Stumbling on Christian Nationalism

Mark 9:38-50
[Sermon preached at Wingate United Methodist Church on 06 October 2024].

Power, force, might, coercion are the tools we tend to look at as either shortcuts or the only possible means to an end which seems out of reach. If we could just exert more control, we could make others bow to our understanding of how the world should operate. We are not necessarily looking for an evil result. We are looking to accomplish good! We’d even like that good to coincide with God’s will, with bringing about God’s Reign on earth as a fully implemented reality! If I could force everyone to love each another, we would finally live in peace and harmony. What could possibly be wrong with that?

We’ve heard, “The ends don’t justify the means.” Then again, we have seen example after example of good people using questionable means to achieve results with which we have agreed. I have never been so focused on following rules I would not be willing to bend a few to accomplish something the rules simply won’t allow. Perhaps that a rule is unjust or poorly considered. Perhaps it is my hubris in thinking I know better. Perhaps it is my being too lazy or impatient to work through all the “appropriate channels” to get something done.

A refrain I grew up with in Brazil was there always being a “Jeitinho brasileiro,” a workaround to do what was needed, despite rules, laws, or established procedures. It might involve a bribe, looking the other way, bending an interpretation of law or procedure, getting past a middleman, or clearing a few hoops to facilitate something. It rather much went along with another saying, “To the king’s friends, the law’s favors; to the king’s enemies, the law’s rigors.” We called it, “the way things are done,” whether or not it was how things should be done. Society simply accepted the benefits it could collect, looking on rules as more of that system established to make life difficult for “the king’s enemies.”

Perhaps the biggest issue underlying this concept and practice was how it was applied so unevenly among the populace. If you had the right friends, the right connections, or just caught someone with a little power on a good day, life was a lot easier and red-tape seemed to disappear. On the other hand, most of those in a position of a little power relished wielding that power to make themselves feel superior to the many coming before them. Every action was a power play, for beneath all the rules was the notion of one’s relative worth defined in the power they held.

That’s the issue the disciples had brought to Jesus in last Sunday’s passage. It is still the same issue they bring up again in today’s passage. They are phrasing it differently here, but it amounts to the very same thing. Rather than speaking of who is greatest in God’s Reign, they are now addressing how to keep some people out in order to protect their own standing. As much as they wanted to become the doorkeepers of God’s Reign, Jesus denies them that position. Rather, he tells them door-keeping does not mesh with the principles of God’s Reign at all. Rather than working for the purity of those allowed to be on the inside of God’s Reign, their very participation in God’s Reign was at stake in their attempt to keep out those they did not know or considered undesirable.

There was no need for them to worry about losing rewards for faithful service to God. The ones who were in jeopardy of losing anything are the very ones attempting to protect their position by playing doorkeeper! The means they were using for self-preservation was actually leading to the opposite result. The means was not justifying the end, it was denying the very aim and purpose of God’s Reign.

If those whose action of mercy is simply to share a cup of water to meet another’s need in service to Christ will surely be rewarded, the disciples had no need to worry about someone else taking away a benefit they had accrued. The blessings of God’s Reign are not so meager as to be insufficient to meet the needs of all. God’s Reign is established on a principle of bounty, of abundance. Their attempt to wield power and control as gatekeepers was built on the premise of scarcity. They were afraid that there was not enough benefit and blessing in God’s Reign to apply liberally to all.

God’s Reign is not build on a foundation of scarcity. It is not wrapped in some insufficiency to meet the needs of everyone. It is not based on dividing up some fixed quantity of blessing. As the saying goes, it’s not pie. God’s economy is based on the premise of abundance. The inherent fertility of the earth does not simply apply to the fire ants which seem to multiply around us, all the gray squirrels in our oak trees, or the bumper crop of weeds I seem to cultivate every time I garden. It also applies to the breadth, grace, welcome, and embrace of God’s Reign.

There is enough of God’s love to go all around. Love does not run out because we give it with too much abandon. Love grows, increases, expands, and multiplies as we give it away. The more we give, the more we have to give, the more natural it is to give, and ultimately the more we receive in return. It is self-propagating, just as the whole of God’s Reign.

Christian Nationalism tries to say that only those people just like us belong. We are the only ones who have inherent rights. If you would become just like us, you might be able to participate, but we are the ones to determine whether or not you meet the standard. We are the keepers of the gate. We decide if you do or do not belong. That is pretty much what the disciples were trying to do. They were trying to place limits around who had the right to use Jesus’ name and authority for any action whatsoever. They wanted power. They wanted control. Maybe they could not determine who would be first or second in God’s Reign, but they could thin the ranks to be sure they got good seating.

Mark places this discussion as the context for Jesus’ comments about casting oneself into the sea while attached to a millstone. The stumbling block he mentions is that hindering another from following Jesus, culling the ranks in God’s Reign, playing the role of gatekeeper. Jesus then refers to Gehenna, Jerusalem’s waste dump. Those who take on the role of gatekeeper put themselves in the same category of all the other refuse dumped outside of town. This is not what we have come to call hell. It is the landfill, the dump, the place where everything worthless is discarded, eventually to be consumed by worms or burning methane.

I’m reminded of Jesus’ words in the Sermon on the Mount, where he says that we will be judged by the very same means we use to judge others. Our attempts to exclude others don’t exclude them. They just result in our self-exclusion. When we fail to love, include, embrace, and welcome others into God’s Reign alongside us, we are the ones who lose. We lose the blessings of God’s Reign akin to cutting off our own hands or feet. The greed with which we cling to blessings, position, power, or control removes us from the very things we are trying to grasp.

Christian Nationalism focuses on controlling who is in and who is out. It insists on our being the gatekeepers, only allowing those like ourselves to participate. Love and grace work the opposite way. They give of themselves generously and freely, and in the giving, they are multiplied beyond all of our expectations. We either embrace God’s Reign on God’s terms, or we exclude ourselves. The only means to God’s Reign are love and grace, not force, power, control. Which means will we embrace?



— ©Copyright 2024, Christopher B. Harbin 



http://www.sermonsearch.com/contributors/104427/

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