Proper 24 (October 16-22)
Texts: Mark 10:35-45;
Isa 53:4-12; Heb 5:1-10
See also the accompanying Sermon Notes
“COLUMBUS DAY” OR “INDIGENOUS PEOPLE DAY”:
GOVERNANCE BY SERVITUDE OR SERVICE
I’d like to begin with a rather bold claim. What we do here this morning and every Sunday morning — something that followers of Jesus have done for two thousand years now since that night before he died — what we do here each and every week is very much related to our American experiment with democracy. I believe that some of the fruit produced by the Christian practice of Holy Communion has finally yielded the Democratic ideal, the ideal posed by our founders when they declared that all people are created equal. Equality. Every person being given an equal chance to succeed and flourish in a community of friends and citizens. For nearly 250 years now that’s what our nation has been striving to be.
And that’s what this weekly meal is about, this meal into which we are baptized. From the very beginning of the Christian faith movement, church communities were an alternative to empire, where leadership comes from the top down based on very unequal relationships within the community. Church communities were an alternative in which each baptized person was equal in worth, part of a Beloved Community based on mutually serving one another. Several hundred years later the church allied itself with the Roman Empire, and churches became less of an alternative to empire. The Church became more and more like empire. Yet we continued this weekly practice of Holy Communion and reading the teachings of its founder, the one we call Lord. And so I believe that as our ancestors who came to this country got out from under the European empires, they began to dream of an alternative governance. Democracy. Building community around the ideal of all God’s children being created equal. It’s an ideal that we’ve never quite arrived at yet, but we’ve continued to inch closer.
We are now sixteen days away from an election, however, at which I believe that American experiment is on the ballot. It could come to an end — or at the very least, a major setback — because of the movement of Christian Nationalism which I’ve been talking about throughout this year. And our Gospel Reading this morning makes the stakes crystal clear. Jesus makes the two alternatives of governance stand in stark contrast, as opposites, really: “You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them. But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life a ransom for many.”
What has led up to this moment? Let’s take a step back for a wider look. Two chapters earlier in Mark’s Gospel, in a passage we read five weeks ago (September 15; Proper 19), Jesus takes his disciples to the capital city of their region, Caesarea Philippi, to ask them the urgent political question. Peter gets it right by declaring, “You are the Messiah.” That’s the Hebrew, “Messiah.” The Greek is “Christ.” Both mean the “anointed one” of God — the king, the one God has put in charge. But Jesus suspects that they have what that means all wrong, so he begins to teach them that his messiahship will begin with being rejected by the Jewish leadership and killed, before being raised on the third day. Sure enough, Peter tries to rebuke Jesus, showing his misunderstanding of what Jesus’ messiahship means.
What comes before today’s reading is the third time that Jesus tries to teach his disciples about his messiahship. Here’s the two verses immediately before we pick up today’s reading. Jesus says to his disciples, “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; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” And once again, the disciples show their lack of understanding. This time it’s James and John, the sons of Zebedee, showing their misunderstanding of messiahship in terms of that age-old imperialism, the age-old nationalism, in which their leaders Lord it over them. They think Jesus the Messiah has come to turn the tables so that they will lord it over the Gentiles. They dream of being at his right and left hands when that happens. Cabinet members, so to speak, in his regime of glory. Jesus is talking about his glory in terms of the cross, and hinting that it will be someone else on his right and left — two bandits crucified with him.
We began this morning by lifting up the practices at the heart of our Christian community: being baptized into God’s family and then sharing a weekly meal we call Holy Communion. Now notice how Jesus mysteriously references these two practices in his answer to James and John: “You don’t know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or be baptized with the baptism that I am baptized with?” You see? Then he tells them the key to understanding the two practices at the heart of Christian community: a governance based on equality in mutually serving each other, modeled by even, or should I say especially, the leaders. He comes as a Messiah who serves. And he specifically contrasts it with the governance they know all too well, the Gentiles who lord it over them. He needs them to understand that his messiahship isn’t just about turning the tables in a governance that features the same kind inequality of some ruling it over the others. No, Jesus’ messiahship represents a fundamentally different kind of governance, a governance where there can never be any kind of servitude or enslavement because even, and especially, the leaders set the example of mutual service between equals. Jesus came not to turn the tables within the same kind of imperialistic, nationalistic governance. He came to turn the page on that form of governance itself. He came to usher in God’s reign in which God’s children find a way to serve one another in love and forgiveness, in order to help one another flourish.
Brothers and Sisters, I believe that the American experiment with democracy has been an effort to get there, to that new form of governance. Not just to turn the tables on the kind of imperialism humankind had known for centuries, but to actually turn the page on a different kind of governance altogether. Democracy. A community where everyone is treated as being created equal, friends. Where we serve one another, even and especially our leaders. But from the beginning we’ve also held onto the old form of governance, especially when white males viewed themselves as in charge over women and people of color. We began with the ideal of all people being created equal, but then set things up in ways that only white male landowners where actually treated as equal. It’s so important the advances we made in extending the vote, where we are all literally equal, with one vote for each person. Over the past 250 years we even fought a Civil War over those initial mistakes. In the last fifty years, we’ve made great strides in recognizing the equality of women, people of color, differently abled people, and LGBTQ people. I believe that Christian Nationalism is a reaction against those strides forward, an effort to block and reverse America’s movement to finally turn the page with a new form of self-governance among equals.
Let me conclude this morning with the meme you can find at the end of your Sermon Notes. This past Monday was the holiday we used to call Columbus Day. Increasing numbers of people have begun to call it Indigenous People Day, and I believe for very good reason. It’s not what critics call “revisionist history.” No, the move to Indigenous People Day is based on corrections to our history based on very good evidence. In this case the extensive diaries of Christopher Columbus himself. We can read from Columbus’ own hand how he used indigenous people for target practice, how he used indigenous women for sex trafficking, and how he enslaved them for his own aggrandizement. The meme provides an example of his own words from his diaries:
Here, too, we see the contrast in the two alternatives to governance. Columbus continues to think in terms of imperialism and nationalism, in which its OK for one group of people to lord it over, and even enslave, others. And the indigenous peoples he encountered in this land represented the other form of governance, a more egalitarian self-governance among equals who were generous in serving one another, and even serving strangers. And notice the terrible and tragic irony. The imperialistic monster who killed and enslaved others did so in the name of Christ, using the excuse of calling the others “pagans,” worthy of his enslavement. The indigenous people were made to learn a hard lesson.
Brothers and Sisters, here’s the lesson I believe we must learn in following Jesus. Over the centuries our way of Christianity took on too many elements of imperialism and nationalism, thinking we Christians were made to rule the world. When we listen to the indigenous wisdom of our fellow citizens of color today, I think we learn to hear the more authentic voice of Jesus again. Remember, Jesus was an indigenous man in the first century Roman Empire. He spoke with an indigenous voice of his people that had suffered many centuries of being ruled over by others. It is this authentic voice of Jesus, straight from our Gospels, that we need to hear as we go to the polls in 16 days. Will we let the practice of this weekly meal, in which we are called to openly and generously serve one another, will we let this practice be our guide to more fully moving into the wonder and the promise of a true democracy of equals? Will we listen to the voice of the indigenous man, our Lord Jesus, who came to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many? Amen
Paul J. Nuechterlein
Bethania Lutheran Church,
Racine, WI, October 20, 2024
