This week the world and the text seem to swirl around and through one another as we struggle to understand greatness and power and suffering. Any thought we had that the great received power for the good of others and that the need for suffering had already been dealt with are confused and upended by the words of Jesus. (Twenty Second Sunday after Pentecost. Proper 24 [OT 29] Mark 10:35-45.) It is cold comfort to see that the disciples struggled with the issues then just as we do now. Most of us are still very uncomfortable with the implications of the words of Jesus. Let us take hope and courage and wade into the mess!
Three years ago my reflections took a different direction. You may like to read.
Political wars and elections and scandals, natural and human made disasters, and whatever is happening in our local communities and families and hearts, confront us with questions of what does greatness look like, what is power for, and why so much suffering? These are questions for everyone and particularly for us who gather around Scripture and believe life and guidance is to be found in the written word.
Many of us will have grown up being taught that Jesus died for us, a ransom, a sacrifice, a perfect payment for imperfect people, and we tend to take it that this means that issues of greatness and power and suffering have been dealt with and that we have only to believe and to try and be good - and make sure others be good - for our world to be ok.
We tend to want the suffering of Jesus to have finished with suffering on our behalf. But this is at odds with what Jesus is saying, certainly in the gospel of Mark. For this is the third time that the disciples have got it “wrong” about suffering. Firstly in Mark 8:27 – 38 when Peter recognised who Jesus was he didn’t want Jesus to talk about suffering – that did not fit with understandings of greatness and divine power. Jesus rebuked Peter for seeing in a human rather than divine way and then challenged all the gathered that if they wanted to be followers then they needed to take up their cross and follow. Secondly in 9:30 – 37 when Jesus talks about the suffering he must undergo the disciples didn’t understand and instead argued about who among them was the greatest. Jesus takes a little child in his attempt to teach about the nature of the call and the journey of humility and vulnerability. And now this week, in the verses immediately before our reading, verses 32-34, we have Jesus again warning of the suffering to come but again the disciples respond by negotiating position in regards to power and greatness.
Each time Jesus says that he must suffer and that the disciples will too. The first time that they need to take up their own cross if they wish to follow. The second time that they need to become like little children. Last week that they will have fields of persecution as well as family and material blessing. And now Jesus says that they are to be different to their neighbours (the Gentiles) and those who rule over them who are tyrants. If they wish to be great they need to be a servant of all.
While Jesus clearly sees that his suffering and death will have a benefit for others, for all, a ransom, he does not seem to understand his suffering to exempt us from the experience of suffering ourselves. Indeed he is very clear that disciples will suffer and that we are called to be vulnerable, humble and in the service of others. The suffering of Jesus does not remove us from the terror of the human condition but takes us further into the heart of what it is to be truly human and open to the gift of divine presence. The way of the cross is not so much something Jesus did instead of us but he went first where we must all follow, including ultimately to go through death to life.
How is this good news? Sometimes I just want to be rescued and removed from the fearful mess of the human condition! Again and again we are brought to the foot of the cross – at Easter, Sunday by Sunday, by world events, by the state of our hearts – and we find the good news is that we are companioned by the Holy One of God even here, that there is nowhere and no situation in which we are abandoned and left on our own. Wherever we are Jesus is too.
Power and greatness and suffering coalesced in Jesus the Christ. Not simply did Jesus set aside greatness and power for a short time while suffering with and for us but he was the embodiment of the greatness and power of love even in suffering (How else could Jesus continue to love and forgive even from the cross?)
So what did the suffering and death, the ransom paid, by Jesus achieve? The language of ransom suggests that he paid for, or invested in, a path of liberation from the captivity of enslavement. (Making all the more extraordinary his challenge to then voluntarily become slaves of others!) If Jesus was not paying off an angry vengeful God with his suffering then his ransom was surely to the system of punishment and enslavement itself! Jesus was paying off, paying for, the deconstruction of the scaffolding that held up the old system of payment and bargaining that kept the people enslaved to one another and their ideas about a capricious God – this was the suffering sacrifice that was to end the sacrificial system.
Jesus was showing the path of liberation. And it was a radical yet unattractive path in many ways! The path led not out and above the pain and suffering of the human condition but through the very heart of it. It was not an escape clause but a commitment to full and loving emersion in the mess of creatureliness. And so it surely is for us. We know suffering and we probably have a measure of power and greatness. We are called to grow and flourish and serve in the mix not to escape suffering into power and certainly not to seek power over others.
Is there benefit to us in the suffering of Jesus if we are not spared? Yes! We are not alone or abandoned in it. It is not all there is and death, hate and fear will not have the last word. Greatness and power and love and hope and life are not negated by suffering but to be experienced in the midst of whatever happens! The divine chose to dwell among us in Jesus and continues to dwell among us in one another as we serve each other. Greatness expressed in compassion, joy, creativity and dedication to others is powerful in ways that are not quelled by suffering. War, pestilence, flood, and life threatening diagnosis can not quell the great love of God. Power manifested in courageous kindness is not wasted or without hope. We are in this mess together and our God, the source from which Jesus drew his courageous love, is here with us among the little and the lost. So let us lovingly serve one another and find liberation on this path.
Even so, come Lord Jesus the Christ, come call to us from within our lives and show us how to serve one another in love and hope.
This is my work informed by all I have heard, read and experienced. I am indebted to the wisdom of others. This week was a real struggle and I am especially grateful to:
Eric Fistler and Robb McCoy at Pulpit Fiction Podcast https://pulpitfiction.libsyn.com/
Sally Douglas & Monica Melanchthon Pentecost 22 podcast www.bythewell.com.au
John T Squires “Not to be served, but to serve: the model provided by Jesus (Mark 10; Pentecost 21B)” www.johntsquires.com
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