Changing the Story
You can listen to this sermon here
Gate Pa – Year B 29th Sunday in Ordinary Time, 2021
The Sermon
1. Introduction:
They thought they understood what was happening. They thought they understood what God was doing in this person Jesus.
They thought they knew what God was up to with Jesus.
They thought they understood God.
Jesus was the holy one from God. He had healed many of all that sought to bring death. He was a teacher with words of life. He inspired and offered hope to so many. He had shown power over the natural world and the world of spirits. And now he was off to Jerusalem. There was an air of expectation and hope. Clearly God was with him, and when God was with you, despite what Job said, you were blessed with success. They were not sure what was about to happen, but they hoped.
They didn’t understand why he kept trying to teach them that he was to be betrayed and crucified. That made no sense to them. That was their worst nightmare. There was no hope in that. Just more death. What on earth could God possibly be doing in that kind of mixed-up story? What kind of God would even do that?
They knew God to be all powerful. Every year in the Passover they celebrated God defeating the power of Egypt, the enslaving empire of those times. And they remembered how they were saved from death with the blood of a lamb, the death that took the first-born male of each Egyptian family and their livestock. And they remembered how they were liberated, freed from their lives of slavery.
This God was at work in Jesus. They were sure their longing to be freed from the enslaving powers of their day was about to come true. They hoped for an end to Rome’s rule and that the corruption of the leading Judean families was at an end. In Jesus God would fulfil the ancient promises and liberate them now as God had done so long ago. And James and John wanted front row seats to the power and honour.
While this may seem a little outrageous, their first loyalty was to their family. And as brothers they sought the best opportunities for each other and their family name. They didn’t understand anything that Jesus had been talking about when he talked of crucifixion. It simply made no sense to them. They needed to get this mission back on track, so they ask to be at Jesus’ left and right side, the places of power and honour. And they would join Jesus in ending poverty and getting rid of Rome’s crippling taxes, freeing slaves, and allowing all to thrive in the new Kingdom of God. Jesus as God’s anointed would bring in an era when the people of God would live in safety, and thrive in right relationship with God and each other.
Poor old James and John. They were so close, but the old ways of thinking blinded them to Jesus, to what God was up to in him.
2. Mark’s Story
Mark’s Gospel was written during or just after the horrors of the failed Jewish rebellion, with so many dead and enslaved, and Jerusalem and the temple were left in ruins. Mark knew that these old expectations were not what God was up to in Jesus. Either Jesus was a failed messiah, like so many others, or God was up to something else. The disciples, including Peter, and James and John, were so slow to get that and to understand. And they were and are not alone.
God was offering something entirely unexpected in Jesus. Yes, God was offering liberation. But not in the way they looked for.
Just like the exodus story, the liberation was more than liberation from slavery.
In the exodus the Hebrew people had been slaves under Egyptian masters who determined how they lived as slaves. The Egyptian gods shaped their understanding of the divine. Egyptian society shaped their understanding of how communities worked. Egyptian law shaped their understanding of justice.
In the exodus the Hebrew people spent 40 years in the wilderness as the God of Abraham liberated them into life with God in their midst. They were liberated from all these things and offered radically different ways of relating to the divine, shaping their society, and living in God’s justice.
But the old ways of empire they had learnt in Egypt slowly returned, until finally they pleaded for a king to rule over them and enslave them once again.
This was not what God desired for them or creation. The covenants were God’s promise to restore Israel to be the people God desired, so that through them all humanity was restored, and creation renewed so that all might thrive in right relationship with God, each other, and all of creation.
3. Jesus is like God and God is like Jesus
What was God up to in Jesus?
God was offering liberation from seeking liberation through the old ways of power, honour, wealth; the ways of empire.
More than that God was offering liberation from seeing God as other people saw their gods, as some kind of imperial potentate. As they had learnt in Egypt, God was too often seen as a more magnificent version of a Persian or Roman Emperor. All powerful, ruling justly, and crushing those who defied him.
Mark knew this liberation. He offered us his gospel so that we would see what James and John struggled to see. That Jesus is like God and God is like Jesus.
As he says to the disciples this week, Jesus lived and taught that he came to serve, not to be served. If Jesus is like God, then God is the servant. In Jesus God is teaching us about God being the servant.
Jesus taught and lived that his way was through the humiliation of the cross, where he would hang powerless. This was not to meet the demands of God, but was the price exacted by the powers of death for living God’s justice and peace. If Jesus is like God, then God is powerless, willing to pay the price so that we might live out God’s justice and peace.
Mark began his gospel by saying “Now is the time! Here comes God’s kingdom! Let that blow your mind and change your hearts and lives. And trust this good news!” He tells the story of the beginning of this good news. Despite the carnage in Israel, and despite the growing persecution, he knew God as the powerless servant offering justice and peace. Mark knew that God’s kingdom was and is coming now, blowing our minds.
But this liberation has proved hard to hang on to. James and John struggled with it. The church has struggled with it ever since. Too often God is pictured as a more magnificent version of the most powerful figures around. Because God is all powerful.
While we gently smile at James and John, too often we ask for exactly the same thing without even knowing it. And the result is Jesus gets turned into the one who comes to rescue us from the wrath of God, the divine potentate. He becomes a sacrificial lamb, dying in our place. We miss that the blood in exodus is not a sacrifice, but the means by which the people of God are rescued from death.
As a result being a Christian is too often described in terms of being a servant of this all powerful God, doing the will of this God, at risk of punishment when we go astray. We have been like James and John again and again and again. We have accepted slavery to old ways instead of embracing the liberation offered in Jesus.
4. The Questions
The question Mark keeps asking are
- what do you think God was up to in Jesus?
- what does this say about God?
- what does this mean for how we live in our own dark and troubled times?
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