Isaiah 53:4-12
Hebrews, 5:1-10
Mark, 10:35-45

✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen. 

      In a few minutes we are planning to have a baptism.  I say “planning” because if I were about to be baptized, and I had just heard that gospel, I’d be having second thoughts.  It doesn’t make the church sound attractive.  Jesus’ disciples – disciple means follower – were not showing their best selves.  They don’t seem to get what matters to Jesus.  I’d be wondering, “Do I really want to be part of this?”

      Years ago when I was getting interested in Christianity, I realized that I liked Jesus.  He was attractive – his values, the way he lived and died, his wit, his teaching, his passion, the way he challenges us and undermines conventional wisdom.  I liked Jesus, but I didn’t like the church.  It struck me as corrupt, poorly embodying the way of Jesus; it lacked integrity, a bunch of intolerant, know-nothing hypocrites more worried about their own agendas rather than with Jesus’ good news.

      I got baptized anyway, and while many of my negative views about the church are still accurate, I recognized that the church is more nuanced and not exactly the same everywhere, and that the church is highly reflective of humanity – full of faults, but also brightness.  I became more understanding.  Usually as we grow older we grow in appreciation for how difficult it is to embody our ideals.  We become more aware of how we fall short ourselves, and so we may feel less compelled to judge.  My hope for myself, and for our parish family, is that we grow gradually to embody more fully the beauty and reality of Jesus.  That’s transformation.  As we’ve been hearing over the last month, that happens here.  It strengthens me; it inspires my better self.

      People in every group influence each other, and we can help to bring out the best, or the worst, in other people.  That’s what caught my attention in today’s gospel.  The disciples are still trying to figure out Jesus’ ideals.  They don’t yet know how to relate to one another in a healthy way.

      It’s crucial to know that the conversation between Jesus and the sons of Zebedee, James and John, happened just after Jesus had predicted for the third time that he would be arrested, tortured, and killed and then on the third day he’d rise.  Jesus and his disciples had been walking up to Jerusalem.  Mark reported that the disciples were afraid.  They were headed for Jerusalem, moving toward some kind of confrontation and conflict.  They had tons of uncertainty. 

      They must have also been confused.  They had seen Jesus perform miracles and heal people and do mighty works.  Surely this suggested a future of power and glory, but it was a much different kind of power and glory than they expected. 

      James and John told Jesus that they wanted the highest positions of honor in his glory, one on the right side and the other on the left.  It’s ironic because when Jesus is in his glory, on the cross, there are criminals on his right side and on his left side.  That’s not the public vindication James and John desired.  They didn’t understand the nature of Jesus’ glory, the glory of God.

      Jesus promised reversal; he tried to turn his disciples’ expectations upside down.  The great are not those in positions of power, but the great are the meek and weak, those who serve, those of the lowest social status.  The way of Jesus, the way of the cross repudiates exercising power over others and controlling others; the way of the cross repudiates hierarchies and social climbing; the way of the cross repudiates classes of haves and have nots, winners and losers, honored and un-honored.  Jesus’ vision for his followers is that they will form a community without competition for honor and status.

      The disciples lived in a society where concern for honor and a good reputation permeated every aspect of public life.[1]  Our culture is obsessed with consumption, getting as much as we can; their culture was obsessed with gaining honor.  James and John wanted more honor than the others, and they attempted to climb over the others.  Their selfish competitiveness ignited envy in the group.  The other disciples got angry at James and John.  I would have, too.

      The occasion revealed a fundamental weakness of the group of disciples, that they had a long way to go to become a strong, healthy community.  The way James and John went to Jesus to get honor indicates the disciples were primarily related to Jesus and not much to each other.  What held the group together was loyalty to a central figure: Jesus, not their relationships with each other.  They had respect for Jesus, but not for each other.  It’s not surprising that immediately after Jesus’ arrest and the crucifixion, the disciples were disintegrating.  The resurrection and the coming of the Holy Spirit prevented the disciples from falling apart.

      In Lent, I gave a series of talks and observed different ways people associate in groups.  I drew two stunning, elegant diagrams to illustrate the way people associate in groups.  I made a dot to represent a person in each of my diagrams, and the lines represent strong relationships.

      The first diagram had a dot in the center and lots of dots around it, and all the surrounding dots were connected by lines to the center dot, but none of the surrounding dots were connected to each other.  This is one way groups organize: high dependence upon a single figure.  If the central figure is removed, the group falls apart.  This is generally how the disciples associated with each other before the resurrection.  It’s a common way groups are structured: loyalty to a charismatic central figure, but not to each other.[2]

      The second diagram I drew had dots all over the page, and each of the dots had one or more lines connecting to other dots, but there was not a single dot to which all the other dots were connected.  It was a much more complex picture, a much more complex organization with strong relationships between group members and no single person holding it all together.  This is the type of community the disciples became after the resurrection.

      The church could not have grown if everyone relied upon a single relationship with the leader.  Human beings really can’t manage more than a hundred, maybe a hundred fifty, relationships.  The church grew by having a more complex organizational structure. 

      Also the church no longer needed a single leader figure.  At the Last Supper Jesus taught us that if we ate his bread and drank from his cup, he is in us and we are in him.  Baptism holds the same truth: we’re baptized into Christ, become one with him, mutual indwelling.  Everyone of us has intimacy with Jesus, in ourselves and through others.

      Therefore, the most important thing for a strong and healthy community is for people to develop friendships.  That’s what makes us feel like we belong.  The strongest relationships involve giving and receiving support and care.  There’s mutuality, sometimes sacrificing for the other, sometimes the other fulfilling your needs; it’s give and take.  Jesus modeled this for us: sometimes he healed and ministered to others, and sometimes he allowed others to provide him hospitality and to care for him.

      Another quality of strong and healthy communities is the ability to cope with discontent.  In today’s gospel, the disciples were angry at James and John.  To me, James and John are the clearly in the wrong, and Jesus had to recognize this.  But Jesus did not take sides.  He responded to the disciples’ displeasure by stating a principle: whoever would be great among you must be servant of all. 

      Often the best way to deal with discontent is to recall the group’s purpose, to keep the main thing the main thing.  Jesus was clear: he came not to be served, but to serve, and that is what he calls us to be.  As we learn to serve others, to love others as Jesus loved us, we move closer to God, we grow in Christ, we have a deeper relationship with God.  That’s the vision of transformation: the process whereby the gap between our reality and our ideal become narrower.  In October, as we emphasize stewardship, we’re concentrating on this transformation. 

      This week the stewardship team and I are going to send out a pledge card and ask you to make a financial commitment to support God’s work in this parish in 2013.  Please give it prayerful consideration.  In a couple of Sundays, on November 4, everyone may come to the altar and offer their pledge.  If you are able, please join me and my family in raising your pledge for next year.

      This is as an opportunity for each of us to assume responsibility for our common life and to bring out the best in each other.  A strong and healthy community has lots of people who step up.  The more we step up, the more we support one another.  That has been our way.  There’s great generosity here, and I’m grateful for the way you sacrifice.  It inspires me and strengthens my better self.  It shows that we’re all in it together, doing God’s work together, growing in Christ.

✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.


[1] Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, Fortress Press (2003), p. 369f.

[2] Malina, p. 342, argues that this structure is particularly common in ancient Near Eastern factions.

Genesis 2:18-24
Hebrews 1:1‑4; 2:5‑12
Mark 10:2‑16

✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.

      This morning we have the treat of Bishop Montgomery celebrating so together we can celebrate his 50th anniversary as a bishop.  I’m delighted and grateful to mark this occasion, a moment to reflect on vocation, a fancy word meaning “calling,” and to recall that God calls each of us and offers us different ways and roles to serve.  Being mindful of Bishop Montgomery’s years as bishop and priest, of Father Owens 63 years as priest, inspires me, and maybe can inspire each of us in our various callings.  Following our calling can transform us, can shape our hearts.

      Another vocation we celebrate by numbering anniversaries is marriage, and in today’s gospel Jesus discusses marriage and divorce with his disciples.  These days nearly half of all marriages end in divorce.[1]  Fewer Americans are married – only half of American adults, whereas 50 years ago over 70 percent were married.  Some say that our culture’s esteem of marriage is declining.

      In general, broad terms, people marry now because we love someone and expect that love to last.  We also may assume and expect that loving this person will be relatively easy, not demanding too much for us.  Writing in an online chat, a young woman wrote about getting ready to marry because she loved her fiancé, but she added, “However, if things change, I won’t hesitate to divorce him.”  Well, sweetie, I guarantee you that things are going to change, and things are going to change radically; you need to be ready for some hard work.

      As we consider a partner for life, our culture has shaped in us an expectation that we must not settle for anything less than Mr. or Ms. Perfect.  Mr. or Ms. Good Enough is not romantic, not the perfection we expect for ourselves.  Only Mr. or Ms. Perfect will do because he/she will make me look good, he/she will be easily compatible and make few claims on me, he/she will always excite and delight me, he/she will help me reach my personal goals. 

      Marriage has become much more about achieving self-fulfillment, be that fulfillment emotional or sexual or financial or whatever.  Our culture stokes absurdly huge and impossible expectations about what another person can do for me: he/she should even be able to fix what is wrong in me and to do it painlessly.

      Last week, some of us celebrated another 50th anniversary – James Bond.  When I was nine, I first saw a Bond film, and I sort of fell in love: all fantasy and flash, luxury and panache, exotic adventure and derring do.  For a while, I was a great devotee, even as I discovered that he’s a cartoon.  He’s more than a bit adolescent and self-involved, saving the world for the kicks it gives him not because he cares about the world; but for some, he’s an aspiration: the ideal of masculinity, a real man, and his sexual conquests demonstrate it to us, as well as to himself.  It’s a rather pathetic ideal of masculinity.  Once upon a time, masculinity was about self-restraint and service to others and maturity. 

      The gospel would have us understand the purpose of marriage that way, too, that it’s one of many ways human beings may develop character, inner strength, self-sacrifice, one of many ways we can become more Christ-like.  The Christian understanding of the purpose of marriage is that it reflects the love of God, it gives joy, it provides help and comfort, it nurtures life, it provides meaning, and it serves the common good. 

      In the last century or two, marriage has become less about serving God and community and family and more about finding individual fulfillment, less about public well-being and more about private satisfaction.  Perhaps it’s out of balance.  No doubt, we can all find some faults in the way our society understands marriage, the current state of the institution, but we could almost certainly find fault with marriage in every age and place, and while I find some of our cultural assumptions about marriage troublesome, and we have deep, heart-felt controversies about it, but marriage in our day strikes me as far better than it was in the ancient Near East.[2] 

      In Jesus’ day, two individuals did not decide to get married because they had fallen in love.  That’s a modern development, and one that is not normative throughout the world today.  Back in Jesus’ day, for the most part, men and women inhabited different worlds.  The male world and the female world didn’t overlap much.  So marriage was not about friendship or companionship, and certainly not about self-fulfillment.  It was about serving the family and raising children to perpetuate the family.  In other words, individuals did not get married; families did.  A wedding was a merger of two extended families, and so the families arranged it. 

      Two families of similar status matched their children.  The men carefully and extensively negotiated a contract, exchanging gifts or services for the bride and making sure they got a fair deal, that neither family took advantage of the other.  The bride’s family typically provided their daughter with a dowry at the time of the marriage.  The bride essentially left her family and became a member of the groom’s family, but a stranger in that family, on the margins of family life, and she had no power.  If she had a son, she gained status in the family and became closer to her new family.  As he grew up, the son became her advocate, providing greater security for her. 

      Even with a son, she was still her husband’s property and extremely vulnerable.  She had no rights, no legal standing.  A man could divorce a woman, but a woman could not divorce a man.  A divorced woman might be accepted back into her original family, led by her father or uncle or brother, who would be angry, dishonored by her divorced.  A divorce typically led to a feud between the families – intense hostility and even violence.  It shook up the community.  If, however, the divorced woman did not have a family or her family rejected her, there’d be peace, but she’d end up on the street, a beggar or prostitute.

      To me, it was terrible, and Jesus thought it unjust as well.  In today’s gospel, Jesus’ interrogators grilled him about the legality of marriage.  As usual, Jesus responded to their question with a question: what did Moses say?  They knew that the Old Testament explicitly states that it is lawful for a husband to divorce his wife.  Jesus quoted Genesis: God made us male and female, and two become one flesh – today’s Old Testament reading.  His point: marriage creates deep bonds, and God allows divorce, but it’s not God’s intent for us, not what he desires for us.  It’s also not what we desire for ourselves.

      Then Jesus redefined adultery.  In Jesus’ day, only a married woman could commit adultery - her sexual infidelity alone.  The husband could not commit adultery; there was no such thing.  Jesus envisioned marriage without the double standard.  He said that a man who divorced his wife and married another committed adultery.  Both parties of the marriage could be a victim of infidelity, not just the husband.  Jesus sought equality of treatment.

      All of Jesus’ teaching about marriage is in the context of the Kingdom of God, God’s rule.  God’s purpose for marriage is to unify people, to bring us closer together, to shape our hearts.  In the coming age, when God rules all things, respect, care, and love characterizes relationships – not legalities. 

      Today’s gospel ends with Jesus taking up children in his arms and blessing them.  He cradled the weakest, most vulnerable people, those of no standing.  This is the Kingdom of God where all are welcome and embraced, where our status anxieties and our pecking order disappear.  He said that the little children are open to God’s rule; those at the bottom, humble and aware of their need, those receive God.  The Kingdom, a richer and fuller life, does not come from following rules and laws.  It comes from openness to God.

      And here’s an irony.  A broken-heart is a sure sign of life; a heart broken open is much more likely to be accessible and hospitable to God and to other people.  Those who know the pain and sorrow of divorce may be more able to receive the Kingdom than those who don’t.  If we understand our suffering and disappointments as opportunities for growth and for drawing closer to God, not as punishment, not as curse, not as shame, then we may be more open and able to receive the Kingdom as a child, and God will transform our lives.

✠ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit.  Amen.


[1] Timothy Keller, The Meaning of Marriage, Dutton (2011), p. 22.  Keller is the source for the marriage statistics and the quote below about not hesitating to divorce, p. 25.  I also relied upon his discussion of the history of marriage and the search for a compatible “soul mate” (pp. 26-31).

[2] Ancient Near Eastern marriage information from Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels, Fortress Press (2003), pp. 188, 331-2, 424.