What Do You Want Me to Do for You? (Mark 10:46-52)

So when Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” I’m pretty sure I know how to respond. “This or that,” I think, is what will enable me better to follow Jesus “on the way.” A little tuck here, a pinch off there, and I’ll be good as new. I don’t need much. Already in pretty good shape.

But what if Jesus’ vision of what I need is different? What if Jesus sees a completely different road from the one I’ve been trained to expect? What if following Jesus is being given eyes to see that what formerly looked like failure is precisely the path down which I’ve been called?

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The Taste of True Glory (Mark 10:25-45)

What the disciples demonstrate they don’t understand about Jesus’ mission has less to do with whether or not it will come true, but what it might mean if it does come true.

What do I mean?

Simply this: the disciples ask to have important positions alongside the new messiah, to be included in all the grand happenings after Jesus comes into his glory. They assume they know exactly what that glory will look like. That they don’t grasp Jesus is going to be killed as a common criminal demonstrates that they don’t really comprehend what kind of glory Jesus is going to come into—a kind of 'glory' to which nobody aspires.

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On the Way to What? (Mark 10:17-31)

In the young man’s search to inherit eternal life, Jesus shows him that he needs the poor just as much as they need him. So, when the young man walks away dejected, it’s not only because he can’t bear to part with his stuff. Part of what drives him away is the thought of letting go of a system in which he has few needs, in favor of a system in which the powerless are on equal footing, a system in which the rich looking to inherit eternal life need the poor ... as much as the poor looking for an equitable community where everyone has enough need the rich.

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A World for People Different from Me (Mark 10:2-16)

Jesus argues that God set down the law as a way of establishing a community whose primary purpose is to protect those who are often too defenseless to stand against the way the world is ordered. In other words, Jesus offers a vision of God’s reign that turns the taken-for-grantedness of those who are privileged on its head, and stands beside those who are too easily trampled by folks at the top of the food chain.

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It Takes Practice (James 5:13-20)

According to James, we’re not called to believe the right things, say the right things, or have the right bumper stickers on our cars. According to James, our job is live like Jesus asked us to live.

Simple. Do the things Jesus did and people will see Jesus standing right in front of them. Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, house the homeless, bind up the broken-hearted, give voice to those who have no voice, sing with those who sing, mourn with those who mourn, heal the sick, pray and cry and laugh and confess your sins—because Lord knows we’ve all got plenty to confess. And the miracle of it is, when the church begins to act like Jesus—it’s its own best advertisement.

And we don’t do any of those things because by doing them we’ll be successful, attract hoards of young families pulling trailers full of cash into our parking lot. We live like Jesus because it’s the right thing to do—because Jesus asked us to.

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Helping in Bearing Our Crosses (Mark 8:27-38)

Jesus isn’t talking about some subjective experience, some inconvenience, like being near-sighted or having an uncle whose an overbearing loudmouth nobody wants to sit next to at Thanksgiving dinner. The cross is something we decide to bear, something we take up, not some physical infirmity, our aches and pains. This is a voluntary thing, not something thrust upon us by genetics or lack of aptitude or just sheer bad luck—things over which we have no control.

The crosses we bear, like Jesus before us, have to do with the consequences we suffer in our determination not to stay silent in the face of injustice, with the pain and suffering we embrace as those who try to live like Jesus by saying “yes” to the vulnerable and the destitute, while saying “no” to those who operate the machinery of the death-dealing systems of domination.

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Just A Crumb (Mark 7:24-37)

I believe this Syrophoenician woman challenges us to encounter newness and change not as a threat, but as God trying to break in among us and stretch our understanding of how big this welcome is we’re supposed to be giving, how expansive is the vision of just who God wants to offer hospitality to.

So, here’s what I think: We ought to be asking ourselves what kind of gifts God is sending us in people courageous enough to seek us out to see if there’s anything to this “Jesus thing.” Because sometimes God shows up looking like the very people we’ve spent so much of our lives avoiding.

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Getting It Right on the Inside (Mark 7:1-7, 14-15, 21-23)

But Jesus knows the dangers of sounding righteous and pure, while you’re secretly wallowing in cruelty and exclusion—of saying one thing in the breathy tones of piety or patriotism, while simultaneously doing what you need to in order to retain power and influence. In other words, you better get it right on the inside first … because the inside is where God is, and the inside is where God is calling you to throw open the doors and invite everyone, to embrace those who are different from you, to love those who look and talk in ways that are foreign to you, those who make you uncomfortable because you’re positive they don’t meet your exacting standards of propriety and decorum, those you’re sure God can’t possibly love the way they are.

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There Was No One (Ephesians 6:10-20)

In other words, according to Isaiah, there was a time when God alone was seeking justice for the weak and the powerless. The author of Ephesians says that the community of the faithful, because of the example of Jesus, needs to take its place alongside God, to put on the same armor God put on all those years before in Israel—not so that we can fight our individual demons, but so that justice will no longer stand at a distance and truth will no longer stumble in the public square.

Paul says that we’re part of the divine Justice League—because justice is precisely what God desires, but what is too often nowhere to be found.

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Actual Bread (John 6:1-21)

In the ancient Near East, the small number of the rich and the powerful, the rulers and their retainers benefitted from a political and economic system where a few lived well, while the rest of the population had to scratch out a living by the skin of their knees and fingertips. That is to say, the folks in charge had a vested interest in promoting the belief that religion is about holiness and spirituality, and should, at all costs, avoid such messy things as economics and politics—because once the peasants start wondering whether or not the system is giving them a raw deal, the whole thing starts unraveling.

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You Give Them Something to Eat (Mark 6:30-44)

In the new reign over which Jesus presides, the sick are healed, the hungry are fed, the outcast are welcomed, the forgotten are remembered, and sinners are forgiven—for the simple reason that that’s what God wants. That’s the way God is. Perhaps it doesn’t make good business sense to go to all that trouble for people who can’t offer you anything in return, but that’s God’s idea of a good time ... lavish, extravagant, unthinkable.

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How Will They Know? (John 13:31-35)

"I’ve seen people kicked off food stamps by Christian politicians who announce their 'love' with words like 'personal responsibility' and 'incentivizing the poor.'

"I’ve seen people who claim to follow Jesus 'love' immigrants by putting their children in cages.

"I’ve seen homeless LGBTQ kids who’ve been 'loved' out into the street by families with Jesus dripping from their lips.

"Love, at least the way it gets enacted in our world, appears to be a much more malleable concept than we like to believe."

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When Church Gets Interesting (Mark 6:1-13)

But maybe what Mark intends for his readers to understand is that, no matter how you slice it, this following Jesus stuff is really inconvenient. If you’re true to the gospel, then not everybody’s going to like what you have to say. Perhaps the point is in trying to negotiate the troubled middle ... between making Jesus so innocuous that he starts looking like the inoffensive neighbor on a Nickelodeon sitcom and identifying with him so closely that you start being insufferable in the way that ordinarily makes you cringe when you see it in others.

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The Other Side (Mark 4:35-41)

But for those people who’ve regularly found themselves oppressed and marginalized, for those whose history always seems to get erased when it challenges the systems that keep some people in power, the mega-storm of the reign of God must feel like the very breath of God. It feels like a peace that that finally establishes justice and equity for all God’s children, especially those who’ve spent their lives living on the other side—in the dark unforgiving environs that all the polite people have studiously tried to avoid.

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Walking the Margins (Mark 5:21-43)

What I find interesting about these two intertwined stories is the issue of how short-sighted they make Jesus appear on the front end. In both cases, Jesus participates in activity guaranteed to marginalize him in everyone’s eyes. In both cases, he risks the social and political costs of being unclean by touching those who are unclean. A true test of your convictions is what you’re prepared to look like a complete idiot for—what you’re willing to lose everything for.

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The Kingdom of God Isn't Always Good News (Mark 4:26-34)

When we say “reign of God” in church, it sounds like good news. But to Caesar, to the powerful, to the people who always come out smelling like roses, to the people who benefit from a nice, orderly system that they alone control and benefit from—it doesn’t sound like good news at all. It sounds like the end of everything that has consistently given them advantages that most people will never enjoy.

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When Your Faith Makes People Nervous (Mark 3:20-35)

"For too many people in our culture, being Christian means obsessing about what average people do with their genitals, while ignoring what wealthy people do with their checkbooks.

"It means embracing people who say 'Merry Christmas,' while ignoring babies born into squalor and poverty.

"Christianity, for too many people today, means 'saving souls for Jesus,' while often despising those same souls until they have the decency and good sense to become more like you."

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No Cheap Grace (Isaiah 6:1-13)

We live in a world where the deck has been historically and consistently stacked against those who haven’t had the power to protect themselves and their children. Racism, huge disparities in wealth and opportunity, xenophobia, misogyny, vast repositories of prejudice against LGBTQ people and the disabled. These are wrongs that can’t be fixed with well-intentioned expressions of regret. Sometimes, when things are bad enough, historically entrenched enough, systems need to be dismantled and rebuilt.

Jesus called such a dismantling and rebuilding “the reign of God.” According to Isaiah, according to the Gospels, when “sorry” isn’t enough to fix the old world, we need a new world.

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A New Unsettling Force (Acts 2:1-21)

The temptation is to believe that if you’re doing the right thing for all the right reasons that you should win everyone’s approval. How can anybody be mad at you? You’re just trying to do the right thing?

But that’s not how it works. Sometimes doing the right thing can get you fired. Ask Jesus, sometimes doing the right thing can get you killed. I want to say to folks who claim that Jesus makes everything better: 'Have you ever actually met this Jesus? I don’t know about you, but every time I bump into him he’s stomping around in steel-toed boots, busting up furniture and smashing the good dishes.'

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Re-drawing the Circle (Acts 8:26-40)

The circle of the beloved community isn’t wide enough until the poor and the powerless get to sit at the same table with the rich and the powerful.

It isn’t wide enough until that corner of the lunch room where they sit has been moved to the center, and the kids who’ve never had a voice get to sing like angels.