“A Broader Perspective”
Text: Mark 9:40 – “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Scripture
Lessons: Psalm 124
Mark 9:38-50
Proposition: It is so easy for us to view things only
from our perspective, from our point of view.
Jesus reminds us, however, to get a bigger viewpoint of the world, to
look at things from “A Broader Perspective.”
There
are many things in life that I can do: reading, writing, organizational
leadership, speaking, parliamentary procedure (I mean, who doesn’t want to know
the rank of privileged motions and what to do with a substitute motion? J). There are
a number of things with which I have some proficiency, but drawing has never
been one that I have numbered among whatever gifts I have. I can draw a cow or a dog or a snake, and
they all look pretty similar – well except the snake doesn’t have legs, of
course!
Several
years ago, however, Caroline got a book and I looked at it and actually did
some of the exercises. It is called, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. The basic premise is that when most of us
draw, we draw from our memory of what we think something ought to look like, rather than actually seeing a thing and drawing what we see. Betty Edwards, the author, identifies that as
left-brain drawing: logical, linear,
rational. So she designed several
drawing exercises to help us tap into the other side of our brain. The one I remember most vividly was drawing a
picture that was laid out on a grid and was upside down. Therefore, when you first looked at the
picture, it looked just like lines in boxes.
When I drew that on my own paper, however, and then turned it upside
down, it was a hand. I had drawn a hand,
and it actually looked like a hand! I
was floored! It was a matter of looking
with the right kind of perspective.
Perspective. So much in life is a matter of perspective,
don’t you think? When talking with
someone else, it’s important to be able to see things from their particular
perspective… which clearly is a lost art in our society. We might well not agree on some things, but
if we can understand each other’s perspectives on certain subjects, it is
possible that we can come to at least some kind of understanding and
acceptance, and maintain our relationship together… again, something that is
woefully lacking in politics and in our society as a whole. And it gets
exponentially worse if we demonize the “others” and then believe, and/or even
proclaim, that “God is on our side.”
Athletes
sometimes fall into the habit of believing that. Rich Franklin, an Ultimate
Fighting Championship middleweight, cornered the man who challenged him and
launched a looping kick that caught him on his jaw. The man's face flushed red,
and his knees wobbled. Franklin moved in, pounding his opponent until he
collapsed. The chiseled fighter took the ringside microphone and faced the
roaring crowd. “I want to say thanks to God, all praise to him,” he said. Then
he bowed and folded his hands in prayer as his groggy opponent was led outside
the ring. On his website and on his gear, he prints Psalm 144:1 – “Blessed be
the Lord, my rock, who trains my hands for war, and my fingers for battle…”
Franklin says. “Jesus was fearless, not someone you provoked. He’s a man’s man.
He was a carpenter who worked with his hands. He wasn’t a metrosexual who did
his nails.” This reminds me, sadly and infuriatingly, of those this past week
who have said, “He was just a high school boy. ALL high school boys do that
kind of stuff.” As the ancient prayer goes, “Good Lord, deliver us.” Indeed,
deliver us, O God! Deliver us, O God, from constantly demonizing women who are
heroic enough to raise questions, or even accusations, against men in positions
of power! Deliver us, O God, from such warped and twisted perspectives on life,
and particularly on masculinity! Of course I don’t know what happened between
Judge Kavanaugh and Dr. Blasey Ford when they were at that party in high
school. But the pattern of how this week has played out is woefully too
familiar! And it brings out attitudes and perspectives that are anything but
good.
The
author of our Old Testament lesson this morning from the 124th Psalm
held tenaciously to the perspective that God was on the side of his
nation. He believed wholeheartedly that
the Lord was on the side of Israel during recent military conflicts. He even repeats himself in his attestation of
this belief: “If it had not been the Lord who was on our side – let Israel now
say – if it had not been the Lord who was on our side, when our enemies
attacked us, then they would have swallowed us up alive…” It seems to be a common thing to believe; if
things go well for us or our family or our church or our nation, then God is on
our side. If things go badly, then…
well… where is God then?
There
are those who seem to believe that the United States is the most recent
inheritor of “chosen nation” status, as was Israel of old. There are those who want to blame that the
tragedies of September 11 happened because we took prayer – and therefore God,
they assert – out of public schools, or because we “tolerated” gay and lesbian
people, or because… well, you name the particular thing that too many people
fear and don’t like. During the first World War, all of the nations involved,
with the exception of the Ottoman Empire in Turkey, considered themselves
“Christian” nations – us, Canada, England, France, and Russia on one side,
Germany, the Austrian-Hungarian Empire, and Bulgaria on the other side. English and German Christians both prayed to the same God for
victory. You might be familiar with what
has been called the Christmas Truce of 1914, when soldiers on both sides laid
down their arms, played soccer together, sang Christmas carols, held a joint
Christmas Eve worship service… but then picked up their weapons the next
morning to resume the war. So whose side
was God on? We better be careful about
this whole question, don’t you think?
That
was precisely Jesus’ caution to his disciples in our New Testament lesson this
morning. You remember what
happened. In Jesus’ day, people believed
that all manner of bad things – from ill health, to mental illness, to
epilepsy, to bizarre behavior in people or animals alike – were caused because
of demonic possession. So it was that
many Jews, including Jesus and his followers, practiced exorcisms. The disciples got wind one day that there was
someone doing things in Jesus’ name who was not part of the immediate and intimate
band of Jesus’ followers. So they come
to Jesus, concerned. “Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name,
and we tried to stop him, because he was not following us.” Isn’t that an interesting scenario? Someone was engaged in good and compassionate
deeds. Someone was helping people who
were in need. Someone was lifting up the
name of Jesus. Does anything sound bad
or even remotely suspect in any of that?
But the disciples were concerned because this unknown do-gooder wasn’t a
part of their little group… as if the group of disciples was theirs in the
first place! Had they so quickly
forgotten that they were not a
self-selected group with carefully established membership criteria and
organizational bylaws? Had they so
easily forgotten that it was Jesus
who called them, Jesus who taught
them, Jesus who was the head of their
group? And they are somehow offended and
incensed because someone was helping others in the name of that same Jesus, but
he wasn’t a part of their “club?” The
disciples apparently thought that the name and the deeds of Jesus belonged exclusively
to them, and they were resentful when someone else was doing something that
they assumed was their sole right to do.
Jesus
tried to set the disciples straight about that.
He told them, “Do not stop him; for no one who does a deed of power in
my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil of me.” That makes sense, doesn’t it? But Jesus continued, and said this amazing
thing: “Whoever is not against us is for us.”
Wait! Doesn’t Jesus have that
backwards? I mean everyone knows that the correct wording is, “Whoever is not with us is against us!” Jesus uses this
and a similar phrase four times in the Gospels.
Matthew 12 and Luke 11 contain parallel stories about Jesus being
accused by the Pharisees of casting out demons by use of demonic power. Jesus railed against them for both the insult
and for their incredulous misunderstanding, and said “whoever is not with us is
against us.” That’s what we usually believe,
isn’t it? If we don’t share the same
political beliefs, then you must be against me, and therefore wrong, and
perhaps even against God! If you aren’t
of the same ethnic heritage as I am, then you must be against me. If you don’t believe the same dearly-held
religious tenets that I do, then you must be my adversary. If you don’t believe in this nation, or at
the very least don’t believe in the ideals of democracy as I understand them,
then you must be my enemy. Aren’t those
things that, to some degree or another, it seems we believe… at least so many
of us? However, that is not what Jesus said in our Gospel lesson
for this morning. Jesus turns things around in this instance: “Whoever is not against us is for us.” That stretches my comfort zone! Does it yours?
“Whoever is not against us is for us.” That’s not what we usually hear in our
polarized society. That wouldn’t play well on radio or the internet or TV
attack shows. We normally want clearly
identified friends and equally-clearly defined enemies. But things were not so
easily and readily divided that way for Jesus.
Rather than being concerned about who to exclude from people’s relationships, Jesus radically included people within the embrace of
God’s realm, for the enhancement of the community of faith. To have the
audacity to think that God is on “our side” is a stance of unbridled privilege.
To have the audacity to think that God is on “our side” is a stance of
unchecked egotism. To have the audacity to think that God is our “our side” is
a stance of impudent idolatry.
When
we gather here in worship this morning, we do not gather here just with each
other. We do not gather here just with
other Presbyterians. We do not gather
here just with other Americans. We do
not gather here just with Christians who are alive today. When we gather, we gather with all the saints of God – living and dead,
here or elsewhere – and we gather with Christ as the Head of the Church. He
is the Divine Host at the Table. He is the One who calls us and claims us
and chooses us to gather around this Table.
He is the Lord, in whose name
we serve, in whose name we love, in whose name we witness to others, in whose
name we are called to gain “A Broader Perspective” – on life, on faith, on
who’s “in” and who’s “out.” And the
Table is larger than we can see, and the perspective is broader than we can
imagine.
Maybe
the challenge for us… perhaps our calling, even… is to consciously and
continuously ask ourselves how big our circle is. Is it big enough to
include family members who maybe drive you nuts, just as you do them? Is
it big enough to include people at church… or at school… or at work… who don’t
agree with you about things, even about important things? Is it big
enough to include political liberals and conservatives, to include straight and
gay, to include people of all races and colors and languages and cultures?
As
the Civil War was nearing its end and the Union appeared as if it might be the
victor, someone asked President Abraham Lincoln if all that wasn’t due to the
fact that clearly the Lord was on the side of the Union cause. His answer became famous, even if we often
ignore it: “Sir, my concern is not
whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God
is always right.” Perhaps we
should make sure that we’re on Jesus’ side, living how he would like us to live. It seems to me
that our challenge and task and calling is simply not making our circle any
smaller than Jesus would draw it, and to live into that “Broader Perspective”
into which Jesus calls us.
AMEN!
