Proper 7(A)
If you’ve ever read a popular magazine or watched any daytime television show
like Dr. Phil or The Doctors, you will know that they are built on the premise that
we want to be successful. We want to be successful with our diets, we want to
looks healthy and fit, we want to be successful in our marriages and in our jobs.
And these shows and articles are all about how to be successful. And whether
they are selling snake oil or giving good advice, they count on our hunger for
success to sell their products and themselves. And they usually package it as “Ten
Easy steps to a Tighter Tummy” or “Three Rules that Will Fix Your Marriage.”
Well, it has always been that way, and in today’s Gospel reading, Jesus is telling
the disciples how to be successful as his followers. But listen to what Jesus counts
as success:
If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they
malign those of his household!
Do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who
can destroy both soul and body in hell.
“Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to
bring peace, but a sword.
And the final clincher:
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever
loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not
take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Following Jesus is going to be more than wearing a I Jesus t-shirt. There is no
way that being Jesus’ disciple is going to fit neatly into an otherwise stable life.
Jesus is saying that if they want to measure their success, the yardstick against
which they should measure it is the Cross. If they are true to him, then they will
suffer as he did. People will hate them and persecute them and the only promise
is that God will be with them, and the promise that they will find real life by giving
up the false life of accommodation with the world.
It is hard for us, who have never known real persecution, to really understand
what making the choice to follow Jesus meant for the disciples. And it is equally
hard to understand what life is like for people in other cultures, who do still make
the choice to follow Jesus, even when they risk their freedom and their lives to do
so. We may risk being ignored or laughed at if we take our faith seriously. But we
probably won’t get fired or go to jail or be killed for it.
In 21st century America, those of us who are Christian, white, and educated,
are the dominant group. We have the privilege of having the most wealth and
education, the best housing and the hundred other signs of privilege that we
are accorded in this society. So rather than focus on how we are persecuted for
our faith, I want to risk thinking with you about how we persecute others. There
is a little book by Allan G. Johnson, called Privilege, Power and Difference. It is
the best description of the barriers that divide people from one another that I
have read. He doesn’t lay blame, but points out how having privilege and power
make us unaware of what others without power struggle with. Being of another
race, another religion, another ethnicity, being female or physically impaired or
homosexual, all of those things lower our privilege and our access to power. And,
of course, it is in the interests of those of us in power to stay unaware that others
lack what we have. So we easily judge the poor person who is black or Latino, who
never got a good education and whose chance at getting a job is small, and who
has to struggle every day to survive in ways that we cannot imagine. And while
we have gotten better as a society about our prejudice against Jews, we are still
often afraid of people who are Muslim or Hindu or other Eastern religions. And
consciously or not, we find ways to keep them out of power.
And this starts early. We hear our children make fun of another child and we let
it go, or perhaps we silently cheer them on. Our children learn very early on that
some people are, to use the quote from “Animal Farm,” ‘more equal than others.’
And because children learn so quickly and thoroughly, they soon figure out which
people or groups they can ignore or tease or bully. And so the pattern continues.
So I want to suggest that we hear this Gospel lesson in a different way. To follow
Jesus in 21sr century America means first, becoming aware of how we persecute
others, even unintentionally. It means hearing their stories, and beginning to
understand the ways in which they have been denied the privileges we take for
granted. And second, following Jesus for us means finding ways to change the
“rules” we take so much for granted about who gets power and who doesn’t.
There was a wonderful story about this in the news lately. A white woman was in
the grocery store with her friend, who was African American. The white woman
went through the line first and paid with a check. The cashier looked briefly at
her driver’s license and then signed off on the check. Her friend followed, and
also paid with a check. But this time, the cashier didn’t accept her driver’s license.
She wanted another form of identification. With obvious suspicion, she then
went to the book with the list of customers who have bounced checks. When the
white woman saw this, she went to the service counter and asked for a manager
to come to the checkout. When the manager got there, he said, “Is there a
problem?” The white woman said, “Yes, there is. I went through the line and paid
with a check and had no trouble. But my friend, who is black, has been treated
with disrespect and suspicion. I want to know why.” The manager, of course, fell
all over himself apologizing and immediately okayed the black woman’s check.
It was the willingness of a person in power to step in and defend the rights of
someone with less power that made the difference.
We take a risk when we champion those who lack privilege and power. We may
be scorned or ridiculed. We may risk losing friendships. People may be angry that
we are questioning the unwritten rules that we live by. But if we are going to be
true followers of Jesus, we have no other choice. Jesus spent his life reaching out
to those that society scorned. He called the rules of power and privilege of his
society into question. For those of us in power today, that is what we are called to
as well. We don’t have to do any great heroic act. We might start by simply sitting
down with someone, for example, who is black, uneducated and poor and just
asking them to tell us what their struggles are. If we can truly listen – not telling
them what they should do or why they’re wrong – we will learn things we never
knew or imagined. We must hear the voices of those who experience the world
very differently than we do, we must trust their experience and we must find
ways – even small ways – to make our society one where all people have access
to the privilege and power that we enjoy.
The promise that we are given is that it is in doing that that we will find true and
abundant life. If we cling to the privilege of this world, we risk losing the real
power, which is the power of God’s love. If we risk giving away the power of this
world, we will gain more than we could ever have imagined or hoped for.
“Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever
loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever does not
take up the cross and follow me is not worthy of me. Those who find their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it.”
Amen.
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