Title: The Powerful Weakness
This is one of those times when I don’t always know where to go in a
sermon, so I am going to do a little wandering today, sharing with you a
story I’ve shared in another setting, and yet trying to hear this Scripture
from the place we find ourselves in at this moment in our history as a
congregation. In the last couple of weeks, I’ve mentioned some of the
odd things about the Gospel of Mark, one of which we see replayed
before us again—the presence of secrecy in this particular Gospel. In
the past few weeks, we saw Jesus telling the people he physically heals
to keep their healing a secret from others, and here, today, we have
Jesus going through Galilee in secret, telling no one where he was going
with his disciples in order to teach them a difficult thing, a teaching that
Peter tried to reject last week, and which caused such a ruckus that
Jesus actually calls Peter “Satan” for seeking another way other than
cross. The secrets continue today, because now he takes them through
Galilee in order to teach them a difficult thing, and he wants no
distractions from others, because what he teaches them again is what so
infuriated Peter—that the path he was destined to take was not one that
was expected of Jewish messiahs—there would be no militaries victories,
and the one whom the disciples loved would choose death rather than
be part of causing the death of others. One call from Jesus for rebellion
against the Romans from this popular figure could set off a small war,
one which the Romans would surely win, and would cause a wave of
crucifixions of the very rebels themselves. Here, in our passage today,
Jesus teaches his disciples his way of peace, a different way, than
anticipated by those who wanted to believe that Jesus would be the
Messiah that would free them from the Romans.
Instead, he teaches them a new way, about who is great and who is not.
They have been arguing about who will be first in the coming militaristic
Messianic kingdom to come, an idea that Jesus moments ago had been
trying to squash with his words about his death and new life. Another
theme that runs throughout Mark is an almost willful desire by Jesus’
listeners to misunderstand his words—he teaches them that he will be
crucified and then he will be raised, and they still don’t get it, or maybe
they don’t want to get it. “They did not understand,” so writes the author
of Mark, and I suspect the truth of the matter is they didn’t WANT to
understand, because the argument that they’ve been having amongst
themselves is all about being winners, and who would be the greatest
winner, who would sit next to Jesus in the seats of power in the future
kingdom to come.
And so Jesus gives them those familiar words we’ve heard many times
before—“whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all.”
Eugene Peterson interprets Jesus words this way: “so you want first
place? Then take the last place. Be the servant of all.” It’s the call to
choose weakness, to choose the way of the cross, as a way of seeking
true and pure power. And yet, of course, this is not power as most
people understand it—gaining power, at least as understood by Christ,
seems to be all about giving power away—you become great by making
others great, you become close to God by helping others become close
to God. And the funny thing is that this scrambles everything up—it
turns the world upside down, and so now the one farthest from the
throne, from the seat of power, becomes closest to the throne. It’s an
odd thing, one of the weird paradoxes found in the Gospels I’ve
mentioned a few weeks ago.
I think this passage is wonderful for a lot of reasons, but I think the
reason why its important in our day and age is because of what it calls us
to do, which is to sometimes to choose uncertainty over certainty,
weakness over strength, the grey areas over black and white areas in
our lives. What I mean by that is that I think that Christ calls us to be less
sure, less powerful, less arrogant, about what we think we know about
the world, and what we think we know about God. Humility is not
something we church folks talk about alot and we certainly practice it
even less than we talk about it. And, again, I don’t think I am talking
about false humility, that false martyrdom I talked about last week—I am
talking about those moments in life that require us to say, despite the
polarized climate we live in, it is that moment when we can honestly say
the hardest words: “I really don’t know.” And when we do have an
opinion or a strong belief, we also add on these even more difficult
words: “and you know, of course, I could be wrong as well.”
The hard part, I think, is knowing when to practice humility, when to
choose to be last, to serve rather than to demand that others serve us,
to listen to others even when our instincts are to do all the talking.
Rather than to talk, to express, to demand, to enlighten another, we are
asked to listen and to be enlightened by the lived wisdom of another.
Now, don’t get me wrong: listening to the wisdom of another doesn’t
mean that their wisdom has to become our wisdom, as I mentioned a
couple of weeks ago: it only means that the way of Christ means we do
more listening than talking and we don’t make the mistake of thinking
that right or correct beliefs bring us close to God—humility brings us
closer to God, and that can be practiced by those on both sides of the
questions that divide us. The hard part found in life is those moments
when we are were pretty sure we know the right way…and then we
realize that maybe, just maybe, we didn’t know what we thought we knew,
and that perhaps the issue was more complex for ourselves than we had
ever really expected.
Let me share with you a story that I’ve shared with others in another
setting, and that I want you to know I’ve received permission to share it
with you by the person I tell the story about. Many years ago, I became
good friends with a woman I’ll call Susan, though that is not her real
name. Years ago, Susan and I found ourselves sitting in my car, outside
a family planning clinic that provided abortion services, and the silence
between us at that moment as she was waiting for her appointment was
just huge. My friend Susan had become pregnant by a young man she
felt she had no real future with, and she was in the midst of her
schooling, and was about to begin her professional life, and she simply
was not ready to care for a child, nor ready to ready to carry a child to
full term to be adopted. It was an awful situation for her, and this
decision to terminate her pregnancy was hard and difficult for her, and
the hardness of it all seemed to tumble into that car at that very moment,
as we were sitting there, waiting for her early afternoon appointment. I
think were both still stunned, stunned that she found herself having to
make this difficult choice, and I was stunned personally because I was
sitting next there with her, full of ambiguity and mixed feelings, not
knowing why I was feeling so uneasy. You see, I have been a bleeding
heart liberal for years, and like all good liberals, I totally believe in a
women’s right to choose to make this difficult decision—and I still believe
that to this day. I think up to that point I had been what I now call a
“sloppy liberal,” that is, someone who just sort of takes on all the liberal
positions on issues that liberals are supposed to take, WITHOUT doing
much thinking about them, about the reasons behind those beliefs and
positions—abortion and a woman’s right to make that choice for herself
was just one of the many things I accepted because that is what good
liberals believe.
But what happened for me during that week between the moment she
told me she was pregnant and the moment we found ourselves in front of
that clinic was my own painful process of sifting through my emotions and
thoughts and feelings about her decision to end the pregnancy. What I
found inside of me was a lot more ambiguity than I had expected to feel,
a lot more misgivings that I would have liked to have admitted, because
my comfortable, sometimes smug, liberal beliefs ran smack into real life,
into a situation where black and white, the good and bad, started shifting
into grays, different shades of right and wrong came into view, and it was
not easy anymore to feel like you knew for sure what was right or wrong.
Though I did not think the fetus she carried in her was a child at that
moment, the reality is that it had the potential of being a child and I really
struggled with the reality of that for a few days. And yet, I also knew the
complicated and painful history of women’s fight to win some control over
their lives, especially in relationship to their bodies, and the struggle for
self-determination that has almost always begun with the right of woman
to have control over their own bodies.
The worst part if it all, I think, was the question she asked me afterwards,
after her appointment, a question I didn’t want to answer, it was almost in
the form of an accusation--“what were you thinking when we were in the
car, waiting for me to go inside?” She wanted to know what I was feeling,
what I was thinking, because she knew something had happened during
that week with me, and that I had struggled a little with her decision,
though I know I she had struggled a lot more deeply and painfully than I
ever would with it. I think she saw that silence between us as my
conveying some sort of judgment upon her, though I never meant to
convey that, nor do I believe I ever did judge her, and I suspect that
some of her interpretation of it was part of her own struggle with this
difficult decision. I do know that I didn’t want to tell her of my own
struggle with her decision—I mean, I get that its her decision, not mine
and I fully supported as her right to make it, and I realize that I was real
down on the list of people who had much of a right to struggle with it,
especially in comparison to her, but I have to admit that I felt such
unease because of what could have been, of what might have been for
her, and it had showed in my silence, and she had seen the turmoil
within me as it was etched into the silence we shared in that car, outside
the clinic. The only answer I had, the only answer to this question that I
was afraid to answer, was the truth, and I shared with her what I had felt,
and why I felt that that silence so many years almost seemed to engulf
us, which was the truth about my own ambiguous feelings about was
about to happen. I wish I had been honest earlier with her, before that
moment, because I made that incredibly difficult moment even harder for
her.
We remain very good friends even to this day, and I continue to be pro-
choice and have even served on a clergy panel for Planned Parenthood
since then. But that day, sitting in that car, sifting through my ambiguous
emotions and thoughts, and completely empty of all self-assurance and
self-righteousness, was one of those moments where I think I got what it
means to be humble, to actually say the words, “I don’t know—I thought I
knew, but maybe I don’t know as much as I thought, and maybe the issue
is more complicated FOR ME than I had expected.” Now, of course, it
was a lot harder on Susan, the whole experience, but I realized that you
can have opinions and beliefs, and even then, you can know that things
like this, these kinds of hard ethical decisions, aren’t ever easy, one way
or another. I guess I understood myself more and I think I understood
those people who fervently disagree with me on this issue more, and I
must admit that I understand them better because of that experience, in
that car, sitting with my friend, both of us full of confusion and mixed
feelings, and sadness that she was having to go through difficult moment.
Humility is that moment when you and I realize that we don’t know as
much as we thought we did and that the measuring stick God uses in our
lives is not about beliefs or non-beliefs, about right doctrine or right
belief or right ethics—I think the measuring stick, for me in that car, was
how I did and didn’t care for my struggling friend in that moment. To
draw closer to God, I must draw closer to her, and to be with her, in this
moment. Think about this for a moment: the disciples keep thinking that
to be close to God means stepping over and on each other, in an effort
to get closer to the throne, to the seat of power, but, in contrast Jesus
seems to be saying that greatness is all about drawing closer to each
other and helping each other and being present with each other, sitting
in some car somewhere with a friend who is making one of the most
painful decision in her life, and letting go of whether or not it is the right
or wrong decision. All the rightness and wrongness stuff, it’s not our
business—our business is to serve those who are hurting, and letting go
of any pretensions that we are burdened with being God in this world,
with being the eternal judge and jury in this world or the next. In many
ways, in that car, I was humbled by real life, and the complexity of a
situation at hand, and yet the worse part was that I wasn’t humbled
enough, in the sense that I couldn’t let go of my stuff enough in order to
love her in that moment, just as God loved her completely in that
moment. If I had done what I had been asked to do, which was serve her
and be with her, but as we Christians often do—I got confused about
what I being asked to do, which was to be PRESENT with her, NOT be
RIGHT about this or that issue or any issue. Christ wasn’t asking me to
be clear and unambiguous on what I believed about this moment: Christ
was simply asking me to be present to one of his children, my friend
Susan. To be weak, to be unsure, to be humbled by life and the difficult
things, and to love the one who is hurting, that is what Christ is asking us
to do, to be powerful in our weakness. Maybe next time, and because of
God’s grace and Susan’s grace, maybe there will be a next time, I will get
it right. Amen…
