16/50: Redefining discipleship
U2 has always brought home what it means to be a disciple of Jesus. This song never gets old.
““If anyone causes one of these little ones—those who believe in me—to stumble, it would be better for them if a large millstone were hung around their neck and they were thrown into the sea. ”
I remember throwing a middle school age tantrum one day before church. “All those people are hypocrites. They only care what you look like on the outside.” I said. As an overweight kid who longed to be beautiful, I was definitely projecting some of my own self-loathing onto the folks at church. But there was some truth too, because it was at church that people commented on my weight and the cute girls got the solos in choir.
My critique of the church shifted as I got older, but it had the same substance. I was concerned that there was an in group and an out group. I worried the church was too exclusive. As a young prophet, I remember saying in front of church once, “Jesus wasn’t white or Republican.” Even in the early 1990’s, the shift of the evangelical tradition to be wedded to a political identity was not sitting right with me.
And then there was a morning in college when I woke after spending the night in the Watts neighborhood of Los Angeles where a friend was living at the time. I had listened to the helicopters overhead all night and spent time in the homes of black folks who lived nearby, hearing their stories and concerns. The next morning I drove all the way up Imperial Blvd to teach Sunday School at a mostly white megachurch in Orange County. I sat on the cushioned pews and felt the moment of departure clearly. Would I follow the voices of the privileged or the voices on the margins?
The text for today from Mark 9:38-50 is one of those that you have to preach carefully because there’s lots of violence, fire and damnation in it. But as I read it, I hear my 13, 18 and 22 year old self aligning with Jesus. When faith is about appearance, entitlement and exclusion, it is deadly. It deserves the strongest of rebukes. Followers of Jesus must be vigilant about choosing love not exclusion, aligning with the margins of our world, blessing the world with goodness and generosity.
Following that way seems easier when you’re 18 than when you’re 50 and investments have been made and privileges are entrenched. This is the path of discipleship.