A Sermon for the Locust Grove United Church of Christ of York, PA

by Rev. James Eaton, Interim Pastor © 2024

22^nd Sunday After Pentecost • October 20, 2024

Isaiah 53:4-12, Mark 10:35-45

The city of Barcelona in Spain sits on a coastal plain in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. It’s been occupied by people since the Stone Age, and it’s been a port since before the time of Christ. In all those centuries, sailors have been able to find Barcelona by sighting the tall mountain of Montserrat that behind it, just as the Appalachian Mountains rise west of us. A cathedral sits up there now but long before the cathedral, the caves were homes. It’s easy for me to imagine a sailor seeking harbor, sighting Montserrat hours and hours before seeing Barcelona itself, knowing they have a definite destination, knowing where they are going. I get the same feeling every time I come here to Locust Grove. There’s the long drive down the highway, a few miles down Mount Joy street, the left turn we sometimes miss and then the tall steeple of this meeting house. It calls me, and I always smile seeing it. I know where I’m going; I know there will be all of you, friends, brothers and sisters in Christ, I know what we are doing together. Today’s reading from Mark is a steeple, it’s a mountain, it’s a signpost to tell us where we are going following Jesus. Do you see the mountain? Do you see the signal? Are you ready to come along?

If we glance backward in the story, we remember Jesus’ encounter with the rich man, a man Jesus instantly loved, yet one whose faith would not carry him beyond the safety of his riches to follow. What riches do is promise is comfort and safety. Riches insulate you from suffering; they did then, they do now. I wonder how sad it made Jesus when he failed; I wonder how he felt comparing the man’s rejection to his own mission. Just after that, just before what we read this morning, Jesus again shares his view of the mountain he is climbing, the way he is walking.

He took the twelve aside again and began to tell them what was to happen to him, ³³saying, ‘See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; ³⁴they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.’ [Mark 10:31b-34]

Nothing safe there; nothing comfortable. 

The disciples don’t get it. It’s striking if you look at the whole story. This is the third time Jesus has told them about where he’s going. The first time, Peter rebukes him, the same word used about Jesus casting out demons; Peter means to cast out this idea of suffering. The second time, the disciples don’t understand and are afraid to ask Jesus what he means. This third time they seem too concerned about themselves to really take it in. Just before this, after Jesus says that riches and the comfort and safety they create make it hard to be saved, Peter says, “What about us?” And here we have James and John asking to be his right-hand men when he comes into power. It’s clear what they have in mind: Jesus is going to go to Jerusalem, work some major miracles, defeat the Romans and the Herodians and presto become king. Pow! Zowie! Super Jesus to the rescue! All kings need helpers; they want the top slots. It turns out the other disciples do too, they get mad about James and John putting in their bid first. They all want to be rich and powerful. They all think that’s what success means. Don’t we?

Most Christians have never truly embraced Jesus as a suffering servant any more than the first disciples did. Jacquelyn and I spent the last week in Spain and Spain is littered with cathedrals. We go to them because that’s where the art is and much of the art depicts Jesus suffering: Jesus being scourged, Jesus crucified, Jesus on the cross. We call them “dead Jesi” I once counted 12 in one room in a museum. But most of them are in churches dripping with gold and rich, ornate fixtures. Jesus suffers; the church does not.

It’s easy to just appreciate the art and roll our ideas at the implied theology, to see it as the high tide mark of Medieval Catholicism but contemporary Christianity here in America is often no better. So many today have swapped the passion and suffering of Jesus for Christian Nationalism, a sort of self-made church which replaces the cross with an American flag. Like James and John, we’d like to be powerful. We’d prefer taking up a weapon to offering the other cheek.

Jesus has nothing to do with Christian Nationalism. Instead, he points us back to Isaiah and the image of a servant. He says explicitly, “…whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. [Mark 10:44]” and he uses the word suffer to describe his mission. Just like us, ancient people thought success meant avoiding suffering, so the words of Isaiah must have shocked them. What kind of Messiah, what kind of king is crushed? What kind of Messiah, what kind of king is oppressed and afflicted? Just like us, when we think of suffering, their first impulse is to turn away; the second is to blame someone, often the person who suffers. The whole Book of Job is devoted to the problem of suffering and the answer proposed by Job’s friends is that it must be his fault.

But Jesus has a different understanding of suffering. He sees it not as an invitation to blame but as an occasion inviting response. The Gospel of Luke has a story not in the others in which Jesus is explicitly asked who is to blame for suffering and he replies that the problem is not who to blame but how to act; there he tells a parable in which the challenge of suffering is to repent and to bear good fruit. Now, Paul says in Galatians, 

…the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, generosity, faithfulness, ²³gentleness, and self-control. [Galatians 5:22f]

Jesus describes his own suffering as a ransom. In his time, ransom was a word often used about a process for reclaiming someone from slavery. The fruit of the mission of Jesus is not political, it is instead a transformation of our lives so that they are changed and become about loving others. It is literally an inspiration: that is to say, an implanting of the Spirit of God into our hearts. We see that inspiration when we bear the fruit of the Spirit.

We see this on the large canvas of some lives in a way that transforms our community. Martin Luther King, Jr.. Writing about his own life and struggle against the slavery of racism, said, 

My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. … I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself and heal the people involved in the tragic situation which now obtains. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive. [Christian Century 77 April 1960 pg. 510]

King refused to let his suffering bind him; he refused to seek safety from suffering. On the last night of his life, speaking to sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee, where the whole legal establishment of the city was against them and there were threats on his life, he said,

[delivered 3 April 1968, Mason Temple (Church of God in Christ Headquarters), Memphis, Tennessee]

In that terrible moment when that shot rang out, I know that the shooter was the slave, enslaved by the hatred of racism and the man he shot, that man of God, was a free man following Christ. Like Jesus, he knew the occasion of suffering; and like Jesus, he knew it as an opportunity to set God’s people free, to be a ransom for many, to live out inspiration.

 Well, it’s always dangerous to talk about a heroic, well known person. Because it’s easy to listen and cheer him on and think, what a hero he was. But we are not all heroes. We are not all great men and women. We are simply here, getting through this day and the next. We’re not wondering how to change the world, we’re wondering what’s for dinner tonight and did I take my pills. But we encounter suffering as well. Someone dies and we grieve. We think we’re doing fine and fall or suddenly the doctor gets that look, and we hear terrible news. What about us? I admire Dr. King, but what about the rest of us? 

So I want to tell you about another person who is a hero but perhaps only to me. Her name was Mattie and I knew her when I was first in the ministry. I thought of her as an old woman and you know, she was probably younger than I am now. Our frame of reference changes, doesn’t it? Shortly after I was called to her church as the pastor, she became very ill and went into the hospital. She was in a lot of pain at times, but she always managed to smile when I walked in the door. One day I went to see her and got to meet several of her family; after a little bit, she kicked them out and said, “I need to talk to the Reverend privately.” So they left, she had me close the door and then, she said, “Reverend, I’m going to die.” Now, I’d encountered people who were dead but that was my first one who announced it ahead of time. Then she told me she needed me to do something that was hard: this woman who is lying in a hospital bed, telling me she’s dying, she’s telling me it will be hard. And then she asked me to lie. “My family can’t admit I’m going and it will upset them and they’ll start fighting if you tell them I’m dying, so I need you to pretend you don’t know.” I was young then: 28, and I had pretty rigid principles and they didn’t include lying. But Mattie was so worried about her family that I agreed. I didn’t get it then, to be honest but I do now. There she was, laying in what a month or so later turned out to be her death bed, but she wasn’t fearing anything, she was just worried about her family, she was just loving her family.

We can spend our lives trying to avoid any suffering, looking down on those who do suffer, discussing why it’s their fault. Jesus summons us to another way, the way of love, the way of servanthood, the way of suffering love. Power and riches are no part of the mission of Jesus; they are no part of our mission. His mission is to transform us, to ransom us from the slavery of the world and to light our lives with the light of the spirit. And he asks today, as he asked then, “Are ye able?” May we become a blessing by saying yes, Lord, yes, I am able.

Amen.