Fifth Sunday of Lent, 2023 - Follow Me

“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” Mark 8:34.

With this statement, Jesus described what is involved in being one of his followers. The three phrases he used – deny themselves, take up their cross, follow me – are best understood against the backdrop of his warning, “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod,” Mark 8:15.

In last week’s blog, I identified the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod as the merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking of the world. To take up one’s cross is to reject this way of thinking, living as an insurrectionist against it. To deny self is to die to the constructed, ego-centric persona we created based upon this way of thinking – what the world told us to be and do if we wanted to be accepted and valued. To follow me is to live in relationship with Jesus as our teacher-rabbi, learning from him a different way of thinking and living – thinking shaped by the character of God and the ways of God, what Jesus called the kingdom of God.

The way of thinking Jesus taught was (is) at odds with the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod – the way the world thinks and functions.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod is merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking whereas Jesus taught grace-based thinking that is expressed in forgiveness.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod emphasizes rules, laws, codes of conduct, moral and religious standards, each defining what is expected and telling us what to do whereas Jesus taught us to follow the way of mercy and compassion. “Go and learn what this means, ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice’” (Matthew 9:13, Hosea 6:6).

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod focuses upon behavior - the external - whereas Jesus taught us to focus on the interior – the heart, the attitudes and spirit that govern our lives (Mark 7:17-23).

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod emphasizes conformity to expectations and obedience to the law (behavior) whereas Jesus focused upon spiritual growth and the transformation of the heart.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod with its focus on rules and laws fosters rigid black-and-white, either-or thinking whereas Jesus dealt compassionately with the complexities of life.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod results in us-them thinking whereas Jesus taught us to view and value, accept and embrace everyone as a beloved child of God.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod operates out of comparing and competing whereas Jesus taught the way of humility that recognizes all of life as a gift from God.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod, operating out of comparing and competing, fosters better than-less than thinking whereas Jesus taught us to treat every person with dignity and respect as a beloved child of God (Mark 9:36-37).

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod creates hierarchal thinking that assigns status and standing, power and privilege to those who have higher ranking in the hierarchy whereas Jesus taught that the measure of true greatness was a servant spirit (Mark 9:35).

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod with its deserving-oriented thinking fosters a judging, critical spirit that traffics in condemnation, judgment, punishment, and rejection whereas Jesus taught us to respond to others with forgiveness (Luke 7:26-50; Matthew 18:21-35).

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod, operating out of a judging, condemning spirit, uses power over, down against others, for personal benefit at the other’s expense whereas Jesus used – and taught his disciples to use – power to serve, that is, alongside the other, on behalf of the other, for the other’s good at personal expense (Mark 10:42-45).

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod creates on an underlying emotional tone of fear whereas the ways of Jesus lead to joy and peace.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod fosters shame whereas the ways Jesus taught produces freedom.

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod relies on self-effort and self-reliance whereas Jesus taught us to live in glad dependency on the Spirit, trusting the Father’s faithful provision and extravagant generosity (Luke 12:22-34).

The yeast of the Pharisees and of Herod produces a persona we present to others – what I call the constructed, ego-centric self, based on what world says we need to do and be if we want to be accepted and valued - whereas the ways of Jesus lead us to discover our true self, the person God created us to be (Mark 8:35-37).

Jesus proclaimed that the kingdom of God “has come near” (Mark 1:15, NRSV) or was “at hand” (NIV). The word he used meant the kingdom was here, now – in our midst. It was a reality that could be experienced now, that we could be a part of now. The way of living he embodied and taught is something we can experience in our own lives today.

As he proclaimed the reality of the kingdom, Jesus called people to repent (Mark 1:15). The word he used meant to think with a different mind. The yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod is how the world trained us to think. Like the disciples, it blocks our ability to recognize the kingdom, much less respond to it. Being a part of the kingdom requires us to learn a different way of thinking – the kind of thinking Jesus taught.

To follow Jesus is to move from the way the world trained us to think – merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking – to the grace-based way of thinking Jesus embodied and taught, i.e., kingdom-oriented thinking.

Fourth Sunday of Lent, 2023 - The Yeast (Leaven) of the Pharisees

 “Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod,” Mark 8:15.

It is one of Jesus’s cryptic sayings that is generally overlooked and ignored. Yet, it is full of meaning and significance.

The disciples didn’t understand what Jesus meant by it. They thought he was talking about bread (Mark 8:16). But obviously, that’s not what Jesus meant. Matthew’s gospel identifies what Jesus meant. “Then they understood that he had not told them to beware of the yeast of bread, but of the teaching of the Pharisees and Sadducees,” Matthew 16:12.

Beware of what the Pharisees teach. Beware of how they train you to think.

When Jesus spoke of the yeast of the Pharisees, he was referring to the thinking that shaped their world. That thinking shaped how they viewed and treated others, particularly those who did not measure up to their expectations. It shaped their sense of identity. It shaped what they valued. It shaped how they used power.

Interestingly, Jesus said the yeast (thinking) of the Pharisees was similar to the yeast (thinking) of Herod. The religious world and the political-social world operated out of the same kind of thinking.

Jesus warned the disciples about their kind of thinking. Beware! It is dangerous thinking. It undermines human relationships and destroys community.

So what is this kind of thinking – the thinking that governs the religious world as well as the political-social world yet is so dangerous and destructive?

The yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod is merit-based thinking. It is thinking that is oriented towards deserving. It creates transactional, if . . . then relationships. What one receives is based upon what one does, that is, deserves.

Merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking is built around laws, rules, standards, codes, and expectations. It focuses upon behavior – what one does or does not do. It emphasizes conformity to the expectations expressed in the laws and rules and codes.

This law-focused thinking fosters rigid black-and-white, either-or, right-and-wrong thinking. What the law says is right. Anything that challenges or violates the law is wrong.

 Merit-based thinking naturally leads to us-them thinking – those who conform and measure up to the expectations, those who don’t. Us-them thinking is tribal thinking. We naturally segregate ourselves into groups of those like us, excluding those not like us.

The us-them, tribal thinking of merit-based functioning inevitably produces comparing and competing. Who is right? Whose way is best? Of course, “our” way is always right. Our way is always the best way to do things.

Comparing and competing leads to better than-less than thinking. Because our way is right and better, we are better than “them.” We operate out of a not-so-subtle arrogant “better than” spirit.

The culmination of this thinking – merit-based thinking, right-or-wrong thinking, us-them thinking, better than-less than thinking – is a hierarchal society made up of those who are “in” and those who are “out.” Those at the top of the hierarchy enjoy greater privilege, power, affluence, status, freedom, and opportunity than those lower in the hierarchy.

In this hierarchal world, power is used in self-serving ways – to protect or enhance one’s position (with its power, status, wealth, privilege, and freedom) in the hierarchy, to keep “those other people” “in their place” at the bottom of the hierarchy, to punish and reward. Power is used over, down against others, for personal benefit at the other’s expense.

This merit-based world is built on self-effort and self-reliance. It fosters appearances, not authenticity. It produces a persona – a false self that I call a constructed self. This so-called identity is based upon what the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod told us we needed to do and be if we wanted to be accepted and valued. This constructed self has a shadow side – those parts of ourselves that we hide from others (and sometimes ourselves) for fear they would judge us and reject us if they knew about them. This hidden self is full of shame. This merit-based way of thinking and living floats on an ocean of shame.

The emotional tone underlying this merit-based way of thinking and living is one of anxiety and fear – fear of the other, fear of not getting my share, fear of losing what I have, fear of being found out, fear of judgment and condemnation, fear of being rejected and excluded, fear of not being loved and valued.

“Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod!” Jesus’s word meant to look out for the danger in this way of thinking and living. It is dangerous thinking. Nothing good comes from it. He also meant “be aware of” this kind of thinking – in the world in which we live as well as in our own lives. This way of thinking and living is how the world – our religious world, our social world, our political world, yea even our families – trained us to think. “Be aware of how it penetrates how you think and what you do.”

Jesus used three terms to describe what it meant to be his disciple – his follower. Deny self, take up your cross, follow me. Each of these three terms plays off of his warning about the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. To take up our cross is to reject the way the world trained us to think and live. It is to live as an insurrectionist against the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod. To follow Jesus is to learn from him a different way of thinking and living – the ways of the kingdom that reflect the character of God. To deny self is to surrender the constructed self the world told us we needed to be if we wanted to be accepted and belong.

This Lent, let’s give up the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.

Third Sunday of Lent, 2023 - Deny Self

What did you give up for Lent? 

The season of Lent is commonly associated with giving up something we enjoy – caffeine (coffee), sugar, chocolate, soft drinks, alcohol, etc. The Catholic tradition of eating fish on Friday during Lent is rooted in this practice of giving up something for Lent – in their case, meat. As for me, I traditionally give up rhubarb. 😉 The thinking behind this practice is that the inevitable desire for what we give up becomes a prompt to desire God – to think about God, to turn to God, to pray.

This Lenten practice is based upon Jesus’s teaching, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves,” Mark 8:34. In my mind, the practice is based on a misunderstanding of this teaching.

The phrase “deny themselves” is one of three that Jesus used to describe what is involved in being his follower. In my last blog, I addressed the other two phrases: “take up their cross and follow me.” To be a follower of Jesus is to live as an insurrectionist (take up your cross), rejecting the way the world trained us to think and live. It is to walk in relationship with Jesus (follow me), learning the ways of God he taught so that our thinking and living are shaped by the character of God and the ways of God.

In this description of what it means to be his follower, denying self has to do with identity, not things we enjoy.

When we reject the way the world trained us to think and live, we give up the identity we created based upon what the world said we needed to be and do if we wanted to be accepted and valued. I call this identity our constructed self. We built this identity based upon what we, through self-effort, accomplished and achieved. This identity is tied to how we measured up to the expectations of the world in which we grew up – family, society, church, culture. This identity is not our authentic or true self. It is a persona we present to others.

This constructed self is an ego-centric self. It is me-focused, hence the term ego-centric. It operates out of a self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit.

Comparing and competing feed this ego-centric identity. At the core of this manufactured identity is the thought “I’m not like that. I’m better than them.” Judging and criticizing others reinforces the sense that we are better than “those other people.” An unrecognized spirit of arrogance lives at the core of our ego-centric identity.  

To be a follower of Jesus is to give up this manufactured identity – the persona we created in order to be valued and accepted by the world. It is to discover our true self – the person God created us to be – as we walk in relationship with Jesus, learning and living the ways of God he taught.

As we walk with Jesus, a servant spirit – the spirit of Jesus – grows in us (Mark 9:33-37). The servant spirit is the opposite of the self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit of the ego-centric, constructed self. As the servant spirit grows in us, we surrender comparing and competing, criticizing and judging along with the better than-less than thinking that props up the ego-centric, constructed self. As long as we cling to the identity of our constructed self, we cannot genuinely serve others. We will be caught up in protecting and propping up the identity we manufactured - our ego-centric, constructed self.

To follow Jesus is to die to the ego-centric identity we created in order to be accepted and valued by the world. This false identity is what we give up for Lent. It is what we give up as a follower of Jesus.  

Second Sunday of Lent, 2023 - Take Up Your Cross

 The Lenten journey is a six-week discipline of intentional, focused discipleship. For those who choose to practice the discipline of Lent, it is a time of consciously focusing upon God and their relationship with God. Interestingly, few people – in my experience - speak of the journey in terms of discipleship.

The Lenten journey is patterned after the final six weeks of Jesus’s life when he journeyed from Galilee to Jerusalem to celebrate the Passover. According to the synoptic gospels, the awareness of what he would experience in Jerusalem dominated his thinking during this timeframe. He repeatedly attempted to prepare his disciples for what he knew was coming, but they could not hear or accept what he said. In addition, he repeatedly taught them about discipleship – what it meant to be his follower. As with his teaching about what awaited him in Jerusalem, the disciples were unable to grasp what he taught about discipleship. (The gospel of Mark gives us three examples of how Jesus’s teaching about what he faced in Jerusalem was paired with his teaching about being his disciple. The gospel indicates these three pairings were examples of a recurring theme in his teaching.)

Like the disciples, many today who identify themselves as a Christen do not have a clear understanding of discipleship – what it means to be a follower of Jesus. They speak of being a Christian, not a disciple. For them, being a Christian means believing certain things about Jesus (proper belief), living a certain way (proper behavior), and church involvement (proper worship).

Jesus clearly stated what is involved in being his disciple. Yet we, like his first disciples, struggle to grasp what he said. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me,” Mark 8:34. In this teaching, Jesus used three phrases to describe what is involved in being his follower: deny self, take up your cross, follow me. These three phrases express the essence of discipleship.

I often hear people speaking of their “cross” as in “it’s my cross to bear.” On the surface, the term “my cross” seems to echo Jesus’s teaching about discipleship. However, the meaning of the term “cross” as used in this common phrase and what Jesus meant by it are radically different. In the statement “it’s my cross to bear,” the word “cross” refers to some kind of painful challenge we are facing, such as a chronic illness or the challenges of grief after the death of a spouse or child. These normal, difficult life experiences are not what Jesus meant by the word “cross.” It is not how the disciples would have understood the term.

In Jesus’s day, the cross was a means of execution the Roman government used to punish and make an example of those who dared to defy their power and authority. Crucifixion – death by the cross - was a torturous, painful death done in the public forum. (Jesus’s crucifixion was by one of the city gates so that all who came and went would see it.) It was Rome’s way of saying, “This is what happens to anyone who dares to defy us.” The cross was for insurrectionists.

When Jesus said discipleship involved taking up the cross, he was talking about a way of life. He meant living as an insurrectionist. To be his follower was to reject the ways of the world. It was to walk out of step with the thinking of the world and the ways of the world which Rome embodied.

Jesus paired “take up your cross” with the phrase “follow me.” This phrase was a technical term in Jesus’s day, used by rabbis to invite specific individuals to be one of their disciples, i.e., learn from them. To be a follower of Jesus – a disciple – was to learn from him a way of thinking and living that was different from the world’s way of thinking and living. It was to learn and live the ways of God that Jesus taught, i.e., the ways of the kingdom.

The heart of discipleship is walking in relationship with Jesus, learning from him a different way of thinking and living. It involves moving beyond the way the world trained us to think and live. To be a disciple is to use power, in all its forms, the way Jesus used power - to serve others. It is to view and value, accept and embrace every person as a beloved child of God - just as Jesus did. To be a disciple of Jesus is to reject the merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking of the world, choosing instead to relate out of grace and forgiveness – just as Jesus did. It is to value people more than material things – just as Jesus did. It is to trust the extravagant generosity of God, giving generously and freely of what God has given – just as Jesus did.

When the Lenten journey is about discipleship, we intentionally reflect on how we are living as a follower of Jesus. We allow the Spirit to help us recognize the teachings of Jesus that we resist. We allow the Spirit to help us recognize where we do not live the ways Jesus taught. We allow the Spirit to help us examine what is in our hearts. We allow the Spirit to help us recognize how our thinking and living mirrors the ways of the world rather than the ways of God. We allow the Spirit to show us the next step of our discipleship journey.

In other words, giving up something for Lent - chocolate or alcohol or sugar - may or may not have anything to do with being a follower of Jesus. More about that in my next post – Deny Yourself.