Finding freedom through love
Proper 21B  |  Mark 9:38-50

The last couple of weeks we’ve been talking about hubris and failure. I don’t think I actually used the word hubris either time, but I should’ve. It’s a good word. And it perfectly encapsulates the disciples’ problem.

The thing about hubris is that when we are full of it, we can’t see it.

So we think we’ve come up with the right answer. And maybe we have. But what then? We often think right answers lead to…good grades, maybe? Accolades? Scholarships? Acceptance into prestigious institutions of higher learning? And then what? You go to Harvard, you can write for the NY Times, clerk for Supreme Court Justices. Teach in any august institution where you can lift up the next generation of elite thinkers. Then run for senate. The sky is the limit.

And look at all of those dumb people you passed along the way.

When getting a right answer leads us to elevate ourselves above other people, we’re making a mistake. And when we are used to offering right answers, we tend to make that mistake a lot.

We see this with the disciples.

Two weeks ago, we talked about how Peter gave a right answer he didn’t fully understand. And yet he obviously thought he was a Big Man on Campus. Then Jesus rebuked him, called him Satan, and literally put him in his place: behind him.

Then comes the Transfiguration and with it, the disciples were unable to exorcize a demon that was tormenting a boy. Jesus had to do the work himself, telling them that they offered the wrong intention when dealing with that demon.

Soon after, Jesus is predicting his death again. And what are the disciples doing? They’re arguing about which of them is the greatest. To which Jesus says the first shall be last—the greatest must be servants. Then he picks up a child and says that how they treat this little one is how they treat Jesus and God.

Hubris has blinded their thinking, confounded their ability, and prevented them from doing the work of Jesus Christ. Hubris. They think they are great. That they are right. That they deserve what they get, and what they get better be the best. They are following Jesus, so they must be the most important humans in the world. They deserve this.

That is the most insidious word.

In English. In western culture. In the United States. Deserve. Because we base deserve on something other than the grace of God. The generous gift of God. God’s thankfulness and faith in the least of these.

No, deserving in our world is always about merit and reactivity. It is about rewarding the great and punishing the weak. So the rich deserve their riches and the poor deserve their suffering. The high performers deserve their accolades and the low performers deserve their suffering. The business owners deserve their tax breaks and hourly employees…deserve their suffering.

Notice how much a meritocracy is a matter of having faith in the system itself being just. That our own sense of right and wrong, of generosity and gratitude make no difference—they have no impact on the system at all. That we can see how unjust something can be and yet we still think someone earned their place. By studying harder or perhaps they squandered their opportunities and deserve their suffering.

And yet, also most of us get it—that it isn’t just, that deserving isn’t really how it is. Or at least we can recognize its limitations and see that it, too, fails to create a just society.

Jesus rejects the very idea of deserving. And therefore, by extension, the merit-based system. I mean, he grabbed random dudes to be his disciples. And Mary Magdalene was clearly the smartest of them.

Undeserved

It takes our recognizing our own implicit bias toward ordering society in a hierarchical system with insiders and outsiders, with betterthans and lesserthans, with stongerthans and weakerthans, with people who have been working in the fields all day and people who couldn’t find work and only got in at the last moment and we want to say These people don’t deserve it! How dare they get the same! We have to see how blind we are before we can recognize how blinded the disciples are when they see someone else successfully exorcizing demons in the name of Jesus. Someone without the right credentials. Didn’t get the right degree with the right training. Didn’t have to prove himself to a Commission on Ministry or shmooze the bishop.

We have to recognize that the disciples are royally cheezed because this guy might, potentially ruin the brand. And meanwhile, they are powerless. They are powerless to stop him. So they enlist Jesus’s help.

But remember, too, that they are powerless to exorcize those demons themselves. Just a few verses ago none of them could exorcize the demon that was causing incredible suffering to a young boy.

They could. Now they can’t. What’s the difference? Their hubris. Their jealousy. Their reactionary rage and undeniable self-importance.

Overcoming distraction

This gospel has a distractingly harsh tone. Particularly as Jesus speaks to the disruptive, oppressive character of hands and feet and eyes causing us to stumble—and what we need to do to eliminate that stumbling. And I’m worried we might miss the point. That it isn’t about seeing smut and feeling lust, so we gouge our eyes out just in case—this isn’t about self-mutilation or an oppressive demand for self-regulation. These are examples for our relationships with other people! Jesus is imploring us not to throw ourselves at another’s feet to trip them up. To seek their destruction. 

And where else does Jesus speak of this? Isn’t this a variation on the theme? Of God’s command not to exploit and oppress others? And hasn’t Jesus already offered an alternative vision for exploiting people: to love and serve them?

This is why the disciples’ argument about greatness just before this feeds directly into this moment. Because greatness, superiority, taking up residence upon a pedestal from which we can condescend and evaluate, dictate and demand, castigate and demoralize, not just commanding others with our sheer awesomeness but putting people, not behind us, but beneath us—to trample and keep down. Saying to ourselves that they’re just not as good.

And historically, this attitude, this vice has led to the demonization, dehumanization, and murder of immigrants, laborers, activists, gay or trans persons, the disabled, native populations, the Japanese, blacks and hispanics, communists and socialists, the 1985 firebombing of a city block in Philadelphia, now Jews and Palistinians; this isn’t greatness. It’s villainy. It is sin.

And it comes from hubris and that sense of superiority. Of place. Specialness. That we deserve this. We have a right, not to safety among the many people in the world, but to safety without them anywhere in the world. Genocide.

The Fruit

This is the fruit of hubris and deserve and plays for power. Oppression, exploitation. Sin. And the disciples don’t see it, of course. They’re worried about the mission and the brand. They don’t know this guy.

But we also always worry about those things. And we never know the guy. And Jesus instead claims the guy because he’s doing the work. Work they can’t do! Work that they are failing to accomplish. Because they are more worried about this guy than the child Jesus just had in his arms.

Jesus even says, in no uncertain terms, that this man is that child! So they need to stop getting in his way! Stop thinking they are better than he is. Stop thinking that he is unworthy, the wrong kind, not on the team. Our fears aren’t always our best guide. Often they compel us to distrust, dismiss, then oppress.

We can often identify certain ways we don’t align with Jesus. When we stray from our work or get focused on the wrong things. The most infamous example is the idea of arguing about how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. But there are blindspots in our imagination around the divine project. When it comes to who gets to serve whom. What place power and authority have in the movement. Even what our work is for.

It is for transformation. Turning away from sin and toward God’s grace through Jesus’s Way of Love.

It is for healing the sick and casting out demons. For resisting the powerful and encouraging the spread of grace, hope, faith, and love. It is for serving more than receiving and hoping far more than fearing.

Let us work on our hearts, friends! On the distraction of power and control and order, but instead, embrace the will to serve and bless and create space for new life. For generosity and hope to flourish. That we may be a school of love, learning together, always recruiting students, and resisting the temptation to give grades to each other. Just joying in our work, this beloved company, and the indisputable grace that flows into all of us, pours over all of creation, that doesn’t come from us or need us, but surrounds us and names us whole, beloved, saying listen to him, my beloved; your liberator. With him, we can be free. Let us all be free.