The Disciples’ Dilemma

Proper 20B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago

While the world wages war, Christ calls us to wage wisdom. Waging wisdom requires highly specialized armaments. James made us a list. Outfit yourself with “purity, peace, gentleness, reasonableness (a yielding spirit), mercy, good fruits, impartiality and sincerity (James 3:17). These are not the kind of weapons which can be purchased or procured but are fruits of the Spirit God brings into being to fill faithful hearts and minds.

In the disciple’s way of thinking, the coming of the Son of Man would operate according to the same logic that built and perpetuated the Roman Empire. Jesus would rule from an earthly throne like King David. The disciples couldn’t understand how victory fit with talk of loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, or suffering for the sake of the gospel. Jesus taught them, “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). Jesus taught them to wage wisdom, not war.
Jesus asked them. “What were you talking about on the way?” (Being “on the way” is a metaphor for discipleship in Mark’s gospel. We encountered this evocative phrase last Sunday. We will see it again in coming weeks. In Greek, the word translated the ‘way’, can refer to a road or a path, or it can refer to a way of life.) Jesus and the disciples are walking to Capernaum, heading south to Jerusalem, toward the cross. Jesus told them a second time saying, “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again” (Mark 9:31).

In response, the disciples are silent. They don’t know what to say. You can almost see them looking at each other—there he goes again. “They had argued with one another who was the greatest” (vs.34). You might think the disciples were impossibly dense. Reading Mark’s gospel we think, there they go again. But to be fair, we might try replacing the word, ‘cross’ with ‘noose’. Jesus was telling the disciples the Son of Man was not going to assume the throne in Jerusalem, but be betrayed and lynched, like a common criminal. Take up your noose, Jesus was saying and follow me. It’s no wonder the disciples were confused.

While Jesus waged wisdom the disciples were still striving for worldly things. Their sense of privilege and entitlement was a tightly drawn circle around themselves, rather than an open circle making room for those whom Jesus called them to serve. Yet, I wonder, are we so different? (David Lose, Luther Seminary)
Jesus stopped to give the disciples an object lesson. He gave them a children’s sermon—using a real child. Now understand, in the world inhabited by the disciples, children were not the focus of adult energy that they are today. Children were potentially human, but not fully human, until they survived long enough to become adults. Jesus brought the child from the margins into the center. (Barbara Lundblad)

Jesus taught them to welcome the little children. Not because children are innocent or perfect or pure or cute or curious or naturally religious. Jesus wanted them to welcome the child because the child was at the bottom of the social heap (Barbara Lundblad). Jesus wanted them to become warriors of wisdom.
Open your hearts to receive one such as this, Jesus told them. These are those whom we strive for. These are the siblings to whom you now belong through your baptism into Christ. Where violence makes enemies, wisdom de-polarizes conflict. Where violence desensitizes and degrades, love re-humanizes and restores bonds of relationship that are otherwise, impossible. The way of wisdom, compared to war, is an invitation to conquer fear through compassion; to bind people in community through the capacity to become vulnerable rather than through the threat of violence.

Jesus is Lord and Savior of all. Christ Jesus has dominion over all creation. Yes. But he rules from a cross and an empty tomb. He wields, not bullets, or bombs but the transformative power of mercy, love, and forgiveness. Jesus may not have been the Savior the disciples wanted or expected. Yet he is the Savior we most need. Jesus clears the path that leads to love and the abundance of life.
This was the disciples’ dilemma. Jesus waged wisdom, not war. Yet, the choice has remained a difficult throughout the history of the church. The idolatry of wealth and power has deep, deep roots in the colonial Church and in American Christianity. How many Christians in America today would be shocked to realize that Jesus was not white? Or to consider that all our amassed privilege and wealth and power are not earned, or God ordained but instead ill-gotten and stolen? (Angela Denker, Red State Christians)

Many Church people still long for a Messiah to have dominion over secular America by force and threat of violence. They are once again attempting to write a different ending to the gospel. They prefer an ending in which Jesus ascends the throne, not the cross. But, unlike the first disciples, they are not being silent but preparing to take control.

I am speaking, of course, about Project 2025 and of so-called Christian nationalism which is neither Christian nor patriotic but opposed to the gospel of Jesus and to American democracy. “Project 2025 is a plan to impose a form of Christian nationalism on the United States. Its patriarchal view does not recognize gender equality or gay rights and sanctions discrimination based on religious beliefs. Christian nationalist ideas are woven through the plans of Project 2025 and the pages of Mandate for Leadership. Its thousands of recommendations include specific executive orders to be repealed or implemented. Laws, regulations, departments, and whole agencies would be abolished. It portrays anyone who opposes its sweeping ambitions as being enemies of our republic” (Paul Rosenberg, “Meet the New Apostolic Reformation,” Salon Magazine, 01/02/24).

So, here we are again. Like the first disciples, we face a choice. Look to Jesus to wage wisdom, not war. Remember Jesus’ object lesson. Look to for those in your midst, Jesus said, who have no standing, no wealth, no voice, no value, and there, you will find me. These are the siblings to whom we now belong through our baptism into Christ. “Oh, may our hearts and minds be opened, fling the church doors open wide. May there be room enough for everyone inside. For in God there is a welcome, in God we all belong. May that welcome be our song!” (ACS #1038).