What a great moment we experienced together last Sunday, as we received the hopeful good news that for God all things are possible! That after 150 years, we are still here, and we are still saying “yes” to following Jesus!
Last week, the commitment of Peter and the disciples, and our own commitments to leave behind friends and family to follow Jesus, were affirmed with a promise from Jesus. With those first disciples, because we are allowing Jesus to turn our lives upside-down by accepting and working for a world where the first are last and the last are first, and the greatest among us are servants, Jesus promised us:
For everything we have given up, he will give us much more. For everything we have turned our back upon, he will give us a hundred times more!
It was a great day! A joyful day! A hopeful day!
But… (C’mon you knew it was coming!) …but, what a difference just one week can make.
Just when we were beginning to think that the disciples were finally starting to get it right, we open our Bibles, and still in this 10th chapter of Mark, we read where James and John, the sons of Zebedee, come asking Jesus if he will do them a favor.
You remember their poor parents, don’t you, Mr. and Mrs. Zebedee? Matthew told us the story of how their family fishing business was nearly destroyed that day a radical rabbi named Jesus came to town. That was the day James and John proved they were willing to drop everything, literally as they dropped their nets, leaving family, their job, everything behind, to follow Jesus (Matthew 4:21).
I am sure Peter had James and John in mind when he said to Jesus: “Look, we have left everything and followed you.”
But today, in the same chapter, we discover that they really don’t have a clue to what it truly means to follow Jesus when they ask Jesus if one can sit at his right and one at his left in his glory.
Pointing out their disappointing cluelessness, Jesus responds: “You really don’t know what you are asking!” For they had no idea that the ones who would end up on Jesus’ right and his left would be hanging on crosses!”
But that’s what it’s like after you say “yes” to Jesus. One Sunday, we got it! One Sunday, we are affirmed by Jesus! One Sunday, the pastor pats you on the back and calls you a kindness-lover, a peace-maker, a justice-doer, and a grace-giver. And the next week, you’re sitting on the struggle bus without a clue.
One Sunday, we feel like we have all the courage we need to stay on the right, albeit narrow, road that leads to life, abundant, meaningful, purposeful, and eternal. And the next week we are struggling, questioning, and wondering if staying on this difficult road with Jesus is really worth all the grief we receive from our family and friends, from our co-workers and neighbors.
We are always being tempted to acquiesce to popular culture. Because, following this narrow way of Jesus really does turn our entire world upside-down, and if we are honest, we’d admit that we’d be much more comfortable if we could just put some of our world back right-side-up.
We think about how good it would be to put ourselves first for a change, to be great again, to live without dying to self, to confront our enemies without having to love them, and to build wealth without having to give everything to the poor. How much better would life be if we identified with the first instead of the last, with those who have the most instead with those who have the least, with the powerful instead of the enslaved.
We think of how much better we would have it if we never heard of a woman whose two copper coins, worth just a few cents, were actually more valuable in the eyes of Jesus than the large bags of money that others were putting into the temple treasury.
We dream of what life would be if we never heard the story of a poor beggar named Lazarus resting by Abraham’s side, while a rich man begs for mercy.
We think about how much better life might be if we never heard the Sermon on the Mount, or the story of the Good Samaritan. How much better would we sleep at night, how much more money would we have in the bank, if could be like the Priest and the Levite who, without a care in the world, passed by on the other side.
New Testament Scholar Martin Copenhaver writes that our gospel lesson in Mark chapter ten bears repeating, because we are continually being tempted “to straighten up the order of things that Jesus turned topsy-turvy.”
As Disciples of Christ were creating a movement in the 19th century to return to the radical teachings of Jesus, German philosopher and cultural critic Friedrich Nietsche was denigrating those teachings calling the way of Jesus “a slave morality.”
Nietshche noticed that Christianity seemed to be most popular among the people in his day who were at were at the bottom: women, children, people living in poverty, people living with disabilities, people of color, and of course, the slaves. He accused Christianity of giving hope to those at the bottom, while offering very little to those at the top.
His criticism served as a warning to the church as they heard Nietshche saying: “If you’re not careful, if you keep teaching the upside down Gospel of Jesus, then you might fill your churches up with the wrong type of people!”
And it was a red flag for the privileged and for the powerful as they understood Nietshche saying: “If you don’t do something about this radical, upside-down topsy-turvy message of Jesus, then your workers may want to organize. They might begin to collectively bargain to improve their economic and social status. Your women may demand to have the same rights as men, even the right to vote. And although it’s unthinkable, they may even want the right to control their own bodies! And your slaves, well, they may rise up and demand to be treated like whole human beings, not just three-fifths.
So, the false prophets in the world went to work. Rejecting the gospel of Jesus that turns the whole world upside down, they began to twist scripture, take it out of context, and even make up unbiblical sayings to preach and teach the antitheses of Jesus, all in order to straighten out the topsy-turviness of the gospel.
“God only helps those who help themselves!” they declared.
“Women should be submissive to men, at home, in the workplace, in government and in the church,” they asserted.
“Children could be exploited for their labor,” they affirmed.
“Jesus was a white European man,” they pronounced in a plethora of artistic portrayals.
“God’s Word sanctions slavery,” they argued.
“Those people are abominations to God,” they preached.
And we know that those false prophets are still very much at work today, “straightening up the order of things that Jesus turned topsy-turvy.”
In an interview with NPR, evangelical leader Russell Moore said that multiple pastors have told him stories about their congregants being upset when they hear words read from the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus proclaiming an upside-down world where the poor are blessed, those who hunger for justice are filled, and the meek inherit the earth.
Moore said:
Multiple pastors tell me essentially, the same story about quoting Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount – [and] to have someone come up after to say. “Where did you get those liberal talking points?” Moore added: “And what was alarming to me is that in most of these scenarios, when the pastor would say, ‘I’m literally quoting Jesus,’ the response would be, ‘Yes, but that doesn’t work anymore. That’s weak.’
So, what do the pastors do? Well, at an alarming rate, many are leaving the ministry. But some stay, but to keep their congregants happy, they water-down the gospel, transforming the offensive counter-cultural meat of Jesus’ teaching into some, warm, comforting chicken soup for the soul. And to pastor a large church, some pastors have traded in the gospel that sides with the weak and the oppressed in exchange for a nationalism that sides with the strong and powerful.
Although this is the reason many people have given up on the church today, the irony is that it is also the reason people need the church today. Because to fight the great temptation to straighten up, water down, or trade in the gospel, people who have made the decision to say “yes” to Jesus need one another. To stay on the radical, narrow, offensive, difficult, counter-cultural, topsy-turvy way of Jesus, we need each other to help keep us accountable and encouraged, especially during these serious times when many in the church are rejecting it, calling it weak.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, who stood up to the fascism and white Christian nationalism of his day in Nazi Germany, once prophetically preached:
Christianity stands or falls with its revolutionary protest against violence, arbitrariness, and pride of power, and with its plea for the weak. Christians are doing too little to make these points clear, rather than too much. Christendom adjusts itself far too easily to the worship of power. Christians should give more offense [and] shock the world far more than they are doing now. Christians should take a stronger stand in favor of the weak, rather than considering first the possible right of the strong (Dietrich Bonhoeffer, from his sermon 0n 2 Corinthians 12:9, 1934).
The good news is that we are a part of a church where we are going to keep holding one another accountable. We are going to keep one another encouraged and hopeful. No matter what happens this week, or in the next three weeks, we are going to do all that we can do to stay topsy-turvy, following the radical, narrow, seemingly foolish, upside-down way of Jesus toward the poor, the suffering, the marginalized, the prisoners, the refugees, the undocumented, the lonely, the hungry, the dying, the tortured, the homeless–toward all who thirst and hunger for justice and compassion.
Following this way will shock many. It will offend some of our friends and even disappoint some in our family. Because what does this way offer us? Not success, not popularity, not riches, not worldly power, but we believe—we may not always understand, and at times we are even clueless—but we believe Jesus when he says it leads to a life that is full, complete, meaningful, purposeful, abundant, and eternal, and it creates a world that is more kind, more just, more free, and more merciful. Amen.
Just Love 