Second Sunday of Lent, 2024 - The Heart of Discipleshp

It’s the heart of the gospel of Mark. 

Chapters 8, 9, & 10 contain the heart of the gospel writer’s teaching about discipleship. In them, he describes the heart of discipleship—what is involved in being a follower of Jesus.

These chapters record Jesus’s journey from Caesarea Philippi north of the Sea of Galilee, down the Jordan River Valley to Jericho, as he made his way to Jerusalem for the Passover celebration. Throughout that journey, he attempted to prepare his disciples for what would happen in Jerusalem—suffering, death, then three days later raised from the dead. In spite of his efforts, his disciples could not accept what he was teaching. It went against their understanding that the Messiah was a warrior-king like David who would throw off the hated Roman yoke, reestablishing the nation’s independence.

In these three chapters, the gospel writer recorded three different occasions in which Jesus taught the disciples about what he would experience in Jerusalem—Mark 8:31-33; 9:30-32; 10:32-34. These were not the only time he sought to help them understand. Mark 9:31 specifically says “he was teaching them.” The original language indicates he was repeatedly teaching them.

The gospel writer used these three occasions to anchor Jesus’s teachings about what was involved in being his follower—a disciple. In these three teachings, the gospel writer presented the heart of discipleship.

The first and foundational description is found in Mark 8:34-37. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). This description (addressed in last week’s blog) defines a follower of Jesus as one who lives in relationship with Jesus, learning from him a different way of thinking and living—follow me. The language of the original indicates this learning-based relationship is an ongoing process. This new way of thinking and living is radically different from the thinking that governs the world. Consequently, a follower of Jesus is out of step with the way the world thinks and functions. S/he lives as an insurrectionist against the ways of the world—take up their cross. In learning this new way of thinking and living, a follower of Jesus lets go of the identity s/he built by following the thinking of the world—deny themselves. This identity is an egocentric identity we all manufacture based upon what the world said we need to do and be in order to be accepted and valued. Letting go of this manufactured persona frees us to discover and live out of the person God created us to be—our authentic, true self.

This new way of thinking and living is further defined in the second teaching about discipleship, Mark 9:33-37. It describes the heart of discipleship.

As Jesus and the disciples made their way through Galilee, the disciples were arguing among themselves about who was the greatest. Their argument grew out of the transfiguration experience (Mark 9:2-8) in which Jesus chose Peter, James, and John to go with him on the mountain retreat. That opportunity suggested these three were Jesus’s inner circle—a distinction that, in their thinking, set them above the other disciples. The argument was about which of the three was the greatest. The other disciples likely argued that they were just as great as any one of the three.

Their argument was rooted in the thinking of the world. It was hierarchal thinking in which those at the top of the hierarchy were considered to be greater than those beneath them. The disciples were comparing and competing. They were competing with one another in an effort to gain a higher position in the hierarchy. In doing so, they compared themselves to one another. They were seeking to prove they were at least as great as any of the rest, if not better. Comparing and competing, status and standing are tactics used in constructing the egocentric self.

Jesus used their argument as an opportunity to teach them about greatness and about being a disciple. Greatness in the kingdom is based upon a different standard than that used by the world. “Whoever wants to be first must be last of all and servant of all” (Mark 9:35). The new and different way of thinking Jesus taught was about being a servant—giving oneself to address the needs of another. True greatness is found in being a servant, not in being at the top of the hierarchy.

The heart of discipleship is a servant spirit.

We cannot live out of a servant spirit while clinging to our egocentric identity. Our egocentric, manufactured identity is based upon hierarchical thinking. It involves comparing and competing. We must relinquish this false identity—along with the thinking upon which it is built—if we are to live as a servant. We must deny ourselves.

A servant spirit is seen in how we treat those who are viewed as insignificant in the world—those who are at the bottom of the social hierarchy. The little child (Mark 9:36-37) represented these insignificant ones. To welcome the child—the insignificant—is to embrace him, treating him as someone of significance and value. The egocentric, constructed self—living out of comparing and competing, following hierarchal thinking—struggles to embrace and value the insignificant people of the world.

A servant spirit requires a transformation deep within—an inner transformation of the heart. The egocentric, constructed self inherently lives out of a self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit. Obviously, this self-serving spirit is at odds with the servant spirit that is the mark of authentic discipleship.

This transformation of the spirit out of which we live is not something we can accomplish through self-effort. It requires the transforming work of the Spirit. Our role is to recognize and acknowledge the deep-seated, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit that is at play in our lives. It is to give the Spirit permission to address it, knowing that dying to this governing spirit will likely involve struggle and pain. Our role is to maintain constant vigilance, knowing this egocentric spirit does not die easily. This spirit is deceptive, inserting itself in our very efforts to serve others. Our role is to consciously choose to live as a servant, giving ourselves to address the needs of others. Our role is to live in glad dependency upon the Spirit to do what we cannot do in our own strength.

Discipleship—being a follower of Jesus—is a life-long process of transformation in which the Spirit, transforming our hearts and minds, engrains a servant spirit within us.

The heart of discipleship is a servant spirit.

Next week, I’ll address the third teaching about discipleship found in chapter 10. This third teaching further clarifies what it means to live out of a servant spirit.

First Sunday of Lent, 2024 - Deny Self

What did you give up for Lent? One of the traditions associated with the six-weeks Lenten journey is the practice of “giving up something for Lent.”

This practice of “giving up something for Lent” is commonly linked to Jesus’s teaching about discipleship. “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” (Mark 8:34). We give up something for Lent as a way of denying ourselves. We commonly deny ourselves something we enjoy—chocolate, caffeine, soft drinks, alcohol, sweets, sugar, Facebook, video games, 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. Personally, 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.

In my mind, the practice is based on a misunderstanding of Jesus’s teaching about denying self.

The phrase “deny themselves” is one of three phrases that Jesus used to describe what is involved in being his follower—a disciple. Deny themselves, take up their cross, follow me. These three phrases teach us that being a follower of Jesus is to engage in a way of life that is different from the way the rest of the world lives. It is to embrace a way of thinking and living that is different from how the world trained us to think and live.

As you undoubtedly know, a cross was a Roman means of capital punishment. It was used exclusively to punish those criminals who were guilty of insurrection—those who dared to challenge the ways of Rome and defy the power of Rome. Jesus taught that to be his follower was to live as an insurrectionist in defiance of the ways of Rome. To be his follower was (is) to learn a way of life that is at odds with the way Rome—as well as the rest of the world—lives.

“Follow me” was a technical term used by rabbis in recruiting potential students (disciples). It was an invitation to learn from the rabbi by living in relationship with him. To be a follower of Jesus was (is) to live in relationship with him, learning from him a different way of thinking and living—a way that was (is) at odds with the way the rest of the world (represented by Rome) thought and lived. This different way of thinking and living was called the kingdom of God. It was thinking and living shaped by the character of God and patterned after the ways of God.

These two phrases—take up their cross, follow me—are clues to understanding the term “deny themselves.” The term is a reference to our identity—an identity based upon how the world trained us to think and live. When we reject the way the world trained us to think and live—“take up their cross,” we turn loose of the identity we created by conforming to what the world said we needed to be and do if we wanted to be accepted and valued. I call this identity our constructed or manufactured self. This pseudo-identity was constructed through self-effort. It is based upon 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—the person God created us to be. It is a persona we created to present to others.

Because this manufactured self was constructed through self-effort, it is an egocentric self. It is me-focused, hence the term egocentric. It operates out of a self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit.

This manufactured, egocentric identity is fed by comparing and competing. It unconsciously sees itself as better than others—particularly those who fail to measure up to the expectations expressed in society’s religious laws, moral standards, behavioral codes. Judging and criticizing reinforces the manufactured self’s sense of being better than “those people.” An unrecognized spirit of arrogance lives at the core of this egocentric identity. 

To be a follower of Jesus is to turn loose of 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), displacing the self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit of the manufactured, egocentric 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 our manufactured, egocentric identity. As long as we cling to the identity of our manufactured self, we cannot genuinely serve others. We will be caught up in protecting and propping up the identity we manufactured by conforming to what the world told us we needed to be and do in order to be accepted and valued.

To follow Jesus is to die to the manufactured, egocentric 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 to live as a follower of Jesus. It is what it means to “deny themselves.”

Ash Wednesday, 2024 - Thinking Out Loud

I bear on my forehead ashes made in the sign of a cross—an indication that I have attended an Ash Wednesday worship service. The service spurred a multitude of thoughts and reactions. So, while they are still fresh, I am putting them down on paper—a kind of thinking out loud for those of you who care to eavesdrop.

Ash Wednesday is traditionally about sin and repentance. The yearly liturgical readings develop the theme by drawing from Psalm 51, the prophet Joel, and the prophet Isaiah. Sin, repentance, human frailty (dust and ashes), and the prospect of death are all woven into the traditional Ash Wednesday service. These “heavy” themes commonly overshadow the faithful love of God expressed in grace and forgiveness.

It strikes me that we church folk are obsessed with the concept of sin. We are quick to proclaim how we fall short—i.e., our sinfulness. Our worship services commonly include confession liturgies along with prayers of confession—as did tonight’s Ash Wednesday service. The six-weeks Lenten journey is based upon the themes of sin and repentance. All of this talk about sin and repentance dances around (upon?) the guilt and shame which are an inherent part of our human condition. No wonder we get hooked so easily!

Just thinking out loud—this (what is to me) over-focus on sin and repentance keeps the focus on us. We are center stage. Talking about how we fail to measure up—i.e., sin—keeps the spotlight on us. It seems to me the focus of worship is God—a response of the heart to who God is, to the beauty of God’s character, to the steadfast love of God, to God’s ways of grace and forgiveness, to the transforming work of God in our lives through the Spirit.

Just thinking out loud—this (what is to me) over-focus on sin and repentance reflects merit-based, deserving-oriented thinking. Because we fail, we deserve judgment and condemnation. (Hear the language—deserve.) Confession and repentance commonly precede any proclamation of forgiveness, suggesting they are something we have to do in order to be forgiven. Again, merit-based thinking—if we repent, then God will forgive. It seems to me God’s grace and forgiveness precede any confession or repentance. It is God’s faithful love, expressed in grace and forgiveness, that frees us to deal honestly with our sin and wrong. Confession and repentance are responses to God’s grace and forgiveness.

Just thinking out loud—this (what is to me) over-focus on sin and repentance keeps us focused on behavior, stuck in trying-harder-to-do-better. Our religious life is defined by morals—what we should not do. As I understand what Jesus taught and how he lived, authentic spirituality is reflected in relationships—loving God by loving others. The Spirit is at work within us, leading us to love as Jesus loved.

Just thinking out loud—this (what is to me) over-focus on sin and repentance seldom leads us beyond our sins. Our confession rubs a bit of salve on our sense of guilt, but it doesn’t lead us to deal with the specifics of our sins, much less their source—why we keep repeating them. Jesus identified the heart as the source of the problem. “For it is from within, from the human heart, that evil intentions come: fornication, theft, murder, adultery, avarice, wickedness, deceit, licentiousness, envy, slander, pride, folly. All these evil things come from within” (Mark 7:20-23). It seems to me God’s desire for us is transformation, not reformation—a cleansed heart and renewed mind that produce a transformed life (Romans 12:2), what Paul called a new creation (2 Corinthians 5:17). The Spirit empowers us to love as Jesus loved by engraining the character of Christ in the depths of our being—in the heart.

Just thinking out loud—this (what is to me) over-focus on sin and repentance reflects a failure to come to terms with our humanness. Being human means being in process, not yet full grown. As a result, mistakes and failing to measure up are normal, unavoidable realities. It seems to me that shaming our failures—calling them sins—prevents us from learning from them. (Failure is one of the ways we learn best.) Fearing the shame that we attach to failure, we seek to avoid acknowledging any kind of failure. Like the man and the woman in the garden, we hide the truth of our choices from God, from others, and from ourselves. We shift the blame rather than accepting responsibility for our choices.

Just thinking out loud—this (what is to me) over-focus on sin and repentance denies the gospel. The good news Jesus proclaimed was about who God is and how God relates to us. It was about the steadfast, faithful love of God. It was about the grace and forgiveness with which God deals with our sins and the lavish generosity with which God gives them to us. It was about God’s embrace of us as beloved children, even “while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8). Such love, expressed in grace and forgiveness, frees us to embrace our humanness, including our failure to measure up. It calls us to lay aside our identity as “sinners” in order to embrace our identity as beloved children of God, created in the image of God, being recreated in the likeness of Christ.

Just thinking out loud—this (what is to me) over-focus on sin and repentance fails to lead us to love God with all of our heart, mind, soul, and strength (Matthew 22:37-40).

Just thinking out loud—I have grown tired of what Rohr calls the sin management focus of churches.  I am ready to move beyond sin and repentance, beyond guilt and shame. I want my spiritual journey—including Ash Wednesday and the Lenten journey—to be about growing “in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” (2 Peter 3:18) so that I might love God with my whole being and love the way Jesus loved.

Transfiguration Sunday, 2024 - Listen to Him!

It was for the benefit of the disciples—something they needed if they were to continue to make progress on their spiritual journey. It is something we need if we are to grow spiritually.

The story of Jesus’s transfiguration on the mountain is told by all three of the synoptic gospel writers. Although they each relate the same facts, each told the story with a different focus and emphasis. In the gospel of Mark, the focus is on the disciples. The way Mark related it, Jesus’s transfiguration was for their benefit.

Mark tied two experiences together—what we call “the great confession” at Caesarea Philippi and Jesus’s transfiguration on the mountain. The link is seen in the reference “six days later” (Mark 9:2).

The experience at Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27-30) reflected progress in the disciples’ understanding of who Jesus was. In the first half of the gospel, the disciples did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah. They struggled to understand what he taught. Using the imagery of the blind man whose healing required a second touch (Mark 8:22-26), they were blind. At Caesarea Philippi, for the first time they said out loud what they had begun to whisper behind Jesus’s back: “You are the Messiah” (Mark 8:29). Again, using the imagery of the blind man, the disciples could now see. They recognized that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah. The problem was, they—like the blind man after the first touch—could see, but not clearly.

Their failure to see clearly is reflected in what happened after they acknowledged to Jesus that they knew he was the Messiah.

The gospel writer indicated that Jesus sought to build on their understanding. Now that they knew he was the Messiah, Jesus then began to teach them what being the Messiah entailed. “Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8:31). Jesus sought to teach them that the Messiah was also the Suffering Servant described in Isaiah 52:13-53:12. (Jesus was the first person in Jewish history to put these two figures together.)

Of course, the disciples did not think of the Messiah in terms of the Suffering Servant. They thought of the Messiah as a warrior-king like David—one who would defeat their enemies and reestablish the nation as a leading world power. Naturally, they rejected what Jesus tried to teach them. “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him” (Mark 8:32).

This interchange reflects a critical issue in the disciples’ growth—an issue we all encounter over and over again in our spiritual journey. How we resolve this issue determines whether we continue to make progress spiritually or become spiritually stuck and stagnant.

The issue occurred when what Jesus taught contradicted what the disciples believed and how they thought. Jesus captured the issue in his response to Peter, “you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things” (Mark 8:33).

The disciples’ thinking reflected the world’s thinking—power used over, down against others for personal benefit, at the other’s expense. (Compare Mark 10:41-42.) Their thinking reflected the comparing and competing ways of the world (Mark 9:33-37). It was shaped by the self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit that permeates the world’s way of thinking (Mark 10:35-37).

In contrast, Jesus’s teachings reflected the ways of God—the ways of grace and forgiveness that views and values, accepts and embraces every person as a beloved child of God. In contrast to the self-serving, what’s-in-it-for-me spirit, Jesus taught his disciples to live out of a servant spirit (Mark 9:35), using their power to serve (Mark 10:43-45). His teachings reflected thinking shaped by the character of God, by the steadfast, faithful love of God, and by the servant ways of God.

The essence of the spiritual journey is captured in this interchange—moving beyond how the world trained us to think and live to thinking shaped by the character of God and the ways of God. This shift in how we think inevitably impacts what we think and believe. It is what the apostle Paul referred to as “the renewing of the mind” (Romans 12:2). It is how our lives are transformed into the likeness of Christ (Romans 12:2; Ephesians 4:22-24; Colossians 3:9-11). It is how we grow spiritually.

In order to embrace the teachings of Jesus, we must move beyond our resistance—resistance rooted in how the world trained us to think, in what the world trained us to believe. That’s where the transfiguration experience came in for the disciples.

Jesus took Peter, James, and John—his inner circle—with him on his mountain retreat. There “he was transfigured before them” (Mark 9:2b). They caught a glimpse of his glory in the spiritual realm—a glory greater than the glory they imagined for him as a conquering hero. The saw Moses and Elijah, representing the Law and the Prophets, i.e., the Hebrew Scriptures. Their presence suggested the teachings of the Hebrew Scripture supported what Jesus had taught them about the Messiah. They were enveloped in a cloud, indicating the presence of God. They heard a voice from the cloud (i.e., the voice of God) say, “This is my Son, the Beloved; listen to him” (Mark 9:7).

The first part of what they heard affirmed their understanding about Jesus being the Messiah. It was a line from Psalm 2, the coronation psalm that was sung whenever a new king was crowned in the nation. This line indicated their understanding that Jesus was the Messiah was on target.

The affirmation was followed by a command: “Listen to him.” The command confronted their resistance to what Jesus taught them about the Messiah. It called them beyond their resistance. It called them to be willing to hear what Jesus was saying. It called them to learn from him. It called them beyond how the world had trained them to think and what the world had taught them to believe so they could embrace a new, different way of thinking—a way of thinking shaped by the character of God and the ways of God. As long as they continued to cling to how the world trained them to think and to what the world taught them to believe, they would remain seeing, but not clearly. They would only see clearly when they embraced what Jesus taught.

Like the disciples, our spiritual journey involves moving beyond how the world trained us to think and what the world taught us to believe. It involves recognizing, learning, and embracing the ways of God Jesus taught. It involves learning a different way of thinking—one shaped by the character of God and the ways of God.

Progress on our spiritual journey can only happen as we move beyond our resistance to what Jesus taught. Our resistance is an indicator that we are clinging to our old ways of thinking—to how the world trained us to think, to what the world taught us to believe. Such resistance blocks our spiritual progress, keeping us stuck in old thinking and stagnant in our spiritual life.

The experience of Peter, James, and John on the Mount of Transfiguration once again invites us to recognize and relinquish our resistance to what Jesus taught. It invites us to embrace a teachable spirit so that we might continue to make progress on our spiritual journey.

Which raises the question: about what might God being saying to us “Listen to him!”?