Hitchin' Our Wagon

Mark 10:35-45
October 18, 2009

Last year, I was at a Presbyterian conference. I decided to attend because there was a group of people who were considering ways to be in community with one another even though geographically dispersed. It was appealing to me because of the principles this community was to be based on. The idea came from one person who had the vision and got the project going. She was at the conference to work with folks on how to make the vision a practical reality.

I have to tell you, I had an ambivalent experience that week. On the one hand, I was excited about how people were talking about what it means to be “Christian” in our time and context; things like living simply and making a commitment to social justice. On the other hand, there was a dynamic going on that week that just didn’t sit well in my gut. The leader of this effort is a charismatic personality – in part because she has taken huge steps already to enact these principles in her own life. Her very life convinces people that it is possible, and that’s appealing. In addition, she is “famous” – within Presbyterian circles, mind you, but these were Presbyterians who were gathered.

What happened would have been ridiculous if it hadn’t been so disturbing. At every meal and in casual conversations, people dropped her name as if it were currency in the competition to be most Christian. There were mentions of shared trips and conversations. People were sure to point out when they worked with her in various organizations. The goal was to prove to everyone else that you were on the inside. That you were important because you were the right hand gal or guy of this important person. It all gave me a little tinge in my gut that told me something was amiss.

I think this is as close as we can come to a modern day version of our passage this morning. James and John admire Jesus and know others admire him as well. They want to be associated with him and want the glory given to Jesus conferred on them because of that association. They wanted to hitch their wagon to Jesus and ride along to the top – to the place of glory and power guaranteed in this Messiah who had come to pull them out of the depths and place them on the top of the world.

We can learn a lot from this passage by looking at the similarities between the disciples and our modern day attempts to hitch our wagon to people we think are on the road to glory. And the similarities feel all too obvious. Most of us would be pretty bold to make too harsh a judgment about James and John given our innate understanding of their impulse. We want to be seen as good – a good Christian, a good person, a good citizen. And so when we have the chance to stand between the gaze of others and someone who is seen as “good”, it’s hard not to step into the line of sight. It’s hard not to steal some of that gaze for ourselves.

Everyone likes to be liked and seen as good. None of us likes to be rejected or ignored. Humans can’t be blamed for being human. We have a natural, albeit uncomfortable, sympathy with James and John. And so we stand beside them as Jesus tells us all that we don’t understand what it means to hitch our wagon to his. James and John want to be on Jesus’ right and left when he gets his glory. But Jesus tells them that when all is said and done, it won’t be two regal attendants sitting beside him on a throne; rather there will be two criminals hanging on his right and left when he dies on the cross.

Do we really want that? Given our sympathies for the disciples, we too are left wondering whether the Jesus of the cross is really who we want to be associated with – whether this is the Jesus we want to follow, or would we rather follow the Jesus that looks more like a Messiah – a king – a nice fellow who walks around and loves people? It is our similarity with the disciples that brings us face to face with this dangerous Jesus and the question of whether this is the kind of savior we want.

As much as we learn through our similarity with James and John’s desire to be side by side with the charismatic, famous Jesus, I think we have a lot to learn by looking at our differences with them as well.

First, and most importantly, when we choose to sidle up to someone who we think will confer status on us in our day and age, it is not, to state the obvious, Jesus. The disciples were undoubtedly caught up in the status game. But at least they chose Jesus. Their impulse was right, even if their motives were a bit off target.

Too often, we are hitching our wagons to anything but Jesus. We find people and paths that seem to lead somewhere more promising. Instead of throwing our lot in with the downwardly mobile, we find people and organizations that will make us look better, feel better and sound better. When the disciples chose Jesus, at least for the time being they weren’t being led away from God’s will. When we choose to admire and follow someone no matter how genuinely good they are, we will in the end be led astray. People are changed by such admiration and worship. Leaders tend to enjoy the attention and eventually believe all the praise, and then they sell out, too often taking their followers right along with them. Following Jesus might take us where we don’t want to go, but it won’t lead us astray.

Another way our situation differs from the disciples is that it is much harder for us to hitch our wagon to Jesus than it was for James and John and all the rest – for two reasons: We know the end, and we have farther to fall. The disciples get to rely on their initial impulse to follow Jesus without knowing he died on the cross. Actually, Jesus does keep telling them this; but they have the luxury of denial because it hasn’t actually happened yet. We don’t have that luxury. We have to choose Jesus knowing he will walk us straight up to the cross.

In this way, we are less like the disciples and more like the original audience of Mark’s gospel. They were basking in the glory of the resurrection, but Mark reminds them that following Jesus leads to the cross. Three times Mark reminds them of this – with Jesus predicting his death three times in one short chapter.

Mark tells us all – the early Christians and those of us following today – that even when it’s hard we are to stay with Jesus. And things were hard for the early Christians. They were living in the shadow of the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem. Rome was winning – in a big way. I’m sure the temptation to hitch their wagon to the Roman Empire was strong. Identifying with Jesus, the one Rome put to death, would invite persecution from both Rome and the Jewish elite.

When we are suffering, when we are feeling bad about ourselves or lonely or rejected, of course we would want to choose the path that brings immediate relief. Sometimes that path includes fighting back with a vengeance, choosing violence to achieve the short term goal of “winning”. Sometimes it means finding our identity based on other people’s values because we see that society praises those values far more than Christian ones. Sometimes we choose being American over being Christian, because Americans seek victory over enemies, foreign and domestic, and Jesus seems to seek failure by refusing to fight back even at the expense of his life.

It’s harder for us. It was harder for the early Christians. Whether we want to admit it or not, hitchin’ our wagon to Jesus will put us on the losing team by the world’s standards.

The other reason it’s harder for us to hitch our wagon to Jesus than it was for the disciples is that we have farther to fall. We know Jesus is headed down – down to a life of slavery and service to others. But that sounds different to us than it would have to the disciples or even the earliest Christians to whom Mark was writing. When Jesus tells them they must be last, the truth is they pretty much already are. These disciples are not middle class or part of a democracy, nor are they able to determine their own financial futures or social status. True they are not slaves or servants, and Jesus is calling them down even a notch farther. But basically what Jesus is asking them to give up on is a dream, not to turn away from a reality they already know.

Not so easy for us. We have already been pulled pretty far by the wagon of heroes and power. We’re born hitched to the fates and fortunes of our family, which for most of us already confers a fair amount of privilege, especially when our status is compared to the rest of the world. Even more, we are hitched to the United States, where the opportunity to increase our status is so much greater than for people born into families beset by poverty in other parts of the world.

Our choice is whether to give this up or not…and I really do think that’s harder than what the disciples had to choose.

But, even though it’s hard, even though we know where its ends and what we will have to sacrifice, we are supposed to hitch our wagon to Jesus. That’s what Mark seems to be telling us. But, the surprising twist at the end is that Jesus rejects the admiration and worship too. He tells us to hitch our wagon not to him but to those at the bottom of society. We are to throw our lot in with the slaves and the servants and see where that takes us.

We all remember when Representative Joe Wilson shouted “liar” at the President during a speech on health care to a joint session of congress. His accusation came when the President claimed illegal immigrants would not be covered by any national health insurance. This outburst set off a debate between the two sides where each was trying to be more “against” offering health coverage to illegal immigrants than the other. The response from the administration to this accusation was “no, really, truly, we aren’t going to help the illegal immigrants.” And the accusations kept flying from their political opponents, “admit it, you are secretly planning to help these terrible people.”

When all this was going on, a member of our congregation offered this insight: “In all the discussion… nobody has stopped to wonder just who does pay for health care for the undocumented workers. Somebody has to, they live here, they are poor and they get sick. Maybe we should think about covering them for their sake and ours.”

I think this is what Jesus was talking about – I think this is what Jesus was living. He hitched his own wagon to people like illegal immigrants, slaves and lepers, and he was inviting the disciples to do the same. When you do this, you hear these debates differently. When Joe Wilson yells, “liar,” you think, “I hope so. I hope someone is secretly planning to ensure coverage for the undocumented workers.” This is not the easy path. This is certainly not the path to glory. “Both” sides will look at you with disdain. In the race to create distance between true Americans and those here without our permission, you will lose. But that’s where Jesus will take us, if we hitch our lives to his.

Of course, the whole reality of the cross tells us that doing this is hard – to understate it. And that begs the question: Why? Why would we want to hitch our wagon to Jesus? If we do, our lives will be changed, we will be asked to sacrifice, and we will meet honest to goodness opposition. We might find it hard to be a part of a political party or social group. Our answers will be different to questions of the day, and our lives will look odd. And in the end, we will be just another common criminal hanging on the cross next to Jesus.

Jesus doesn’t give a nice, neat, easy answer to this question. Neither does the gospel of Mark. This is the gospel that lacks all mention of resurrection or feel-good appearances of Jesus to the disciples after an empty tomb. But, what the early Christians knew was that the ways of power and glory, of status and winning, or political success and nationalism were as far from how the kingdom of God should look as you could possibly get. Jesus wasn’t there to win short-term battles and fix short-term political and national problems. Jesus was there to offer a way that would lead to an entirely different world.

There is no immediate motivation in this story. And Jesus doesn’t promise it will be easy. But here’s what he does promise. Listen to what he says, “The cup that I drink, you will drink; and the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized.” At first it may not sound like much, especially if we are ambivalent about whether we want to drink from that cup. But given all the disciples’ misunderstandings and failures, Jesus still says, “you are able to follow me. I know you are, and you will.” Jesus has incredible faith in the disciples – God has incredible faith in us, even though we fail to understand too.

Even if we don’t want to admit yet where it’s going, maybe we can join the disciples in their imperfect desire to hitch their wagon to Jesus. I believe God works even through imperfect decisions. We might not be ready for the implications, but I think we should keep vying to be next to Jesus – at least that will keep us from vying to be next to heroes that will lead us foolishly astray. At least that will start us down the road, even if we don’t yet accept the destination. It’s a place to start, and a way to continue on the journey of faith. We do know where it’s headed, and there is a lot to lose by the world’s standards. But, this is the one we have chosen to follow. And Jesus will not lead us astray – Jesus will not ultimately let us worship him and sing his praises. Ultimately, Jesus will point us in the direction of the cross…and the line from here to there runs through the lives of people who need the good news, who need our love and service, who need a God that doesn’t seek the privileged and powerful. That’s where our leader is taking us. Are we able to follow? Yes, we are able, if we hitch our wagon to the right horse. Amen.

Married to the World

Hebrews 1:1 – 4, 2:5 – 12; Mark 10:2 – 16
October 4, 2009: World Communion Sunday


As I was preparing the sermon this week, I realized there was a chance that when Dennis read the passage in Mark, an elephant would walk into the sanctuary. Given this, I decided I had three choices when writing my sermon. First, I could ignore this passage from Mark – completely ignore it by not having Dennis read it at all. Every week I choose which passages we read from the lectionary, and every week I leave one or two out, for all sorts of reasons. And leaving Mark out was tempting because most of you wouldn’t know what the passage said, and so the elephant would stay safely in the zoo. But not dealing with it at all – just because it might be awkward – didn’t appeal to me because I think it’s a passage rich with meaning and possible application for us.

The second option was to preach about divorce, which would demand that I give the elephant a name: perhaps a name like, “I was divorced six years ago”. If I did this, I would prove to you that I am not avoiding a subject just because it would be uncomfortable for me. But this didn’t work either. To preach a sermon about divorce this morning would force me to find things in the text that aren’t there. Preaching about divorce just to prove I am not avoiding something seemed disingenuous.

Finally, I could preach about what I think this passage is actually about – which is not divorce – leaving the elephant present but unacknowledged. And as you have probably guessed, I chose the last option. I chose to preach on what I think it is really about. I know that leaves me open to the criticism that I’m avoiding the subject of divorce so I don’t have to talk about the elephant, but it still seemed like the best choice. You’re welcome to tell me otherwise after the sermon .

The truth is, no passage from the bible that explicitly mentions divorce has much of anything at all to say about divorce in our day and age. When Jesus talks about divorce, I am fairly confident he is not envisioning me and my ex-husband walking into the court house and filing our divorce decree. Families then share very little in common with families now. They would likely be unrecognizable to most of us. Societal expectations in the bible about marriage and kids are a far, far cry from what our society expects. And so the concept of divorce in 1st century Palestine bears little to no resemblance to our concept today.

I would be happy to have the divorce conversation or preach on it at some time in the future. This is simply not the right passage to ground that discussion. In fact, to take this passage and apply it literally to our understanding of divorce today would land us in a moralistic, judgmental place – which, interestingly, is exactly what Jesus was calling the Pharisees on.

Jesus is asked a legal question. And he deflects, “Let the law answer that question,” he says. Then Jesus goes on to talk about how we should be in relationship to each other and he chooses marriage as the example because it was where the Pharisees started. His point is that the quality of relationships cannot be measured by the law, they can only be governed by it. Relationships, all relationships, should be evaluated against the nature of God’s creation and God’s purpose for all of us.

Narrowing the application of this passage to divorce as we understand it today allows us to ignore all of the relationships we might be in that do resemble the dynamics of marriage in 1st century Palestine. In that day women and children were essentially property. The men had the money and the power, leaving women and children completely vulnerable apart from men. The power imbalance was massive and it was normal and accepted. No one stopped to ask what that power imbalance meant for women or children, or how it felt, or why it mattered.

So, what relationships in our world today do reflect the marriage dynamic in Jesus’ day? Any relationship where we treat someone as less than equal – any relationship where we have power over others and fail to recognize what the exercise of that power is doing to people. And we are all in those relationships, married, divorced or none of the above. All of us sitting here are in those relationships by just by virtue of living in a privileged country, just as all men were in imbalanced, power-driven marriages in Jesus’ day just by virtue of being men.

The global equation between the rich and the poor, the “haves” and the “have nots” is seldom questioned. It is accepted as “what is”, and those of us on the winning side of that equation rarely, if ever, stop to think about how it would feel to be born into poverty, or how it would feel to have our daily lives depend on whether the U.S. did or did not send in troops; did or did not ease sanctions; did or did not curb emissions.

In our passage, we are the ones who have the power to affect someone merely because we are born into a particular circumstance – Jesus was talking about men’s relationships to women, today it is Americans’ relationships to the rest of the world. And when we are in such a role, Jesus tells us the law isn’t going to work as the guide for how we should relate to the rest of the world. The law is full of all the same unexamined assumptions about what is “normal”. The law codifies the power imbalance.

Instead, in his answer to the Pharisees, Jesus tells them that in human relationships that seek to reflect the love of God, the powerful one should leave everything he knows and be united with the one he has power over. Become one with your wife. Become like a lowly, powerless child. When he does that, he will feel what the other feels and know what the other knows. Our contemporary word for that is “solidarity.” You leave what you know, set aside your power for a moment, and become one with someone who is “other”, whose life is so foreign to you, you can’t imagine what they might be feeling or what they know or how they do things.

Become one with your wife, Jesus says. Then you will know how your actions will affect her, you will feel it, and so you will choose rightly without needing the law to tell you what to do. And this was almost as unthinkable to men at that time as it is for us to think about leaving everything we know, giving up all of our privilege that we are born into, and becoming one with people half way around the world.

In all its convoluted language, this is what I think Hebrews is about: solidarity. Only here it is God choosing solidarity with us. The author says that first God created us, humankind, and then God’s intention was that we would live in harmony with each other and creation. But humans have never fully achieved that harmony. So God tried sending the prophets to tell us how to live and treat each other and be in relationship with each other. That didn’t work so well – so then God became human like us, and showed us how to live and treat each other and be in relationship with each other. The key to the whole thing is that God became like us. In Jesus, God felt what it was like to live in this less-than-harmonious world, to have little power, to suffer and to die. Because of this God can walk with us as we seek that harmony.

This is World Communion Sunday. Taking communion today, while thinking about people taking communion all over the world, is one kind of solidarity, even if largely symbolic. It is one way we realize that we are connected to people because they are creations of God just as we are. It is a momentary act of union. It is also an occasion to think about the harder truths we face on this World Communion Sunday.

Most of us, certainly me included, have very little understanding of the lives of most of the people with whom we share this meal today. At the same time, when we’re honest with ourselves we know that we have a great deal of power to affect their lives. Because we live in a first world country, our actions and choices often affect the lives of people in developing countries – either positively or negatively. We might not like it, but we can’t avoid it. This is where we live, and the global dynamics are what they are.

All of us need to examine our individual part in these relationships and ask ourselves how to find solidarity with the people whose lives we affect. But I thought today we might look to our church denomination as an example of being in relationships of solidarity. In other words, let’s look at how the mission program of the PCUSA addresses issues of need, power and solidarity in all the communities we serve. The good news is by and large our missionaries are people who have decided to leave everything they know, to set aside the power and privilege into which they were born, and to go to be one with people half way around the world, so that they can walk with people as together they seek the harmony God intends.

Most of us can conjure up some pretty nasty images when we hear the word mission or missionary. There have been times in our history when mission work was synonymous with going to a foreign country and converting people from their indigenous religions and cultures to “our” religion and “our” culture and “our” values. There have been people in our denomination working as missionaries whose only concern was for the spiritual state of someone’s soul without a second thought as to their material or physical needs – as if those could be separated.

But we’re a long ways from that. We have learned to see more clearly the power dynamics – we are moving from having a relationship with the world that looked like biblical marriages to relationships that look like the one Jesus envisioned where we set aside our power, leave what we know, and become one with those we seek to love and help.

At a recent gathering in Dallas, our denominational leaders constructed a document called, “An Invitation to Expanding Partnership in God’s Mission.” This paper lays out some of the new ways we understand Mission work in the Christian church. It says, “[We strive] in our mission to be aware of the context out of which we come, to respect the persons with whom we labor and to honor the context in which they live. In an era of massive global inequalities we commit ourselves to be sensitive to and address the issues of power that result from our differences. We seek to live out these mission values with humility, integrity and steadfastness.”

This shift can certainly be seen in the mission work of our own Des Moines Presbytery. Our church knows a little bit about the Presbytery’s work in El Salvador, as we have contributed to that mission many times. Our mission worker, Kathy Mahler, lives down there and knows the people as brothers and sisters. She trusts that they know best their needs; and works with them to match those needs with our resources. Our churches here partner with small communities in Berlin to work together on local projects.

This mission has been extremely successful, and I think that is due to the initial tone that was set by Bob Cook, who was our first mission worker there. He left behind everything to go live there. He loved people, learned from people, and grew daily in his understanding of the lives around him. It was from this place that he could come back to us and know what to ask for. We have church delegations go down all the time, not just to “do” things, but to be with our friends down there in solidarity. Spending a little time just seeing what their lives are like – the great stuff and the terrible stuff. It is a mission based on solidarity. We don’t impose our beliefs or worldview on them, because our beliefs and worldview are extremely limited. In order to “help”, we have to feel life from their perspective and step into their worldview, which is just as valid for them as ours is for us.

Solidarity is what God is all about. In Jesus, God chose to become us…completely, without power over us. God plunged into our lives and walked with us so we can be assured that God partners with us in working out God’s purposes here on earth. Because God became one of us, God could no more exercise power and control over us than we can over a friend we make in Berlin, El Salvador.

That is our model – God choosing to become one of us. And the next step is ours – choosing to unite with people we don’t know or understand and people we have power over and affect without even thinking twice about it. When we take this step, we will be compelled to walk with them as they work to bring God’s love to this broken world, helping out whenever we can. And this kind of solidarity – this way of being in the world – works in all directions. Power fades away and someone we think we are helping is learning about us, readying themselves to offer themselves when we need it and don’t have the resources.

We’re married to the world and we need to decide what we want that marriage to look like. When we come to this table for communion, do we come as the husband who accepts their power over their wife as a given, or as a partner? Do we come in power or in peace? Do we come as solitary individuals or in solidarity with people all over the world? Communion is what God does with us. God communes with us in Jesus. Now we are called to commune with the world. Amen.