Looking for Trouble--January 22, 2024

Looking for Trouble--January 22, 2024

"Now after John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God..." [Mark 1:14]

Before we can talk about what Jesus calls us to do, we should probably raise a prior question: What tells Jesus himself that is it time to begin his work?  What initiates Jesus' response to God's call on his life?

I ask it that way because when you actually look at the storytelling in Mark's gospel, the catalyst for Jesus' public ministry seems to be the arrest of John.  That is to say, Jesus begins his public career well-aware of the potential (maybe inevitable) danger waiting for him, if announcing the imminent inauguration of God's Reign got John arrested.  Jesus knew, and he did it anyway.... which means, for certain, you can’t make a victim out of Jesus.

You might try, but in the end, the story of Jesus resists any attempts to make him a hapless fall-guy who stumbled into trouble with the religious authorities and the imperial power-brokers. That’s not to say people haven’t tried to make Jesus sound like just a poor, misunderstood rabbi who naively got caught up in the royal mess of first century Roman and Judean politics. But these people have to pretend that verses like today’s aren’t there. To hear Mark tell it, Jesus sure seems to be looking for trouble.

Or at the very least, he knew the stakes. Jesus did not start out on a public career in ministry thinking it would make him a respectable figure in the community. He knew that if he was going to walk the same road as John, there would at least be jail time in store for him, and most likely worse. Jesus didn’t start out thinking that he would win a popularity contest by announcing the Reign of God, only to be surprised when the religious professionals made him a public enemy. There is no honest version of Jesus that never upsets the powers of the day, and there is no truthful picture of Jesus that doesn't knowingly provoke and unsettle the Respectable Religious Crowd. He knew from the beginning that there would be costs—and he was prepared, from day one, to give everything. And for the sake of bringing the world to life in God's kind of justice and mercy, Jesus decided it was worth the costs.

Now, this brings up what I have come to believe is a very helpful rule-of-thumb when thinking about Jesus: if your picture of Jesus is of someone who would never have said anything controversial enough to get him arrested, or if your picture of Jesus is of someone whose words, actions, or social company never would have gotten him crucified, then check your picture again: you have got someone else’s photo in your frame. That’s not Jesus. If he didn’t do and say things provocative enough to get himself publicly executed by the authorities or lynched by a crowd of smiling religious people, you’ve got the wrong Messiah.

The thing of it is, Jesus knew all that was in store for him. He knew the costs head, because he had seen them in John’s life, all played out. It’s much as theologian Walter Wink says about martyrs—they "are not helpless victims, but fearless hunters who stalk evil out into the open by offering their bodies as bait." Jesus knew the costs and was prepared to pay them—for the sake of the Kingdom he announced, and for the sake of all of us who would get to be a part of it.

Now, that means two things for us as we step into the new day. For starters, there is a whole new depth to Jesus’ love for us—or at least one that maybe we haven’t spent much time thinking about. It means that Jesus was not merely “hypothetically willing” to die for us, or that Jesus was ignorant of the potential costs of being God’s Messiah. We often end up making sacrifices in our lives that we had been playing the odds on never really having to face. A couple promises in their wedding vows, “For richer or poorer, in sickness and in health…” but in the intoxicating fog of optimism and flowers, chances are they are both just hoping it will never come to the sickness or the poorness parts. Or they just aren’t thinking about what it will be like to have been married for 40 or 50 years and to go through a lifetime of lost sleep, tired muscles, belt-tightening, and the rest. We are not bad at making promises, so long as we don’t have to think much about the costs of keeping them, or we think that the odds are in our favor about ever having to pay the piper. Jesus, however, is under no such illusions. He has seen John get arrested from the get-go, and yet he suits up and goes off to do the same nevertheless. Jesus isn’t playing the odds or just crossing his fingers and hoping he’ll be lucky as a messenger of the Kingdom and maybe not get pinched. He knows what’s in store, and he does it anyway—for you and for me. Jesus won’t be made a victim by anybody else—he knew what he was getting into. He still does.

And he decided it was worth it anyway. Hold that thought for a moment. That means--YOU--were worth it anyway. You, dear one. You, beloved. You were worth all that holy troublemaking.

But now that also means there’s a second conclusion for us, too: we cannot help but be aware of what we have gotten ourselves into as Jesus’ followers. Being Jesus’ followers is going to mean—by definition!—going where Jesus has gone. And Jesus has headed right into a life of holy troublemaking, same way as John before him. Maybe John could have pled ignorance and that he didn’t know being a prophet of the living God would get him thrown in jail (he seems to have had such doubts and frustrations in Matthew 11:2-6), but Jesus knows, and now so do we, that being a part of the Kingdom may well shake things up and turn us into holy troublemakers, too.

We will be called to sacrifice our comfort and our routine, to risk looking foolish, to associate with the nobodies, the anybodies, and the not-very-respectables, all to invite them into the Kingdom, too, the way Jesus did, no matter who is upset by it. We will be called to speak up and to stand with others. We will be called into waiting rooms in moments of holy silence to shed holy tears. There will be a cost. There could be marches and jail cells, and even bullets, like there were for Dr. King whose legacy we just recalled as a nation once again last week. There could be the loss of friendships of folks who simply can't imagine why you, as a follower of Jesus, care so much about "those people" when they have a long list of reasons not to. There may be a loss of Facebook-friend and social-media-follower popularity when folks don't want to be challenged by your insistence on going where Jesus leads you, and loving the people Jesus leads you to love. And there may be a frightening loss of familiar idols as the way of Jesus leads you to let go of the false gods of prosperity, of reputation, of nationalism, of political party, or even of "the American dream." As a wise older brother in the faith, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, says, the grace of following Jesus will cost us our lives, but it will give us the only true life there really is.

And there it is again: following Jesus means a death of sorts--but the kind of death that makes resurrection possible, too.

At least, we can say like Jesus, we know what we’re getting into.

Dear Jesus, to be honest, following you sometimes feels like the first hill on a roller coaster. Hold onto us tightly and do not let us go as we stare down the adventure before us.