What are we up to?
Building a Lectionary Commentary for Modern Radicals.
I think that the question, “What would it mean to actually follow the teachings of Jesus, while still living in a modern capitalist society?” is the most important question that Christians and followers of Jesus’s teachings can attempt to answer today. I live most every day of my life in modern, capitalist America, and the fact is that Jesus did not. We come to the Bible with our own experiences and assumptions. If we don’t appropriately explore those assumptions, then they will shape our reading of Jesus’s teachings in ways that will at best obscure Jesus’s call to us and at worst subvert Jesus’s teachings to support the status quo.
In his time Jesus did not support the status quo, and I do not think that has changed in any way. Jesus was a radical, and his teachings are radical. I would like to explore how radical his teachings really are. Each week I want to walk through Jesus’s teachings by taking a look at the Gospel reading from the lectionary for each Sunday. (The lectionary is just a list of scriptures that many churches use to decide what scripture to talk about each Sunday) As we read the scriptures we will use that question of how to follow Jesus in a modern capitalist country as a lens through which to look at the text and the world around us. I hope that it will reveal a different way of understanding both the bible and the world we live in, and I believe that no matter where this journey leads us, we will have gained much from undertaking it together.
I’m calling this Journey “Radical Servanthood” because I think it most aptly explains what I believe following Jesus’s teachings entails. In a 2006 book, Henri Nouwen explained the idea this way:
Radical Servanthood, as the encounter with the compassionate God, takes us beyond the distinction between wealth and poverty, success and failure, fortune and bad luck. Radical Servanthood is not an enterprise in which we try to surround ourselves in as much misery as possible, but a joyful way of life in which our eyes are opened to the vision of the true God who chose to be revealed in servanthood... Radical Servanthood challenges us, while attempting persistently to overcome poverty, hunger, illness, and any other form of human misery, to reveal the gentle presence of our compassionate God in the midst of our broken world.
In short, I use the idea of "servanthood" to encompass how we best follow Jesus' teachings as written in the gospels. In a parable in the Gospel According to Matthew, Jesus says, “‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who are members of my family, you did it to me.’” As Rev. Harry Howe paraphrases it, “When you serve others, you also serve me.” Jesus calls us to serve others and to love our neighbors as ourselves as a foundation to following his teachings.
I call this servanthood “radical” because as a person living in the United States of America, it is not lost on me that our culture has its own messages about how to live. Living as a servant is radical in a society where one is called to be a rugged individual and make sure that they look out for their own needs first. Servanthood can’t be done alone. Living as a servant is radical in a society where the profit motive is seen as the best way to order the distribution of wealth. Servanthood is rarely profitable. Living as a servant is radical in a society where one is expected to “deserve” help from their community rather than to assume that everyone needs help. Jesus did not ask for credentials from those he fed and healed. Living as a servant is radical in a society where the goal is to accumulate money and objects to ensure personal security. Servanthood does not guarantee personal security and requires both community and faith to be secure. Living as a servant is radical in a society where our system continues to oppress generation after generation of African-Americans, immigrants, women, and the poor. Jesus teaches us that the first shall be last and the last shall be first.
Each week we will explore the teachings of Jesus in the bible and the radical idea of life as a servant to God and to the world around us. I will reveal right away that the end of this journey will not lead to one specific right answer as to how to follow Jesus. We merely set out to place the world we live in and the values of our day against the words attributed to Jesus in the Bible. I simply believe that the lessons learned from the communion of our lives and context, and the teachings of Jesus in the bible will lead us all on a journey that can change lives.
As we begin, the scripture we start with is a great example of why this work is necessary. Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23. In this story we see the very nature of Jesus that inspires this work. We often talk as if Jesus’s mission was simply to die for the sins of the world. This passage reminds us of Jesus’s mission as a social critic of his time. Jesus is called out because the people in power, the scribes and pharisees, noticed that some of the people who Jesus was eating with were not meeting their expectations. It comes off as something like, “Why would you be eating with these people?” While I certainly agree that washing hands is something we should all do a bit more of, this a great example of entrenched power using rules and expectations to enforce who is “in” and who is “out” of the club.
Throughout the gospels Jesus teaches us about his radical, inclusive community that invites women and men, sick and healthy, poor and wealthy and calls them all to follow. He hangs out with tax collectors and uses outsiders as the “good guys” in his tales. There is no one who is not invited to Jesus’s table, and that even includes some guys who don’t properly wash their hands.
Jesus responds to this interruption by calling the powerful to account. They are enforcing the letter of the law while not following its spirit. They are concerned with what looks right as to seem like a devout follower of the law, but they have forgotten God’s call on their hearts. They are not defiled by what they look like, but indeed they are defiled on the inside because of their thoughts and actions.
This seems like a pretty simple passage to follow in practice. I think most of us want to be welcoming, and this could easily be summed up with a simple plattitue about how the doors of our church are open to all people. I urge you instead to think about the people you encounter from day to day. How many people do you spend any time with at all who do not at least mostly seem like you? The definition of that is going to be different for each of us, but the reality on the ground for me is that I’m a well educated, middle class, heterosexual, white guy. I spend almost all of my time with people who are at least a few of those five things. I spend time with many people who are different than me on a few of them, but I very rarely encounter anyone who doesn’t match me on four or five of them.
Jesus’s radical community is open to everyone, but everyone won’t just appear at our table because we say we want to be inclusive. Jesus got out in and among the people of all stripes. If we are to follow him it will be outside of our comfort zones. Not just in our language, but in our actions. We need to eat with some folks with dirty hands. Not as a savior, but as a friend. That is what following Jesus today would look like.
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See you next week.