The Whirlwind

Proper 24, Year B

October 18, 2009

I’ve been enjoying the embarrassment of riches the lectionary has given us these last few weeks. As I’ve said before, we are in the heart of those chapters of Mark in which Mark places Jesus’ teachings on discipleship in conjunction with his predictions concerning the fate awaiting him when he and his disciples finally arrive in Jerusalem. Today we have come to the end of our brief excursion into the Book of Job, and we finally hear God’s response to Job’s criticisms, questions, and demands. And the letter to the Hebrews, which I’ve not preached about, continues to expound its author’s understanding of the meaning of Jesus Christ. Wonderful texts, all, profound themes and questions.

As I’ve been reminding you these past few weeks, this section of Mark is tightly and very carefully constructed, around three episodes where Jesus predicts his suffering and death, followed by the disciples’ misunderstanding, and concluding with Jesus giving them instructions on how to be his disciples. Today’s Gospel comes immediately after the third prediction. Given that it is the third time through, the repetitive nature of the whole sequence becomes more clear, and the absolute idiocy or incomprehension of the disciples stands in ever-sharper relief.

In fact, on careful reflection, this sequence of events, with the disciples continually misunderstanding Jesus seems somewhat artificial. After all, who could be that dumb? As teachers, as parents, as bosses, if we’ve said something three times, we expect it to be learned. So if they still don’t get it, we suspect it’s not a matter of incomprehension, rather it is willful ignorance. This construction puts the disciples in such bad light, that when Matthew goes to rework this section of Mark, he rewrites it so as to soften the negative depiction of the disciples.

The first time it was Peter, the second time it was “the disciples,” this time it is James and John, the Sons of Zebedee, who put their feet in their mouths. In Matthew’s version, however, it is not them, but their mother who asks this question of Jesus.

After Jesus predicts once again, for the third time, that he is going up to Jerusalem, where he will be arrested, tortured, and executed, two members of his inner circle come to him with a special request. When he comes into his glory, they want to be at his side, they want to be closest to him. Jesus has been teaching his disciples about a Messiah who will suffer and die, and the disciples are still thinking of a Messiah who will deliver the Jewish community from its Roman occupiers. They think that they are on their way to Jerusalem to challenge the Roman legions militarily.

Jesus’ response is full of symbolism: “You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” When they say they are ready, Jesus predicts that they will share the cup and the baptism that Jesus will undergo.

The disciples were unwilling or unable to imagine the future that Jesus predicted. They were so bound by their values and world view that they couldn’t conceive of what Jesus was talking about when he talked about discipleship, suffering and death.

I always take comfort in the way Mark depicts the disciples, even though many Christians are scandalized by his portrayal. The disciples misunderstand Jesus at every step of the way. They are unable to do the kinds of things Jesus does, heal people or cast out demons for example. And in the end, when Jesus makes his final journey from the Upper Room to the cross, the disciples leave him utterly alone, abandoned by his closest friends. Many Christians find the brief synopsis I’ve given you of the disciples in the Gospel of Mark offensive. They can’t believe it’s true, because Peter, James and John, and all the rest—except Judas of course, became the pillars of the church, they are saints, they spread the word throughout the world.

I take comfort in this depiction because Mark depicts a group of men in some respects very much like ourselves. Why were they drawn to Jesus? Why did they obey him when he said, “Come, follow me”? And Jesus’ teachings were so astounding, so out of this world, that they had no way of understanding him, most of the time. Jesus didn’t choose them because of their brilliance, their talents, skills, whatever. He didn’t read their resumes he didn’t carefully assess how they would work together, he simply called them, and they followed.

But we are like them in many ways. We, like they, are so bound by our lives, values, and assumptions, that we can’t hear what Jesus is saying to us. We hear the words “cup” and “baptism” and we immediately think of the sacraments—Eucharist and Baptism. Who knows what James and John thought Jesus was talking about? But Mark knew—the cup and the baptism, were what awaited Jesus in Jerusalem, his arrest, torture, and execution.

For us cup and baptism have almost become what scholars of symbol call dead symbols, so often used that they have lost their meaning for us. Part of the reason for that transformation over the centuries is precisely because of another image used in Mark’s gospel, and then greatly expanded upon in the letter to Hebrews. At the end of today’s gospel, there’s a word that has taken on enormous significance in Christian theology—ransom, and in the letter to the Hebrews we have heard repeatedly of sacrifice.

These words, this doctrine, have so shaped our experience, our theologies, and our world views, that is hard to hear what Jesus said in the Gospel of Mark with open ears. For Mark, this word ransom, and indeed Jesus’ death on the cross was not about sacrificial atonement, it was not about Jesus dying for our sins. It was about something different, and perhaps even more radical. Throughout these chapters we have been hearing Jesus teachings about discipleship. Take up my cross and follow me, you will drink the cup that I drink, and be baptized with my baptism. For Mark, discipleship was all about sharing in Jesus’ death, about walking with him to Calvary. Disciples were to expect the same fate that awaited Jesus in Jerusalem.

The disciples recoiled from Jesus’ words, because his suffering and death were inconceivable to them. We drink the cup, and are baptized with water, never thinking of Jesus’ words here. That we might share his fate, suffer and die as he did is inconceivable to us. But of course, it is not just our own death that is inconceivable to us. We should not be able to make sense of Jesus Christ’s death either. The doctrine of atonement, that Jesus died for us, for our sins, should not make sense. The problem is, the notion is so familiar to us, that we can no longer see the horror of it, the evil of it.

Could God, did God, require Jesus die so that we might be saved? What does that say about God? Oh, I’m not talking about God’s love, but rather of everything else, the mercilessness, the lack of compassion, the sheer necessity. What does the doctrine of atonement say about our notion of God?

Let’s leave that question for a moment and move back to the book of Job. After all, in a sense, that’s Job’s very question. The understanding of God operative in the day of the book of Job had God rewarding the righteous and punishing the evil. Job suffered, therefore, he must have sinned. But Job refused to accept the equation of sin equals suffering, so he challenged God. And after lengthy speeches, finally, at last God speaks, out of a whirlwind, and says, “Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?”

This speech of God to Job is powerful, haunting, but in the end it is unsatisfying. For God does not explain Godself to Job. God simply tells Job that he cannot understand God, because God is so far beyond Job, beyond comprehension. God’s response to Job is meant to put Job in his place. It is meant to end the conversation, to shut Job up. And it does all of that, but in those questions are a reminder to us about the nature of God, and about our nature. True, God is ultimately beyond our comprehension, but this scene between God and Job reminds us not only of that, but also that too often we try to understand God by forcing God into categories of our making. We limit God by placing boundaries around God.

Job did it; James and John did it as well. When we define God in our terms, we limit the ways in which God might come to us; we close ourselves to the possibility of transformative experience. Occasionally, God comes to us in a whirlwind, sometimes God is present in bread and wine, sometimes God speaks in a still, small voice. Listen!

Jesus Loved Him

Proper 23, Year B

October 11, 2009

Questions, questions. Today’s lessons are full of questions, full of hard questions. In Job, we have heard part of Job’s response to his suffering. As I said last week, Job’s response to his plight was not patience, or humble acceptance. He responded angrily, and today we have heard how deep and powerful that response was. Job insisted that his suffering was not punishment for some sin he had committed, and he persisted in that conviction even when his three friends challenged him to admit his wrongdoing, confess his sin, and do penance. Instead of looking within to find the reason for his plight, Job looked elsewhere.

As he tried to make sense of his situation, Job appealed to God to help him understand. But as he pondered his situation, he went further. Job began to wonder where God was for God seemed to have abandoned him.

“If I go forward, he is not there;

or backward, I cannot perceive him;

on the left he hides, and I cannot behold him;

I turn to the right, but I cannot see him.

Probably many of us have had times in our lives when we were in the same place as Job, profoundly aware, not of God’s presence, but of God’s absence. Sometimes that experience is a result of suffering, but sometimes it is also the product of profound questioning and reflection on our life and the life of the world. “Where is God” is a question that drives to the heart of our faith, and to the very heart of the human experience.

But even if we don’t most of us, most of the time, ask profound questions like the ones raised by the book of Job, still there are questions. The Christian life is full of questions, large and small, difficult and easy. Today’s gospel confronts us with two questions. The first question is asked by a rich man: “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” Jesus’ disciples ask the second question after hearing Jesus’ words: “Then who can be saved?”

Committed Christians reside in the interstices between these two questions, seeking salvation but profoundly challenged by Jesus’ words. Because Jesus’ words are so unsettling, because they amaze us, even as they amazed Jesus’ disciples, as Mark reports. Over the centuries Christians have done any number of things to soften the edge of his words: “It is easier for a camel to go pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.”

Those words are so difficult for us to hear, because, like the disciples, we wonder. These are hard words that Jesus says, words that put is in a hard place. If it is the case, if it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God, then salvation is impossible. So we try to weasel out of the hardness of the place. We tell ourselves, we aren’t rich, not like the really rich, not like Bill Gates. So Jesus wasn’t talking to us.

Then we look for another escape route. There’s always the possibility that Jesus didn’t mean what he said or didn’t say what Mark has him say. Maybe Jesus said rope, not camel; the two words are almost identical in Greek. Or my favorite interpretation, that there was a gate in Jerusalem, called the “eye of the needle” through which a camel could squeeze with difficulty. In other words, these difficult words aren’t meant for us, we’re middle class, not wealthy; and camels can get through the eye of the needle after all. So let’s all breathe a sigh of relief and go about our business.

But, next Sunday is the deadline we’ve set ourselves, the day we return our pledges for 2009 to the church. We are in the middle of our stewardship campaign and I’m sorely tempted to turn this into a stewardship sermon. It’s that time of the year, after all, and what better hook for our stewardship drive than to connect Jesus’ reply to the rich man to our own pledging. That would make for a remarkably successful campaign. If all of us gave all of our possessions, Grace Church could do some pretty impressive things.

But as much as I would like to, I can’t do it. For one simple reason—Jesus is not speaking to our situation at Grace. The man has not come to Jesus to offer financial support. He has come for help, for advice. He approaches Jesus because he wants to know how to attain eternal life, how to enter the kingdom of God, of which Jesus preaches. He addresses Jesus with humility, bowing down before him, calling him “Good teacher.”

Jesus’ response is challenging—not simply because he challenges the rich man, but because he challenges us as well. His response to the man is to remind him of his obligations under Jewish law. In a nutshell, Jesus is saying, keep the commandments. The man asserts that he maintains his obligations to the Jewish law.

From a traditional, twenty-first century Christian perspective, the whole of this interchange between Jesus and the man is jarring. Things don’t seem to make sense. Jesus’ response to the man ought to be, “accept Jesus Christ as your personal savior;” or “have faith in me,” or even “I am the way, the truth and the life.” Instead Jesus tells him, keep the law. Furthermore, when the man insists that he does keep the commandments, that, in essence, he is a good Jew, Jesus doesn’t respond with words to the effect that keeping the law is impossible, righteousness under the law doesn’t work. Instead, he gives him another command: “Go, sell all that you have, give it to the poor, and come, follow me.” Doing that will give the man treasures in heaven, it will bring him into the kingdom of God.

But of course, the man finds those commands much harder to follow than the 10 commandments. Now we learn something new about him. Mark tells us for the first time, that he has great possessions and he can’t give them up. So he leaves Jesus. His desire to share in the kingdom of God, his desire to walk with Jesus, to be a disciple was not as intense as his desire to continue living the life he had, to enjoy his possessions.

But in the course of the story, Mark tells us something else. “Jesus loved him.” At first hearing, we may find such a statement completely unremarkable, but in fact, it is almost unique. Only one other time in the gospel of Mark, does the writer use the word “love”—that is when Jesus recites the two great commandments, to love God and to love neighbor. In other words, Mark never says elsewhere in the gospel, that Jesus loves someone.

Jesus loved him. These simple words challenge us, and challenge every interpretation of this encounter that we might have. In the first place, Jesus doesn’t simply tell the man, follow me. No, he adds conditions. In Mark’s version of Jesus’ calling of the disciples, Jesus words are simply, follow me. But here, Jesus adds conditions, demands. Go, sell, give, come and follow me. For this man, it seems, it’s not enough to follow Jesus, he must also turn his back on all that he has, publicly renounce it.

But then, even though he turns away from Jesus, we are told that Jesus loves him. Does it mean simply that Jesus feels sorry for him, that he has compassion on him? But no, it isn’t because the man turned away in shock after Jesus’ words. Jesus loved him and then said to him, Go, sell what you own.” Jesus commands were in response to his love of the man.

The man stood on the edge of a great opportunity. Having asked Jesus a question of eternal significance, he received an answer of equal significance. But it wasn’t simply a matter of the man’s eternal fate. It was also about a relationship. To have given up his possessions would have meant to accept, in radical and complete openness, the love of Jesus Christ.

Jesus has invited the rich man to follow him, to become his disciple, and the rich man turned away, he turned back from the possibility of that life. But this encounter challenges us to the core of our being, to the core of what matters most to us. In these weeks, we have been learning a great deal about what Mark, and Jesus, understand by discipleship. And each week, we hear the same message. Following Jesus changes everything.

So we are back to stewardship and we are back to discipleship. We, like the rich man, are facing a choice, a life-changing moment. We confess our faith in Christ, we claim to have personal relationships with Christ, we call ourselves his disciples. But Jesus stands in front of us. Jesus loves us, and asks us to give up what matters most, to live in radical openness and complete commitment to him. How will we respond? Will we try to weasel out? Will we, like the rich man, turn away in grief and shock? Or will we accept Jesus’ challenge?