I am making a trip to Chicago in a couple of weeks. It is a journey I try to make once a year, to see family members who are still there. I grew up in the Chicago area, so this is going home, in a way. Even though I have not lived there for 40 years.
It is home also because I will be back with my people, the ones who have known me forever. And I feel pretty sure, based on my experience, that it will be a week full of love and joyful moments, and also some failures.
Some amount of failure is baked into the cake when you go back home. I will have expectations of someone that won’t be met. I will hurt someone’s feelings, and someone will hurt my feelings. I will have a knee-jerk reaction to something someone says, because that’s the way it always goes. In spite of my best intentions to be more mature, more compassionate, and wiser, I will have moments of behaving the very same way I have since I was a child.
We tend to have expectations of everyone in our lives, but especially family. And what that means is that we don’t let them change.
It even happened to Jesus when he went home.
Astounding and powerful things came out of his mouth and they said, “What? Isn’t this Mary’s kid? You know his brothers and sisters – matter of fact, they still live here, don’t they? Yeah, they’re just like us.” The folks from back home were not impressed with Jesus. Actually, they were offended.
“How dare he go and be all different! Who does he think he is?”
It’s quite possible Jesus knew it would happen this way. He probably knew they would give him a hard time. Even though he was “amazed at their unbelief” he must have known there would be pushback. I wonder why he brought the disciples along to see this. Was there something here for them to learn?
Is this their final lesson before he sends them out in the field?
Which is what he does next, with a few short and simple instructions: take nothing with you; make yourself vulnerable. Stay in the same place – if someone has offered you hospitality, be a gracious guest. And if you should find rejection, shake the dust off your feet as you leave.
He prepared them for failure, because failure will happen. Probably a lot.
The gospel has been met with rejection in all times and all places. People doubted that Jesus could do anything about Jairus’ little girl. His family doubted him when they heard people saying he was out of his mind. And his disciples, even they doubted him again and again and again.
What all this doubt amounts to is rejection. Rejection of any hope that Jesus will heal you, enlighten you, feed you, or bring you good news. It’s sad, but true. And because of this, I must tell you two things you won’t like: first, rejection is inevitable in the life of a Christian. Failure is inevitable. And second, we ought to get comfortable with it.
I don’t know if I can say this too strongly, because the church has a triumphalism problem. And that is not an attractive quality.
This is something that probably started way back in the 4th century, when the emperor Constantine decided to take this scrappy little movement and make it the official state religion. Which was great. We won.
No one could feed us to the lions anymore, just for being a Christian, because now being a Christian was a good thing.
Being a Christian was the best thing, the right thing. Winning.
And we thought this is something we could get used to – winning – and so we did get used to it. and we came to expect it. We thought it was our right and kept on thinking that for centuries.
When everyone in America was Christian, we did a lot of winning, naturally. Winning with the laws, winning with the custom of saying “Merry Christmas” to everybody and getting a holiday from work on Good Friday and so much more. So much winning, you could get tired of winning, as someone once said.
So much winning, we almost stopped being Christian.
Because being a disciple of Christ is simply not about winning. It is not about having success, in any conventional sense of the word. The way of Jesus Christ is the way of the cross. And the cross looks to all the world like nothing so much as failure.
It’s not an easy road Christ has put us on.
For the sake of the gospel, we wake up every day with the resolve to be a force for good in whatever way is given to us. We go out with the conviction of faith in the risen Lord. We read the scriptures and we offer our prayers and we hope and we hope and we hope for success. Still, we will frequently be met by failure.
We are sustained through hard days by memory deep in our bones: the kiss of God’s amazing grace, the buoyancy of God’s healing power, the resonance of Christ’s peace. We go on, putting one foot in front of the other because, even when the road is hard, we are never alone on it.
We began this series six weeks ago, with these men who are called disciples, beginning their journey of following Jesus. I said to you then that as we watch the disciples through Mark’s gospel, we see them fail repeatedly. In so many ways. And I also said we are very much like them.
I told you it is crucial that we remember who we are following, because it will make a huge difference in the way we choose to live. If we keep our eye on Jesus, we will let his life be the model for our lives.
We know now that the way will be fraught with uncertainties and that we will sometimes be plagued by fear. We will be tempted to put our hope in men and women and institutions, which will fail us. But we also know that one of the most precious gifts Jesus has given us is this gift of one another, so that we will never be alone with our fears and disappointments, and we will always have companions who may carry the light when we cannot do it ourselves.
So our series is bookended, in a way, with the calling in and the sending out of the disciples. But there is another set of bookends, as well. We celebrated the sacrament of communion that first Sunday and again today. This sacrament is a gift, a strength, that we should never overlook. As Christ invites us to his table, we remember with head and heart and body and soul that we belong to Christ; that we are one with him and with one another.
This is our superpower, if you will.
Disciples of Jesus, we look ahead and we see hurdles and impending crises. In the church, in our nation, in the world. Through it all, let us steadfastly hold on to our identity as disciples of Jesus. Let us embrace the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which enable us to always work for the cause of righteousness and justice. We will grow weary in our failures. But we know that in the end God’s ever-expanding love will win and that is the win that matters.
Disciples of Jesus, with all our heart and mind and body and soul, let us be on the side of love.
