Sermon: B Lent 2, February 28, 2021, "Taking up our cross to discern a path"

 B Lent 2 SJUCC 2021

Mark 8:31-38

February 28, 2021

 

Throughout this season of Lent, we voluntarily walk out into the stark and extreme landscape of the wilderness to develop our focus and clarity about who we are and who we are in relationship.  Because the wilderness can be a dangerous place, almost inhuman, with wild beasts and the like, we must discern what we will leave behind as unnecessary baggage and what will we take with us as important, valuable.  If we walk through this time intentionally, the wilderness hones our attention.  And what we give our attention to, grows. 

In the current age, we are consistently being inundated by the technologies that deliver to us our relationships with the outside world in current events, the interpretation of the news, fake news, and entertainment, and all the variations and combinations of these.  Our technologies also deliver to us our relationships with our far-flung families, friends, and our values in texts, tweets, and Facebook posts.   

I like the criticism found in movies like the zombie romantic comedy, “Warm Bodies,” which parodies modern society.  As the movie opens, we see a number of people walking around an airport, glued to their phones, their technology making them unavailable to the everyone and everything around them.  The movie asks, in effect, are we using our technology or is our technology using us?  Have we, in effect, become zombies?   . . . A little ironic to ask in the midst of Zoom worship.

The etymology of technology is found in words like “art,” “skill,” “craft,”, and “ingenuity.”  In effect, our technology is about “useful art.”  But as our technology becomes more and more strongly tied to our identity, the question, again,  is whether we are using our technology or whether our technology is using us?[1] Are we using and infusing our technology with our values or is our technology using and infusing us with other values?  Certainly, all the news about infiltration and manipulation of media platforms like Facebook and Twitter remind us that some systems and structures are banking on the fact that we can be controlled and used by our technologies.  What are we paying attention to?

In the passage from Mark we have before us today, Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, or follow me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”  That passage is probably either Jesus quoting Cynic philosophers who had come before him, Cynic philosophers who may have been his contemporaries; or the author of Mark placing a popular Cynic quote on the lips of Jesus.  Cynic philosophers were not negative in the way we use the word “cynical.”  Rather, Cynic philosophers were a-social and counter-cultural critics.  Many of them would beg and go unshaven and unbathed.   Some would go without clothes or belongings.  Cynics did all this to point out how ridiculous the striving after possessions and wealth was in Roman society.[2]  Not surprisingly, Roman society responded by referring to Cynics as “dogs.”

           Epictetus, a Cynic philosopher, was quoted in the 2^nd Century as saying, “If you want to be crucified, just wait. The cross will come. If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right, then it's to be carried through, and your integrity maintained.”[3]  Within Cynic schools of philosophy in the First century, suffering, sin, and death or, literally, carrying one’s cross for doing the right or virtuous thing, certified that person as full of integrity, authentic, a true philosopher.[4]  The Roman government maintained its dominance through horrendous, tortuous executions carried out through crucifixion.  The message of Rome was simple, “Submit or die.”  For a Cynic, to take up one’s cross was to live with integrity under authoritarian hypocrisy of Rome.

Many believe that the gospel of Mark was written around year 70 C.E., the time of the Jewish Great Revolt.  The historian Josephus believes that approximately 1.1 million Jews were killed by Rome during the Great Revolt, many of them crucified, Rome ringing the city of Jerusalem alone with tens of thousands of crosses.[5]  So when Mark includes admonitions to take up our cross and follow Christ, this is not metaphor or hyperbole.  These are real challenges to a costly discipleship, to recognize that to live out our values might be a test of our loyalties, even to the point of death.

           That was the original meaning of the Greek word we now translate as faith, pistis.  Pistis meant loyalty or allegiance.  In what basket do you put your eggs?  Historically, we have heard this passage translated as Jesus admonishing Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  But the better word for “Satan” is probably “Adversary”, the great tester of loyalties[6], the one who wants to know if you are a disciple of Christ or Caesar?  Are you a follower of the one who puts their eggs in the basket of the materially poor, the political prisoner, and the occupied?  Or are you a follower of the one who puts their eggs in the basket of the materially wealthy, the militarily powerful, and those who maintain peace through violence and death?  Are we setting our minds, our attention, on divine things or something else?

Cynic philosophers believed a life lived virtuously, with the expectation of struggle, rose above what the Romans could do to you with a cross.  The disciples of Christ defined that virtuous life in an even more radical path.  We, too often, interpret Jesus’s crucifixion as a singular experience when, in all reality, hearing the gospel story would have been a sign of solidarity that Christ too, like what you, your friends, and your family might have experienced, Christ too suffered that same fate.

Repeated by or put on the lips of Jesus, Jesus’ followers had to be aware that the path they had chosen was a hard path, a path full of struggle.  Suffering and hardship came to Jesus’s followers not just because life was hard, but also because a virtuous life, a life full of integrity put them square against a society maintained by violence and torture and death. 

Too often “take up your cross” has been interpreted in the common vernacular about having our own individual crosses to bear, a phrase we still use much too often, as in, “Poor Mike, how does he stand it when the Illini lose to Michigan State like that?  I guess that’s just his cross to bear.”  Rather, this verse is about entering into struggles and hardships which put us foursquare against systems of domination and destruction.   “If you take up your cross,” is about choices over and against a hopelessness that says the world can be any different.  Show your loyalty even in the shadow of the cross.

The radical call of this Scripture is made even more explicit when Jesus references the Human One[7] (not once but twice) or what has been traditionally translated as the Son of Man.  The Human One, in Jewish mythology, is seen coming with the Ancient-of-Days in the prophet Daniel’s dreams to institute, transform, and rehabilitate society in the values of justice.[8]  The Human One also opposes the evil and wicked empires, characterizing those empires as carnivorous beasts with their arrogance and long teeth, devouring and consuming, consuming and devouring.   Again, are we aligning ourselves with the project of the Human One or the carnivorous, violent, consuming, and arrogant beasts?

We must liberate our attention in this wilderness of Lent so that we have the tools to live this difficult, radical life, to maintain our loyalty when it would just be so easy to assent to the violence and death reasserted in Syria, now practiced in our schools, and furthered in extractive economies that devour the poor and our planet.  How shall we do this?  How do we use our technologies to inform our faith?

Kevin Kelley, the founder of Wired magazine and a self-identified Christian, has a fascination with the Amish and their practices.  The Amish are stereotyped as people who resist change and the wider culture by abandoning technology, electricity, and any sense of modern fashion.  But Kelley relates that the Amish are changing all the time.  They decide what useful art they are going to employ based on values and practices that inform their values.  According to Kelley, the Amish use discernment questions which reveal their values.  Those discernment questions are:  1) Will this technology increase or strengthen my family?  And 2) Will this technology increase or strengthen my community?  Kelley goes on to say:

 

So the Amish, their ideal is to have every meal with their children until they leave. They want to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day with their children. How much time does it bring them and keep them in the community? So the reason why they have horses instead of cars is because the horse can only go 15 miles away, so they have to go shopping, go to church, go to visit, all within 15 miles. That forces them to pay attention, to support their local neighborhood, their community. And so when they’re looking at new technology — like, they say, LEDs or whatever — does it help them do that, or does it not? So they’re not rejecting technology. They’re saying: We want technology that serves our purposes.

 

And the way that they do this is also interesting, is — they don’t think about the technologies. They have Amish early adopters. And these are guys, usually, in any community, who are eager to try new things. And they have to get permission from the bishop. And so the bishop will say, “OK, Ivan, yeah, you can have a cellphone in your truck for work.” And so, for the next year, they watch — his community watches Ivan to see how that affects his family, his community, his work, and if they don’t think that it’s a positive, then he has to give it up. So it’s a community decision.[9]

 

Does our useful art, our technology, reveal our loyalties, reflect what we want to grow?  Or do we end up reflecting the loyalties of or technology?

           Allied Media Projects is an organization based out of Detroit that is actively seeking to build a world based on transformative justice through intentional and strategic use of media technologies.  Their mission is to cultivate media strategies for a more just, creative and collaborative world. They serve a network of media makers, artists, educators, and technologists working for social justice.  Their definition of media includes all forms of communication, from videos and websites to theater, dance, design, and interactive technology.[10]  Hear in that mission statement values, not unlike the Amish, to be purposeful and intentional with their attention to technology.

           Here are some of the principles they have discerned in their work: 

·     We are making an honest attempt to solve the most significant problems of our day.

·     We are building a network of people and organizations that are developing long-term solutions based on the immediate confrontation of our most pressing problems.

·     Wherever there is a problem, there are already people acting on the problem in some fashion. Understanding those actions is the starting point for developing effective strategies to resolve the problem, so we focus on the solutions, not the problems.

·     We emphasize our own power and legitimacy.

·     We presume our power, not our powerlessness.

·     We spend more time building than attacking.

·     We focus on strategies rather than issues.

·     The strongest solutions happen through the process, not in a moment at the end of the process.

·     The most effective strategies for us are the ones that work in situations of scarce resources and intersecting systems of oppression because those solutions tend to be the most holistic and sustainable.

·     Place is important. Place helps define context.

·     We encourage people to engage with their whole selves, not just with one part of their identity.

And, finally, they list in bold: 

·     We begin by listening.[11]

Imagine a whole community of people who might take up those spiritual practices as a way of walking through the wilderness and honing their attention at a time of ever-changing technology.  I hear in those principles strongly spiritual content coming from a secular setting.  More and more, I hear a spiritual consensus emerging that recognizes we can no longer give our loyalty to the rules of Rome but must find something more just, more life-giving, more intentional, living with integrity even when it is difficult.  What of those principles might you take, individually, as a walking stick which measures your steps?  What of those principles might we take, as a faith community, to sharpen our attention, to continue piecing together our downtown neighbors and citizens, and living our lives in loyalty to the things of God and not of Caesar?  I think Allied Media Projects has it right.  We begin by listening.  May it be so.  Amen. 

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[1] “The universe is a question:  interview with Kevin Kelly,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, January 18, 2018.  https://onbeing.org/programs/kevin-kelly-the-universe-is-a-question-jan2018/.

[2] F. Gerald Downing advances the comparisons between Jesus and the Cynics more than anyone.  The Jesus Seminar has used much of his material to draw comparisons.

[3] “Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark,” http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark08.html, citing Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus (Amherst, New York:  Prometheus, 2000), p. 160.

[4] Ibid, citing David, Seeley,  “Blessings and Boundaries:Interpretations of Jesus' Death in Q. In Early Christianity, Q and Jesus,” Semeia 55 (ed. John S. Kloppenborg; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 131-46. 

[5] James Carroll, Christ Actually:  The Son of God for the Secular Age (New York:  Viking, 2014), pp. 46-54.

[6] Bruce J. Malina and Richard J. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress Press:  Minneapolis, 2014), p. 182, n. Honor; Secrecy.

[7] Literally, “The One of Fertile Soil” or, as I translate it, “Child of Earth.”

[8] The Bible references this as tzedakah (righteousness)

[9] “The universe is a question.”

[10] https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/story

[11] https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/network-principles.

Sermon: First Sunday of Advent, November 29, 2020, "Whose good news?"

B Advent SJUCC OL 1

Mark 1:1-3; Mark 13:1-11

November 29, 2020

 

         It is night—seemingly at midnight, a night that seems like there will never be a dawn.  One of the reasons the Christian faith still resonates with me is because in the deepest night, these First Century people found a path in the wilderness. 

The Gospel of Mark was written around the time between 66 CE to 70 CE when Jewish rebellion had captured the city of Jerusalem and the Roman Empire took notice.  Jewish rebellion had been sparked by the priestly caste in Jerusalem and over 600,000 Jews from Judah and Galilee rushed to Jerusalem to join the fight.   The Romans reorganized, amassed their troops, and were going to make sure that every last bit of that rebellion was forever destroyed.  While the Romans patiently built ramparts for an eventual assault on the Jerusalem city walls, the Jerusalem defenders ran so low on food that many starved, and others began to flee.  Those caught by the Romans were promptly and prominently crucified, so that the Jews within Jerusalem could see—and, as the corpses rotted, smell—whom they were dealing with. 

The Roman siege lasted most of a year, during which something like ten thousand crosses sprouted in a ring around the inner city of Jerusalem, each with its stinking cadaver.[1] 

The rule for populations conquered by Rome was straightforward.  Submit or die.  When Mark is written, Romans were crucifying five hundred Jews every day.[2] 

This Advent season we begin our work in the gospel of Mark, considered the earliest of the gospels in our Bible, even earlier than the gospel of Matthew.  As I shared, scholars believe that Mark was written around the year 70 CE, either just before, during, or after the Romans were laying siege to the city of Jerusalem.  The everyday reality for First Century Jews is filled with every day torture, trauma, and loss.  All looked bleak. 

In response, the Gospel of Mark is a treatise which shares how the Jewish people are to conduct their lives when death seems imminent and inevitable.  One of the reasons the Christian faith still resonates with me is because in the deepest night, while the cross is known as a symbol of terrible trauma, torture, and death, these people found a path of mutual healing, food sharing, and confrontational non-violence in the wilderness. 

           The Scripture passage for today is just three short verses, and I would like to focus on that first verse for this week’s sermon:  “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”  This is language that tells everyone in the First Century that this Mediterranean Jewish peasant is certain to be crucified.

When the Gospel of Mark, in Chapter 13, states:   “When you hear of wars and rumors of wars, do not be alarmed; this must take place, but the end is still to come. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; there will be earthquakes in various places; there will be famines,”[3]—this is not apocalyptic fortune telling but a writer sharing with the world what they see in the destruction of Jerusalem. 

Too often what we have said is that Jesus’s trauma, torture, and death on the cross is unique.  What we learn from the history is that the suffering of Jesus is in keeping with so many Jews who suffered at this time.  In Mark’s story of Jesus’s death, when the Temple is torn in two, the symbol of Roman savagery was complete.   One could only imagine surviving this savagery because the story told that the trauma, torture, and violence that happened with Jesus did not end with a Roman cross.[4] 

To understand any of life’s truisms, however, we must begin with a baseball story.  The Champaign-Urbana American Legion baseball team had come to play a double header at the famous Al Mulberry Field in the humble hamlet of my hometown, Metamora, Illinois.  My brother, Andy, played for the home squad, and he remembers hearing the players from the visiting team making fun of the fact that the baseball field was pushed right up against a corn field.  Comments about playing in Hicksville against hayseeds could be overheard by my brother as the opposing team warmed up and talked smack. 

           Now my brother is very sensitive about such comments.  He is a very quiet and humble person, which, if you are not listening closely, can come off as simple and unintelligent.  Which my brother is definitely not.  But he is very aware how people might stereotype him.  So when he first told me this story, he shared how he and his teammates slapped around the opposing team’s best and hardest throwing pitcher and would yell to each other with a thick southern drawl, “Hey, sit on his change-up and adjust to his fastball.”  They would repeat some of the hick comments made by the visitors.  I’m sure the visitors from the great metropolis of Champaign-Urbana didn’t quite know what to make of Metamorons talking their own smack to poke fun at them.

           When I told Andy I was going to use this story for my sermon, he ended his reflections with a defiant, “And we swept the doubleheader.” Clearly, some of the anger,  still fresh in his mind. 

           I am reminded of the Broadway musical and movie, West Side Story, which had Puerto Rican immigrants singing about their new country, America.  In the movie, the chorus of the song “America” sings the praises:  “I like to be in America; Okay by me in America; Everything free in America.”  But the verses use an insider satire, a language we use to describe our own country, that makes us squirm in our chairs a bit.  “Here you are free and have pride; Long as you stay on your own side; Free to be anything you choose; Free to wait tables and shine shoes.”  One has to listen closely in the song for how patriotic phrases are turned on their head.  “Life is all right in America; If you’re all white in America.”  The liveliness and energy of the song invite us in to sing lyric that critiques and satirizes.  Are they just having fun?  Is it a joke?  Or is something more serious being said here?  It’s never quite clear.

           Similar layers are found in John Fogerty’s, “Fortunate Son,” Springsteen’s “Born in the USA,” or John Mellencamp’s, “Little Pink Houses.”  Because these are sung by white men who love the troops, the language in them makes people assume they are patriotic songs.  Looking underneath the language, however, is a revolutionary critique that is critical of the American project.  The language, at closer look, invites you in, makes you sing along, and then uses language to upend American capitalism, militarism, and imperialism.

           In the same manner as my brother using the language of the other team to poke fun back at them or the song “America” satirizes freedom and opportunity in their new country, the gospels use the language of the Roman Empire as a form of sarcasm, a way of critiquing the political and religious claims made at the time.   The language used by the gospels was language used long before Jesus arrived on the scene.  That first verse of the gospel of Mark is loaded with that meaning.  “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, Son of God.”

The first verse of Mark acts as a title for the entire gospel and lets us know that there is a conflict between Rome, its emperor, and Jesus of Nazareth from Galilee.  Even the use of the words “gospel” or “good news” was language used to declare a military victory for Caesar.  Evangelists would travel around the empire sharing that good news, proclaiming Caesar to be the incarnation of the Divine human.  This was Roman propaganda and it began with the joyful messages spread across the Empire proclaiming Caesar’s divine birth.[5]  To understand how closely tied the political and religious were during this time period, cities receiving the good news of Caesar were said to offer sacrifices in honor and devotion to the gods.[6] 

The evangelists of Caesar Augustus, the ruler we read in the birth-story of Jesus in Luke’s gospel, sent out joyful messages that Caesar had been born to the god, Apollo.  To use good news or gospel for this Jesus fellow then, cut against the legitimizing rhetoric used by Caesar and his evangelizers.   

           The author of Mark goes on with a title for Jesus we have come to think of as Jesus’s last name.  This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ.  “Christ” literally means “Anointed One” and was the Greek translation of the Hebrew word, “Messiah.”  The term “Messiah” was usually reserved for a political king or ruler who delivered or liberated a people from oppression or war.  For example, Cyrus of Persia, the ruler who liberated the Jewish people from Babylonian captivity and exile, was referred to as a Messiah.  The title originally referred to the ancient kings of Israel, anointed by God.[7]  At the time of Jesus, Messiah had also become a title for the leader of a populist rebellion against Rome.[8]

           Finally, the title of Mark concludes with the good news of Jesus Christ being proclaimed as the Son of God.  In a place called Priene, on the western coast of Turkey, around the year 9 BCE, a huge Temple was built.  Above the entrance to that Temple, one would have seen this dedication written, “The People Dedicate this to Athena Polias (the Greek goddess of Wisdom and War) and to the Imperator Caesar, the Son of God, the God Sebastos.”  Sebastos is another word for Augustus and, translated from the Greek, means “God to be Worshipped.”  Further in to that Temple, a calendar inscription, dedicated to Caesar Augustus, and sounding very much like the gospel of Mark reads, “the beginning of the good news for the world.”[9]  That inscription is some ten to twelve years before the birth of Jesus and some eighty years before the gospel is written.

Six different coins were minted during the reign of Caesar Augustus and on every single one of those coins is the phrase, “Caesar, Son of God.”[10]  Caesar was not only known as Son of God, but God Incarnate, God from God, Lord, Redeemer, Liberator, Prince of Peace, and Savior of the World.[11]

The author of Mark is intentionally placing this Jesus of Nazareth in direct conflict with Rome and its Caesar, proclaiming him the Messiah and Son of God.  Romans who read this material would have wondered if these claims for a Jewish peasant were meant to make them angry or make them laugh.  Rome and its ruler may not have understood the challenge found at the very beginning of this gospel.  But those people who were crushed every day by Rome and its emperor would have understood.  Just as Puerto Rican immigrants know the layers and what is being said in the song “America” from West Side Story.

The author of Mark is not writing a biography of Jesus.  The author is not trying to share an objective history.  Rather, the author is trying to make it very explicit that this is satire and resistance literature over and against Rome and its Caesar.  The author of Mark has a viewpoint, a perspective.

As Christians, over the course of this Advent season, we must recognize the two distinct choices given to us by the gospel writer.  Caesar Augustus and Jesus of Nazareth are two distinct choices.   How are loyalty and love for Jesus Christ, Son of God, different than loyalty and love for Caesar, son of god? 

This is Mark chapter 1, verse 1, “This is the beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.”   The content of who that Jesus is, a journey of unarmed truth and unconditional love matters.  In mutual healing and the sharing of food, Jesus seeks to weave together an alternative empire.  He seeks to upend the Roman gospel that is filled with violence and domination.  In a community where militias gather to threaten violence in our own state, we, as people of faith, need to say that we walk a different journey which will never be secured or promoted through violence.  This is only reinforcing the gospel of Caesar.  So we must be prolific, we must be evangelistic, and we must say that this is not who we are or what we want for anyone. 

It is night.  The Doomsday Clock, which has become a universally recognized indicator of the world’s vulnerability to catastrophe from nuclear weapons, climate change, and disruptive technologies in other domains, has been moved closer to midnight since its founding in 1945.   As of January 2020, the Doomsday Clock has been moved to 100 seconds before midnight.[12]  May we have the will to read on beyond this gospel’s title, and the wisdom to see the difference between the two paths, Christ and Caesar, and the courage to choose love and loyalty for the path that does not promise success, power, or wealth.  Caesar’s evangelists are forever threatening to beat down the door if we do not heed their good news.  Christ stands outside the door knocking . . . waiting . . . hoping against hope that the world will come near enough, to carve a new path in the wilderness, and thus, to hear good tidings of our God’s great joy.   Amen.

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[1] James Carroll, Christ Actually:  Reimagining Faith in the Modern Age (New York:  Penguin Books, 2014), pp. 46-54. 
[2]Ibid, p. 72. 
[3] Mark 13:7-8
[4] Carroll, Christ Actually, pp. 58-59. 
[5] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man:  A Political Reading of Mark’s Stories of Jesus (Maryknoll, NY:  Orbis Books, 1988), p. 123, quoting the Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.
[6] Craig Evans, Mark’s Incipit and the Priene Calendar Inscription:
From Jewish Gospel to Greco-Roman Gospel http://www.craigaevans.com/Priene%20art.pdf
[7] Wolfhart Pannenberg, The Apostle’s Creed in Light of Today’s Questions (Louisville, KY:  Westminster Press, 1975), p. 53.
[8] Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man, p. 123. 
[9] Craig Evans, “Mark’s Incipit,” ((OGIS 458; ca. 9  BCE).
[10] John Dominic Crossan, “The Challenge of Jesus,” Faith and Reason:  The Participant’s Pages.  http://www.faithandreason.org/downloads/COJ_Participants.pdf
[11] Ibid.
[12] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, “Doomsday Clock,” https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock/current-time/#:~:text=Previously%2C%20the%20Clock%20was%20moved,recognition%20of%20its%20historic%20nature.

Second Sunday of Lent, "Attention liberation"

B Lent 2 BFC 2018

Mark 8:31-38

February 25, 2018

Mark 8:31-38

31 Then he began to teach them that the Human One (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. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Adversary! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Human One (Son of Man) will also be ashamed when that one comes in the glory of the Loving Creator with the holy angels.”

Throughout this season of Lent, we voluntarily walk out into the stark and extreme landscape of the wilderness to develop our focus and clarity about who we are and who we are in relationship.  Because the wilderness can be a dangerous place, almost inhuman, we must discern what we will leave behind as unnecessary baggage and what will we take with us as important, valuable.  If we walk through this time intentionally, the wilderness hones our attention.  And what we give our attention to, grows. 

In the current age, we are consistently being inundated by the technologies that deliver to us our relationships with the outside world through current events, the interpretation of the news, and fake news.  Our technologies deliver to us our relationships with our far-flung families, friends, and our values in texts, tweets, and Facebook posts. 

The etymology of technology is found in words like “art,” “skill,” “craft,”, and “ingenuity.”  In effect, our technology is about “useful art.”  But as our technology becomes more and more strongly tied to our identity, the question is whether we are using our technology or whether our technology is using us.[1] Are we using and infusing our technology with our values or is our technology using and infusing us with other values?  Certainly the news that the Russian government infiltrated media platforms like Facebook and Twitter reminds us that some systems and structures are banking on the fact that we can be manipulated and used by our technologies.  What are we paying attention to?

In the passage from Mark we have before us today, Jesus says, “If anyone would come after me, or follow me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”  That passage is probably either Jesus quoting Cynic philosophers who had come before him, or were his contemporaries, or the author of Mark placing a popular Cynic quote on the lips of Jesus.  Cynic philosophers were not negative in the way we use the word “cynical.”  Rather, Cynic philosophers were asocial and counter-cultural critics.  Many of them would beg and go unshaven and unbathed.   Some would go without clothes or belongings all to point out how ridiculous the striving after possessions and wealth was in Roman society.[2]  Roman society responded by referring to Cynics as “dogs.”

          Epictetus, a Cynic philosopher, was quoted in the 2^nd Century as saying, “If you want to be crucified, just wait. The cross will come. If it seems reasonable to comply, and the circumstances are right, then it's to be carried through, and your integrity maintained.”[3]  Within Cynic schools of philosophy in the first century, suffering sin and death or literally carrying one’s cross for doing the right or virtuous thing, certified that person as full of integrity, authentic, a true philosopher.[4]  The Roman government maintained its dominance through horrendous, tortuous executions carried out through crucifixion.  The message of Rome was simple, “Submit or die.”  Many believe that the gospel of Mark was written around year 70 C.E., the time of the Jewish Great Revolt.  The historian Josephus believes that approximately 1.1 million Jews were killed by Rome during the Great Revolt, many of them crucified, Rome ringing the city of Jerusalem alone with tens of thousands of crosses.[5]  So when Mark includes admonitions to take up our cross and follow Christ, this is not metaphor or hyperbole.  These are real challenges to a costly discipleship, to recognize that to live out our values might be a test of our loyalties, even to the point of death.

          That was the original meaning of the Greek word we now translate as faith, pistis.  Pistis meant loyalty or allegiance.  In what basket do you put your eggs?  Historically, we have heard this passage translated as Jesus admonishing Peter, “Get thee behind me, Satan.”  But the better word for “Satan” is probably “Adversary”, the great tester of loyalties[6], the one who wants to know if you are a disciple of Christ or Caesar?  Are you a follower of the one who puts their eggs in the basket of the materially poor, the political prisoner, and the occupied?  Or are you a follower of the one who puts their eggs in the basket of the materially wealthy, the militarily powerful, and those who maintain peace through violence and death?  Are we setting our minds, our attention, on divine things or something else?

Cynic philosophers believed a life lived virtuously, with the expectation of struggle, rose above what the Romans could do to you with a cross.  The disciples of Christ defined that virtuous life in an even more radical path.  We, too often, interpret Jesus’s crucifixion as a singular experience when, in all reality, hearing the gospel story would have been a sign of solidarity that Christ too, like you experienced among your friends and family, was crucified too. 

Repeated by or put on the lips of Jesus, Jesus’ followers had to be aware that the path they had chosen was a hard path, a path full of struggle.  Suffering and hardship came to Jesus’ followers not just because life was hard, but also because a virtuous life, a life full of integrity put them square against a society maintained by violence and torture and death. 

Too often this verse has been interpreted in the common vernacular about having our own individual crosses to bear, a phrase we still use much too often, as in, “Poor Mike, how does he stand it when the Illini lose to Michigan State and Purdue like that.  I guess that’s just his cross to bear.”  Rather, this verse is about entering into struggles and hardships which put us foursquare against systems of domination and destruction.   “If you take up your cross,” is about choices over and against a hopelessness that says the world can be any different.  Show your loyalty even in the shadow of the cross.

The radical call of this Scripture is made even more explicit when Jesus references the Human One[7] (not once but twice) or what has been traditionally translated as the Son of Man.  The Human One, in Jewish mythology, is seen coming with the Ancient-of-Days in the prophet Daniel’s dreams to institute, transform, and rehabilitate society in the values of justice.[8]  The Human One also opposes the evil and wicked empires, characterizing them as carnivorous beasts with their arrogance and long teeth, devouring and consuming, consuming and devouring.   Again, are we aligning ourselves with the project of the Human One or the carnivorous, violent, consuming, and arrogant beasts?

We must liberate our attention in this wilderness of Lent so that we have the tools to live this difficult, radical life, to maintain our loyalty when it would just be so easy to assent to the violence and death reasserted in Syria, now practiced in our schools, and furthered in extractive economies that devour the poor and our planet.  How shall we do this?  How do we use our technologies to inform our faith?

Kevin Kelley, the founder of Wired magazine and a self-identified Christian, has a fascination with the Amish and their practices.  The Amish are stereotyped as people who resist change and the wider culture by abandoning technology, electricity, and any sense of modern fashion.  But Kelley relates that the Amish are changing all the time.  They decide what useful art they are going to employ based on values and practices that inform their values.  According to Kelley, the Amish use discernment questions which reveal their values.  Those discernment questions are:  1) Will this technology increase or strengthen my family?  And 2) Will this technology increase or strengthen my community?  Kelley goes on to say:

So the Amish, their ideal is to have every meal with their children until they leave. They want to have breakfast, lunch, and dinner every day with their children. How much time does it bring them and keep them in the community? So the reason why they have horses instead of cars is because the horse can only go 15 miles away, so they have to go shopping, go to church, go to visit, all within 15 miles. That forces them to pay attention, to support their local neighborhood, their community. And so when they’re looking at new technology — like, they say, LEDs or whatever — does it help them do that, or does it not? So they’re not rejecting technology. They’re saying: We want technology that serves our purposes.

And the way that they do this is also interesting, is — they don’t think about the technologies. They have Amish early adopters. And these are guys, usually, in any community, who are eager to try new things. And they have to get permission from the bishop. And so the bishop will say, “OK, Ivan, yeah, you can have a cellphone in your truck for work.” And so, for the next year, they watch — his community watches Ivan to see how that affects his family, his community, his work, and if they don’t think that it’s a positive, then he has to give it up. So it’s a community decision.[9]

Does our useful art, our technology, reveal our loyalties, reflect what we want to grow?  Or do we end up reflecting the loyalties of or technology?

          Allied Media Projects is an organization based out of Detroit that is actively seeking to build a world based on transformative justice through intentional and strategic use of media technologies.  Their mission is to cultivate media strategies for a more just, creative and collaborative world. They serve a network of media makers, artists, educators, and technologists working for social justice.  Their definition of media includes all forms of communication, from videos and websites to theater, dance, design, and interactive technology.[10]  Hear in that mission statement values, not unlike the Amish, to be purposeful and intentional with their attention to technology.

          Here are some of the principles they have discerned in their work: 

·      We are making an honest attempt to solve the most significant problems of our day.

·      We are building a network of people and organizations that are developing long-term solutions based on the immediate confrontation of our most pressing problems.

·      Wherever there is a problem, there are already people acting on the problem in some fashion. Understanding those actions is the starting point for developing effective strategies to resolve the problem, so we focus on the solutions, not the problems.

·      We emphasize our own power and legitimacy.

·      We presume our power, not our powerlessness.

·      We spend more time building than attacking.

·      We focus on strategies rather than issues.

·      The strongest solutions happen through the process, not in a moment at the end of the process.

·      The most effective strategies for us are the ones that work in situations of scarce resources and intersecting systems of oppression because those solutions tend to be the most holistic and sustainable.

·      Place is important. Place helps define context.

·      We encourage people to engage with their whole selves, not just with one part of their identity.

And, finally, they list in bold: 

·      We begin by listening.[11]

Imagine a whole community of people who might take up those spiritual practices as a way of walking through the wilderness and honing their attention.  I hear in those principles strongly spiritual content coming from a secular setting.  More and more, I hear a spiritual consensus emerging that recognizes we can no longer give our loyalty to the rules of Rome but must find something more just, more life-giving, more intentional.  What of those principles might you take, individually, as a walking stick which measures your steps?  What of those principles might we take, as a faith community, to sharpen our attention, to continue piecing together our downtown neighbors and citizens, and living our lives in loyalty to the things of God and not of Caesar?  I think they have it right.  We begin by listening.  May it be so.  Amen. 

                                                                                                                                         

                                                                                                                                         

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[1] “The universe is a question:  interview with Kevin Kelly,” OnBeing with Krista Tippett, January 18, 2018.  https://onbeing.org/programs/kevin-kelly-the-universe-is-a-question-jan2018/.

[2] F. Gerald Downing advances the comparisons between Jesus and the Cynics more than anyone.  The Jesus Seminar has used much of his material to draw comparisons.

[3] “Historical Commentary on the Gospel of Mark,” http://users2.ev1.net/~turton/GMark/GMark08.html, citing Robert Price, Deconstructing Jesus (Amherst, New York:  Prometheus, 2000), p. 160.

[4] Ibid, citing David, Seeley,  “Blessings and Boundaries:Interpretations of Jesus' Death in Q. In Early Christianity, Q and Jesus,” Semeia 55 (ed. John S. Kloppenborg; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), pp. 131-46. 

[5] James Carroll, Christ Actually:  The Son of God for the Secular Age (New York:  Viking, 2014), pp. 46-54.

[6] Bruce J. Malina and Richard J. Rohrbaugh, Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Fortress Press:  Minneapolis, 2014), p. 182, n. Honor; Secrecy.

[7] Literally, “The One of Fertile Soil” or, as I translate it, “Child of Earth.”

[8] The Bible references this as tzedakah (righteousness)

[9] “The universe is a question.”

[10] https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/story

[11] https://www.alliedmedia.org/about/network-principles.