The Benefits of Membership

Mark 10:35-45    

I was thinking of my old friend Bill this past week. He died a couple of years ago at the age of 82. I first met him when he invited me to join him and his wife to a dinner theatre performance of The Sound of Music. He picked me up in his Buick. We talked about cars. Bill was an avid member of the Buick Club of America.

I never knew there was a Buick Club until I met Bill. He was very enthusiastic about it. He went to Buick meets, joined in with Buick Club tours whenever he could. Bill had a barn on his property which held a variety of Buicks, so part of the fun was deciding which one to drive when he went to Buick Club events.

The Buick Club was not his whole life, though. He was also a Free Mason, and had several other affiliations, including the Presbyterian Church. Membership was a significant part of Bill’s life; he was an organization man, in the best sense of the word; a man of his generation. He worked for corporations, he joined clubs and fraternities, and he believed in the mutual benefits of being a member.

Many of his friends from the Buick Club came to his funeral, all of them wearing their club jackets. They were friendly with everyone, but they mostly stayed together, sort of huddled in a circle. You could see they had a good camaraderie, a sense of belonging with one another.

I thought about Bill because I was thinking about membership. The gospel today takes us to another somewhat absurd conversation between Jesus and his disciples – another day in which the disciples demonstrate for us how immune they are to learning – when James and John announce that they want Jesus to do for them whatever they ask of him. Like he’s their personal genie in a bottle. When I think of all the comebacks Jesus might have given them, what he actually said is not among them. He says, very good-naturedly, “What is it you want me to do for you?”

And given this opening they jump right in, saying, “We want you to let us sit right in the front with you, on your left and your right.” They want to be the teacher’s pets. His right- and left-hand men. The first and second runners up in glory. They want to be considered special, set apart from the others.

And when they hear about it, the other disciples get mad – not because they disapproved of what James and John did, but because they wished they had gotten there first. If rewards were being handed out, they didn’t want to be left out. They, too, wanted the benefits of membership in the insider’s club.

The Jesus Insiders Club. whatever that is.

A couple of weeks ago we had an inquirer’s class here at the church – an opportunity for those who are considering membership to learn something about it. We talked about a variety of things – our personal faith histories, practices and beliefs in the Presbyterian Church. But something we did not discuss was the benefits of membership.

I didn’t tell them that when you become a member of WPC you get your own pew, which becomes your personal property for life – in fact, you may bestow this property as a legacy to your descendants, should they become members of WPC. This privilege also confers on you the right to kick out any unwitting newcomers who don’t know any better than to sit there. You can walk right up to them, give them a cold stare and say, “You’re in my seat.”

I didn’t tell them that when you become a member you get a reserved parking space. Or that membership gives you the authority to chew out anyone who puts the silverware in the wrong drawer, passes the offering plate the wrong way, or makes some other unforgiveable faux-pas.

Lording it over and behaving as tyrants – these are the things Jesus says about the gentiles and their leaders.

I did not tell the folks in our inquirer’s class any of these things because, alas, they are not true. Membership in the church of Jesus Christ doesn’t really come with any of these benefits. You don’t even get a membership card. No club jackets, either.

I don’t know why we have this tendency to think that membership gives you some status. That when you become an “insider” you now have something to lord over those who are still outsiders. Maybe it’s because we have a fear of being left out, ourselves; of being outsiders.

When I was a psychology undergrad I learned that human beings are motivated by three innate needs: the need for achievement, the need for affiliation, and the need for power. It isn’t hard to see how these needs sometimes affect the ways we behave with one another. James and John, and I assume the others too, have a need to achieve. They want everyone else to see them as being special. They also have a need to affiliate, to show that they belong.  And finally, they need power. They wrestled with this need for power in the group and their desire to lord it over the others. In spite of everything Jesus says, they continue to wrestle with their need for power.

I want to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they have been listening to Jesus throughout their journey together. They have heard him say in so many ways that, in his kingdom, the first shall be last and the last first. They have heard him say that, contrary to their hopes and expectations, he is not going to march into Jerusalem and overthrow the empire; he is destined to suffer and die at the hands of the empire. And that any who follow him are called to demonstrate God’s love by serving others, even submitting to humiliation and suffering themselves.

I want to believe they have heard these things, as we have heard them. But, like us, they find them very hard to accept. They, like us, tend to resist these truths. They, like us, will hear in one moment that Jesus will be handed over to the authorities, condemned, and killed. And in the next moment they, like us, will say, “Jesus, give me whatever I ask for.”

Jesus, give me what I am asking for.

Jesus recognizes this problem. He looks at James and John when they say, “We want you to give us whatever we ask for,” and he says, “You don’t know what you are asking for.” Are you able to drink the cup that I drink? Or be baptized with the baptism I am baptized with? Do you really understand what you are asking for?

Can you go where I am going? Are you able to drink the cup?

The cup is bittersweet. It holds both sacrifice and celebration; obedience and freedom; persecution and treasure. The cup holds both death and life.

To drink the cup means drinking all of it.  You can’t push the bitterness over to one side, like you might push your Brussels sprouts over to the side of the plate.  You drink all of it.  Where do you imagine you find the courage to do that?

I will tell you where: in the fellowship of Christ. In the community of the church. Because this community, at its best, is a communion of servants, those who are devoted to serving one another and the least of God’s children. It is a communion of discipleship, as we learn together to practice humility, to extend forgiveness and mercy.

If you want to know the benefits of membership in the church, this is it. It is the community in which we may practice growing in Christ’s likeness. The community in which we are free to expose our weaknesses because, when we dare to do this, we may benefit from the strength of the community holding us up.

Now we don’t always reflect those great qualities, to be blunt. We too often look like the ones who lord it over others, or like James and John in their weaker moments, shoving our way to the front of the line. We too often say, Jesus give us what we want, when we don’t really know what we need.

My old friend Bill shared with me once his concern that young people didn’t seem to want to join – either his clubs or his church. He was a little mystified by this, and also sorry for what he thought they were missing.

I can’t speak for the clubs. But maybe, in the church, we haven’t been clear enough about those real benefits. Not the private pew or the right to judge others; I’m talking about the love and support, both given and received.

May we keep our eye on the true benefits of membership;

May we embrace them fully;

May we draw courage from the strength of one another; our fellowship in Christ.

Photo Credit: Auckland Museum [CC BY 4.0  (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Receiving the Kingdom

Mark 10:2-16     

My friend Rachel was married when I first met her – and I thought her marriage was divinely happy.  It looked like that from the outside.  But it became awfully clear one day that this was not such a happy marriage, when Tom announced to her that he was planning to file for divorce.  He did not love her anymore, he said, if he ever really had loved her in the first place.

Rachel was heartbroken for a long time.  This was an independent, intelligent, highly capable woman, but now it was like her whole life had fallen apart. Everything that she had believed and valued about her life was now in question. In our conversations during that period, she acknowledged that, yes, the marriage had been troubled but she had not wanted to accept that the troubles were that threatening.  She had not wanted to believe it.  Now, she had to accept it and believe it and deal with it.

It took some time, but gradually she did heal.  There came a time when our conversations weren’t solely focused on the marriage, the divorce, and what Tom was doing. Then one Saturday a couple of years after the divorce I met her for lunch. When she sat down across from me I could see she was in a great deal of distress, and I soon found out why.  Tom was getting remarried.  This was the day of his wedding.  It was like reopening a wound, and starting the bleeding all over again.

Perhaps this is what Jesus was talking about when he said a man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery against her.  No matter the reasons for the divorce, no matter the healing that has taken place after, the bond that was once theirs can still hold the potential for pain.  

Perhaps this whole conversation about divorce and marriage is Jesus’ way of saying to us, as he has said so many times, that he wants to show us a new way. It’s as though he is saying to us – 

You want to talk about what is lawful; I want to talk about what is good.  

You want to dwell on blame and where it should be assigned; I want you to see truth and know that sin permeates every aspect of your lives; in one way not your fault at all, but in another way entirely your responsibility because you’re the only one who can do anything about it.

You want to believe in your own righteousness and you hate to be confronted with the brokenness of your human condition, but I want to show you that you come before God with nothing and any righteousness you have comes from above.

You want to present yourselves as worthy of the kingdom but I want you to know that whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.  

As a little child…

A little child who brings no credentials, no accomplishments, nothing to impress.  A child brings only herself, asking only for love.  

A little child who does not need to be complimented for all his great qualities or validated for his actions.  That is only something he learns as he gets older.  A child who brings only himself, asking only to be accepted just as he is.  

Little children have many endearing qualities, but I think the one quality Jesus may wish for us to see today is the quality of humility – a garment that we find quite fitting for little children but less so for ourselves. Not very comfortable, I know that. Yet I don’t see how we can approach the kingdom of God without humility.  

Once again, Jesus pulls us out of our comfort zones. Today he does it by talking about divorce.

We are not comfortable talking about divorce, and some of us are so uncomfortable it becomes hard to even hear what he is saying. He seems to be saying that divorce is sin. But if we are to say that, then let us also say that, sometimes, divorce is the very best we can do in our human condition. If we are to regard divorce as sin, as Jesus seems to be suggesting, then I also want to say it is not necessarily an evil act. Rather, it is a tragic symptom of our brokenness, and every one of us is impacted by this brokenness – divorced or not.  Jesus just wants us accept the fact of this brokenness and the consequent suffering that spreads through our lives. But then maybe he would say – 

So you’re not all that great.  But you’re not that bad, either.  You know what you are? You are a little child looking for love along with the rest of us. And you can find that love in the kingdom of God.

If this text tells us one thing it is that there is pain in life. There is pain in both marriage and divorce, especially in divorce.  But life goes on. And turning away from bitterness and blame is always an option. Seeking redemption and healing is always possible with God.

And so the story of us – if I were to boil it down to its bare essence: we are created in goodness; broken by sin; redeemed by Christ.  This is the Christian story.  This is our story, and this is all we have to present at the doors of the kingdom. Here we are, nothing more than little children.  

It is enough.

Stumbling Blocks

James 5:13-20             

Mark 9:38-50     

I just heard about the new words that have been added to the Scrabble dictionary this year. Among them is “ew.” I like that. I mean, I don’t like the word, but I am amused that it is now something you can play in Scrabble. Ew, the sound you make when the milk has gone bad; what you say when your kid eats his boogers.

My spell-checker still doesn’t know it’s a legitimate word – every time I type it the angry red squiggle lines appears underneath, warning me that I have made a faux pas. But it’s real now, it’s okay to say ew.

The word, ew, will forever and always remind me of the 18-year-old woman in Texas who asked me what I was studying at the university, and when I told her I was working on a PhD she said “ew.” As in, that sounds hard. Boring. Definitely not cool.

Ew. The swift, efficient two-letter judgment.

I don’t know if it’s English. It might be a universal word. After all, it’s more of a reactive noise than a meaningful word, sort of like “huh.” Maybe ew is something you could hear any place in the world, no matter what language is spoken. Maybe the people in ancient Palestine said, “ew” when they passed the lepers. 

Except Jesus. He didn’t say “ew.”

Maybe I’m talking about the word ew today because it’s easier than talking about the gospel passage. It is. This passage from Mark is moving into territory no preacher wants to enter. Jesus is saying weird stuff. He’s talking about hanging millstones around your neck, cutting off your hand or foot, tearing out your eye. That’s a big “ew” for me. He throws out the possibility of being cast into hell – three times, he mentions it. And then ends with, “Have salt. Salt is good.”

I am afraid this passage is chock full of stumbling blocks. But let’s try to get through it.

It begins with the disciples coming to Jesus and tattling on someone who is casting out demons in Jesus’ name. “Teacher, teacher, he’s casting out demons and you didn’t say he could.” Someone outside their small group is battling the demons, evidently with some success. Are the disciples happy about that? No. It’s making them jealous. 

You see, just a short time before this happened there was a man who brought his son to Jesus’ disciples to be healed. The boy was suffering from terrible seizures, which was attributed to a bad spirit within him. The father begged the disciples to cast out this demon from his son. But they couldn’t do it. They tried, but couldn’t do it. When Jesus saw what was going on, he did it himself.

So, just a few short verses later, when they encounter someone who is not one of them, doing what they were unable to do, they were not happy. I suppose it just seemed unfair to them that some Joe Blow steps out and gets it on the first try! Here they have been training for this, but still can’t do it right. It doesn’t seem fair. Of course, it makes no difference to the one who has been healed if their healer was an official disciple or not – he has been healed of an evil spirit. But for the disciples it makes all the difference in the world, and they can take no pleasure in this. They feel that someone ought to stop such things from happening. Jesus should stop it.

But Jesus says, “Whoever is not against us is for us.” Anyone who is doing good work in my name can be on my team. After all, it’s not a competition. Is it?

It’s not as though you would put a block in front of someone who was running the same path as you, so to make them trip and fall, losing ground. It’s not like that, is it?

Is this a competition in your eyes? That you would be judged in comparison to one another, so it is necessary to keep others from getting ahead of you?

But Jesus, they might reply, someone we don’t even know is casting out demons in your name, Jesus! He’s not even a disciple, Jesus. Ew, Jesus. Make him stop. Better we should all fail, than someone we don’t even know, who isn’t a part of our program, should have some success.

Well, Jesus answers them, if you want to put stumbling blocks in front of any of the little ones who believe in me, it would be better for you to drown in the sea. 

This is not an easy passage to deal with. It’s confusing when he talks about stumbling blocks, because first he is accusing them of putting blocks in front of others but then suggests they are making stumbling blocks for themselves. It’s unclear when he talks about the little ones, because it sort of sounds like he’s referring to children, but it’s not clear that there are children here. It’s unnerving when he talks about a choice between cutting off our limbs or going to hell because that doesn’t sound like much of a choice. 

I don’t know exactly what he meant when he speaks of hell – none of us really does. The word in the original text is Gehenna– the name of a place outside Jerusalem, which was a regional garbage dump. A burning, stinking, smoldering garbage heap. It was not uncommon at the time to use this reference, to speak of Gehenna as a kind of hell. Maybe you can think of a modern-day reference that has the same effect. 

But, of course, it is unlikely that he simply means the literal Gehenna. Jesus is very serious here; he wants to convey a state of being that would be painful, intolerable, suffering. Hell.

This is something we don’t like to talk about these days – if we ever did. The idea of hell is frightening – whether it is the image of eternal flames or the dark, cold void of being separated from God. Hell is a place we do not want to go. But Jesus wants us to hear about it. 

If any one of you puts a stumbling block before one of these little ones who believe in me – this is the danger that leads to hell. If you cause a little one to stumble, you are not doing my work. You are doing the work of evil. 

When he speaks of these little ones here, you might want to assume he is speaking of children. After all, it was just a few verses ago that he lifted a child onto his lap and said, “whoever welcomes such a child, welcomes me.” But given the context, I don’t believe it is necessarily children he has on his mind. It is likely that when he says “little ones” he means weaker, less important ones. When he speaks of putting up stumbling blocks before others he means taking advantage of your relative strength to hurt another who is relatively weak. 

Perhaps he is referring, at least in part, to the ones who are casting out demons in his name. His disciples, who are trying to maintain a belief in their own greatness – remember last week, that’s what they were arguing about – are united in bringing down someone else. They seem to be demonstrating a kind of “herd mentality,” as they seem determined to keep strict control over who is in and who is not. They have made themselves the gatekeepers.

Amazingly, they elevated themselves to such a height, they say, “this guy – he wasn’t even following us.” Not, “he wasn’t following you,” but “he wasn’t following us.” Apparently, they no longer think of themselves as followers of Jesus, but more like equal partners in his firm. 

They are wrong, though. They are not his equal partners. In fact, it should be as clear as day that they still have so much to learn. Perhaps a little talk of hell will wake them to that fact.

Because in these recent passages we have seen the disciples behaving badly – even toward each other. They try to bring down one who is not in their inner circle, and they even try to bring each other down. They want to be seen as the best. The first. The greatest. They are willing to put stumbling blocks in front of one another, for the sake of being the greatest.

And it really isn’t about that, not at all. It’s about the community – the ever-growing, always-loved, community. 

One thing Jesus is very clear about, not just here but throughout the gospels, is that his concern is for the wide, wide circle of God’s beloved – a circle that extends well beyond the boundaries of this little band of disciples. At every opportunity, he challenges the boundaries people want to draw. He’s not in it for ego, or for his “brand,” or for any propriety self-interest, he’s in it for God’s boundless love for the world.

So when he speaks about salt, he is talking about salt’s preservative qualities. He is suggesting that they be a little more like salt, in preserving the beloved community he came to draw together and lift up. James, in his letter, has some excellent suggestions for doing that: confess your sins to one another; pray for one another; help one another to stay on the path of righteousness and holiness.

It’s a messy passage, to be sure, this section of Mark. But often the hardest things to say, and hear, are the most important. I pray that we will not put any stumbling blocks in front of one another or ourselves, that we might hear his words and follow his will.

Photo: Salt. By kevindooley - https://www.flickr.com/photos/pagedooley/2769134850/sizes/l/, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=5019625

Perfect Submission

James 3:13-4:3, 7-8    

Mark 9:30-37     

Sometimes, when I read certain gospel passages, I think about a young Chinese woman I knew several years ago. She was a student where I was serving as campus minister. She started coming to me because she was interested in Christianity. So we began getting together to read the gospels. One day as we were working our way through a passage, she stopped reading and looked at me with this perplexed expression on her face and asked, “Why did he say that?”

I felt kind of stupid then, because I didn’t know. In fact, I was surprised at her surprise, because I had never thought about why he said what he said. I am embarrassed to say that I didn’t have anything like a good answer for her. But she got me thinking about how profoundly strange the gospel is.

It is strange – and we have to realize that the disciples must have looked as perplexed as my Chinese friend did when Jesus said to them, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” Yet, although they didn’t understand, they were afraid to ask.

Why were they afraid to ask?

I have been asking this question this past week. I have heard two likely reasons. One is that they were afraid because they didn’t want to admit their ignorance. They would be ashamed to admit they didn’t understand. Because then someone might call them stupid, and who wants to be called stupid? No one. We are more offended by being called stupid than if we were charged with any of the seven deadly sins, so it is quite likely that the disciples wished to avoid appearing dull or ignorant. But there might have been another reason, too.

Perhaps they were afraid that what he was saying was true. Perhaps they didn’t fully understand it but they understood enough to know that what he was saying didn’t sound good to them. or easy. Or fun. Perhaps they were afraid of knowing more.

Now, that is very human, isn’t it? They understood enough to know that this was not something they wanted to understand.

But as they continued on their walk, they lagged behind Jesus. Probably by intent. It wouldn’t be all that surprising if they wanted, at this moment, to put some distance between themselves and him. After all, he has just said something very off-putting.

And while they walked, they talked among themselves. About what? Were they talking about the things Jesus had been teaching them? Were they talking about these strange things he had said and what they could possibly mean? Nope. They were talking about their comparative greatness.

I could spend a lot of time marveling at how the disciples went, in a matter of minutes, from being afraid to ask him what he meant to arguing about which of them was the greatest. It’s laughable, isn’t it? How do you go from being an ignorant fool who is afraid to acknowledge his ignorance to asserting you are the greatest?

I’ll tell you what I think. It is fear that does it. Fear can make us grasping, selfish, avaricious people.

There is a character that captures this phenomenon well in Jane Smiley’s novel, The Greenlanders. This is a story about the men and women who lived in Greenland in the 14^th century.

This was a cold and inhospitable place, far away from the rest of the inhabited world. I have read that the early Viking settlers named the place Greenland in the hopes that it would attract many more settlers, settlers who would discover when they got there that, in reality, it was not very green.

The winters in Greenland were long and harsh, such that the primary concern for these settlers was having enough food to survive until spring. When the snow began to fall, they led the cows and sheep indoors. When the spring arrived, they carried the animals back outside, because they were too weak to walk.

There are stories of the stronger, healthier men making the rounds of the settlements in the late winter to check on the others. They sometimes found whole households had taken to their beds, even lying on top of one another to stay warm. These families had run out of food and fuel, and merely hoped to sleep until spring – and then, hopefully, awaken.

During one terrible winter, the priest was making the rounds. He came to the home of a woman named Vigdis. He opened her door without knocking and was stunned by what he saw. Vigdis was standing at a table cutting meat and stuffing food into her mouth. She was, in fact, surrounded by food – cheeses, hanging birds, sealmeat and blubber, vats of sourmilk. She was enormously fat, fatter than he had ever seen her before. Smiley wrote that the priest “saw at once that she had responded to the hunger of the settlement by consuming and consuming without cease.”

She had been hoarding food ­– probably for ten years. As the people around her were starving to death she was growing ever more gluttonous. As men and women were vanishing to skin and bones, as parents were burying their children who died of starvation, Vigdis was growing fatter and fatter. She was killing her neighbors with her greed. The men who worked for her were willing to turn a blind eye because she gave them enough food for their families to survive.

The title of this chapter of the book is “The Devil.”

Fear can make us grasp in some unbecoming ways. And it was very likely fear at work among the disciples – fear that the one who was leading them, Jesus, was walking into a deadly trap – which drew them into a boasting contest about who was the greatest. They had already heard him say that, to be his followers, they would need to deny themselves. They had heard him say that they would need to take up their cross and follow him.

They had also seen him in all his transfigured glory, earlier in this same chapter, when he ascended the mountain and was lit by a brightness that was almost blinding, when Moses and Elijah appeared at his side. They had seen the power and the glory, and they had been told about the suffering and submission. They did not care to see how these things would be reconciled with each other.

The disciples did not like the idea of suffering and obedience unto death any more than we like this idea. We prefer the easy path, although we admire Jesus for taking the harder path. In contrast to these first disciples, we have actually grown quite comfortable with the notion of Jesus’ suffering. But we are still no different from them when it comes to comprehending what it means to follow him.

“Who is wise and understanding among you?” This is the question James asks us in his epistle. Or, as the disciples might ask, “Who is the greatest?”

It is not the ones who are most boastful. Nor is it the ones who are grasping, selfish, greedy. This is, James says, earthly, unspiritual, even devilish wisdom.

When we are confronted with the invitation to submit our wills and our bodies to God’s will, we are more likely to display some of that devilish wisdom and grasp for whatever we can get our hands on – like Vigdis hoarding food, like the disciples jostling for the position on top. The more we feel threatened, the more we will grasp. Fear and insecurity never drive good leadership or lead to greatness.

On the contrary, James would say, submission to God is born of that pure wisdom from above, which yields gentleness, mercy, and peace. In this paradox of strength and submission, suffering and glory, we find salvation. Or, as Fanny Crosby put it in her beloved hymn,

Perfect submission, all is at rest,

I in my Savior am happy and blest,

Watching and waiting, looking above,

Filled with his goodness, lost in his love.[i]

May you be a follower of Jesus, wherever he leads you. May you seek not to be the first, but to submit to God’s wisdom, may you find your rest in him.

Photo: Gluttony knows no limits. Portrayal of the Seven Deadly Sins on the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. By Giovanni Dall'Orto - Own work, Attribution, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4787886

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[i] Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine!

How to Follow Jesus

Mark 8:27-38     

I have a small collection of crosses in my office, made of a variety of different kinds of material – wire, ceramic, clay, wood, glass. There is one that is a souvenir from Sacre Coeur Basilica in Paris; one is a souvenir from Mo-Ranch, the Presbyterian conference center in the Texas Hill Country. One was given to me by a man I met at a youth workcamp; he carved them out of purple heart wood and gave one to each of the chaperones. I have one that I made out of pieces of cut glass fused together. They are all beautiful.

To say the cross is beautiful – this is something no one would have said back in the first century. We have mostly forgotten that the cross was an instrument of torture, a gruesome form of capital punishment. The cross doesn’t have the same impact today as it used to. We wear crosses made of beautiful gold and silver, some with precious gems mounted on them. In our homes and in the church, we display crosses of smoothed, stained, and polished wood and shiny brass. They are beautiful; they are works of art.

The singer Madonna made the cross into a fashion craze back in the eighties. Every teenage girl of any faith, or no faith, wanted one. Someone told me, back then, about some girls shopping for crosses who asked the store clerk, “Do you have any of those kind with the little man on them?”

Well, we roll our eyes at these foolish girls who don’t know what a crucifix is, who don’t even know who that little man is or what he’s doing on the cross. How can they be so ignorant? In fact, we roll our eyes impatiently at Peter and the other disciples, too. What is the matter with them? How could they not understand what Jesus is saying to them? Take up your cross and follow me – don’t they know what he is all about?

About twenty years ago Ben Affleck and Matt Damon made a film called Dogma, a satire about the church. The Catholic League didn’t think it was funny; they declared it blasphemous. Affleck and Damon play two fallen angels who are trying to get back into heaven by exploiting a loophole in church law, or, dogma. 

George Carlin plays a cardinal in New Jersey who decides the crucifix – you know, the cross with the little man on it – is just too much of a downer. So he decides to rebrand his church to create a more uplifting, feel-good message: he takes Jesus down off the cross and creates this new icon, a brand new Jesus, for his church – a cartoony-looking guy with a big toothy grin giving a thumbs up and a wink. Really. It’s called Buddy Christ. 

The cardinal turns the entire message of the gospel upside down, because, you know, it’s depressing. Now it’s a message of good times, prosperity, living your best life now. 

No more “take up your cross and follow me.” Replace that with “God just wants you to be happy.” It’s tempting, is it not? 

I have to admit, it’s tempting. Because taking up my cross sounds like hard work, possibly quite painful.

I know it shouldn’t be such a problem, the idea of pain, because millions of people go to the gym every day to willingly inflict pain on themselves. But somehow it is a problem. Not too many people want to take up their crosses and follow him.

And I daresay that Peter and the other disciples felt that way too. None of them wanted to follow Jesus this way! Take up your cross? No one in their right mind would willingly submit to the cross of the Romans. It was ugly, it was brutal, it was the worst kind of death imaginable. 

Can we blame Peter for taking Jesus aside to speak with him privately, not wanting to be seen as disrespectful toward him, but sincerely worried that Jesus was sending the wrong message? The cross! This would be seriously discouraging to any potential followers.

The message of the cross is a tough message. I don’t need to tell you that.

And they struggled with it, as we struggle with it; because we know, and they knew, the beautiful things that Jesus preached and taught and did. He healed. He demonstrated compassion. It was beautiful. And he did it not just for his friends, not just for people who were in his group, people who were like him. He had compassion for even the outcasts, even the “sinners.” His inclusivity was beautiful. 

His disciples should have known this better than most, because among them were some of those “sinners.” Matthew, a tax collector, considered unclean and borderline acceptable by his own people due to the nature of his work. Yet Jesus called him, saying “follow me.” He was included; he was loved. It was great, wasn’t it?

Yes, they were bewildered; yes, they were continually surprised by the turns Jesus would take, the answers he would give to the Pharisees. They were surprised, no doubt, by the company he would keep. At every turn, they were surprised by him. But it was beautiful, wasn’t it? The things he did? So beautiful, in fact, they couldn’t see the inevitable path it would take toward the cross.

They chose to follow Jesus, I suppose, because they could do no other. Even now, at this moment when he draws a line in the sand saying, “On this side, the cross. If you want to follow me, come over here. Make up your minds.” And they still followed him.

I’m not sure they yet understood what he meant by that. Don’t we still struggle to understand what it means to take up our cross? What is your cross? What is my cross?

It isn’t just the sufferings of daily life, which we all have. We all know the sufferings of living in these mortal bodies with aches and pains and fatigue. And we know the emotional suffering that seems to be part and parcel of being in relationships with other people. These are just in the nature of human life on earth.

I think there is more meaning in the notion of taking up your cross and following Jesus. For his suffering, his sacrifice, was not without meaning or purpose.

Jesus drew a line in the sand that day when he told the disciples what it would be like to follow him. But there were, perhaps, other times when Jesus crossed over the lines that others had drawn, which tell us something more about what this means – to take up your cross. 

He broke rules. He crossed lines that religion had drawn and went over to stand beside the lepers, the tax collectors, the gentiles. He crossed lines that the world had drawn when he spoke of overturning the order of things – the last shall be first and the first shall be last. 

The world still draws these lines. And here is something that is as true today as it was then: the world does not smile on those who cross the lines.

To stand with the poor, the drug-addicted, the homeless, the refugees, the prisoners. To show compassion for the downtrodden, the least of these who are Jesus’ brothers and sisters. 

To stand where Jesus stands. Take up your cross and follow him.

“If any want to become my followers,” Jesus says. This is the way you will go. You might not be in the popular crowd. You won’t join the others in scoffing at the dirty guy who lives under the bridge. You won’t remain silent while the others are condemning whole races or ethnic groups as criminals or condemning anyone because of their skin color or gender or religion or sexual orientation. You won't , because you will recognize the humanity they share with you.

You, like Jesus, will be scorned for your actions, for doing the unpopular thing.

If any want to become my followers, Jesus says. You will separate yourself, stand apart, from those who are in it for self-gain – whether it be material profit or just being well-liked. You will push back against those who would put stumbling blocks before the least of God’s children – the weakest, the neediest, the most vulnerable. 

This is your cross: to do justice, love mercy, walk humbly with your God.

It is beautiful, isn’t it?

Photo: A cross at Faith Presbyterian Church, Huber Heights, OH. It's made out of our broken things. 

Learning Compassion

Mark 7:24-37     

So Jesus is on his way to Tyre, but he is coming from Galilee where he has been trolled, you might say, by Pharisees. They have been following him around, apparently looking for opportunities to criticize him. Of course, they found one: uncouth table habits. Apparently, they didn’t wash their hands before eating. No doubt, they ate with their hands, so it is a little bit gross. But it was not so much hygiene that the Pharisees are worried about, it’s protocol. Their chief complaint is that Jesus and his disciples don’t follow the tradition of the elders, a ritual hand washing.

I don’t know if Jesus had a beef with this particular tradition. But what bugs him is their hypocrisy. The way they abandon the commandment of God and hold on to human tradition. God did not say, “wash your hands.” That was your mother.

So, while washing your hands is a nice thing, Jesus feels that it is being used as a stand-in for the more important, more challenging things that God actually does command. It’s easy to wash your hands; it’s a lot harder, say, to love your enemies, forgive those who harm you, heal broken spirits, welcome the sinner. If all it took to be a Christian was to wash your hands, sermons would be a lot shorter.

I suspect that Jesus neglected to wash his hands on-purpose, just so he could have this conversation.

He takes the opportunity to tell the Pharisees, and everyone else listening in, nothing outside of you can defile you. It doesn’t matter how you eat or what you eat. It is what comes out of you that defiles you. Particularly, what comes from your heart.

So, just like that, he declares all foods kosher. No problem. Eat whatever you want. God doesn’t care what goes in your mouth; it is what is in your heart that really matters.

Then he takes off, leaving them with this new idea to chew on. And he goes to the region of Tyre. Tyre is in Syria. This is a non-Jewish area, so the people Jesus will encounter here are gentiles.

Right away, a gentile woman approaches him. She is Syrophoenician, meaning she is Greek culturally, of Syrian ethnicity. She is not at all Jewish.

And she approaches him because her daughter is suffering. She has an unclean spirit, a demon. This child is possessed by evil.

Now, we don’t usually talk about being possessed by spirits, or demons, or evil. But even though we don’t use these terms, we ought to be able to understand these problems. When you hear that she was possessed by an unclean spirit you may suppose she is suffering from a severe mental or physical illness. It doesn’t really matter what it is. A sickness that has no known cure or treatment, that causes nothing but unrelenting suffering, can certainly seem evil.

And the suffering is equally intense for Jews and gentiles alike.

But this is a gentile woman. In a gentile land. Jesus is out of his area code. Why he went there, I don’t know. Mark offers no explanation. But he does, and word about him and the amazing things he does has spread this far. And this mother doesn’t let tradition or custom stop her from approaching him because her daughter’s life is at stake. She bowed before him – stopping him in his tracks – and she begged him to heal her daughter.

She has cast off her dignity, she has put her body on the line, taking the chance that she will be brutally thrown aside. And she begs him for mercy.

And the Jesus we know and love – what do we think he would do? He would look at her with kindness. He would go down on one knee to get at eye level with her and tell her she matters, her daughter matters. And he would follow her back to her house, lay hands on this girl and bring peace to her body and soul. This is the Jesus we know and worship and love.

But that is not what he did.

He looked at her and said, “I’m not gonna throw the children’s food to the dogs.”

There is so much packed in that response. It says I am here for the children of Israel, God’s chosen ones. I am not here for you. It says they are special and you are the opposite of special. It says you are lower than a human being – you are a dog, and I don’t mean a pet chihuahua.  I mean a dirty dog.

And we just can’t believe he said it. We can’t believe he would be so cruel.

Everything about this exchange says that he just wants her to go away. You would expect her to skulk off quietly, begging forgiveness for the trouble.

Yet, she surprises us – about as much as Jesus surprised us with his words – when she says –

Yes, but even the dogs get to eat the children’s crumbs.

This woman knows what she needs. She musters up the courage to push for it. She bets that even though she won’t be first in line, she might be second. She takes a chance that there is more than enough mercy for even the dogs that sit under the table waiting for crumbs to fall.

She is amazing in her boldness, her persistence in asking for what she needs. And Jesus is amazing in his response.

When we say about Jesus that he was human in every way, we should believe that he was human in this way too – that he might make a mistake. And when we say that he was without sin, we might mean that he was willing and able to correct his mistakes. That alone is quite enough, and it is much more than you could say about many of us much of the time. Jesus, holding at the same time both human and divine natures, was on a learning curve.

Having just schooled the Pharisees about God’s law versus human tradition on the matter of food, he now gets schooled by a Syrophoenician woman about God’s law versus human tradition on the matter of people. Yes, Jesus was sent to the children of Israel, but God’s grace doesn’t end there. And confronted with this truth, Jesus says Yes.

After leaving Tyre, he journeys in the region of the Decapolis, another gentile area, and he is presented with a man who is deaf and unable to speak. Again, a gentile. This time, he says nothing about dogs, nothing about who is worth his time, but he simply takes this man in hand and heals him.

Later on, in the next chapter, Jesus is teaching great crowds of people, still in the gentile regions. And he turns to his disciples and says to them, I have compassion for them. All of them.

Compassion is something that we have to learn. Even Jesus learned it, and quite possibly he learned it from a Syrophoenician woman who wasn’t wiser than he was – she just needed her daughter to be made well.

We learn by experience, through our encounters with others, if we allow ourselves to learn, just as Jesus did.

We learn that our shared humanity makes us one family, even if our languages and customs and religious practices are different.

We learn that loving others in the manner God loves us involves giving much more than demanding. And in giving, we become the model of Christlike love. In giving, the way Jesus gave, we show the world the love God has for them.

Compassion is the good news. Compassion is the mission. And here is the message for you and me:

Be like the Syrophoenician woman and stand up courageously for what is good and right. Stand up for yourself and stand up for others who need you to.

Be like Jesus who changes course when he sees that his initial response was wrong. Believe me, if Jesus is not too proud to correct himself, neither should you and I be.

Be compassionate, as Jesus is compassionate. Putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. Asking yourself how you would want to be treated in that same situation. Pushing aside preconceptions about “these kind of people” for the sake of better understanding the flesh and blood person before you.

Learn compassion. Now is a good day to begin.