Following Jesus to a Fruitful Life: Acting Like a Child

The truth is that if you follow Jesus you might be considered a wimp. It could happen. Jesse Ventura seemed to think that. You remember Jesse. He was the pro wrestler who became governor of Minnesota. One time he created a stir by saying “Organized religion is a sham and a crutch for weak-minded people who need strength in numbers.”[i] He backtracked a little from that, but he was only speaking his mind.

Friedrich Nietzsche believed something of the same thing. He was a philosopher living in the late 19^th century when he wrote a book titled The Genealogy of Morals. It’s an extended critique of religion and particularly Jewish and Christian beliefs.

Nietzsche believed that religion was an instrument that weak individuals used to keep the strong under control. “Jesus of Nazareth,” he said, “the gospel of love made flesh, the ‘redeemer,’ who brought blessing and victory to the poor, the sick, the sinners – what was he but temptation in its most sinister and irresistible form?”[ii] For Nietzsche, what Jesus tempted human beings to do was to do nothing, to be passive, to receive what the world flings at us and not to act, not to become fully human. What Nietzsche believed was that Jesus was teaching the weak secretly to hate the strong and to restrain them from acting.

The world is full of Nietzsche’s now. Adolf Hitler took Nietzsche’s philosophy and twisted it into a perverse ideology that brought unimaginable suffering to the world. In his mind, it was a legitimate act to try to rid the human race of its weaker members, its degenerate members, as he thought of them. In place of the world as it is he thought he was creating a super race, a master race.

Nietzsche’s children don’t all look as repellant as Hitler. Sometimes they are much more respectable. There’s a little of Nietzsche in all of us. We all have a little self-interest that chafes against the idea that we need to be restrained. “Why do I have to think about the poor? Why should I be concerned if they are in need? Shouldn’t they be looking out for themselves? What concern is it of mine if the migrant worker is being abused? Do I really need to care about the folks down at the nursing home? And folks in far-off lands? Orphans in Russia? Girls being bombed and threatened in Afghanistan simply because they are going to school? Women being raped as a matter of course in the Congo? When the Church talks about such things…when people care about such things…aren’t they just being naïve? I have so much to do. Why should I be distracted by them?”

As we talked about last week, the world doesn’t want to hear about weakness. It still doesn’t know what to do with a crucified savior. We say to ourselves, “If we’d been there we would have known better than the disciples. We would have seen who Jesus was and we would not have been a part of the mobs calling for his death.” But maybe we would have seen him as a naïve trouble-maker, too. Maybe we wouldn’t have been so concerned if the ruling authorities took him out.

The first time that he told them about his crucifixion they were on the way to Caeserea Philippi. Then, on their way back to Galilee, Jesus told them once again, "The Son of Man will be betrayed into human hands. They will kill him. And three days after being killed, he will rise again."

That's the essence of the Christian story about Jesus put as plainly as Jesus could put it. Jesus betrayed, killed and raised again after three days. We say it in our affirmations of faith and in the Great Thanksgiving before communion. When you ask what this Jesus Christ event is all about, this is it.

The disciples still don't understand. And they're also afraid to ask Jesus what he means. So they keep on walking.

We don't know exactly what happened on the rest of the trip, but we can take a pretty good guess, because when they got to the house in Capernaum where they are staying, Jesus asked them, "What were you arguing about on the road?" and Mark tells us that they didn't answer because they had been arguing about who was the greatest. We might say that they were acting like children because they got into a silly argument they didn't want the teacher to know about.

Why would they be arguing about this? Was it just a kind of denial? The disciples were scared and confused by Jesus' pronouncements of impending death. So maybe they decided that they would never be able to understand and turned instead to something they could understand - competition. And since there were twelve of them the easiest competition they could find was between themselves. Which one was the greatest? Later James and John would bring the dispute to Jesus, asking if they could sit at Jesus' side in his glory. But for now it was an argument they used to pass the time when they were not understanding things.

Jesus knew what was going on, even before James and John came to him. So Jesus realized that he had some teaching to do. He sat down, which was the normal position for a teacher to take in those days, and he called the twelve disciples to him and he told them, "Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all."

Now I can see the disciples trying to figure this out. They were running down lists of excuses in their minds, trying to see how they could fit the rule to their situation. "Now, when Jesus says last, he must just mean the last of the believing folk. And when Jesus says all, he must just mean all the acceptable folk. I might be able to live with this saying if that's what he means."

But then Jesus did something that none of them expected. He called a child into the middle of their circle. A child! Please understand what a dramatic act this is. Children in Jesus' day were not treated in nearly the same way that they are today. Many children in our culture are smothered with things and attention and we rearrange our schedules to suit their needs.

It was very different in the ancient world. Children were forced to live in a world made for adults from their earliest days. Adults tolerated children until they grew up and could act like civilized people. They certainly weren't people that you sought out or asked to come into adult groups, especially if the group was discussing religion.

Children were servants in the household. They would have stayed with the women until they reached age and then only the boys would have been allowed into the realm of adult men. We think of children as innocents and we talk about the innocence and wide-eyed wonder of children. That was not how people in Jesus’ day saw children. They were non-people and treated that way.

We have been seeing children all over Mark’s gospel, though. Children are important to this story. Jairus’ has a dear daughter who is dying and he will do anything he can to bring her to health, including seeking out this travelling teacher and healer. A Syrophoenician woman has a daughter with an unclean spirit and even though she is a foreigner, she will do anything for this child, including seeking out this Jewish Jesus. As Jesus comes down from the mountain with Peter, James and John, they run into a man who cries out to Jesus on behalf of his son – “I believe; help my unbelief!” Even evil Herod in his courts has a young stepdaughter who delights him with her dancing. Children are all over this story.

So something is up here. Something is upside-down in this story. So maybe it’s not so surprising that Jesus took a child and brought her into the middle of the disciples. Then he embraces her. What a powerful image this is! In the midst of this great discussion on who is the greatest, this power play among the disciples, there is a hug! Jesus points the way forward by giving a hug to the one person in the household who is considered the very least. And he says, "Whoever receives one such child in my name, receives me, and whoever receives me does not receive me, but the one who sent me."

If they had really been paying attention this would have popped the bubble of every disciple in the room. They were in competition to decide who was the person of greatest worth, who was the person whose name would be remembered. Jesus, however, took a person who was considered a non-person, a nameless child and put that child at the center.

This is where Jesus gets us into trouble. He is saying that, “Yes, we do care about the weak and the poor and those who live on the margin, because it is a way into the heart of God. We meet God in the child. We learn from the wounded and the broken-hearted. We receive Jesus when we receive one such at this.

Children are at risk in this world. There was a disturbing report this week that said that the number of abortions and vasectomies may be on the rise because of economic conditions. One person close to the situation said, "Unfortunately we see women who are making decisions about terminating a pregnancy because of the severe economic crisis they're facing. They simply don't believe they can afford to bring another child into the world."[iii]

Children are one of those things that don’t make sense if you take Nietzsche’s philosophy to its logical end. Children will always be among those the world considers weak. They will always consume the thought and time and energy and worry of those who care for them. They will not make sense to those whose vision of life does not extend beyond themselves.

The Bible knows, however, that children are a blessing. They are a statement of confidence in the future and they signify that our lives have greater significance than what we, as individuals can do. They are always hope and promise, however they come. And Jesus puts a child at the center.

Jesus takes a child! It was his way of pointing to God's will which is not self-serving, but other-serving. The true measure of greatness is servanthood, and that means serving all, not just the believers, not just the acceptable folks, but all, including the last and the least.

It is often said that the church is the only institution that exists for the people who are not yet a part of it. We come here each week, not just to join together in love, but to prepare for service out there beyond the walls. At least that's what we're called to be. And still the foreigner, the child, the refugee, the unemployed person, the abused person, the hungry person, the teenager waits for us to come.

To be about this mission is to be misunderstood by the world. The Nietzsches will never understand. But we just might find Jesus, who was betrayed and killed and who, after three days, was raised again - for you and me and us all. We just might find Jesus, who shows us a child and shows us the Way. Thanks be to God.

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[i] http://thinkexist.com/quotation/organized_religion_is_a_sham_and_a_crutch_for/210461.html.

[ii] Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the Genealogy of Morals, trans. By Francis Golffing, [Anchor Books: New York, 1956], pp. 168-9.

[iii] Paula Gianino, CEO of Planned Parenthood in the St. Louis region, quoted in “Meltdown Impact extends to abortion, birth control,” AP, 24 Mar 2009, http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/M/MELTDOWN_FAMILY_PLANNING?SITE=VANOV&SECTION=BUSINESS&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT.

Following Jesus to a Fruitful Life: Who Do You Say That I Am?

The truth is that Jesus is not who we think he is. I’ve told the story before about the friend of a friend who was an Episcopal priest taking his first appointment in a small parish in southwest Virginia. He decided, when he arrived at the church, that the arrangement of the chancel area in the front of the sanctuary was all wrong. So for his first Sunday he moved all of the furnishings to where he thought they ought to be.

I’m pretty sure this is one of those things that warn everybody against doing when they go to seminary. You don’t make major changes to the worship space on your first Sunday because somebody is likely to get upset. Sure enough, as people were shaking his hand at the door, one dear saint of the church came up to him and said, “If Jesus Christ knew what you had done to the front of this church, he’d be rolling over in his grave.”

Jesus is not who we think he is and the reason for that is that we keep on making Jesus over to look like us. A Harris poll came out recently and it said that the person who most Americans mentioned when asked to name a hero is…Barack Obama. Right after him is Jesus. God is 11^th in the poll, which is a little confusing since Christians would say that gives God two spots.[i] What’s amazing is that after all this time Jesus consistently ranks at the top of surveys like this.

If you dig a little deeper, however, you discover that who Jesus is looks very different to different people. Some people look to Jesus and see a great teacher. Some people look to him and see a miracle worker. Some see him as a great historical figure who started a very influential movement that has had a lasting impact on the world. Some people see him as a prophet – even some other religions like Islam, though the story they tell about Jesus is very different from the gospel accounts.

Some see him as the son of God. The Christ. The Messiah. The lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The one who was fully human and fully divine.

Sometimes we sing about Jesus and talk about him as the one who is high and lifted up, exalted at the right of God. And sometimes we sing about Jesus as being right beside us. “And he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own.” You might think, after that song, that Andy is Jesus’ other name! But the great mistake we make is in thinking that the way we are thinking about Jesus is the only way to be thinking about Jesus. The truth is that Jesus is not who we think he is.

It’s not unusual to fall into this trap. Jesus’ disciples did it, too. Along with all of the other people who followed Jesus. In the segment of Mark’s gospel that we read today you see how there are many, many people around Jesus all the time now. Jesus cannot seem to get away from the crowds, even though he’s travelling all over the place.

The Pharisees come up from Jerusalem to take him to task. 4,000 people come out into the wilderness and he feeds them. People bring him a blind man and he heals him. Everybody is looking for Jesus, but the people who understand who he really is are few and far between. The woman who touched the hem of his garment and was healed. The synagogue ruler who came to appeal on behalf of his sick daughter. The Syrophoenician woman who comes to Jesus even though she is a foreigner – an outsider to the promise – and who seems to have to argue with Jesus in order for him to give her what she wants for her daughter. These people seem to get it. They seem to know who he is. Along with the unclean spirits, of course.

But the disciples? They’re clueless. Even after seeing Jesus feed 5,000 people miraculously they can’t get a grip on how he’s going to feed just 4,000. When Jesus starts to warn them about the leaven of the religious leaders and of old King Herod he is using yeast as a metaphor for how the corruption of these figures can grow and expand. But the disciples think that he is chastising them for not having enough bread for their journey. They just can’t get their minds around what is going on.

So when Jesus asks them who people are saying that he is, we don’t have high hopes that this crew is going to be able to figure it out. But it’s an important moment in this story. This hapless crew may not be the sharpest knives in the drawer, but they will be the nucleus of the new church. These will be the ones that have to tell the story. They will be among the first to testify.

“Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks.

“John the Baptist,” they say. John who has just been beheaded by Herod but who had a large following and who called the people to repentance just like Jesus has been doing. “Elijah,” they say. Elijah, the prophet, who was known for his miraculous signs and for the fact that he was taken up into heaven in a whirlwind. Legend said that he would return in advance of the day of the Lord. “One of the prophets,” they say.

“But you…who do you say that I am?”

The question hangs in the air. Who dares to say it? Who dares to say what they all hope but struggle to believe. Finally it’s Peter who answers Jesus. “You are the Christ. You are not the warm-up act. You are not the one who prepares the way. You are the way. You are the main event.”

Jesus tells Peter to be quiet. Don’t let the cat out of the bag. And then he proceeds to tell them, for the first time, where this rapid journey full of ‘immediately’s is headed. “The son of humanity must suffer many things.” He’s speaking in the third person but he’s talking about himself. “The son of humanity must be rejected by the chief priests and the elders and the scribes. He must be killed. And after three days to rise again.”

The end of the road is suffering? The end of the road is rejection? The end of the road is death? Even with the rising again, this is not what the disciples or the crowds had come to expect.

This is Jesus! The one who stares down demons and binds the strong man. The one who is so powerful that even the hem of his garment is infused with supernatural power. The one who can feed multitudes and walk on water. Suffering? Rejection? Death?

We still can’t handle Jesus’ death. It just doesn’t compute. I think it must be because we are too busy thinking about what Jesus can do for us…about how Jesus can bless us as we are without there being any change or any pain or any transformation. The idea that the journey might involve some struggle or even that some parts of us may have to be put to death so that a new self can arise…that idea is disturbing.

Which brings me to Jean-Claude Van Damme. Do you remember Jean-Claude? He made a series of very gory, very forgettable action movies. I’ve never watched one all the way through. They’re just not worth anybody’s time. But I do remember finding one on TV one day – Cyborg was the name of it – and it includes a scene that shows just how hard the idea of Jesus’ death is for us.

In the film, Van Damme’s character is literally crucified to the mast of a ship. But Van Damme is no wimp. He’s not going to let the nails holding him to the mast in the middle of a raging storm be the end of him. He proceeds to wrench the nails out of the mast by his own brute strength – something that is not humanly possible.

That movie seems to suggest that a real hero wouldn’t have gone to the cross and died. A real hero wouldn’t have submitted to the worst that the world could do to him. A real hero wouldn’t have tried to change the rules about how the world works – he would have just been better at the using the rules as they are and would have claimed victory on the world’s terms.

Jesus is not that kind of hero. Jesus did not come to play by the rules as they exist. You know what rules I’m talking about. The rules about how might makes right. About how you can do anything you want as long as you’re rich enough or strong enough or beautiful enough or well-connected enough. The rules about how more is always more and always better than less.

If that’s the kind of hero Jesus was going to be, he would have marched on Jerusalem at the head of a mob or an army. He would have overthrown Herod and Caesar and any other ruler who dared to get in his way. He would have ended up on a throne and he would not have ended up on a cross. Maybe that’s the scenario the disciples expected but Jesus is going on a different journey.

You see, Jesus is not who you think he is. He’s not going to affirm your expectations – he’s going to change them forever. He is going to meet you where you are and accept you as you are but he’s not going to leave you that way. He’s not going to let the stories you tell yourself and the tapes that play in your head be the thing that defines you. He’s going to challenge you to get over yourself and discover what he knows you can be. And he’s going to do the same to the world.

Did you really think that when Jesus came out of the wilderness and declared that the kingdom of God was at hand that you wouldn’t be affected? Did you really think that when he was calling people to walk who couldn’t walk and to hear who couldn’t hear and to see who couldn’t see that it was only about them? Did you really think that this journey was not for you?

Jesus has made the turn toward Jerusalem. It’s all about the cross now. And he’s inviting you to come. But whether you respond to the call or not – know this – Jesus is changing the world. Because he’s not what you think. He’s more. Thanks be to God.

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[i] http://www.upi.com/Top_News/2009/02/20/Obama_tops_Jesus_in_heroes_poll/UPI-69841235147253/.

Following Jesus to a Fruitful Life: Wonders

The truth is he’s very unsettling. This Jesus who marches through the pages of the gospel of Mark – he’s unsettling. The disciples are out being tossed around in a storm. They’re thinking they’re going to die. And where is Jesus? Back sleeping on a cushion.

When they wake him up he’s mad at them. He seems to expect them to be calm. He seems to expect them to trust that everything will be alright. He tells them to have courage and believe. Just believe.

Of course, this is after he stares down the wind and the waves the same way that he’s been staring down the demons in all of these stories from Mark. Do you remember two weeks ago when Jesus confronted the unclean spirit in the man in the synagogue? Do you remember what he told the man? “Shut up!” Not a nice thing to say. You can only get away with saying it to demons in polite society. But now this is what he says to the storm. “Silence! Shut up!” The evil forces of the world all get the same treatment, even if they are as natural as a squall on the sea.

He’s unsettling, this Jesus. He seems to know just how to get at the heart of the problem. He comes ashore and there is a man who has been possessed by demons. They have tried to bind this strong man but he keeps breaking the chains. He howls and dashes himself with stones. Nobody seems to know quite what to do with this man, but Jesus knows. He goes right to the root of the problem and addresses the unclean spirit. “Come out!”

The demons are Legion – a Roman military term referring to a grouping of about 5,200 soldiers. They beg Jesus to be sent into a group of neighboring pigs. And so Jesus casts them out and sends them into the pigs – 2,000 of them – and the go rushing off the cliff. It’s unsettling. Especially for the pig farmer. Although, if you’re a pig farmer in a Jewish country you’re probably not expecting a lot of return anyway!

Finally Jesus starts to allow the secret out. Before this Jesus had been telling everyone not to say anything about who he is. But this time, when the man who had been healed asks to come with him, Jesus tells him instead to go tell his friends what the Lord had done for him. And he goes and does just that. The word is starting to spread.

Then Jesus goes on and he meets Jairus. Jairus is the ruler of the synagogue in this seaside

town. He’s one of the religious leaders and most of them have not been too keen about this wandering Galilean prophet. Later in the story it is men like him who crucify Jesus.

We don’t expect these two to be in the same story together except as opponents, but Jairus has a little problem. No, make that a big problem. No, make that a life-or-death problem. Jairus has a 12-year-old daughter, a “dear daughter” he calls her, and she is dying. Suddenly nothing else matters. Suddenly it doesn’t matter that the rules of the day say that he’s not supposed to like this Jesus. It doesn’t matter that he’s a threat to social order. It doesn’t matter that he’s an unsettling figure and a menace to the status quo. When your child is sick you want someone to unsettle the status quo. You want someone to change the channel, run roughshod over whatever ails them. If you have children you know what I mean.

So when Jairus hears that this Jesus’ character is in town he goes down to see him. He fights his way through the crowd. He falls down at Jesus’ feet. No other religious leader in any of the gospels does anything like this, but this is a desperate man and he throws himself down at Jesus’ feet and says, “Come and lay your hands on my daughter so that she can be saved and live.” And Jesus goes with him.

Now this is a pretty nifty story. Social barriers come crashing down. Jairus was willing to set aside all the things that would have kept him from associating with Jesus. Jesus is willing to walk with this man who would normally be opposing him in order to heal his daughter. The next scene in this story should be Jesus going to Jairus’ home and healing his sick daughter. But a funny thing happens on the way to the healing.

Jesus has set out for Jairus’ house and once again, as usual in Mark’s gospel, throngs of people surround him. In the midst of this mob there is this woman who is going to make Jesus do a U-turn. Now she is not a prestigious figure like Jairus. In fact…she’s about as far down the social prestige ladder as you can get from the ruler of the synagogue. As a woman she would never have associated with someone like Jairus. As a woman, in that culture, she would never even have approached a man who was not her relative. That was just a no-no from the start.

But there was another reason this woman would not have approached others, especially men. You see, this woman had her own 12-year-old to worry about. For twelve years she had suffered from a disease which brought her physical pain. But the physical pain was not even the half of it.

In Jewish society, a flow of blood made a woman ritually unclean. Those who touched her became unclean. Today we say, “That’s silly. That’s absurd. That’s superstitious. That’s cruel.” But in her day it was the way of the world. So disease was not her only illness. For twelve long years she was a social outcast as well.

Not that she hadn’t tried to be healed. O, she had. She had squandered every penny she had on doctors and like the prodigal son who squandered away his fortune, she had as much to show for it.

To make a long story short, she wasn’t getting a house call from Jesus. She didn’t have the social pull or the right connections. So she decided to heal her twelve-year-old the only way she knew how…she broke the rules. She said, “I know there’s a crowd, but I’m going. I know he’s a man, but I’m going. I know an unclean person shouldn’t touch others, but I’m going. I know I’m not supposed to touch him, but I’m grabbing the hem of his garment! I’m grabbing the hem of his garment and when I do I’ll be healed. The hem of his garment will be enough. The hem of his garment will be enough!” And she snuck up behind him and before anyone could say anything she reached out and grabbed the hem of his garment…and it was enough. BAM!, as Emeril would say, she was healed.

It was like a jolt of lightning. And immediately she knew she was healed and immediately Jesus knew that something powerful had happened. He whirls in his tracks and he says, “Who touched me?” Today when we read this we wonder…is Jesus angry? Is he incredibly sensitive? To the disciples it was just a ridiculous question. They say to Jesus, “You’ve got to be kidding! You have all these people crushing in around you and you ask, ‘Who touched me?’”

But Jesus knows. The woman knows. She falls down at Jesus’ feet. The Bible says she was trembling and afraid, but not because she feared Jesus. The Bible says she was trembling because she knew what had happened. She had been saved. Saved…healed…made whole. The words make no difference. The same word means all three in the Greek. And all three had happened to her.

Jesus is not angry. He addresses her by the title, Daughter. Funny how daughters are getting healed everywhere in these stories. “Daughter,” he says, “your faith has saved you; go in peace and be healed from your affliction.” Wow. That’s some interruption.

But now the story can keep going, right? Now Jesus can go on and heal that other daughter, that other twelve-year-old. But no. There’s a complication. Word arrives from the synagogue leader’s house and the news is not good. “Don’t bother the teacher any more. It’s hopeless. Your daughter is dead.”

Now healing is one thing. Resuscitation…that’s something else. You can just hear the wheels turning in Jairus’ head. If only we hadn’t been interrupted. If only he had kept on moving when he was touched. If only…if only…the fear and darkness are creeping in.

But Jesus does not allow it to continue. Jesus says, “Don’t fear, only believe.” And Jesus can say this, you see, because everyone in that crowd had just seen this in action. Jesus can say this because everybody had just seen a woman break every rule, cross every barrier, do everything she possibly could, because she believed that the hem of his garment would be enough. She was a daughter who was effectively dead. She was a daughter who was sealed out of the society, shut out of the system, shunted to the side…and yet she believed that she was going to live and she was willing to risk everything because when you come right down to it…what did she have to lose? If there was life for her it sure wasn’t in sitting by the side of the road guarding her uncleanliness. If there was life for her it was not going to come by respecting the walls meant to protect others from her. If there was life, it was going to come through hope, through belief, through the hem of his garment...if I can just touch the hem of his garment.

Fear is death. Fear is death. What good is fear against a power that can bring a woman twelve-years dead back from oblivion? What good is fear against a God who can send a legion of foes off a cliff? What good is fear against a God who can calm the seas and still the winds? What good is fear against a God who refuses to respect the boundaries of the tomb? What good is fear against a God who won’t get real, who won’t accept that nice guys finish last, who won’t agree that the best we can say about life is that “stuff happens,” who won’t let our lives be defined by the worst things we’ve ever done, and who insists that despite all evidence to the contrary that the reign of God is coming and in fact, it’s already here! What good is fear with a God like that?

What is it that God and the angels are always telling biblical people when they show up? God appears to Abraham in a dream and before telling him about all the incredible things that will happen, he first says, “Don’t be afraid.” Hagar, the unfortunate surrogate mother who gets sent off into the desert to die with her child, Ishmael, God calls to her and the first thing God says is, “Do not be afraid.” The angel of God appears to Mary with the news that she’s going to be unexpectedly expecting and what are the first words he says, “Don’t be afraid.” Joseph finds out that Mary is unexpectedly expecting and is about to make a break from her and an angel appears and the first words the angel says are, “Do not be afraid.” Are you starting to get the picture? When God has something big to say…when God wants to tell us to look out for something wonderful that’s about to happen…when all the evidence around says…BE AFRAID…the first thing God says is, “DON’T BE AFRAID.”

And why is this important? Why do we care about this? Why is this the most important thing that we could hear today? Because we are living in a state of fear.

We pick up the newspapers and there it is. The break-ins and crime just down the street. The wars that drag on. The stock market which sinks, taking with it retirement accounts and dreams. The recession that threatens to become a depression. The deficit spending. The budget shortfalls. The gnawing sense inside of us that tells us we are vulnerable. The secret sins and quiet addictions that sap our energies and divert our souls. The relationships ruined by violence and abuse. Depression. Worry. Anxiety. Grief. Death.

But Christians are not called to live like that. Christians cannot live like that. It is a perversion of who we are meant to be if we let fear dictate who we are and how we live. This Jesus is unsettling, but he is leading us to life, to claim the territory where we live. To send the demons packing and to work new wonder. As Christians we did not receive a spirit of slavery to fear again, as Romans reminds us, we received a spirit of adoption which allows us to call upon God in the intimate way that a daughter calls upon her father and mother. As Christians we are not looking back and we are not allowing fear to be the one turning us around. We are always moving forward. Always reaching out into a future that is defined by the resurrection and by God’s final victory. The barriers have been broken and we are racing to keep up with the new world that’s coming. We may not grasp it all in this life. We may not understand it all. We may not be able to comprehend even the smallest bit of what God has in store for us, but if I can just touch that hem. The hem of his garment is enough. The hem of his garment is enough. The hem of his garment is enough.

We’ve come too far to turn back now. We are on a road that is all about hope and love and perfect love casts out fear. Hope and love are the foundation on which the church is built. Jesus leads us onward. Where he’s going is unsettling. But he has wonders to show us. Don’t be afraid. Only believe. Thanks be to God.

Following Jesus to Fruitful Life: Conflicts & Confrontations

Jesus said, “If you have ears to hear, listen.” When I was serving a church in England I often found the truth in the old saying that Britain and the United States are two countries separated by a common language. There were just some words that didn’t translate. Like the time when I came in for an evening meeting and asked a church member if the restroom was locked (because it often was). He looked at me, totally befuddled, and finally said, “Well, you can use the sanctuary.” For him a restroom was a place to rest.

It was the same sort of cross-cultural misunderstanding that my friend, Laurence, ran into when he was living here as a British person. During our seminary days in Dallas, he gave one of the best Christmas sermons I ever heard. The only problem with it was when he mentioned that Jesus was born in an outhouse and it just had a different meaning for us Americans who were listening.

“If you have ears to hear, listen.” What was Jesus saying? That the people he was talking to didn’t have ears? Most of them had working apparatus to hear. That wasn’t it. No, it was something deeper that he was after. He knew they had ears. He just didn’t know if they could listen.

Since we began Lent we have been walking through the book of Mark and we have been noticing some interesting things about Jesus. As Mark tells the story, Jesus is a relentless character. He is constantly on the move. By now you surely know Mark’s favorite word…immediately…and it describes how Jesus moves – with urgency and direction and purpose.

He sweeps up people as he goes. He calls fishermen from their nets and they go. He heals some people and soon there are such crowds that he can’t go into a house or even into a town without being overwhelmed. He’s magnetic.

He also runs head on into controversy. He keeps coming up against demons who are the only ones who seem to know who he is. They are the ones who declare that he is “the Holy One – the Son of God.” But he silences them and casts them out.

Even with this witness, though, the people can’t understand what’s going on. And this is where the ears thing comes in. They have ears to hear and eyes to see but their world view is so cock-eyed…they’ve been living in a distorted world for so long that they can’t hear truth…they can’t see reality…they can’t understand what’s going on right in front of them.

So when Jesus casts out demons they think he’s the one that’s lost his mind. That’s what his family says. Presumably not Mary and Joseph, but other members of his family think that he’s gone stark, raving mad. Others…scribes… religious functionaries who had come down from Jerusalem to see what all the fuss was about…thought that Jesus himself was possessed by demons. “He has Beelzebul,” they said, (Beelzebul being another name for Satan), “and by the prince of the demons he casts out demons.”

You can see where they’re coming from. If the world is so messed up that it seems like the only thing with any power is evil, anybody who displays power must be evil. It’s why nobody trusts a powerful person or a political movement. It’s why people roll their eyes when anyone mentions Washington. We have seen so much corruption and so much damage done by our leaders that we carry with us a justified suspicion of any political leader. We assume that anyone sent off to Washington or Richmond or Eastville will be corrupted by “the system,” which we may call names like Beelzebul.

And then there are those who do awful things in the name of religion. Right now in central Africa there is a group that calls itself the “Lord’s Resistance Army” and it is trying to overthrow the Ugandan government. Its leader, Joseph Kony, believes he is doing the Lord’s work by forcibly recruiting children into his army and by committing all kinds of atrocities in the name of Christianity. The group celebrated Christmas this year by using machetes to hack to death 45 people who were huddled together in a Catholic Church.[i]

We are so jaded and hardened that we find it difficult to recognize it when truth and goodness come our way. So maybe it’s understandable that the scribes would get it exactly wrong. But Jesus doesn’t let it stand. “A house divided against itself can’t stand. I’m not a demon come to fight demons. I am like a thief breaking into a strong man’s house. Unless the thief first ties up the strong man, then he’s not going to be able to steal from the house.”

Do you get what Jesus is saying there? He’s saying that the world is under the sway and the power of evil. The strong man? That’s the same Satan that Jesus confronted in the wilderness. The world has fallen so far away from what God intended that now it is like an alien landscape.

Which brings me to The Lion King. In the movie The Lion King, Simba is the young lion who is the rightful king of a pride that occupies the plains around a giant rock. When his evil uncle Scar orchestrates the death of his father, Mufasa, Simba runs off thinking he was the one responsible. And what happens to the Pride Lands when Simba goes away? Scar allows the hyenas to take over. There is no water, no food, no vegetation left. The harmony of the land has been destroyed and the reign of death has begun.

So Simba’s young friend, Nala, goes to find Simba and to tell him what has happened. She finds him hiding out in the jungle, frittering his life away with two new friends – a meerkat and a warthog. (If you haven’t seen this movie just bear with me!) Nala tells Simba that it is his responsibility to go back and reclaim the land that is his – to face down Scar and to send the hyenas back to where they came from.

Then do you remember what happens next? Simba has a vision of the ghost of his dead father, Mufasa. Rafiki, the baboon prophet, tells him to look into a pool of water and there he sees his father telling him who he is. “Remember who you are,” Mufasa tells the young lion. “You are my son, and the one true king.”[ii]

Now I don’t want to accuse Disney of stealing from Mark, but does this remind you of any scene we’ve talked about in the last few weeks? A pool of water? A voice from out of nowhere saying, “You are my son”? What does this sound like to you? The baptism of Jesus, right?

And immediately…after he has this vision, Simba goes back to the Pride Lands to confront Scar, the lion who has become the king of the hyenas. He claims his territory and exposes his uncle as a liar and a murderer. The movie ends with the clear implication that now the land can become what it was intended to be. Life can flourish. Every creature can play the role it is supposed to play in the circle of life.

This is what this coming of Jesus is like. Jesus is not some new corrupt power seeking to overthrow another corrupt power, which is what too many of our human power struggles are like. Jesus is the son of God – the one true king – come to bind the powers of death and to establish a new reign on the earth.

Of course he is going to seem insane to the people who have no frame of reference for what he is doing. Of course he is going to look like a dangerous renegade to the religious authorities. But to people who have not forgotten the promise that God made at creation…to people who have not given up hope that God’s reign will come…to people who are lost and hurting and downtrodden and lame Jesus is going to look like a man worth following. Because Jesus does not have his eyes fixed on wealth or fame or comfort or control. Jesus’ eyes are fixed on a hill outside the city walls of Jerusalem where a cross waits, ready to claim his life. But his life cannot be claimed. He is the one who determines the rules of the game. Darkness cannot win. Beelzebul and the demons have had their day.

So what does Jesus ask of the people who would follow him? As he travelled he began to teach them. And he told them riddles…parables that were not easy to understand. He talked about seeds and farmers. He told about one particular farmer who was not very careful about where he planted his seeds. He just went out to sow and threw the seeds all over the place.

Some seeds fell on the path and you know what happened to them. They just lay there on that hard ground and the birds came and ate them up. Some seeds fell on rocky ground where there was thin layer of soil, but the plants never really developed much root and, even though they sprang up quickly, the sun came out and scorched them and they withered away. Some seeds fell in the thorns and they sprang up, but they were competing with too many other things and they got choked out. But some seed…some seed fell on fertile ground and it grew and flourished and produced up to a hundredfold yield.

What does it mean? As Jesus explained it to the twelve later he said the seed was the word – the word which he had come to deliver and to be. And when the seed fell on hard ground it was like falling on deaf ears. Before it even penetrated the soil, darkness and evil snatched it away. The rocky ground was like the people who had heard the word and responded but who then fell away when hard times came. The thorny patch was like people who said that they wanted to respond to God but who were too preoccupied with wealth and the comforts of this world and they soon fell away. And the fertile ground….

Who is like fertile ground? When you do your garden this spring what are you going to do to the land? You’re going to break it and turn and open it so that it will be ready to receive the seeds and nourish the plant. It takes broken, turned around, opened up people to receive what God has to give. It takes people who know that Jesus is more than just a miracle worker and a charismatic teacher. It takes people who know that the way to follow Jesus is to first know that you need to follow Jesus. When Jesus is no longer one option among many, but the center of your life, then you are fertile soul for what God’s word can do.

Than image of the Pride Lands in The Lion King is a useful one for us. Because it’s not only the world that is overcome by darkness, but it is our lives, too. Our souls can be overcome by evil and death. We can give ourselves over to demons that tell us that we are not worthy, we’re not capable, we’re not lovable, we’re not redeemable. We can give ourselves over to demons that lead us to treat others with cruelty and indifference and disrespect and mistrust. And when we let these demons rule our lives we start to turn in on ourselves. Our souls shrink, like the Grinch’s heart. We become deformed creatures, distorted beyond recognition.

But God has not forgotten who we are. God has not forgotten what you can be. And God will go to the ends of the earth…to the wilderness…to the gates of hell itself to reclaim what rightfully belongs to God. And you are what rightfully belongs to God. This world is what rightfully belongs to God. The strong man has been bound. We are under new management now. King Jesus is on the move. And immediately the kingdom has come near.

Thanks be to God who did not leave us to dominion of demons, but who walks before us, inviting us to follow him in the way of life. Thanks be to God.

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[i] BBC News, 29 Dec 2008, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7802804.stm.

[ii] http://www.lionking.org/scripts/Script.html#mufasa.