Questioning Jesus
September 22-23, 2012
Back in 1995, Joan Osborne sang a
song that was later named to VH1’s list of Greatest
One-Hit Wonders of the 90’s: “One of Us.” It was later used as the theme
song for the TV show Joan of Arcadia. Throughout
the song, the singer asks a number of questions, one of which is, “If you were
faced with him in all his glory, what would you ask if you had just one
question?”
Over the summer, we had the
opportunity to tackle a bunch of those kinds of questions. Big, basic,
foundational questions of the faith. Questions that many times we don’t know
the answer to, but somehow we feel that we should, and are ashamed to ask.
And it’s not just faith questions
that do this to us, isn’t it? We don’t like to ask questions, because to ask a
question means that there’s something we don’t know, and for some reason, we
live under the impression that we’re supposed to know it all and have it all
together. I can’t count the number of times when someone has come up to me and
started talking about something where I had NO idea what they were talking
about. Sometimes they may have assumed that I had prior information, sometimes
they may have just been talking and assuming that I was following where they
were going, but for me, it quickly became abundantly clear that I was very much
in the dark.
Do you think I stopped them and
said something like “I’m sorry, what do you mean?” or “I’m just not following”
or something along those lines? No. Maybe I didn’t want to look stupid, maybe I
didn’t want to look like I didn’t have it all together or didn’t have the
answers. I just nodded and smiled and listened, and after the conversation was
done racked my brain or kicked myself for not knowing and then on top of it,
kicked myself for staying quiet and worried and wondered if they know that I
hadn’t been following them.
I hope I’m not the only one who’s
done something like that.
Jesus’ disciples were in the same
boat in today’s reading. Actually, the full story begins even before our
reading. Turn in your Bibles to Mark 9:14. Verses 14-29 tell a story of
something that happened right before today’s reading. There’s a boy with an
unclean spirit that’s causing convulsions, and the disciples have been unable
to do anything about it—in fact, as Jesus approaches, they’re in the middle of
an argument with the scribes who had gathered. Jesus chastises them all, even
the disciples, in verse 19, saying, “You faithless generation, how much longer
must I be among you? How much longer must I put up with you? Bring him to me.”
You can almost hear the frustrated sigh in his voice, as even after the time
that his disciples have spent with him, there’s still so much that they don’t
understand. They don’t understand who he is, they don’t understand who they
are, and they don’t understand who they are called to be. After he casts out
the spirit, the disciples ask him in private in v. 29 why they couldn’t have
done it, and his answer basically is that they didn’t pray.
So we have that embarrassing setup
before we get to today’s reading. The disciples have been embarrassed by not
being able to do something they thought they should have been able to do, and
they were almost certainly embarrassed by Jesus’ disappointment. So in verse
30, they pass quietly through Galilee and Jesus takes that time not to stop and
heal people or feed people or do any of these amazing miracles that he had been
doing, but as they travel he teaches them. It’s as though he’s realizing that
his disciples weren’t getting it, that he needed to go back to the beginning,
to the foundational stuff.
And so we get to verse 31, where he
tells his disciples quite explicitly what’s going to happen to him. He says
that he will be betrayed into human hands, and that he would be killed, and that
on the third day he would rise. But look then at verse 32, keeping in mind what
had just happened in the previous story. “But
they did not understand what he was saying and were afraid to ask him.”
In Mark’s account of the gospel,
the disciples remain clueless pretty much all the way through. They are
constantly getting things wrong or not understanding what Jesus is saying or
doing. Even at the end of Mark, after the resurrection, the angel tells the
disciples that Jesus has risen and would meet them in Galilee and that they
were to go there, and what do they do? They stay in Jerusalem, and tell no one.
So for the disciples to not understand Jesus in this instance isn’t a surprise,
but now, they were afraid to ask him. They were embarrassed, they were afraid…instead
of wanting to gain further insight into the truth of the strange things Jesus
was saying, they nodded and pretended to understand, just like we do so much of
the time.
And what was the result? Arguments.
Infighting. Division. When they arrived in Capernaum, Jesus asked them what
they had been arguing about on the way, and like a group of kids being
confronted by a parent, nobody wanted to tell him, because they had been
arguing over who was the greatest, and they knew that he wouldn’t have liked
that argument. Their focus was completely the wrong one, and they knew it.
Because in their non-understanding
of Jesus they had cut off communication, their focus was not on who Jesus was
or what Jesus was about, but on themselves. Alyce McKenzie points out four
possible causes of the disciples’ argument:
- fear that they have fallen in Jesus'estimation (9:19)
- insecurity at their failure to heal the boy (9:29)
- resentment toward one another as Jesus chastises
them
- eagerness to compete to regain his approval[1]
The first letter of each of those
reasons spells out F-I-R-E. Last week, we heard from James’ letter that the
tongue is a fire, and indeed these arguments over our own power, over our own
prestige, when we’re trying to save face and establish or re-establish our
credentials, generate heat. And then we hear this week from James 4:1-3:
4:1 Those
conflicts and disputes among you, where do they come from? Do they not come
from your cravings that are at war within you? 2 You want something
and do not have it; so you commit murder. And you covet something and cannot
obtain it; so you engage in disputes and conflicts. You do not have, because
you do not ask. 3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask
wrongly, in order to spend what you get on your pleasures.
When we hear this passage from
James, it’s easy for our minds to go immediately to our stuff. Asking for
things, and receiving things. Possessions. But this passage also provides a
commentary on our gospel passage and what’s going on with the disciples. It
wasn’t just a piece of information that they didn’t understand that they needed
clarification on. They didn’t get Jesus.
They really, truly did not understand who
he was, or what he was about.
Their focus was on their own reputation. It turned inward, and when we curve
inward like that, when it becomes about us and our standing and our place, then
we too don’t get Jesus. We don’t
understand who he is or what he’s about, or what we’re about as his followers.
What’s Jesus response to the
disciples? He tells, and then he shows. To explain who he is, to explain what
he’s about, to help them understand that his power is found in weakness, that
life in him is found in death and resurrection, to help them understand their
own calling, he takes their argument and turns it on its head. “Whoever wants
to be first must be last of all and servant of all.” Your greatness, your
glory, your place in the Kingdom of God, is found in lowliness, humility, and
your willingness to be a servant. Not just a servant of those who deserve it,
not just a servant of those you like or those you agree with or those whose
lifestyles or choices agree with yours, but a servant of all. A servant of your
enemy. A servant of the outcast. You are to go even so far as to welcome
children.
Of course we’re supposed to welcome
children, right?
We look at this and our inclination
is to think, “aw, how cute. Jesus hugs a kid and tells the disciples that they
need to love kids too.” But these were revolutionary words. Children, in Jewish
culture, weren’t yet fully human. They had no rights, they had no status, no
standing, not even a fully formed humanity. Your calling, he tells the
disciples and us today, is to love and serve and welcome even those who do not
have the same rights as you do, who do not have standing in society, who your
culture tells you that you ought not to love and serve and welcome. Welcome
them into your homes, into your lives, into your church, welcome them to the
baptismal font and to the communion table.
Do we dare take the risk? When we
are radically welcoming, we risk losing our status in society. When the
outsider is welcomed, we risk becoming the outsider ourselves. We risk losing
what we had, we risk losing who we used to be.
But that’s the cross. That’s Jesus’
example. That’s what the disciples didn’t get. That’s what we so often don’t
get. That’s letting go of our need to be right, our embarrassment of not having
it all together, this house of cards that we build for ourselves that we’re so
deathly afraid someone’s going to find us out, that’s letting go of all of
that, and clinging instead to Jesus’ promises of forgiveness and new life.
New life for all of us.
Matt Schur
Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church
Lincoln, NE
