The Rev. Clare Fischer-Davies
St. Martin’s Church
October 18, 2009
Proper 24 B
Everyone has an agenda.
Now that’s not necessarily a bad thing. After all, we believe that God has an agenda – to heal and restore all creation. And we believe that Jesus Christ had an agenda – to lay down his life for us so that God’s agenda could be accomplished. So having an agenda isn’t the problem. The problem for people of faith is when we believe that God’s agenda is exactly the same as our own.
A story swam into my consciousness last week about a new Biblical translation project. This one is being led by Alan Schlafly, the son of Phyllis Schlafly who you may remember was a tireless warrior for various conservative causes during the Reagan era. Alan’s interest in this new translation of the bible is to correct the liberal bias that he says has “become the single biggest distortion in modern Bible translations.”
Mr. Schlafly calls for 10 principles to guide this new translation project. These include getting rid of socialist words like “laborer” or “comrade” and replacing them with appropriate conservative words like “volunteer”. He also believes that modern translations remove references to hell and damnation and has said in interviews that he believes that “forgiveness” is a liberal idea. And Mr. Schlafly intends his new translation to express the full free-market economic principles revealed in Jesus’ parables.
To be fair to Mr. Schlafly, I could just as easily make fun of someone doing exactly the same thing on the liberal side of the Christian spectrum. There are plenty of examples out there. It’s just that Mr.Schlafly’s project has been in the news lately and he has a web site that pops up right away when you Google him. But let me be clear that Alan Schlafly is not alone in confusing his own agenda with God’s agenda. That confusion has been going on for a long, long time.
Take another look at the disciples in this morning’s Gospel. Now every week we’ve been nibbling on bits of the Gospel of Mark, working our way steadily through Chapters 9 and 10. So over four or five weeks, we’ve only traveled a little way through the Gospel – this story follows the story we heard last week about the rich man who is too attached to his possessions to give them up in order to follow Jesus. And just before that Jesus told his disciples that anyone who wanted to enter the Kingdom of God would have to become like a little child. And just before that, the disciples were squabbling about which one of them was the greatest.
Overshadowing all of that is Jesus’ prediction that in Jerusalem, he will be betrayed into his enemies’ hands and he will be killed, and three days after being killed he will rise again. Just before our gospel begins, sandwiched in between the story of the rich man and the gospel for today, Jesus repeats that prediction: The “Son of Man will be handed over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn him to death; then they will hand him over to the Gentiles; they will mock him, and spit upon him, and flog him, and kill him; and after three days he will rise again.” That’s Jesus’ agenda – and the disciples don’t want any part of it.
Without missing a beat, James and John, who are part of the inner circle of disciples and who you think would know better, come up to Jesus and say, “Give us what we want.” And when Jesus says, “What do you want?” They reply “When you come into your glory, we want the places of honor at your right and left hands.”
Talk about an agenda. It’s as if they’ve had their fingers in their ears during all that conversation about the last being first, and being like a little child and giving up everything to follow Jesus. It’s like they just haven’t heard what Jesus told them about betrayal and suffering and death. All they’re concerned about is their own advancement. Their agenda is their own glorification.
Everyone has an agenda. It is wickedly easy to confuse our own personal agendas with God’s agenda – remember that in the gospels, the disciples are standing in for us. When they get things wrong, we’re meant to understand that we get things wrong in the same way. And so when Jesus tells them “whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all,” he is saying that to us. We have to learn to be aware of when we’re setting our own agendas ahead of God’s agenda.
In enews this week I wrote about a sermon from William Willimon, a bishop in the United Methodist Church and one of the great preachers of our time. I always profit from what he has to say, even when it makes me uncomfortable. And there’s plenty that makes me uncomfortable in Bishop Willimon’s sermon, because he goes right to the heart of how I confuse my agenda with God’s. He says, "Jesus is not a technique for getting what we want out of God; Jesus is God's way of getting what God wants out of us."
Jesus is not a technique for getting what we want out of God.
I used to think that God’s agenda and my agenda were pretty much the same thing. After all, why wouldn’t God want me to be a leader in the church, serve on important committees, attend important conferences and make my way up the ecclesiastical ladder? Why wouldn’t God want someone like me to play an important role in the church? So if I wanted those things it wasn’t really ambition driving me, it was simply my eagerness to serve God and the church.
And then this summer happened – and my world was turned upside down and I learned that my agenda and God’s agenda weren’t the same thing after all. It sounds so easy to say it now, but it hasn’t been easy at all. It’s been painful. It’s felt pretty much like putting something to death inside of me. But what has also happened is that, as I’ve let go of my own agenda – at least the agenda of my own ambition – I’ve found that God’s agenda really is better.
Learning to allow God’s agenda to breathe in me – however imperfectly – has brought me into a place that is less restless, less anxious, and less critical. As ridiculous as it might sound, I’m happier and more content now than I’ve ever been before. I am satisfied to do the work God has given me to do – to walk with Gerry through his illness and to serve this wonderful congregation.
But enough about me. As Willimon points out, Mark doesn’t talk at all about what the disciples need, or what their personal experience is. Mark pretty much just talks about Jesus. And Mark keeps pointing out that following Jesus means taking up crosses and denying ourselves and being baptized with the same baptism that Jesus is baptized with.
Willimon tells a wonderful story about himself when he was a campus minister at Duke University. He eagerly participated in the baptism of a Chinese graduate student, and thought he was doing a wonderful thing by insisting that he take pictures of this happy occasion for the newly baptized Christian. He says he wondered why the young man didn’t look happier as he was photographed, and only later did one of Willimon’s colleagues tell him that by being baptized, the Chinese man had ruined his prospects back in China. The government was likely to revoke his scholarship and his own parents would disavow him. His old life was over – he had been baptized into Christ.
The baptismal liturgy that we celebrated last Sunday keeps saying again and again that through baptism, God’s agenda replaces our own. We are drowned in the waters of baptism, and reborn in the new life of the resurrection. We die with Christ in order to be raised with Christ. And every time we witness a baptism, we keep recommitting ourselves to God’s agenda, renewing that agenda in us. We promise to continue in worship, to practice reconciliation, to share our faith, to seek Christ in others and to work for the healing of creation.
Alan Schlafly says that Jesus expresses capitalist free market economic principles in his teaching. I think when Jesus tells the rich man “sell everything you have and then come follow me,” he’s not talking about economic or social or political principles at all. I think he’s saying to the rich man, just like he says to James and John today, “If you want to follow me, you’re going to have to let go of your own agenda. You have to let God’s agenda live in you.”
It’s no accident that Jesus talks about money so much. Nothing is more tightly wrapped up in our own personal agendas than money is – it represents so much to us. Money means status and power; it means security and independence; it’s a sign that we’ve worked hard; it commands respect; it’s a way to control others, or woo them, or punish them. James and John might not mention money when they talk about sitting next to Jesus in glory, but you can bet they’re not expecting to sit on a camp stool. No – they expect golden thrones and slaves bowing down before them and all the trappings of wealth.
So one way to understand our conversation about stewardship is to see it as a conversation about a way of life, a way to – in something as concrete and everyday as what’s written in our checkbooks – a way to let God’s agenda live in us. Stewardship is one way to allow God to use us to accomplish what God wants.
I loved what Lindsay said last week about first steps. They really are the hardest steps to take. A first step can feel impossible to take because that step crosses us over a boundary of what’s safe and familiar, and brings us into a new and undiscovered country. The rich man last week simply couldn’t imagine what it might be like to live without his possessions, with all that wealth that defined him and made him feel important and secure in the world. I like to think that if he could have taken just that one step into the new reality Jesus was offering him, he would have found that his life was richer and more filled with meaning than he would ever have been able to imagine.
Here are a couple of first steps to take. If you have never ever filled out a pledge card before, the first step is to take one this year and make a financial commitment to the church. If you have philosophical or theological reasons that make you object to pledging, those should be discussed with one of the clergy, because giving to the Kingdom of God is one of our criteria for membership. If you are in financial distress, it still is a good spiritual exercise to make some commitment beyond yourself.
The next step, if you have been pledging, is to take some time to do some math over these next couple of weeks. Figure out what percentage of your income you are giving away. Calculate what proportion of your income your pledge represents. Most people find, when they do this the first time, that they are hovering around the 1 or 2% mark. Once you know what you give, then pray for the will to increase it. God will do the rest.
That’s all. Two simple steps – but taking them can radically reorient your life to God’s agenda. Your own agenda will be, perhaps not quite put to death, but enfolded into God’s saving agenda for you and for all creation. “Jesus is not a technique for getting what we want out of God. Jesus is God’s technique for getting what God wants out of us.”
Yesterday, Gerry and I went over to work for a little while on the mosaic. Now that’s an extraordinary project that a year ago, neither Heather nor I really thought could ever be accomplished. It seemed impossible, too complex, a ridiculous undertaking. But Heather just started taking first steps – and now this amazing work of art is taking shape as you all lay little fragments of glass tile into the design that interprets our mission statement: Come as you are. Grow with us in faith. Go forth in peace.
When we live that statement, I have no doubt that we are living into God’s agenda.
Let us pray: Holy God, set your agenda for healing and reconciliation in our hearts, and help us with those difficult first steps each one of us has to take in order to follow where you lead. Amen
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