Strange Games — Saturday Sermons from the Sidelines

Mark 9:38-50; September 26, 2021

In the 1983 film, War Games, Matthew Broderick plays a young computer hacker named David Lightman. Lightman works his way into the computer system controlling the United States nuclear arsenal. He accidentally launches a game which will lead to an all-out nuclear exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union unless the game is stopped.

Of course, no one can stop the game. The film moves toward the inevitable, catastrophic result. In the final moments, Lightman lands on a radical solution. He and the system designer, Dr. Stephen Falken, get the computer (aptly named WOPR), to play tic-tac-toe against itself.

The computer plays more and more games at an accelerating rate. The result is hundreds of “draws.” WOPR then applies this experience to the game of Thermonuclear Warfare. Scenarios flicker across the display in dizzying succession. “What’s it doing?” a character asks. “It’s learning,” Lightman replies.

Over and over, the result of the game is “Winner: None.” Suddenly, the screen is dark, and the room is quiet. “Strange game,” WOPR notes. “The only winning move is not to play.” The crisis is past, and control is returned to the humans. “Dr. Falken,” WOPR asks, “would you like to play a nice game of chess?”

We pick up where we left off last week. The disciples are playing the “greater than” game. Jesus tells them that the only way to win that game is not to play it. The disciples aren’t convinced. John immediately launches into a report on how some of the disciples dealt with a “competitor,” an unknown exorcist who is getting results by invoking Jesus’ name. The disciples tried to stop that first-century copyright infringement, but Jesus tells them they are still getting it wrong.

Strange game. The only way to win is not to play.

It’s clear that the disciples are just not getting it. They argue about who is greater, and Jesus gives them a living illustration of real greatness in the Kin(g)dom. It’s even clearer that they still don’t get it. John reports that the unnamed exorcist is practicing his craft outside of normal channels. Jesus decides it’s time to bring out the heavy rhetorical artillery in order to break through their willful obtuseness.

Jesus continues to sit in the midst of the disciples with a small child cradled tenderly in his arms. He deflects John’s administrative detour and returns to the matter which is literally “at hand.” He points the disciples back to the child as his continuing case study. Eager outsiders must not be rejected, especially when they’re just trying to help by giving the disciples a cup of water to drink in their labors.

Jesus warns his disciples against creating any “faith trip hazards” for the little ones who put their faith in him. Was their constant bickering and their jockeying for position one of the reasons why some community members dropped out of the group along the way? If so, that was a big problem. It would be better to be executed at sea than to be responsible for such a falling away. If only some church leaders in conflicted congregations took this admonition seriously, some church fights might turn out better.

It would seem that a similar dynamic was at work in the Markan community. Imagine, if you will, the gospel account being performed in the presence of such a conflicted community. People on the various sides and in the several factions would sit or stand with one another. Perhaps they glared across the room at one another during worship. They might have refused to meet at the same communion table together. I’ve seen all that and more in contemporary conflicted congregations.

In the midst of that tense situation, the performer of Mark’s script comes to this place. It’s no accident that the text is filled with “you’s.” Just put yourself in the place of those conflictors in the Markan community. Then hear the “you’s” and how they would sound to you. The impact must have been like a spiritual sledgehammer for at least some of the folks. I wonder if some of them heard anything else from the performer that evening.

I find it important to remember that this gospel account is not offered simply to inform. It is presented in order to persuade people to come to put their faith in Jesus and/or to deepen that faith. It is intended to lead people to change their perspective, their worldview, and their behavior. It is a radical, life-changing script that would shake people up. I wonder if sometimes during the presentation, the performer had to stop for a while to allow some of the folks in the crowd do some work of repair and reconciliation before the story continued.

Instead of acting like a bunch of beggars who get to show the other beggars where the bread is, the disciples in Mark’s composition continue to act as if they own the bakery. That unfortunate trend will continue at least through the end of chapter 10. The Twelve had been invited into Jesus’ campaign about five minutes earlier (at least in a cosmic sense), but now they had become the membership screening committee. Rather than inviting all comers in for the party, they were giving the newcomers the boot.

Jesus is teaching the disciples about the suffering, death, and Resurrection which lie ahead for him (and perhaps for them). The disciples are establishing the organizational church in the new Messianic administration, thumb-wrestling over who will occupy which rungs on the ladder of position and power.

In the midst of that argument, they see someone who isn’t even part of the home team. He doesn’t deserve the power he has, in their view, to cast out demons in the name of (by the authority of) Jesus. So, they try to stop him – even though he is accomplishing what they, a few verses earlier, could not. The unnamed exorcist is destabilizing their budding Messianic meritocracy.

The myth of the meritocracy covers up the fact that, as we all know, some of us win the zip code lottery by the accident of birth, and some of us lose that lottery by the same accident. Some of us begin the race of life five yards from the finish line, while others begin that same race a hundred yards away. In such a race, speed has little to do with the outcome. It’s all about where we begin.

Of course, we all know this intuitively. If we, as a culture, acknowledged this openly, we would have to retool everything we do in life. If we acknowledged that “deserving” our power, position, privilege, and property is based on a lie, we would either have to give it up for a better distribution scheme, or we would have to embrace the violence required to maintain the inequality.

Therefore, we tell ourselves stories to justify the system that privileges us. Or we are fed stories that justify the system that oppresses us. In the American system, we hardly think about these stories, and when we do, we who are privileged believe them.

I think the disciples are beginning to tell themselves a story that justifies their assertion that they are “greater than.” They will continue to tell that story throughout chapter 10 of the Markan composition, no matter how many times Jesus teaches them to the contrary. It is perhaps not until after the crucifixion and Resurrection that they can begin to see just how wrong their “greater than” story is for the Kin(g)dom of God.

Jesus advocates radical surgery as a treatment for the disease of the disciples. I want to be clear that Jesus is not advocating any actual amputations. This is figurative, hyperbolic language. No one should begin hacking off limbs or plucking out eyes in response to this text. But the surgery Jesus prescribes is no less painful.

The myth of meritocracy declares that my worth depends on what I control, what I know, what I produce, and what I own. There is no grace in that for me or anyone else. There is no Good News in a system that renders human beings as units of production and property. Fortunately, God regards us as “little ones” who are valued and loved before we can produce or own or think about anything. Our vocation is to regard one another in the same way.

If Jesus followers seek to exclude someone from our community, the burden of proof is on us – the excluders. That is particularly the case when we are acting as the administrators of the established order. When we church people function in that way, we are on very shaky ground in terms of the Markan composition. If an “outsider” is working toward outcomes similar to ours – especially when it comes to hope and healing – that “outsider” is to be commended, not condemned.

If there is anything clear from Jesus’ ministry in the gospel accounts, it is that when being loving and being right are in tension, love trumps being right. How else can we read “The one who is not against us is for us”? The unnamed exorcist may not be getting it all right, but he is doing the Lord’s work. And that’s enough. Demands for higher standards are like offending limbs and wandering eyes. Get rid of them, not the neighbor.

We live in a time when at least some of us have been trained to view all Truth claims with suspicion. Somewhere behind those claims is likely lurking a desire to dominate. One of those lurking claims is the worry on the part of some Christians that we have too much empathy for our own good these days. Such nonsense!

Assertions of “my Truth” are much more likely to result in sin than surrenders to “too much” empathy. Warning that empathy is a sin takes us into a sort of Christian Orwellian use of language which is hard to manage.

Really. I’ll take “too much” empathy over “the Real Truth” any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I trust Jesus to sort it out if I have loved too much. The game may be strange to me. But it’s not strange to him.

Text Study for Mark 9:38-50 (Pt. 6); September 26, 2021

If Loving My Neighbor is Wrong, I Don’t Wanna Be Right

It’s now more than twelve years since my denomination, the ELCA, moved to open our fellowships, our communion tables, and our pulpits to members of the LGBTQIA+ community. My performance during that small civil war in the denomination was neither heroic nor effective. I wish I had been a more courageous and forthright leader. I’m glad the outcome didn’t depend on the likes of me.

I argued repeatedly that I did not want to discuss homosexuality and the Church in theoretical and hypothetical terms. I wanted people to think about two children of the congregation of the same gender. They were involved in Sunday School, Confirmation instruction, youth group for all ages, regular worship, Bible study, and numerous service projects in the name of Jesus. They were real “stars” in the life of the congregation.

Those two children became adults, fell in love, and wanted to be married in the Church. I urged people to think about those two (still theoretical and hypothetical, I admit) children before coming to some sort of decision on the issue at hand. I wasn’t interested in positions which weren’t required to take seriously the real lives of real human beings.

The response I received was both stunning and predictable. “I don’t want to confuse feelings and facts, Pastor,” one parishioner said repeatedly. “I don’t want compassion,” he argued, “I want the Truth. Don’t muddy the waters by brining real people into the conversation.”

I wonder what he might have done in conversations with Jesus about loving outsiders, while a small child sat on Jesus’ lap. The question only occurs to me now in the rearview mirror, but it’s pertinent to this week’s text. It seems clear to me in this text that when being “right” conflicts somehow with loving the neighbor, including the “outsider,” then loving the neighbor trumps being “right.”

Thus, the title of this post.

We will go to extraordinary lengths to protect our power, privilege, position, and property. That’s obvious when it comes to the history of violence associated with White Supremacy. It’s a truism when it comes to assessing the January 6 insurrection. It is also true, unfortunately, in the theological arena. The latest lie promulgated to protect White Male primacy is that empathy is a sin, when carried too far.

In two articles on the desiringgod.org site, Joe Rigney has argued that if love of neighbor seems to conflict with the Truth, then love of neighbor must give way. In our current setting, at least among us “liberals,” (happy to be one and more, thank you very much), love of neighbor is used, according to Rigney, to justify all sorts of sinful conduct and thought. More on that in a moment.

Rigney is president of Bethlehem College and Seminary. “Bethlehem: Education in Serious Joy” is the banner on the institutional web site. The college and seminary appear to fancy themselves as legitimate heirs of the intellectual tradition of C. S. Lewis. It was Lewis, after all, who wrote in Letters to Malcolm: Chiefly on Prayer, that “joy is the serious business of heaven.”

Rigney exploits this supposed kinship with Lewis in his two-part article on the dangers to Christians of feeling too much and thinking too little. He adopts the persona and style of Screwtape, lead character in Lewis’ delightfully ironic little book, The Screwtape Letters. I am more than a little stunned by the smug arrogance of this tactic, but that’s another story.

The first “letter” is called “Killing Them Softly: Compassion that Warms Satan’s Heart.” Thus, if Rigney can hijack the title of a Seventies soul song, then I have no problem using another one to counter his cunning. Initially Rigney uses Screwtape to warn us that even compassion can be “cannibalized” to do the work of the Evil One. Capable tempters will make compassion subservient to “truth,” and support for the sufferer will then become instruction that minimizes suffering.

So far, so good. Rigney’s second article is called “The Enticing Sin of Empathy: How Satan Corrupts through Compassion.” He contrasts compassion (suffering with another person) to empathy (suffering in another person). This suffering “in” can become so powerful that it leads us to sin in the name of comforting the afflicted. Compassion, according to Rigney, seeks to help the sufferer with the Truth. Empathy seeks to help the sufferer with mere emotions. Compassion, he says, focuses on what is good for the sufferer. Empathy focuses on what makes the sufferer feel better.

Rigney goes on to accuse sufferers of holding their neighbors for “ransom” by demanding unreasonable love. “We want their unreasonable demands to become ungodly demands,” Screwtape says for Rigney. “Anyone who refuses to jump through the hoops,” Screwtape concludes, “isn’t being empathetic.” Compassion means going into quicksand to rescue someone, but with a rope tied always to the Truth (outside the pit). Empathy, Rigney suggests, is entering the pit with no rope.

Rigney and his like could appeal to certain trends in the social sciences (although that would seem to be self-defeating). Paul Bloom wrote an excellent book entitled Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion. It may well be that Rigney and company have taken their analysis from Bloom and his colleagues without proper attribution.

Bloom has several contrarian concerns in his book. He worries that what we call empathy has been transformed into a claim for rights. If we experience the suffering of others too fully, we may actually run the other direction rather than offering care. In short, Bloom notes that empathy is more of a feeling response than a conscious decision. So he really pleads that we would seat our empathetic experiences in a larger framework of what he calls “rational compassion.”

“It’s not that empathy itself automatically leads to kindness,” Bloom writes. “Rather, empathy has to connect to kindness that already exists.” He contrasts empathy with compassion. Compassion, he writes, “does not mean sharing the suffering of the other: rather, it is characterized by feelings of warmth, concern and care for the other, as well as a strong motivation to improve the other’s well-being. Compassion is feeling for and not feeling with the other.”

Bloom is not arguing for a lack of compassionate action — quite the opposite. But Rigney and his colleagues do precisely that and thus completely misunderstand what’s going on here.

We can hear clearly the (unacknowledged) basis for Rigney’s argument. “The problems we face as a society and as individuals are rarely due to lack of empathy,” Bloom suggests. “Actually, they are often due to too much of it.” Bloom is concerned that the suffering of the world may overwhelm our capacity for compassion, shut down our helping faculties, and send us fleeing into moral oblivion. His argument is backed by research and good thinking.

Bloom’s argument is not, however, particularly compelling. There’s lots of contradictory evidence, study, and are research in this regard. Well and good, Bloom says. That’s how science works. But it’s not how Truth works for Rigney, who bastardizes Bloom’s work, whether he knows is or not.

“By elevating empathy over compassion as the superior virtue, there is now an entire culture devoted to the total immersion of empathy,” Screwtape declares. “Books, articles, and social media all trumpet the importance of checking one’s own beliefs, values, judgments, and reason at the door of empathy.” This immersion untethers us from the Truth and makes us “eminently steerable” toward the Evil One. Empathy thus becomes the ultimate selfishness, in this view, focused on the “feelings” of the sufferer with no concern for the “good” of the one who suffers.

The accusation, according to Rigney is that we have moved from “feelings are important” to believing that “feelings are all that’s important.” In that universe, caring human beings become self-absorbed moral monsters who do Satan’s bidding by subjecting sufferers to domineering dimensions of care in order to feel better about themselves.

What’s the problem Rigney is trying to fix here? As Mark Wingfield notes, the real agenda comes out in further commentary, discussion, and amplification. Inordinate empathy has led us (well, some of us), for example, to move from regarding homosexuality as a sin contrary to Divine intention to regarding homosexuality as a gift from God. According to folks in Rigney’s camp, how does that happen? Inordinate empathy.

I find myself racing back these twelve years. Nothing new here; nothing to see. “I don’t want to confuse feelings and facts, Pastor,” Rigney and his crowd say. “I don’t want empathy,” they argue, “I want the Truth. Don’t muddy the waters by bringing real people into the conversation.”

The problems with this perspective are manifold. We have here a parade example of the danger of the single story, referenced in an earlier post. Rigney and his ilk argue that empathy will cloud our judgment and lead us into sin. Yet, it is far more likely that our particular take on The Truth provides camouflage for our interests rather than an interest in Reality. The notion that defenders of the Truth are immune to the delusion that afflicts the empathetic is morally arrogant and epistemologically naïve.

It is not the case, whether in the Christian scriptures or in the human heart, that feelings and facts can somehow be separated into isolated containers. Emotions are constitutive of thoughts. When we think, our cognitive and emotional centers light up in tandem and partnership. The first Christians, as first-century Mediterranean folks, understood that thought is always “emotion-fused.” It is an Enlightenment conceit that feeling and fact can be tracked into separate lanes.

We live in a time when at least some of us have been trained to view all Truth claims with suspicion. Somewhere behind those claims is likely lurking a desire to dominate. Assertions of “my Truth” are much more likely to result in sin than surrenders to “too much” empathy. Warning that empathy is a sin takes us into a sort of Christian Orwellian use of language which is hard to manage.

Really. I’ll take “too much” empathy over “the Real Truth” any day of the week and twice on Sunday. I trust Jesus to sort it out if I have loved too much.

References and Resources

Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright. Kindle Edition.

Kiel, Micah D. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-2/commentary-on-mark-938-50-4.

Jones, Robert P. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Lev, Uri Mayer-Chissick Efraim. “’A covenant of salt’: Salt as a major food preservative in the historical Land of Israel.” Food and History, Vol. 5, No. 2 (2007), pp. 9-39. 10.1484/J.FOOD.1.100220.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels Kindle Edition.

Rigney, Joe. https://www.desiringgod.org/articles/the-enticing-sin-of-empathy.

Wingfield, Mark. https://baptistnews.com/article/have-you-heard-the-one-about-empathy-being-a-sin/#.YUyOiLhKiUk.

Text Study for Mark 9:38-50 (Pt. 5); September 26, 2021

The “In Crowd”

“For the one who is not over against us is for us” (Mark 9:40, my translation). If Jesus followers seek to exclude someone from our community, the burden of proof is on us – the excluders. That seems to be the plain sense of this verse and of the verses surrounding it. Unfortunately, we who follow Jesus tend to exercise the reverse of this statement – whoever is not for us is against us.

Before I get too far down the line, we need to acknowledge that Jesus says precisely that – “The one who is not with me is over against me, and the one who does not gather together with me disperses” (Matthew 12:30, my translation). It hasn’t happened often in my ministry, but on a few occasions an alert parishioner has caught these diametrically opposed statements and asked about them. Those have been precious ministry moments.

So, Beloved Preacher, which is it? Does Jesus call us to welcome all comers unless there are compelling reasons to do otherwise? Or does Jesus call us to screen out the interlopers for flaws and only to let in the Chosen Few? Matthew’s account, after all, is the one that reminds us that the way to Life is narrow (Matthew 7), and that many are called but few are chosen (Matthew 22).

Yes, there are differences in these gospel accounts because there are differences in the audiences and issues addressed. In the Markan composition, Jesus is speaking about an outsider who is doing the work of God’s Kin(g)dom apart from the “normal channels.” Good for him, Jesus says. Keep up the good work.

In Matthew 12, the context is the Beelzebul controversy. The “sides” here are not insiders and outsiders doing the same blessed work. Instead, the “sides” are the “Kingdom” of Satan versus the Kin(g)dom of God. Those accuse Jesus of casting out Satan by the power of Satan are aligning themselves with Satan, Jesus declares. That continuing alignment is the one sin which cannot be forgiven since it is the ongoing choice to align oneself against God and to ally oneself to the Enemy.

In addition, the words in Matthew’s account are addressed to the powerful, the positioned, the privileged, and the propertied. In this case, they are represented by the Pharisees. Here the Pharisees seek to adjudicate whether Jesus himself is “in” or “out.” The case Jesus makes here is that he is the One who will do the adjudicating, thank you very much.

The vocabulary used in these accounts matters as well. In Matthew, the phrase “with me” has the sense of “being in company with” or “on the same side as.” That language fits well with the battle lines being drawn in the context. The verb that the NRSV translates as “gather” is the Greek word, “sunago,” which means to gather together or assemble. It is the root of the word we know as “synagogue.”

Matthew’s verse has an underlying Hebrew parallelism which results in a “rhyming” of ideas. “The one who is not with me” is paired with “The one who is not gathering together with me.” In the same way, “is over against me” is paired with “scatters.” Again, Matthew’s statement has to do with real alliance and identification with Jesus, not merely doing the same work. The result of opposition to this alliance and identification is to be “scattered.” Scattering is a code word for what happens to the people of God when they rebel (such as the time leading up to the Babylonian Exile).

There are, therefore, good textual reasons for drawing a fairly strong distinction between the two statements in question. They aren’t contradictions except in a woodenly literal sense. Instead, each is appropriate (at least in literary terms) to its setting and does not impact the use of the other.

That discussion seeks to answer the question of the (hypothetical) alert and curious parishioner. But it can help us with more than that. The power of the statement has something to do with who is being addressed and how. In Matthew, it is the representatives of the religious and political establishment who are seeking to exclude Jesus rather than to “gather with” him. He is only welcome on their terms, and he won’t agree to those terms.

In the Markan composition, it is the disciples who are acting as the representatives of an “establishment.” They are operating in the same way as the Pharisees in Matthew 12. John and the other disciples assume that anyone who is not “with” them in the most literal of senses is over against them and must be regulated. That may be all well and good for the powers of the establishment, Jesus replies, but it shall not be so among us.

The language in the Markan composition has another striking feature. The one who is not over against us is “huper” us (to quote the Greek). The Greek preposition often has the meaning of “for the sake of” or “on behalf of.” There is the sense that the one who is not over against us is actually favorably disposed toward us and is acting for our benefit or improvement. I find that interesting.

One of my favorite podcasts is the Mindscape podcast with Dr. Sean Carroll. You can find links to the podcast at Carroll’s web page, https://www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/. Carroll is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, investigator of complex systems, and amateur philosopher. He is bright, curious, entertaining, and relentlessly in pursuit of the Truth – whatever that ultimately means. The breadth of topics on the podcast is marvelous, and Carroll’s grasp of a variety of subjects is impressive.

It would be fair to say that Carroll is no adherent to a religion. He is a philosophical atheist, a naturalist and materialist, a determinist (at least in the way that quantum mechanics allows determinism), a many-worlds cosmologist, and an eternalist when it comes to an understanding of the nature of time. While he does not go out of his way to hammer religions, he does not shy away from the opportunities when they present themselves.

I imagine that many people of faith would find Carroll irritating and offensive on these occasions. I do not. While we do not share the same perspectives on metaphysics and ontology, I value his work and his views. I find that Carroll is “for” me and other religious folks because he is pursuing the Truth. Whether he accepts the description or not, I believe Carroll is working for the benefit of all who seek to know the essential nature of Reality.

And I think that if Dr. Carroll met me and discovered that I needed a cup of water, he would provide that as well.

When I think of Sean Carroll, I am reminded of the story of Emeth in C. S. Lewis’ final Narnia volume, The Last Battle. Emeth (whose name is the Hebrew word for “truth”) was on the opposing side, that of the Calormenes. The last battle is concluded, and the forces of Aslan have triumphed. Now they are entering the true Narnia, the deep Reality behind all reality.

As they enter, they discover Emeth reclining against a tree in a state of bemusement. Emeth fully expected, once he realized how things turned out, that he would be punished and likely destroyed. As Aslan approached, he awaited his fate. He confessed that he was on the “wrong” side and was glad to at least know the Truth.

Aslan bends down and touches Emeth on the forehead. “Son, thou art welcome,” the Lion growls. Aslan then explains that because Emeth has been devoted to the Truth, even in a vain cause, “I take to me the services which thou hast done to [the Enemy].” The Great Lion is not limited by our human perceptions of who is “in” and who is “out.” We do not determine the bounds of God’s Truth, nor can we be sure we know precisely who is “over against” Jesus and who is “for the sake of” Jesus.

Carroll might find this patronizing or even offensive. I certainly intend neither. Instead, our text demands great humility on the part of Jesus followers. What we think we know is not all there is to know. What we think is Real is surely not all that is Real. The Truth sought by science – even when resolutely opposed to the existence and working of God – is still a Truth being sought. As Luther might remind us, the First Commandment is still in effect. God is God, and I am not.

And that’s the Good News.

No one who earnestly seeks the Truth can remain unaffected by that seeking. When Dr. Carroll shares with me a cup of the water of Truth in his work, I am enriched. And he is drawn (from my perspective), like it or not, more deeply into the Truth that I would call God. While the Church deserves all the recrimination we receive in the atheist discussion groups I sometimes haunt, the pursuit of the Truth often brings the very same people closer to Jesus.

That means something. For example, it means that we must be very careful in how we respond – lest we create trip hazards for these earnest Truth seekers. How much better the world would be if we faith folks could see someone like Carroll more often as a Friend of the Truth than as an Enemy of the Church.

References and Resources

Kiel, Micah D. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-2/commentary-on-mark-938-50-4.

Jones, Robert P. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright. Kindle Edition.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 9:38-50 (Pt. 4); September 26, 2021

(43) And if your hand causes you to trip up, hack it off; it is better for you to enter into The Life crippled than, having two hands, to go away into Gehenna, into unquenched fire. (45) And if your foot trips you up, hack it off; it is better for you to enter The Life lame than, having two feet to be thrown into Gehenna. (47) And if your eye trips you up, throw it out; it is better for to enter into the Kingdom of God one-eyed rather than having two eyes to be thrown into Gehenna, (48) where their worm is not dead, and the fire never goes out; (49) for each one shall be salted by fire.

The second person pronouns in this paragraph are all in the singular form. This is a “you” discourse, not a “you all” discourse. That’s unusual in the Markan composition and in the Christian scriptures in general. We should conclude that something quite “singular” is going on in this text and pay attention accordingly.

As I hear the text, I try to remain focused on the presenting problem in this section of the Markan account. Jesus is teaching the disciples about the suffering, death, and Resurrection which lie ahead for him (and perhaps for them). The disciples are establishing the organizational church in the new Messianic administration, thumb-wrestling over who will occupy which rungs on the ladder of position and power.

Meritocracy is a hot topic for divisive debate in the United States at this moment, as it has been for the last twenty years or so. Barack Obama’s election to the presidency (twice) buttressed the argument made so often that any little boy or girl in America can grow up to be the president of the United States. That statement is part of the mythology of American exceptionalism, post-racial naivete, and the camouflaging of power, position, privilege, and property in this country.

Not long ago, a scheme was uncovered which helped wealthy parents pay to get their children admitted to prestigious colleges and universities. Some highly visible parents have gone to jail, been fined, and suffered some small social stigma. The scheme was decried as evidence that wealthy people could simply buy their way into success, regardless of their native abilities, talents, and proclivities.

If only such crass pay-for-play projects were the real problem. In fact, the myth of meritocracy in the Western world covers the “front door” of privilege as well as the extra-legal “side doors” by which the powerful gain access and continue their stranglehold on position and property. One of the single most reliable predictors of life success in this country is not personal effort or accomplishment, for example. Zip code is a much better predictor of life success than anything we might do as individuals and a far better predictor than our native intelligence or skills.

If I use my hands to sustain the “greater than” story, that behavior has got to go. I can tell myself and others that I have worked hard for everything I have and everything I am. That’s true from a certain perspective. But if nearly sixty-five years of life teaches me anything, it reminds of how many times I could have gone over a cliff in my life. And it reminds of how many times I was lucky rather than good.

Other people have worked much harder than I with far different outcomes. And some people have worked much less than I with far different outcomes. The work of my hands does not make me “greater than” any other. If that’s the story I tell, I’m getting it wrong. And if that’s the story I believe, then someone else is likely suffering in order to support the falsehood that undergirds my life.

If I use my feet to sustain the “greater than” story, that behavior has got to go. It is so easy for me as a White man in this culture to simply walk away from anything and anyone who might make me uncomfortable. I can flee from the “inner city.” I can travel to different schools. I can choose to live in a place where I will see nothing but White bodies all day and every day of my life.

In such self-chosen spaces, I can live in the mythology of White Male Supremacy, and no one will challenge that story for a second. In the absence of such challenge, I can comfortably believe that the mythology is the Truth. If anyone dares to challenge that mythology, I can walk away. Or I can kick their heads in with relative impunity.

If I use my eyes to sustain the “greater than” story, that behavior has got to go. If I choose to see what supports my power and to be blind to what challenges it, then I am already halfway to hell. Yet, that’s precisely what so many of us do. We simply don’t believe the stories of the “less than” life among us because we refuse to see those stories. If someone is not doing as well, it’s their own damn fault, after all.

It certainly can be the case that a person could use hands, feet, and eyes to cooperate in the “less than” story that is told about so many people. But that’s not my place in the system. Like the disciples in our reading, I am sorely tempted to build and buttress the story that makes me “greater than.” The problem is that the “greater than” story leaves me on the outside of the Kin(g)dom looking in – left on the smoking garbage pile of history, being eaten alive by my own avarice and cruelty.

The Jesus story is not a “greater than” story. This section of the Markan composition is always spiced up when it is held alongside the second chapter of Paul’s letter to the Philippians. Whether there is a direct connection between the Markan account and Paul’s work is a matter for continued scholarly debate. But the rhetorical connections are obvious.

“Exercise this kind of practical reason among yourselves, which is also in Christ Jesus,” Paul writes, “who, being in the form of God, did not consider equality with God as something at his disposal, but rather he emptied himself, taking on the form of a slave, being born in human likeness; and in form being found as a human, he humbled himself, being obedient to the point of death – indeed, death on a cross” (Philippians 2:5-8, my translation).

This is the story that forms me as a disciple and puts my “power” in perspective. As I have noted previously, we can only read the “power points” in the gospel narratives from our own positions. The story is not ahistorical or atemporal. Someone who is not in a position of power, privilege, and property as I am should not read the story in the same way. But for me, the Philippians 2 story deconstructs the myth of meritocracy for me as a Jesus follower.

References and Resources

Kiel, Micah D. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-2/commentary-on-mark-938-50-4.

Jones, Robert P. White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity. Simon & Schuster. Kindle Edition.

Du Mez, Kristin Kobes. Jesus and John Wayne: How White Evangelicals Corrupted a Faith and Fractured a Nation. Liveright. Kindle Edition.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 9:38-50 (Pt. 3); September 26, 2021

Trip Hazards

Most commentators agree that Mark 9 is an unusual element of the gospel composition. It is likely a collection of sayings that the Composer has brought together into a set of instructions for disciples. The teaching section begins with Mark 9:30. We read in verse 31 that Jesus was teaching his disciples about the handing over, the judicial murder, and the Resurrection in his immediate future.

(42) “’And he who might trip up one of those little ones who are putting their trust in me – it is better for him if a grinding stone (like that drawn by a donkey) would be placed around his neck and he would have been thrown into the sea.

“And,” Jesus continues in verse 42. That connection is omitted by the NRSV translators, and the separation is highlighted by a paragraph space in the text. But Jesus, in the Markan composition, links the kind cup of water to “these little ones who are putting their faith in me” (Mark 9:42). It is, in part at least, the rigid rejection of these eager outsiders which is a stumbling block to their continuing trust in Jesus.

Instead of acting like a bunch of beggars who get to show the other beggars where the bread is, the disciples in Mark’s composition act as if they own the bakery. That unfortunate trend will continue at least through the end of chapter 10. The Twelve had been invited into Jesus’ campaign about five minutes earlier (at least in a cosmic sense), but now they had become the membership screening committee. Rather than inviting all comers in for the party, they were giving the newcomers the boot.

Jesus’ response is, to understate the case, severe. If anyone trips up one of these newcomers on the way in, the consequence is massive. Being thrown into the sea wearing a giant millstone was a method of capital punishment in the Roman Empire. Jesus says, using hyperbole to get their attention, that such a fate would be preferable to the one that awaits the disciples if they impede the entrance of the “little ones” into the Kin(g)dom.

“Shit’s gettin’ real,” as one might say. It would seem that the behavior of at least some in the leadership of the Markan community was causing “little ones” in that community to question their trust in Jesus and perhaps even to leave the community in the midst of the stresses and strains of first-century Christian living. Capernaum, we have a problem.

I am thinking today of the trends in Christian church membership, church participation, and Christian faith commitments in the United States at the present time. The lines for all of those trends are headed down on the graph. As time goes along, the declines of the lines grow steeper. As I have noted before, the ELCA Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation projects that, based on current trends, my denomination will effectively cease to exist by 2050.

Well, denominations come, and denominations go.

In fact, the ELCA is the third variety of Lutheranism of which I have been a member in the last sixty-five years. As a denomination, we are living through the third major re-organization since 1988. I’m sorry for the disruption that causes in the lives of people who serve Jesus and his Church with faith, hope, and love (because it’s certainly not for the money). That disruption falls disproportionately on people of color and women who have served as ELCA staff, and that’s wrong.

That being said, this denominational decay is a feature of these larger national and societal trends. The Gallup organization reports that in 2020 church membership among U.S. adults fell below fifty percent of the population for the first time in the survey’s history. The study, in fact, charts self-reported membership in a (Christian) church, synagogue, or mosque. So, the numbers for Christians are even lower than the forty-seven percent measured in the survey.

In 1937, the number was seventy-three percent. It remained fairly stable until 2000. In the last twenty years, church membership as a percentage of U.S. population has moved from seventy percent to the reported 47 percent. Church, synagogue, and mosque membership has declined in this country during that time by one-third. The overwhelming majority of that decline has been in Christian denominations and congregations.

Well, why is that? The Gallup folks demonstrate that the decline is does not directly correlate to a decrease in belief in God. Nor is it purely a function of generational differences. Nor is it linked with any particular flavor of Christian theology or history. I think the data indicates that church membership and participation are declining in large part because we Christians (especially White Christians) are putting stumbling blocks in the way of people who might wish to have a trusting relationship with Jesus.

I hope you will read Robert P. Jones’ important book, White Too Long: The Legacy of White Supremacy in American Christianity, if you haven’t done so already. Jones does a masterful job of detailing how White Christianity has constructed and sustained White Supremacy in the United States. “White Christian churches have not just been complacent,” Jones argues, “they have not only been complicit; rather, as the dominant cultural power in America, they have been responsible for constructing and sustaining a project to protect white supremacy and resist black equality. This project has framed the entire American story” (page 6).

White Christianity continues to move further in the direction of White Christian nationalism. “Christian nationalism,” writes Kristin Kobes Du Mez, “the belief that America is God’s chosen nation and must be defended as such—serves as a powerful predictor of intolerance toward immigrants, racial minorities, and non-Christians” (page 4). It’s tempting for us mainline types to think that White Christian Nationalism is a disease of the “evangelical” traditions. Sadly for us, it is alive and well in most of our historically mainline congregations.

Until churches get serious about repentance and repair when it comes to racism, there will be no reconciliation. And it’s not only reconciliation with Black, Brown, Indigenous, and AAPI people that is at stake (although that is crucially important). Many of our own children are leaving our churches because they are sick and tired of trying to sit next to people who refuse to put Jesus’ words into action when it comes to White Supremacy in the churches.

Similar things can be said about our welcome of those who are excluded and rejected because of gender, orientation, economic class, age, and personal history. My experience is that most young people in the Church actually get what the Gospel means in behavioral terms. Since they don’t see churches and older Christians living according to the Gospel, they’re headed for the exits.

As this exodus continues, (historically White) Christian churches become increasingly older, Whiter, and more socially and politically conservative. We are, it seems to me, caught in an accelerating negative feedback loop. Our Christian behavior trips up the “little ones” in our midst. Out they go. So, there are more of us to do the “tripping.” Disaffection increases, and the reactionary rump of the Church gets larger. I suspect we passed the tipping point some time ago, and it’s too late for many congregations.

Yes, I am pessimistic about specific religious institutions. And…and…and I am always wildly optimistic about the power of the Good News of Jesus to change lives and change the world. It’s just that much of that power of change is being applied outside the boundaries of long-established institutions and structures. We American Christians are surrounded by people who are casting out demons in Jesus’ name but are not following us.

We can follow John’s example and complain that they’re not part of the club. I understand that impulse. Many of these unnamed exorcists around us are not church members. Many of them are, I am sure, not Jesus followers, at least in their faith commitments. But these unnamed exorcists are certainly doing the work of Jesus, whether they know it or not.

Jesus tells John to look at the results, not the label. That’s our call as well. But, like the first disciples, we have some trouble getting out of our own way. As a result, we often end up flat on our faces, lying at the edge of hell on earth.

Text Study for Mark 9:38-50 (Pt. 2); September 26, 2021

More Than One Story

(38) “John was saying to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone in your name casting out demons, and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’” (Mark 9:38, my translation).

In 2009 I listened to one of the first TED talks I ever heard. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Nigerian author and intellectual, talked about “The danger of a single story.” At this date, the talk has been viewed nearly twenty-nine million times. If you have not heard the talk (or if you want to watch and listen again), you can find it at https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_ngozi_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare.

Adichie shares stories about narratives she has heard and narratives she has learned that boil the world or people or a person down to a single thing. A single story, she says, will “show a people as one thing, as only one thing, over and over again, and that is what they become.” John and the other disciples tell a single story about the unnamed exorcist in Mark 9. That single story is “he was not following us.”

“It is impossible to talk about the single story,” Adichie continues, “without talking about power.” Many singular stories establish boundaries between “us” and “them.” That is certainly one of the functions of the story John tells in Mark 9:38. John and his colleagues don’t focus on what the exorcist does.

In fact, he is casting out demons in the name of Jesus. That seems like a good thing. But, John says, he’s not following us. He doesn’t belong to us. The unnamed exorcist is not one of the cool kids. He’s not one of the insiders. He has the wrong identity, the wrong pedigree, the wrong credentials. He’s one of them.

I invite you to think of all the stories that create “us” and “them.” There is the story of male dominance – a story that delineates differences between men and women. We all know, at least after John Gray’s 1992 book, that “men are from Mars, women are from Venus.” There is the story of Indigenous genocide. Native peoples are savages to be assimilated or erased because they can’t possess the land like civilized Europeans. There is the story of anti-Blackness. Black men are either hapless, subhuman fools or terrifying, subhuman Black beasts.

These are only a few of the “us” and “them” stories we tell (especially as White, Male, European, Christian, Western individuals). We can add more, of course. We tell stories about fanatical Muslim terrorists. We tell stories about murderous and raping Mexicans pouring across the southern border of the United States. We tell stories about lazy unemployed people who would rather eat chocolates and collect checks than earn an honest living. We tell stories about crazed White Nationalists who threaten Truth, Justice, and the American way.

Not all stories are equally limited or equally false or equally dangerous. But all stories lie to the degree that they leave out the details that make the subjects human. What about this unnamed exorcist? First of all, did he have a name? Was he just a camp follower who hadn’t gone through the regular onboarding process for the position of “disciple”? Did the power of exorcism in the name of Jesus land on him spontaneously, as the spirit of prophecy landed on Eldad and Medad in Numbers 11? Was he better at it than the Twelve – who had recently failed to cast out the epileptic spirit of the boy who simply needed more praying?

We don’t know because John and the others weren’t interested in another story. We do know that John and the others are very interested in position, power, and privilege as they follow Jesus. Another story threatened this campaign for jobs in the cabinet of the new Messiah. So, they had to put a stop to it.

“It is impossible,” Adichie reminds us, “to talk about the single story without talking about power.” She describes a term from the Igbo language that helps us get a grip on this. The term, she says, is “nkali.” It is this part of the talk that really nails the conversation to this section of Mark’s gospel. The term is, according to Adichie, a noun that means something like “to be greater than.”

Boom. We find ourselves immediately back a few verses in Mark 9. The disciples spent the trip from Caesarea Philippi to Capernaum arguing about who was greater. The disciples were arguing about nkali. “Like our economic and political worlds,” Adichie continues, “stories too are defined by the principle of nkali: How they are told, who tells them, when they’re told, how many stories are told, are really dependent,” she argues, “on power.”

John and the other disciples exercise power in pointing out the “otherness” of the unnamed exorcist. They tattle on his out-of-normal-channels behavior. They exercise power in how they shape the story from their perspective and to advance their agenda. They apply power directly as they try to stop the person from continuing to act (it would seem that they failed in this attempt). They keep up the pressure by urging Jesus to put a stop to this out-of-bounds activity.

“Power is the ability not just to tell the story of another,” Adichie notes, “but to make it the definitive story of that person.” The disciples do precisely that. The exorcist doesn’t even need a name. It’s the behavior that tells the whole story, as far as they’re concerned.

Adichie makes a powerful point at this moment in the talk. She quotes the Palestinian poet Mourid Barghouti who writes that the best way to hijack the story, the land, the history, and everything else that would make a people a people is to start with “secondly.” This is precisely what John and the other disciples do to the unnamed exorcist. They begin their story in the middle of his story and thus claim it as their own story.

“Start the story with the arrows of the Native Americans,” Adichie says, “and not with the arrival of the British, and you have an entirely different story. Start the story with the failure of the African state, and not with the colonial creation of the African state,” she continues, “and you have an entirely different story.” We can add examples.

Start with the failures of “inner city” schools and not the histories of segregation, redlining, White flight, White riots, and maldistributed funding, and you get a story that blames Black people rather than White people. Start with the poverty of Pine Ridge and Whiteclay and not with the genocide and Indian schools and stolen land and broken promises, and you get a story that blames Indigenous people rather than White people. Start with AIDS ripping through communities of gay men a generation ago rather than the violent homophobia of American culture, and you get stories of the “gay cancer.”

Once you see the power of “secondly stories,” you will see them everywhere. These are the stories that underwrite and expand imperialism, colonization, racism, genocide, sexism, and all the other power games we continue to play inside the church and out.

This is not how Adichie ends her talk. Nor is it how Jesus leaves the situation with the disciples. (39) But Jesus said, ‘Don’t stop him, for there is no one who shall perform power based on my name and shall soon have the power to speak evil of me. (40) For the one who is not against us is for us. (41) For the one who might give you a cup of water in the Name that is “Messiah,” I tell you truly that one will not lose his wage.” (Mark 9:39-41, my translation).

Don’t stop him! For the one who is not against us is for us. It’s the sort of meme-length aphorism that helps make the Markan script so memorable (and easy to memorize). “Stories have been used to dispossess and to malign,” Adichie says, “but stories can also be used to empower and to humanize. Stories can break the dignity of a people,” she observes, “but stories can also repair that broken dignity.”

Jesus tells the story of the unnamed exorcist in a very different way. Look at the outcome, not the identity. Did he cast out a demon in my name? That action will not leave him unchanged. Not only has someone else been set free. Someone else, the exorcist, has been drawn closer to the Kin(g)dom of God in your midst. The story is not about “us” and “them.” The story is about how “us” is infinitely bigger than our small minds can comprehend.

White, Western, male-dominated Churches are shrines for the Single Story. The question for too long has not been, “Is that Other Person following Jesus?” The question for too long has instead been “Is that Other Person following us.” That is something that must change if the Church is to remain faithful. “When we reject the single story,” Adichie concludes, “when we realize that there is never a single story about any place, we regain a kind of paradise.”

What can it look like for churches to be homes to multiple stories rather than shrines to the Single Story? Every White congregation can seek a healthy dialogue with other-storied communities. Every Christian congregation can seek a healthy dialogue with Jews, Muslims, and other communities with different spiritual stories. We can be places where belief is not an entrance requirement and where doubt is celebrated rather than denigrated. We can become communities of discernment and deliberation rather than of judgment and violence.

Oh, is that all? Unfortunately, the Twelve are not having it…

References and Resources

Kiel, Micah D. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-2/commentary-on-mark-938-50-4.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels Kindle Edition.

Text Study for Mark 9:38-50 (Pt. 1); September 26, 2021

For a deeper understanding, we may be well-served to go to the “end” of this text (knowing that the beginnings and endings of our readings are really arbitrary points in a whole narrative.” “For everyone will be salted by fire. Salt is good; but if the salt becomes ‘unsalty,’ how shall its flavor be restored? Have among yourselves salt and keep the peace with one another” (Mark 9:49-50, my translation).

This mention of “salt” puzzles us as contemporary interpreters. I find helpful some comments by Uri Lev in an article that details the uses of salt as food in the ancient Middle East. He writes that “ancient Arab tribes, like the ancient Jewish tribes, used salt in covenant ceremonies as a symbol of permanence. Still today,” he notes, “Israeli Arabs utter the ancient phrase in Arab tradition ‘There is salt between us’. This means,” Lev continues, “that there is a covenant of peace between the parties” (page 38, my emphasis).

I find it striking that the mention of “salt” and “peace” appear together in Mark 9:50. Salt apparently functions to preserve both food and covenants. We can see this in the several mentions of “covenants of salt” in the Hebrew scriptures. Lev points to “the function of salt as a preservative and its social function as a symbol against corruption and the maintenance of relationships between human beings as expressed in covenants” (page 38).

Ross writes in his IDB article (IV:167) that the “covenant of salt” in the Hebrew scriptures refers to the permanence of that covenant “since eating salt with someone means to be bound to him (sic) in loyalty.” This is the context for the words in Mark 9:50. “Jesus’ command,” Ross continues, “enjoins the mutual loyalty of the covenant relationship.”

The verb the NRSV translates as “be at peace” is given a more active force in the BAGD lexicon. It is translated there as “keep the peace” (page 227). That translation is supported as well by Foerster’s analysis in TDNT II:417-418. He refers us to a similar usage in Romans 12:9-21. In this section on mutual love in the Roman congregations, Paul urges his listeners to refrain from repaying evil with evil. Instead, he calls them to keep the peace with all.

In 2 Corinthians 13, Paul finishes up his letter with a similar appeal. He urges the Corinthian Christians to shape up their relationships, to have a common practical and social rationality, and to keep the peace. The result of this work is that “the God of love and peace will be with you.”

Therefore, the “punchline” of our text goes something like this. “Have salt among yourselves and keep the peace among one another.” But what about the line that leads into that conclusion? “For everyone will be salted by fire” (verse 49).

It’s immediately clear that this line presented problems even for the earliest interpreters (and performers?) of the script. We have three significant textual variants here. One variant simply inserts the words of Leviticus 2:13 in place of the preferred text. A second variant keeps both the preferred text and the previous variant. Metzger concludes that what we have in the text is the earliest and preferred reading.

The textual history, according to Adamiak, “proves that at very early stage this passage from the Old Testament was considered as an explanation of the mysterious logion of Jesus” (page 12). He notes that the interpretation might be relatively straightforward if this was all we had. Then we could conclude that the salty fire will destroy things. But, Jesus tells us, “salt is good.” How so?

The combination of “salt” and “fire” here certainly leads us to conclude that Jesus is talking about purification. The coming trials will force the disciples to focus on what really matters for the sake of their movement as Jesus followers. They are having great difficulty maintaining that focus as they move toward Jerusalem and the end of the story. Their arguments revolve around status and power. Those will not be important elements as they confront the cross.

Every one of them will be purified in the fire of persecution. That’s the nature of Jesus following. What will remain is what is important. Therefore, the purification is “good.” It may be that some of the Jesus followers will lose their “saltiness” and conform to the larger imperial culture. There won’t be, at least in this text, any coming back from that loss.

Conflict within the community, whether of the Twelve or of the Markan audience, is a direct route to that loss of flavor. That rings true for us as well. When I worked as a church conflict resolution consultant, this was one of the constant and tragic realities of the work. Some church members suffered catastrophic loss of faith as a result of their experiences of the conflict. In ever case I ran into this reality. The wounds were too deep, and some folks simply needed to walk away.

The Church in the United States is, at this moment, roiling with conflict. At this moment, one of the hot issues for White Christians in our area is whether we should wear masks in worship. People are screaming at one another in meetings over this issue. Pastors are considering resigning. Some have already resigned or retired because it’s just too much to bear. The politics of Covid-tide have overwhelmed all other concerns and threaten to destroy any number of congregations, faith commitments, and pastoral calls.

Here is, perhaps, a call for the faithfulness of the saints. “Have among yourselves ‘salt,’ and keep the peace among one another.” It is better to be painfully purified than to be destroyed. It is better to be painfully purified than to be responsible for the destruction of another believer. Jesus calls us to spend our time giving refreshing cups of water to other disciples rather than grabbing them around the necks in self-righteous rage.

Apparently, such a discussion is not a new thing in churches…

References and Resources

Kiel, Micah D. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-26-2/commentary-on-mark-938-50-4.

Malina, Bruce, and Rohrbaugh, Richard L. Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels Kindle Edition.