Lighthearted, Playful Disciples

Jonah 3:1-5, 10

Mark 1:14-20

I once officiated an outdoor wedding for friends in Connecticut.  The setting was beautiful.  The white tents and table settings gracious and dignified.  The food was delicious.  The music and dancing delightful.  And then it was time for the cake.  The caterer in her white apron emerged from the back of the house in full view of all the wedding guests.  And we cheered as she carried the very tall cake towards its place on the table.  But just before she got there she tripped, then stumbled, then pitched forward and landed on the cake.  The wedding guests gasped, she stood, burst into tears, then turned and ran back into the house.

You might be thinking – that’s a terrible story.  That poor woman.  Yes, that poor woman.  It was tragic.  But it was also funny.  It wasn’t funny because it happened to her.  It was funny because all of us fear those kinds of experiences.  It’s been awhile now, so I wonder if she can laugh about it now.  What about you?  How good are you at laughing at yourself?

 

Today’s reading from Mark’s gospel invites us to reflect on the calling of the first four people who joined Jesus as followers or disciples.  These two sets of brothers – Simon and Andrew, James and John – left the lives they knew so that they could follow Jesus.

Jesus appears on the scene not as a lone wolf.  He’s not a micromanager so insecure and controlling that he needs to do everything himself.  He shares the work.  He gathers a team around him.  His teaching about God’s kingdom and demonstration of it by powerful healings is work that can be shared.

Jesus wants followers.  He invites disciples.  He seeks partners and friends to go with him as he heals and teaches.  And here we sit, people who’ve come from all kinds of different places to be a part of what Jesus is doing.  We read Mark’s gospel with great interest, because we want to find out what we’re in for as people called to share in Jesus’ work. 

The calling of these first four followers is told in a way that piques our curiosity.  The scene is compressed, leaving out many of the details that might interest us.

Jesus doesn’t give them any time to ask questions or contemplate their options.  He calls them to follow.  And right then and there, they dropped their nets, they left their boats, and they followed him.

We don’t know how well they know Jesus.  Or how much of his teaching they’ve heard.  But for some reason his way of life and his teachings about God’s kingdom were attractive.  We’re told in the opening line of the gospel that what we’re reading is “good news” about Jesus the Messiah.  And Jesus himself went public by preaching about “good news” – and connecting it to the arrival of God’s kingdom.

But we still might wonder whether this sliver of preview is enough to leave the lives we know to follow Jesus.  Is it prudent to drop everything for this?  Is it safe to burn your bridges for a new path that’s largely unknown?  We might wonder whether Simon, Andrew, James, and John were really paying attention to what they were getting into.  Before Jesus even began his ministry, John the baptizer had been put in prison.  You don’t need a degree in political science to figure out that John and Jesus are involved in something that’s making the Roman authorities extremely nervous.

But in spite of what they knew or didn’t know, in spite of their failure to ask more questions or practice due diligence, they follow him “at once” and “without delay.”  There is something about the way Jesus announces the good news of God’s kingdom that they willingly and gladly turn their lives in a completely new direction.  They respond like the people of Nineveh to Jonah’s preaching.  They immediately repent and turn in new directions.

First these four – then scores of other people - respond to Jesus’ call with enthusiasm.  It must have been an exciting time – in our own culture we might imagine the experience of being one of the first people to join little startups like Google or Facebook.  They listen as Jesus teaches, and they’ve never heard anything like this before.  They look on as Jesus heals diseases and casts out demons.  They’ve never witnessed this kind of power. 

From his band of early followers, Jesus chose twelve for a special role as his apostles.  Then he delegated.  He sent them out in pairs and “gave them authority over evil spirits” (6:7).  “They went out and preached that people should repent.  They drove out many demons and anointed sick people with oil and healed them” (6:12-13).  This is all happening at whiplash speed.  One day you were at the back of a crowd watching Jesus do his thing.  And a few days later you and a buddy are off exorcizing demons and healing diseases!

If we stopped right here, this sermon would need to be a sermon about how seriously we should take the call to follow Jesus.  About the importance of sharing in his powerful ministry of teaching and healing.  And most of us would begin to back off at that point.  This hasn’t been our experience.  This doesn’t sound like our lives.  We might start wondering if we really belong here.

But Mark’s gospel has a good bit more to say about Jesus’ first disciples.  Not all signs pointed to their competence and readiness.  They had to ask Jesus to explain the parable of the Sower and the seeds (4:13, 34).  When their boat encountered a storm on the lake and Jesus was asleep, they showed their lack of faith in him and were sternly criticized (4:40).  They didn’t understand how Jesus could feed the 5,000 with only five loaves of bread and two fish (6:52).  They were terrified when they saw Jesus walking on the water (6:50).  They misunderstood Jesus’ warning about the yeast of the Pharisees (8:16-21). 

When  Jesus tries to teach them that the role of God’s Messiah involves suffering, rejection, and death, Peter begins to argue with Jesus because this isn’t what he signed up for (8:33).  Two more times Jesus explained to his disciples that he would be killed.  They never understood this (9:32; 10:37). 

Right after that a man brought his demon possessed son to the disciples, and they tried but couldn’t cast out the demon.  So Jesus had to do it for them. 

Jesus teaches them that the kingdom belongs to those who receive it with the gladness and natural humility of little children.  But the disciples anger Jesus by telling parents not to bother Jesus by bringing him their small children (10:13).  They get into arguments about who among them is the greatest (9:34).  James and John are so dim-witted that they assume he’s planning on setting up a government to rival Rome, and they ask to be placed in the most important cabinet positions (10:37).

In the garden just outside Jerusalem, on the night of Jesus’ arrest, he knew that everything was closing in on him.  He’s filled with anxiety.  He’s emotionally spent.  More than ever, he needs his friends for support.  And while Jesus prays and weeps and worries, Simon Peter, James, and John fall asleep (14:37). 

When he was arrested by the Jewish authorities, all the disciples deserted him and fled (14:50).  Peter denied three times even knowing him (14:72).  At his crucifixion, the disciples were nowhere to be found.  Even the women – the women who had supported Jesus for years – even they hung back at a distance, fearful of being associated with him. 

According to Mark’s gospel, disciples are at best terribly slow learners.  They are usually wrong even when they get it right.  And they are the kinds of people whose lives are characterized by betrayal and failure. 

Why does a “good news” story about Jesus the Messiah carry with it such a damaging and disappointing portrait of Jesus’ disciples? 

If it were a story about the success, faithfulness, courage, bravery, and compassion of Jesus’ followers, that wouldn’t be good news.  To hear that we’ve been invited into a life of crushing expectations isn’t good news.  To hear that only the most heroic and valiant can follow Jesus isn’t good news.  Instead, the story of this gospel is that we are graciously invited by God to experience a life of better, bigger loyalties by following Jesus.

You might even say that Mark’s gospel encourages us to laugh at ourselves. The gap between God’s powerful work and our puny efforts is comically wide.  And this frees us from acting like self-righteous know-it-alls.  It frees us from pretending we have our act together.  And it makes possible a new kind of lightness and playfulness in life. 

Those who’ve gathered around Jesus should be the most self-deprecating people in any room.  We should have the best stories about our embarrassing blunders and ignorant, misguided projects.  We don’t take offense when others laugh at us, because we’re already laughing at ourselves.

I told you last week that I’ve been reading the novel Don Quixote.  Throughout the novel, Don Quixote and his little sidekick Sancho Panza feel like they’re on the verge of celebrity.  They secretly suspect that their brave and courageous adventures will earn them fame and applause.  At one point they’re both mounted on horses to ride into a village full of people who are cheering for them.  But just as they crest the hill into the village two boys sneak behind the horses and stick tree branches in the horses’ butts, causing the horses to jump and buck, throwing their riders to the ground, with everyone pointing and laughing.

I am a 43 year old married father of three and driver of a minivan.  But sometimes I like to pretend that I’m cooler than that.  One night in New York I was planning to meet friends at a little live music venue on the lower East Side.  It’s a hip and trendy little neighborhood famous for the young and glamorous 20 somethings who live there.  The walk from the subway stop to my destination was several blocks.  Like all the other fashionable, tall, thin people, I had my earbuds in, listening to music.  But at one crosswalk I needed to check the map on my phone.  When the light turned green I failed to notice the orange traffic cone in my path.  And staring at my phone I kicked it not once but two or three times on my way down towards the pavement. I lurched forward, legs flailing in an attempt to stay upright.  I went all the way ungraciously down to my hands and knees on the pavement, with all the lovely people filing around me.

One of the things the good news does for us is that it frees us from the powerful need to control our image, to present an accomplished, successful surface to others.  That is a terrible, life-destroying way to live.  It robs us of energy and cuts us off from others.  Much better is the freedom that comes from taking your place in an ancient tradition of fickle, forgetful, bumbling followers of Jesus the Messiah.  People who hold all things loosely, ready to repent and change course at any time.

Jesus’ call to each of us – “Come, follow me” – is good news because it creates a new kind of openness and flexibility in our lives; a playful ability to form and re-form ourselves.  We never take any version of ourselves too seriously. There is no phase of our lives that is so fixed that it has to endure forever.  Every phase is held together by God’s grace and can be gladly let go when the time comes that we see that how we’ve arranged things isn’t working anymore.  We don’t become attached to family patterns, to career or income streams, to a political party or platform.  We do our best to live a life that reflects God’s kingdom right now, but we hold it open and are willing to give pieces of it up as we learn and grow and change.