This coming Sunday, 9/15, kicks off a 5-week run of guest preaching gigs for me. I write lectionary reflections here on the Monday before the text is assigned, and I’ll share the final sermons with paid subscribers here on Wednesdays after I preach. If you’re interested in how sermons evolve from an initial, reflective place to another, pulpit-worthy place (I know, that’s a pretty niche interest, but I find the process kind of fascinating, even when it’s just happening with the Spirit moving in my own head and heart), you’re in luck! Thanks to friends at Central CoB, Washington City CoB and the Pacific Northwest District of the CoB for the opportunity to dive into the texts this way.
I told myself that when I got home from Alaska I would buckle down and really attempt to Figure Out My Life. It’s been 11 months since I left pastoral ministry, and I’ve been floating along, keeping the bills paid and pretty successfully avoiding any intentional discernment about what I should DO with my life’s second act. September was meant to be strapped in, focused, decision time.
The problem is that when I try to direct myself toward intentional discernment, my entire being simply refuses. My brain bounces right off the track. My body gets up and leaves the room. I don’t WANT to do that. Mostly, I just wish I were a sea otter, floating on the back in the ocean with my friends, favorite rock and a few snacks tucked up under my arm.
Part of my problem is that vocational discernment is what I spent a lot of my time learning, teaching and preaching about over the last twenty years. I wrote articles, preached sermons, created curriculum and led dozens of classes and retreats on CALLING. I know all the truisms, all the pitfalls, all the ways that kind of work is bathed and soaked in privilege. Most of that work was also, interestingly enough, funded by very deep-pocketed foundations with very powerful agendas who had vested interest in people’s “callings” leading them to commit themselves to established, institutional structures. Some of the people I worked with got in big trouble for disagreeing with that assumption.
I’m pretty burnt out on calling, these days, especially the version of it attached to institutional ecclesial structures. I know that church processes regularly and systematically deny, distort and crush the tender shoots of actual spiritual nudges that people feel and follow. And I also still believe that those nudges are real and deserve attention and care. The problem is clearing away all the cultural clutter that demands institutional alignment, financial solvency, social ladder climbing and class respectability in order to feel those subtle nudges in the first place.
Jesus knows all about that.
We’re here in Mark 9, repeating the pattern we learned last week: Jesus tells the disciples that he will suffer, die and rise again; the disciples act dumb and misinterpret what he’s saying; Jesus explains that this is the way of the Messiah and that they have stuff to do, too.
This time, Jesus explains, again, that “The Son of Man is to be betrayed into human hands, and they will kill him, and three days after being killed, he will rise again.” And instead of asking him what he means or letting that scary reality settle into their bones, the disciples start arguing as they travel down the road about which of them is Jesus’ favorite. Which of them will be inscribed in the history books as the Best Disciple? Which one is going to be remembered for generations for his faithfulness? Which one is not just Jesus’ friend, but Jesus’ BEST friend? Maybe the Roman governors will be so impressed with them that they’ll award commendations. Perhaps there’s a financial bonus. Maybe they will finally rise above their lower class upbringing and enjoy the trappings of riches, the fine linens and sumptuous feats and powerful relationships. Maybe they’ll finally make it to the top.
And Jesus, who is forever having to explain things to the disciples, sits down and chastises them. “Whoever wants to be first,” he says, “must be last of all and servant of all.” He brings a dirty, snotty child over and says, “whoever welcomes a grimy kid like this welcomes me, and not just me, but the one who sent me.”
Kids in the ancient world were not held up like the icons of innocence and purity that they are today. Kids were dirty, snotty, annoying, and had no standing anywhere in the Roman world. They were less-than-human, considered pieces of property. That’s not to say that people didn’t love kids, they just weren’t considered to have any place on the ladder of society. Nobody got any street cred for hanging out with kids. No one improved their reputation by caring about the children. There were no Save the Children galas, and Whitney Houston would never have sung “I believe the children are our future.”
What Jesus is saying cut right to the heart of the disciples’ argument: if you want to be GREAT, then you have to flip all your expectations about what that means and start hanging out with the least of the least. That’s how all this works, and if you’d paid any attention over the last few months, you’d know that by now. If you want to follow me, then you’re going to have to unlearn all those scripts in your head about what having a “great” or “honorable” or “successful” life means. True greatness doesn’t involve riches or fame or even honor; it involves paying attention to every person, even - especially - the ones that everyone else ignores. It involves spending your time and energy and money on neighborly care, not on social status ladder climbing.
And, I don’t know: when I read Jesus telling his power-hungry disciples to stop daydreaming about their own greatness and start paying attention to the very real people around them, a sea-otter life doesn’t sound so far off the mark.
Sea otters hunt on their own, but when it’s time to rest, they do it together, in a group of otters called a “raft.” The raft keeps the otters safe from predators, and they hold hands while they sleep, so that no one floats away. A raft isn’t necessarily made up of sea otter families or kinship groups; whoever is nearby when it’s time to rest gets gathered up into the raft and if the otter next to you is a stranger, well, you just grab their hand and bring them in.
Following Jesus might be less about “discerning” our “callings,” “listening to our lives,” finding the place where our “great joy” meets the world’s “deep need” and more about grabbing our neighbors’ hands, whoever they are, whatever the situation, wherever we find ourselves, and holding each other close.
Aspiring to be a sea otter might not be such a bad thing, after all.
Yes! I want to be more of an otter these days than determining an actual path. Well, I mean I am still wanting a billboard to tell me what to do, but at the end of the day, I want to be responsive to my neighbors, pay the bills, love and let myself be loved.
I want to grow up to be a Sea Otter as well!😊