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 "KNOWING OUR PLACE" Job 38:1-7; Mark 10:35-45
How many "Survivor" fans are out here? Surely you've at least heard of the TV show "Survivor" unless you've lived under a rock the past four or five years. For those of you who HAVE been existing under rocks, the goal of being on "Survivor" is to win a million dollars. And you do so by being part of a so-called community: "so-called" because the purpose of living in that community is to use it for your own million-dollar ends.
The one who wins the money is the one who never gets voted off the island. And they say that the best way to keep from getting voted off is to blend in and not stand out from the crowd. It's the disagreeable people and the people who are most different that get eliminated first. So that means you survive by being just like everybody else. Another way you can insure your longevity is to make a pact with another player or players to support each other and not vote each other off the island. But that currency is only good until it comes down to you and your partner, and you know who you will vote for then!
So the word "community" gets applied to contestants on "Survivor." But in that context, "community" is only a means to achieving what you want. If we are honest about it, a better word than "community" might be "alliance" because it's all about competition, and the alliance dissolves once only two players are left.
If we wanted to go back to the very first episode of "Survivor," we'd have to go back to the year 31AD or so. And the first contestants we would find would be named James and John. They demonstrate to us this morning that they created this game! Jesus had just told all the disciples about what lay ahead of him: that he would be arrested, and beaten, and eventually killed before rising three days later. Having heard that, James and John responded by forming an alliance against all the other disciples and jockeying to see who would get to sit next to Jesus in heaven. They were far more interested in their heavenly survival than they were the need for service on earth. ------------------------------------- Some of you have told me recently about being asked a similar question. The question had nothing to do with suffering or about how to serve God on earth. The question was about what you thought you would have to say or do in order to get into the gate of heaven.
A question like that appeals to our "Survivor" mentality. It hits upon our desire to figure out what the right answer is so that we don't get "left behind," as it were. The problem with that approach is that it is fear based. And the God that we know and love and serve does not appeal to our sense of fear. God is not up to threatening our sense of well-being in order to get God's way. Considering a question like that takes the focus off God and puts it squarely onto what's in it for us. Thinking only about ourselves and our own issues saps the life right out of us And God is about creating life, not draining it dry. --------------------------------------------- Jesus goes on in his conversation with the disciples and tells them how to be real survivors. Those who wish to be greatest must be servants, he says. True "survivor" mentality relies on putting all of our trust in God. We know Who it is that laid the foundation of the earth, who created the Pleiades and Orion, who knit us together in our mothers' wombs, who knows us so well that without God's will, not a hair will fall from our heads. Trust in that kind of God breeds security in who God is and how God will provide for us.
The last couple of weeks we have talked about Job. We heard first how it was that Job got set up for tribulation. And then last week, we heard Job in chapter twenty-three complain loudly and long about his situation. He complained for the next fifteen chapters, except for the times when his so-called friends tried to comfort him, either by saying that he did something to deserve this or that he shouldn't say anything negative. And finally, in chapter thirty-eight, God gets a word in edgewise.
God goes for four chapters, and still never gives Job a straight answer. Job asks for justice, and God answers him with omnipotence. Actually, that's not a bad answer. Being reminded, gently or not, of who made the world and who designed it for our pleasure helps us to trust that the one who determined the measurements of the earth also knows our frame. And in that knowledge is perfect freedom. ---------------------------------------------------- True survivor mentality also relies on putting our welfare last, not first. We don't put our welfare last in order to avoid getting voted off the island and win a million dollars, or to get into the gate of heaven first, or to sit by Jesus when we get there. We put our own welfare last in order to serve as Jesus has taught us. True survivors know their place, and that place is last. This is neither easy nor natural nor cool. But we are able to do it because all of our trust is in God. Because we trust God, we know that God will give us all that we need. So we can set our fears aside and be about the work that he has given us to do.
Job reminds us that the worst that can happen to us is not suffering without reason; it is suffering without God. What Job wants us to know is that God does not finally abandon us. And what Jesus wants us to know is that, in the words of the spiritual, there's "plenty good room in the Father's kingdom." It doesn't matter who gets to sit next to Jesus. It matters that God loves us and Jesus calls us to service and that we are given the means and ability to do whatever they ask of us. ------------------------------------------------ So, now we are coming up on the bi-annual civic "Survivor" contest that we call Election Season. Politics in from have gotten only dirtier. They have gone from being a contest of ideas to being a contest of who can survive the most mudslinging. It's a given now that whoever chooses to run for office must submit themselves to an uncalled-for level of scrutiny.
Forty years ago, my father was elected to the state legislature as a Republican from in a time when He was honestly a pretty good guy, imperfect, but idealistic about putting on his white hat and going in to make a difference in Sometime during the campaign, he and my Mom decided to buy a new refrigerator and sell the old one to a friend By the end of the campaign, his opponent had him giving away appliances to get votes. That's just a drop in the bucket compared to the level of mudslinging in politics today. When a dethroned congressman makes the comment that he wants people to be able to see Jesus in his mug shot taken when he was put under arrest, you can see the level we have reached.
Stephen Colbert interviewed a politician this week on "The Colbert Report," and decided that he liked the guy enough to try and help him. So he pulled out a deck of cards, and asked the candidate to choose one to determine which rumor Colbert would start about the guy's opponent. Now, Stephen Colbert is a comedian! So of course this "interview" was done in jest. But it almost hurts too much to laugh.
Barack Obama has gotten a lot of publicity lately because he refuses to demonize those who are different from him. Interesting that ethical conduct is newsworthy now. His colleague, the former Republican Senator John Danforth is an ordained Episcopal priest as well as lawmaker. Danforth has just come out with a wonderful new book called Faith and Politics, which I commend to you for a balanced view on how one can be political and faithful at the same time. In his book he writes this: "Our work in God's world begins with the acknowledgement that we are not God, and that our most bitter rivals are made in God's image. That acknowledgment makes it possible for us to do the work God has given us to do: the ministry of reconciliation." I think he's been reading Job and Mark. The ministry of reconciliation requires not defiance or certainty, but humility and servanthood. ----------------------------------- So if we are going to survive as Christians in this world, Jesus reminds us of two gifts we are given to help us along the way: the gifts of baptism and communion. We do share in Jesus' baptism. We do share in the cup poured out for us all. What we experience around font and table turns the self-centered notion of "Survivor" on its head. At the font, we are all washed with the same water. At the table we're all equal. Gathering here requires us to live lives of servanthood: to submit to the same lifestyle Jesus taught, to recognize that God created the world and that God knows what is best for us and desires that for us. Even though a lot of us are gathered here, this isn't "Survivor." This is real community. That's worth much more than a million dollars. And as we are able to trust God and God's good care for us, enough so that we can put our own welfare last, we will do far more than survive.
Amen.
--------------------------------------------------------- Thank you to Ted Foote and Alex Thornburg for their insights about "Survivor" found in their book Being Disciples of Jesus in a Dot-Com World. Senator John Danforth's wonderful new book is called simply Faith and Politics, and I commend it to you for your own reading Thanks also to Barbara Brown Taylor for her sermon "Out of the Whirlwind," found in her collection of sermons Home By Another Way. |
