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September 20, 2009—Proper 20

Lectionary Texts: Proverbs 31:10-31 or Song of Songs 1:16-2:1, 12-22; Psalm 1 or Jeremiah 11:18-20, and Psalm 54; James 3:13-4:3, 7-8a; Mark 9:30-37

Sermon Text: Mark 9:30-37

LLJD (Live Like Jesus Did)

During the Easter season, we often focus on the Via Dolorosa: the route tradition says Jesus followed from His condemnation by the Romans to the place where He was crucified. Is it possible that sometimes we forget that Jesus' entire life on earth was really one long, continuous road to the Cross? And is it possible that sometimes we forget that to follow Jesus means to follow Him on one long, continuous road to the same Cross?

In his book, The Spirit of the Disciplines, Dallas Willard challenges the popular WWJD slogan. WWJD (What would Jesus do?) intends to remind us to stop and reflect on how Jesus might respond if He found himself in a situation similar to one we might be facing. What would Jesus do if His neighbor kept throwing trash in His yard? What would Jesus do if faced with the decision to pay for cable television or sponsor a starving child? What would Jesus do if the song leader never sang hymns? The hope is that as we reflect on what Jesus would do, we will “go and do likewise.” Of course we fail more often than not.

Willard explains it's not that the slogan itself is inherently wrong , but simply that it fails to take into account the entirety of Jesus' life. If we desire to act like Jesus in the heat of the moment, in the crush of the decision, we must do so from a wellspring of acting like Him in the hidden moments of life. He spent much time alone in prayer; we must also. He meditated on the Scriptures; we must also. He purged from His life anything that might detract from His mission; we must also. Jesus didn't just one day wake up and decide to take the Via Dolorosa; His entire life was preparation for the journey.

On the Road to Capernaum

Throughout the Gospels, we catch glimpses here and there of Jesus' way of life: His times of solitude, His days of fasting, His constant attempts to remind others (and himself?) of the calling and purpose of the Kingdom of God. The account recorded in Mark 9:33-37 offers us one of those vignettes.

Shortly after the Transfiguration, Jesus begins the journey toward Jerusalem which will culminate with His crucifixion. As they walked, Jesus drew His disciples to himself and away from the crowds for some of His final teachings to them: “The Son of Man is going to be betrayed into the hands of men. They will kill him, and after three days He will rise” (Mark 9:31). Unable to understand this, the disciples turned their conversation to other things, like who was the greatest among themselves.

Perhaps the discussion arose because of Peter, James, and John's special election to witness the Transfiguration. Forbidden by Jesus to tell what happened, they may have said something to the others like, “We'd like to tell you, but you're not ready to handle it yet.” Or it may have been simply that Jesus embodied the disciples' hopes and dreams of an overthrowing king of Israel, one who would reestablish the Davidic monarchy and make the Jewish nation a great world power, and they believed they were in line for a piece of it. Mark doesn't tell us, but whatever precipitated their dialogue, it was not lost on Jesus, and He wouldn't have any of it. “So you want first place? Take the last place. Be the servant of all,” Jesus told them (9:35, The Message).

Where's the Front of the Line?

None of us likes being last, if we're honest.

Last means becoming losers. It means joining the loners. It means giving up our pretensions to greatness. Being last involves not needing to be right in discussions and arguments. It calls for giving away money and possessions and living like and identifying with the “least of these.” It means owning up to our vices and our dishonesty. Last requires that whining ceases, that self-pity dies, that rationalization and excuses are crucified.
Jesus says we must become last. None of us likes much of what Jesus says, if we're dead honest.

Listening to Jesus means giving up our way of thinking. It means acknowledging we're blind and stiff-necked. When we listen to Jesus we hang out with people we wouldn't be caught dead with. We don't shrink from suffering and injustice. We go to dark places. We stop obsessing over trivia. We get over ourselves. We die with Jesus--to everything.

The disciples shared a relationship with Jesus that few ever have--they literally walked with Him. They heard His stories the first time they escaped His lips and listened as He unpacked their meaning for them. They witnessed miraculous healing power flowing from His hands. They listened and wondered as He often prayed to His “Abba” a short distance away. They watched as He was transfigured on the mountaintop. And yet they still didn't get it. If they didn't get it, how can we?

I've often boggled at Jesus' words, “Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30). Really? Really? What is easy about being last? What is easy about mourning? What's easy about turning one's cheek? Most of us have quite the opposite experience. G.K. Chesterton once mused, “Christianity has not been tried and found wanting, it has been found difficult and left untried.” Perhaps the key to unlocking our difficulty comes from the fact that we look at everything from the same skewed perspective: we see as through a mirror dimly.

Two particular perspectives come to mind. First, the promises of the Christian life--hope, fulfillment, peace, joy--become to us occasions for our getting what we want and getting our own way. When the disciples thought about Jesus as Messiah, they dreamed about power and prestige. When we think about fulfillment, we think about avoidance of pain and accruing wealth. On the other hand, another skewed perspective involves a very limited or piecemeal understanding of what it means to follow Christ. So many of us are told and believe that once we follow Christ everything will be easier. Life becomes a mild head cold rather than a full-blow case of influenza. The result of this thinking leads to disillusionment, the “found difficult and left untried” element, for when life deals us a particularly savage blow, despite being in Christ, we decide something must be wrong.

It hasn't been until recently that I think I've begun to apprehend the loving promise behind “take my yoke upon you.” Jesus came that we might have life and have it to the full. He didn't come to add more laws, more weights, more tasks to our already heavy load. He came to lift them. However, when we divorce His promises from His teaching, we find that both become a burden. If all of us who are weary and burdened in this life attempt to have a relationship with Him without taking His yoke, or teaching, upon us we'll find our burdens all the heavier. And those of us who attempt to follow His teachings without the relationship stumble beneath them. Just like iron and carbon are not steel unless they're melded together, Jesus' yoke and burden must be kept together.

My Burden Is Light

What is the light burden of Jesus' words to the disciples, “If anyone wants to be first, he must be the very last”? It is the giving up the futile chase after those things which can never be ours. Riches? rusting. Fame? fading. Power and position? passing. The Via Dolorosa was the only path Jesus knew that led to resurrection and glorification--not in this world, but the next. The sooner we realize this the more hope there is for us.
In 1997, after the deaths of Princess Diana and Mother Teresa, Kate Legge in the Australian newspaper offered this comparison between the two:

One was young and beautiful and did good works. The other was old and ugly and did good works. One had a First World eating disorder called bulimia. The other lived in the Third World where people starve to death. One wore designer clothes and recently sold her dresses for $7.8 million. The other left behind two saris and a bucket. One made headlines with simple gestures such as touching a person with AIDS. The other lived her life among lepers and the diseased. In one sense there is no comparison between the two women and yet the expiry of the elder missionary, as a postscript to the dislocation over Diana's death, seems to taunt our godless worship of glamour and style.

For now, the first are first, and the last are last. We're called to a different way--the way of the Cross. By taking up the cause and position of the last and the least today, we prepare ourselves for the future in God's kingdom where the greatness is measured by service and honor by humility. It just may be, that as we follow Jesus to the back of the line, we'll discover how easy His yoke and how light His burden really is.