Sunday, October 13, 2024
1.
“Each time you eat this bread,” Jesus says at the table. “Each time you eat this bread, do so in remembrance of me.” Communion, then, requires an act of communal imagination. We come to Jesus’ table to remember him as he was then and perceive him as he is for us, and in the world now. Who is this Advocate who chooses to stand with the maligned and misunderstood? Who is this Martyr who invites God’s forgiveness even and especially on the very ones who mock and maim him? Who is this Fisher of men, women, children, souls: who invites the willing to a journey of uncompromising mercy and relentless loving?
Communion, you see, is both sacrament and invitation, eucharist and altar call. It’s both a sign of Christ’s presence and a choice we make to see him now, to hear him out, to follow his lead. It’s a sacrament because it’s a mystery, a gift, and beyond our control. It’s an altar call because it requires discernment and discipleship. “Each time you eat this bread,” Jesus says at the table, “do so in remembrance of me.” At his table, we are collaborators and friends, imagining and remembering his brokenness and his mercy, his death and his resurrection.
In our communion liturgy this morning—written by my friend, Sara Ofner-Seals—we are deliberate in remembering Jesus and discerning his presence in the midst of the violence that has swallowed Israel and Gaza whole over the past year. The kidnapped Christ. The traumatized Christ. The child Christ in Gaza shot through the head by Israeli snipers. The mother Christ who’s been buried in rubble thousands of times over. In her liturgy, Sara writes: “We mourn that this week marks one year since the devastating events of October 2023, when twelve hundred of our Jewish siblings were killed. We mourn that it also marks 365 days of relentless death and destruction in Gaza, with over 40,000 of our Palestinian siblings killed, nearly 20,000 of them children…” On this World Communion Sunday, we remember that the One who is broken is broken not in the abstractions of theological arguments, not in the poetry of ancient hymns—but in the bodies of thousands in our own time, in the suffering of children, in all those crucified by swords, handguns, assault weapons, exploding cell phones and fighter planes delivering missiles made right here, in American companies by American hands.
And somehow it is God’s intention, and it is our Christian task, to discern the presence of Jesus in the midst of these unconscionable hostilities and unimaginable losses. And let’s be clear. Christian faith shows no interest at all in nationality or national identity. These categories confer no particular blessing on one people or another. Jesus refuses at every turn to wrap his human body in one flag or another. Instead we must bravely, compassionately discern his ways in the midst of human suffering, in the cacophony of violence, and in the fog of war. All suffering, all violence, and all war.
Where is the one who counsels God’s people to love their enemies, to turn the other cheek, to put down their swords and study war no more? This is the question we ask, of one another, at the table and in prayer. Where is the one whose love is so unshakeable that he welcomes blow after blow after blow—rather than turning his own rage (justifiably, perhaps) on the high priests and foot soldiers who mindlessly punish him? If cheap grace treats Jesus as a generalized ideal, costly grace insists on finding Jesus in flesh-and-blood communities and the conflicts that tear them apart. If cheap grace says turn the other cheek whenever you can, whenever it makes sense, costly grace finds in Jesus another way of life entirely—a way shaped by nonviolence and lovingkindness though it brings us to our knees; a way devoted to peace even when it risks our reputation, our sense of balance, even our way of life. The gospel, my friends, is in no way cheap and convenient grace. The gospel is life and liberation, and costly grace: good news made plain in radical generosity and mercy.
2.
In a sense, the fellow who runs up to Jesus, in our text this morning, is looking for reassurance and comfort. Some measure of grace. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” And who can blame him? If he’s living through a season of Orwellian anxieties. If he’s living through another cycle of MAGA madness. If he’s unnerved by his own sense of powerlessness, maybe even his own sense of guilt or shame. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” There’s a version of Christianity, as we know, that reduces the entire gospel to just this. It asks only for acquiescence and requires no imagination. It demands fealty to creed and orthodoxy, but encourages no discernment at all. Say the right words. Join the right church. Sing the right songs. “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” You go to his table to be reassured. Safe. Saved.
So that seems to be this fellow in the story, where he’s coming from, the angst in his heart.
And it’s so telling, so sweet and so telling, that Jesus looks at him, that Jesus sees him and acknowledges him, and that Jesus loves him. Indeed, that may be the whole point of this story, the lead buried in the first paragraph. Jesus looks at the dear fellow, the sincerity in his eyes, and Jesus loves him. Recognizes him. This story is in no way intended to shame this fellow, or us. That’s not the point. It’s in no way passed down through the ages to mark him as unloveable or beyond the reach of mercy and grace. Of this, my friends, there is no doubt: that Jesus has profound compassion, even infinite love, for those who are anxious and burdened by fear. For those overwhelmed by their own experience, or better their own perception of powerlessness and shame.
But still, the invitation that follows is costly and hard. Sell what you own, give to the poor, and then come, and find me. Then come, and follow me. “It is easier,” Jesus says to his friends, and somehow to the church in every generation; “it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.”
The point, I think, of Mark’s gospel is this. That Jesus is embodied, that God is embodied, that the Divine is embodied in human communities, in suffering communities, in the very real bodies of the hungry, the detained and dismissed, the invisible and ignored, wherever and everywhere they are. Following Jesus has something to do with leaving privilege behind, leaving security behind, leaving wealth behind, to practice peace and mercy with Jesus, and then to seek honor and safety for Jesus. Where he suffers. Where he hungers. Where he wanders bombed-out cities and scorched-earth farms and flooded plains.
I have to believe that Jesus holds out hope for the fellow who goes away grieving. I have to believe that Jesus prays for him every day after, trusting, even believing that some seed has been planted in his heart, that some nagging faith will bring him back again. To follow in joy. To join the beloved community. To step into the suffering, and side with the poor, and protect the victims of genocide, hatred and war. Because it’s not in Jesus’ DNA to give up. On anyone. And that’s why, all these thousands of years later, we’re still reading this story.