The Gospel isn’t meant to be gulped down on Sunday morning, but gnawed on through the week so it really becomes a part of us. You’ve got to work at it, like a dog with a good bone! Here’s the Gospel for this coming Sunday — the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost — with food for thought on how to live not for ourselves but for love of the world. Gnaw away!
Mark 9:30-37
Jesus and his disciples went on from there and passed through Galilee. He did not want anyone to know it; for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Chosen One is to be betrayed into human hands, and be killed and after three days, rise again.” But they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.
Then they came to Capernaum; and when he was in the house he asked them, “What were you arguing about on the way?” But they were silent, for on the way they had argued with one another who was the greatest. He sat down, called the twelve, and said to them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Then he took a little child and put it among them; and taking it in his arms, he said to them, “Whoever welcomes one such child in my name welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes not me but the one who sent me.”
The Backstory – What’s Going On Here?
Last Sunday, we heard the story that is the “watershed moment” in Mark’s Gospel. We heard:
*Peter confess Jesus as the Messiah.
*Jesus acknowledge that Peter is right, but then say that being the Messiah isn’t about being the victorious military ruler but about going to the cross and dying.
*Peter rebuking Jesus for saying such things and Jesus rebuking him back.
*Jesus letting Peter and the rest of the disciples know that if they want to follow him as Messiah, it means picking up their cross as well.
Jesus has been incredibly careful throughout Mark’s Gospel not to let word that he is the Messiah out … maybe because he is struggling with coming to grips with it himself, and maybe because he knows people would take it the wrong way. Now as he heads toward Jerusalem, he has turned a corner. He is proclaiming his Messiahship … not by wearing an “I’m the Messiah”
t-shirt, but by talking about his death and talking about how he came not to fulfill the people’s expectations of the Messiah, but to turn them upside down and inside out.
A few things to chew on:
*The message of the Gospel is incredibly hard to hear. It makes absolutely no sense. [1]As Paul said to the Corinthians:
“We proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling-block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength.”
Think about the disciples. They have physically walked with Jesus all this time and seen him do incredible things. Just before this passage, some of them saw him transfigured on a mountaintop and hanging out with Moses and Elijah and heard the very voice of God saying, “This is my son, the one I love. Listen to him!” And yet still when Jesus talks about not being a
Messiah who takes a throne but who hangs on a cross we hear “They did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”
We struggle with Jesus’ call to us to join him in the way of the cross … and that’s OK. If the learning curve for the disciples was steep, think about how it is for us! It will take a lifetime for us to learn to follow Jesus to the cross, and it’s definitely too hard (and ultimately too rewarding) to do it alone. All this means is that we need to be in it for the long hall … and be in it together.
*When we hear Jesus’ passion predictions, it’s easy to be drawn to the words “be killed” … but there is another word that is just as important: “betrayed.” Betrayal is one of the most painful pieces of our humanity … one of the deepest parts of our brokenness. Betrayal is when we take the greatest gifts we can give one another — love and trust — and we use them against one another. Betrayal is when we tempt each other to feel foolish for loving and trusting. And yet if we are to walk the road Christ walks, we invite betrayal. Because to walk with Christ is to strive to love all completely, and we can’t do that without knowing that some of that love is going to be used against us. But we cannot let that stop us.
Try This:
“A strange game. The only winning move is not to play.”
If you were a teenager like me in the early 1980s, you not only know what this quote comes from, you can probably hear the computerized voice that said it. It was from the movie War Games, with Matthew Broderick and Ally Sheedy … the not-so-subtle point of which was that the nuclear brinksmanship of the Cold War created a situation where if the game was played there could be no winners — just mass destruction for everyone and everything.
We are drawn into games all the time. We are drawn into the temptation to be a winner in the eyes of the world … to finish first and claim that spot that the disciples were arguing about before Jesus set them right.
But Jesus did set them — and us — right. Striving for temporal greatness is a game that even if you win, you lose. Because it doesn’t mean anything.
The only winning move is not to play.
This week, take a few minutes in silence each morning and consider the battles you are being drawn into. Where you are tempted to create winners and losers and to strive for achievement at the expense of another. What would it look like not to play the game? Ask God to show you … and to give you the wisdom and strength to make a truly winning move.
Where are the lobbyists for the poor?
A couple years ago, Dr. Cornell West tweeted these words:
“Where are the lobbyists for the poor?”
It was part of a campaign advertising a book he co-wrote with Tavis Smiley called The Rich and the Rest of Us: A Poverty Manifesto that calls on us to make eradication of poverty a national priority again.
The idea of “lobbyists for the poor” turns the whole idea of lobbyists on its head. Lobbyists are paid by groups of people to represent and argue for their own interests.
The culture of lobbying is relationships of pure utility. Groups of people with a common self-interest pay persuasive people to convince our leaders that they need to act in those interests by persuading them that it is in the leader’s self-interest (Got all that?). These days, this often involves large amounts of money all the way around.
The operative cliche for lobbyists is “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.”
That’s the way things work.
That’s also why West and Smiley note “there are no lobbyists for the poor lined up on K Street in the nation’s capital.”
So where are the lobbyists for those among us who are poor? For those among us who are incarcerated? For those among us who are oppressed and disenfranchised in any way?
Look in the mirror.
Jesus’ disciples are arguing over who is the greatest — an argument laden with self-interest if there ever was one! But Jesus turns the whole idea of greatness on its head.
Greatness is about service. To be first you need to be last.
Then Jesus does something incredible. He takes a child … one of the most vulnerable members of society … someone who is basically useless in terms of anyone’s self interest. He takes a child and says:
“This is me. This is God. This is whom you serve.”
Following Christ down the way of the cross means we live not for ourselves but for love of the world. Following Christ means we reject relationships of utility. Following Christ means we don’t ask “what’s in it for me?”
Following Christ means in every moment, in every relationship, we ask “how is Jesus best followed, how is God best honored?”
Following Jesus means that we get to be the lobbyists for the poor, for the children, for the marginalized, for everyone among us who is on the margins. To stand together on those margins.
We get to be the ones who will devote ourselves to the love of the most vulnerable among us without care whether there is anything in it for the rest of us.
We get to be the ones who will say “Am I better off than I was four years ago?” is the wrong question and instead ask:
“Are we more compassionate than we were four years ago?”
“Do we love our neighbor more than we did four years ago?”
“Are the most vulnerable people in our nation and the world less vulnerable than they were four years ago?”
I say “get to be” instead of “should” because as we do this we find it is our deepest joy. We find that as we lose our lives in love we really do save them. We find that the outer-directed life is the only way we become fully alive.
Where are the lobbyists for those among us who are poor?
We’re right here. And it’s time to get busy.
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Check out the rest of Sunday’s readings
The Lectionary Page has all of the readings for this Sunday and every
Sunday – click here for this Sunday’s readings:(http://www.lectionarypage.net/YearB_RCL/Pentecost/BProp20_RCL.html).
Collect for Sunday
Pray this throughout the week as you gnaw on this Gospel.
Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.
Want to read more?
“The Text This Week” is an excellent online resource for anyone who wants to dive more deeply into the scriptures for the week. (http://www.textweek.com/)
