.

The word Messiah in Hebrew is the “anointed one.” The Jewish belief in and hope for a Messiah was focused on a human being who would be anointed by God to lead the people of Israel to freedom, to save them from the tyrannical reign of other nations, to reunite the 12 tribes, the descendants of Abraham and Sarah, and usher in an age of peace around the world.

In Judaism, the Messiah would be a man – not God, but a man; the greatest political leader imaginable, descended from King David. And he would be the greatest king Israel and the world had ever known. The Messiah would be the king Israel needed, to fight for them, to bring them justice and peace, the justice and peace they could not realize on their own.

The Messiah was a hope. And now, in Peter’s words, this hope has become real.

Jesus knew what he was hearing Peter say when he called him Messiah. He knew all the baggage this title carried, all the particular hopes attached to it, and so he turned the subject to some considerations that Peter and the others had probably never imagined.

That the Messiah will suffer. That the Messiah will be rejected by the leaders of Israel. That the Messiah will be killed, but after three days he will rise again. Contrary to all they believed about the Messiah as a conquering hero, Jesus is telling them the Messiah will be humiliated and put to death.

Now, for us, the whole gospel of Jesus Christ is the story of why this is good news. Why it is a message of hope that Jesus came bearing love without bounds, bringing wholeness to the broken ones, casting out evil in our midst. Why it is that the way of peace is never through violence, but through humility and love. We know from the gospel that Christ, in his refusal to be a party to evil, would destroy the forces of evil by shaming them. Shaming them.

But Peter, and surely the others too, could not see this yet. And when he hears Jesus’ words about a suffering Messiah, he feels shame for Jesus. Shame for the very notion of a Messiah who would let himself be humiliated and killed. And shame personally to be associated with that. He’s like, Ix-nay on the suffering and dying, Jesus. Not a strong message!

And in this moment Peter shows us a side of ourselves that we might be ashamed to see. When we are asked to confess our own complicity in the sins of the world and we react with anger because we insist that has nothing to do with us. When we are asked to give of our own time and wealth for the sake of those who are in desperate need, and instead we close our fists, we turn away. When we sit with a friend who is suffering in a way that truly frightens us and we can’t suppress our impulse to pat their hand and say, “There, there, it will all be okay,” even though it probably won’t.

In moments such as these we have denied the gospel of Jesus. And while it is undeniable that we will all have moments of weakness – moments when we are unable to live fully into the image of Christ, serving the poor and the weak, loving without conditions, shouldering another’s pain with them – our weakness is not to our shame. But our denial of it is.

Jesus’ harsh words to Peter and all his disciples present this truth to us. The way of Christ is beyond the ways of this world, and if we are not willing to see that, to try and understand that, we are caving to the ways of the world, to evil.

There are moments when we know that the way of peace is to keep silent, to refrain from using hurtful words. and then there are moments when the only way to peace is to break the silence. To speak loudly, even if words offend, as Jesus did. For silence about injustice will never lead to peace.

Take the situation that has found prominence in our politics recently: the accusations that Haitian immigrants are eating pets in Springfield Ohio. I don’t know who started this lie, but that doesn’t even matter. The problem is in how most of us have responded to it.

Many of us have laughed about it because it sounds so ridiculous. And many have mocked it by sharing jokes about it online. Talking about politics can be very uncomfortable, and it is much easier to talk about politics if we treat it as a joke. But this lie is not funny. This lie about the Haitian immigrants in Springfield has threatened violence in that community, creating a situation that endangers people’s lives just because they are immigrants. It’s not funny when people are being terrorized. It isn’t just an online joke when people are in fear for their lives.

The gospel of Jesus Christ insists that we not turn away from this. The gospel of Jesus Christ demands that we speak out against it.

To speak out against lies is a risk we must take for the sake of peace. To acknowledge the injustices in the world, and to speak out about them, this is a risk we must take for peace.

And there are times when it is in our very own neighborhood.

Christians must come together on this. And together we must raise our voices for justice and for peace. Because we cannot have one without the other.

A Season of Peace, Week 1: All Who Stand in Need

Mark 7:24-37

We depend to a great extent on the work of biblical historians to help us understand the scriptures better – to get a sense of the context, the best interpretation of language, and the authenticity of the many ancient manuscripts that are available. And I learned something this week that I have to share with you, something that these historians use in their work: the criterion of embarrassment.

The criterion of embarrassment says this: if a story in the bible is something that is, potentially, kind of embarrassing, then it’s probably true. Some of the stories in the Bible might not have happened quite the way they are written. But if they are embarrassing, then they probably did happen like that. Because why would they make up something that might make Jesus, his followers, or the church, look foolish?

By that standard, I think the story of Jesus healing the deaf man is authentic, because it’s a silly image. Jesus sighs, like he’s on his last nerve, and then does some weird stuff with fingers and ears and tongue and spit. Who would make that up?

And by the same standard, the story of the Gentile woman who schooled Jesus has got to be real.

It is uncomfortable that he stands corrected by a woman, a Gentile woman at that. Just prior to this he was traveling through Galilee with his disciples, taking questions and criticisms from the Pharisees. The Pharisees, who were regarded as the authorities on religious matters, surely felt confident of their abilities in an argument with a common Nazarene like Jesus. But time and again they found themselves on the losing side. Again and again, we learn higher truths when Jesus corrects the religious authorities.

So it is surprising and even hard to accept when a Gentile woman corrects Jesus. But perhaps it really shouldn’t be too surprising.

A clear thread that we see running through the scriptures is that humans are vulnerable to being corrupted by power. We are forever wanting to take power into our own hands, and to assert power over other people, but the story of the Bible, from beginning to end, is that all power and glory is rightly attributed to God. and whenever power is put in our hands, it should be understood, this is through God’s goodness and for God’s purposes.

Yet, it is just so hard to keep that perspective. Power makes us giddy. It makes us greedy for more of it. It makes us say ridiculous things like, “I, alone, can fix this.”

Jesus had the power of God in him. People could see that, and they hungered for it, to meet their needs. They wanted healing and feeding and comforting and salvation. They wanted wholeness. Shalom. They were constantly coming to him, wanting and needing, begging and pleading, because Jesus had the power of God.

But Jesus was tired.

At the moment this Syrophoenician woman found him, he was trying to hide. But she found him, she bowed low before him, she begged him – for the sake of her child. “Take this demon away from her, please.” His response to her is cruel, calling the woman and her daughter dogs. Yet, she, this powerless woman, has an answer to him. “Even the dogs under the table get to eat the children’s crumbs.”

And her words shifted Jesus’ perspective. Now, we know, he is seeing her as fully human, created by God and loved by God.

And this is the Jesus we know and love, isn’t it? The one who colors outside the lines, all the time. The one who shows us there is no boundary on God’s love, and that peace – God’s shalom – belongs to all, not just some.

In truth, there is no peace and wholeness for any, unless it is available to all.

And so as we begin our season of peace this morning, I want to say this one thing: Peace begins when we look at the whole human family as beloved by God and, of course, worthy of our love. Peace begins when we learn to look at another human being who is in need and see a reflection of ourselves.

May it be so. 

Picture from ChurchArt.Com

Faith Rules

James 1:17-27

Mark 7:1-8,14-15,21-23

There was a movie that came out in 1998 called Pleasantville. It was a funny story about time travel. But it’s also about how we decide what is wrong and what is right.

There are two teenagers, David and Jennifer, who are siblings. We see in the first few minutes of the film that their lives are fairly unpleasant.  They’re coping with some of the complications that might confront middle class kids: social status, drugs and alcohol, parents who have their own troubles and are mostly unavailable to their kids.  

Jennifer, who is played by Reese Witherspoon, is navigating these issues with some success, but David, who is played by Tobey Maguire, seems mildly depressed and spends most of his time watching reruns of an old 1950’s sitcom, Pleasantville.  It’s a “Leave It to Beaver” kind of program. Way out of date, but there is something about it David just loves. Life is somehow better in Pleasantville, and when he comes home from a tough day at high school, David just wants to immerse himself in this other world.  

One day, catastrophe strikes – the TV remote control breaks.  

A mysterious TV repairman appears – played by Don Knotts.  No one called him, but he’s there. He’s like this wise, magical imp.  He sees the trouble Jennifer and David are in, more than they themselves can see.  He gives them a new remote control, which magically transports them right into David’s favorite TV show.  Suddenly, David and Jennifer are characters in a black & white 1950’s TV world…

…where life is perfect.  The family all sits at the breakfast table together with huge platters of hot eggs and bacon and pancakes, orange juice and milk. You know, healthy. Everything is perfect. Mom is a fulltime homemaker, Dad goes to his 9-5 job and is always home by dinner, except maybe on bowling night. The kids, David and Jennifer, who are now called Bud and Mary Sue, trundle off to high school in their penny loafers and poodle skirt, where they now have to learn to navigate life in this black and white TV town.  

Where everyone knows their place, everyone knows the rules, and everything is perfect.

But it’s not as perfect as it seemed.

For one thing, there are no bathrooms.  Think about it – did you ever see Donna Reed or June Cleaver step into the powder room?  Nope.  

There are other difficulties too.  David and Jennifer have all sorts of clashes with the people of Pleasantville because they’re not the same. They have been shaped by the real world – the real, colorful, 3-dimensional world. They don’t quite fit in.

But then, we discover, their mere presence in Pleasantville begins to change the place and the people.  They begin to have subtle influences on people, and the influence becomes visible.  In this black and white world, one by one, people begin to show some color, like a rosy flush in their cheeks or lips. The color blooms as they take on some depth in terms of their emotions, their values, their perspectives on the world.

There is, of course, the predictable backlash. Those who have not been colorized lash out angrily against the colored ones, victimizing them. There is definitely a nod here to the real clashes that were occurring in our country around that time having to do with skin color.  But the issue is even broader than that.

It has to do with sexuality, gender roles, openness to cultural differences and new ways of seeing things, doing things.  Books, art, music that are all new to them.  It has to do with becoming more fully human.  And this blossoming into full humanity is threatening for those who can’t understand it.

You might be wondering what this extended recap of the movie Pleasantville has to do with the scriptures for today.  It’s all about how sometimes a new thing can be very challenging or threatening, even while it is ripe with new possibility.  

The people in Pleasantville were learning that there was a whole big undiscovered world outside their town limits.  They were discovering that there were other possible ways of being outside of the well-worn routines of their lives. They were discovering the limitations of Pleasantville.

But at the same time, David and Jennifer were learning to appreciate the genuinely good qualities of Pleasantville.  Again, it wasn’t all black and white.  New things were happening for everyone.

And basically, newness was what Jesus was bringing to Israel.  He had been traveling around the Galilee and surrounding regions teaching, healing, and feeding, and doing these things in radically new ways.  As the Pharisees watch him, they are less joyful about the good things he is doing than they are concerned about the ways he is doing them.  They say to him, “Why don’t you follow the traditions of the Elders?  Why don’t you all wash your hands the way you are supposed to?”  To the Pharisees, their carelessness about this detail is a signifier of what is wrong about Jesus.  

The Pharisees are seeing all these things through the parameters they have set for defining what it is to be a Jew.  Jesus doesn’t fit in these parameters – even though he is as authentic in his faith as a man could be.  It’s the challenge of encountering something new. And figuring out what changes are okay, even good, and which ones are not.

They accuse Jesus, saying, “You are ignoring the traditions.” And Jesus responds to them, saying “But you abandon the commandment of God.” 

The truth of the matter is we often struggle to discern one from another. 

When I lay the story of Pleasantville over the gospel, I see something similar: Pharisees, looking at the world through a black and white lens, insisting that the right way of doing things is the way they have always done things. And then these kids come along, who are just different, and seem to challenge the traditions just by being who they are. They’re not opposed to the rules, in general. But they aren’t willing to be less than who they are, for the sake of a rule. They don’t want to be harmed – or for anyone else to be harmed – because of a rule that maybe doesn’t even make sense.

In the film, it seemed as though when David and Jennifer appeared in Pleasantville, there was an invitation to discernment. Some of the residents of Pleasantville began to reflect on the ways things were done and begin to recognize areas of injustice that they could no longer ignore.

I don’t want to go so far as to imply that the Pharisees were just like two-dimensional TV characters. But I will suggest that perhaps their application of the law was a two-dimensional collection of rules and traditions that had, in some ways, lost their connection to the commandment of God: to love the Lord and one another with heart and soul, mind and strength.

Love is the commandment, and everything must begin with that. As Jesus said, It is the things that come out of a person that matter. Those things can be love or they can be evil. Think about it and learn to recognize the difference.

And, as James says, when we are caring for one another, particularly those who are most in need of care, when we are acting out of generosity and not selfishness, then we are in accord with God’s desire. 

The law of love is the lens through which we interpret all else. Let everything be filtered through love.

Photo by Tim Wildsmith on Unsplash