Teaching Nonviolent Atonement
Pastors have a frequent question when they begin to discover mimetic theory. “That’s great. But how does it preach?”
Reverend Tom Truby shows that mimetic theory is a powerful tool that enables pastors to preach the Gospel in a way that is meaningful and refreshing to the modern world. Each Wednesday, Teaching Nonviolent Atonement will highlight Tom and Laura’s sermons as an example of preaching the Gospel through mimetic theory.
In this sermon, Tom discusses the transformation of the human understanding of God from “a blood thirsty monster” into “the loving Abba” that Jesus revealed. This loving Abba cared for the vulnerable. Tom brilliantly makes the connection to the earth’s vulnerability and Pope Francis’s visit to the U.S. We hope you enjoy this sermon!
September 20th, 2015
By Thomas L. Truby
Mark 9:30-37 (The Common English Bible, Copyright 2011)
Welcoming the Vulnerable
Jesus and his followers travel through Galilee, the place where they are most well-known, but Jesus wants to keep their journey quiet; no attention brought to them, no crowds, no public demands, no rock-star idealization on this trip. He wants to remove the effect of others on his followers so that they have a better chance of taking in what he wants to teach them.
The crowd doesn’t understand what Jesus is doing and their misconception makes it even harder for the disciples to understand. Jesus’ message, so different than the majority, is hard to keep in mind when the ego-inflating crowd swarms around.
What was Jesus teaching his disciples? He was telling them “The Human One will be delivered into human hands. They will kill him. Three days after he is killed he will rise up.” That’s it. That’s the whole thing. This is the third and briefest statement in Mark on what is coming for Jesus.
Notice Jesus is delivered into human hands. A majority of religious people in this country don’t believe that. They believe Jesus was delivered into God’s hands who had Jesus sacrificed as a substitute for us. The majority believe we should be on the cross but Jesus is there instead receiving God’s punishment for us. God demands blood in payment for sin and Jesus provides it. This makes God a blood thirsty monster instead of a loving Abba and totally misunderstands both the character of God and the message of Jesus. This is why it is so important to notice that the Human One is delivered into human hands and not God’s hands. Jesus wants his followers to take this in and gives them quiet time to do it. But the text says “They didn’t understand this kind of talk and they were afraid to ask him.”
The question was the elephant in the room but they didn’t want to ask it. They have left everything to follow Jesus. He has demonstrated a capacity to do wonderful things. They see he has the power to be the long awaited Jewish Caesar but now he says he must die at the hands of human beings and then rise from the dead. Can you imagine the weight of their unasked question? It’s so scary they don’t want to know. They just want to go on and pretend he didn’t say it.
I think there is a parallel that works in our time. It is like us modern people preferring to not talk about what is happening globally with our environment. It’s so scary we don’t want to know and when the scientists speak we push it aside wanting their words to go away. Instead of asking question, we put on ear phones and drown our consciousness by watching pixelated screens that present a world far easier to look at and that doesn’t require we rethink our lives. Let’s not look at that disappearing glacier. It makes us too anxious. Let’s tune in to the crowd on Facebook and Twitter and think as they think. That’s why Jesus had asked they travel without the crowd’s awareness. In essence he told them to shut off their smart phones, iPads, iPhones, iPods and radios. He wants his follows to think and feel outside their usual channels.
They return to Capernaum, home base on the Sea of Galilee. They go into a house, close the door, and Jesus asks them a question. “What were you arguing about during the journey?”
Instead of asking the one question on all their minds–what did Jesus mean by his talk of dying and rising again, they had been arguing with each other, distracting each other from the real issue that concerned them all. In their fantasy of the future they had been discussing who would be highest in Jesus’ new regime. They had completely ignored what Jesus had been teaching them and instead chosen to live in their make-believe world where each is a hero and the only problem is resolving the competition between them. Now Jesus wants to know what they have been talking about.
A long silence falls on the group as each hope someone else will speak up. Mark’s narrator tells us “they didn’t respond, since on the way they had been debating with each other about who was the greatest.” This reminds me of the debate Wednesday night in which each was trying to convince the world they were the greatest and the only thing they agreed on was that Trump was the problem. No one spoke to the issues our world is facing. That is a reality they all prefer to ignore.
“Jesus sat down, called the Twelve and said to them whoever wants to be first must be least of all and the servant to all.” There is nothing wrong with wanting to be first but there is a way of doing it that gets you there without destroying the community you wish to lead. If you want to lead, get beyond your own ego-needs and serve those who follow you.
And then to show them what he was talking about “Jesus reached for a little child, placed him among the Twelve, and embraced him. Then he said, ‘Whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me; and whoever welcomes me isn’t actually welcoming me but rather the one who sent me.’”
Love the vulnerable. Let the vulnerable be the center of your community. Embrace them. Instead of fighting, make them the center and you will find peace. Pope Francis has welcoming the vulnerable and will be talking about it with us this week as he visits us.
On another subject, our Safe Sanctuary Policy is our effort to love and protect the most vulnerable in our midst. I am mandated to preach on this at least once every year. This is the Sunday. In this church we go out of our way to always have two adults present when we teach our children or work with them in any way; we are very careful when initiating hugs lest our needs drive the hug rather than theirs; and when they choose to hug us, we warmly respond without clinging to them an instant beyond their need. That’s a tough one for us particularly when their warmth feels so good and we feel needy.
We always remember that an invisible Jesus stands between the vulnerable one and ourselves. This is not easy and we don’t always do it perfectly but we do our best. So with the vulnerable child in the very center of the formerly feuding disciples Jesus says “whoever welcomes one of these children in my name welcomes me.” In serving the vulnerable we serve Jesus and find our unity. Our serving them keeps us from making ourselves too important. With Jesus and his church the vulnerable are always the greatest.
If Jesus were talking to us today, in addition to lifting up a child, I think he would lift up a globe and say the earth itself is now the least of these. I think Pope Francis will talk about that this week, God bless him. Our planet is most vulnerable and currently being sacrificed on the altar of our need to compete and consume at a level the earth cannot sustain. We are destroying our home and the destruction will have dire and unprecedented impact on our children and their children. Already we are seeing the signs in the forest fires, droughts, floods, melting of glaciers around the world, rising of the sea, the acidification of the ocean and disappearance of species. Our scientists have become our prophets and we don’t like what they are telling us. We prefer false prophets who suggest conspiracy theories and bad science. We are like the disciples who hear Jesus predict his passion but close our ears, distracting each other with fights and living in our fantasies rather than facing the truth.
If we would reach for the vulnerable earth, place the earth in the middle of our concern and embrace her, we would find unity, faith and God. This week in a Facebook entry Lindsey Paris Lopez wrote:
I want a huge department of defense…against climate change! Can we please redirect all the time and resources we spend on killing each other toward working together to save our planet?
Whoever welcomes the vulnerable of the earth and the vulnerable earth itself, welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me isn’t actually welcoming me but rather the one who sent me. Amen.
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