Three Reasons to be a Christian
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The three reasons to be a Christian that I wish to speak of this morning are summarized in the metaphors of the cup, the baptism and the different way of life where we do not "lord it over" one another. Ed Payne read from the King James Version, which took much of the best of the early English translations, including the more Reformed Geneva Bible.
In Mark 10, James and John are already looking for a promotion in heaven, to sit at Jesus' right and left hands. Jesus tells them, it shall not be among you as it is among the Gentiles. Whoever would be first ... must become your Servant..." Jesus does not claim to know or decide who's at the head table in heaven, but he knows everyone can sit around his table here on earth. The basis of the new way of life is in the Cup and the Baptism.
"Can you drink the cup of suffering...?" We all actually do drink some suffering in life, and sharing in this cup of the New Covenant, this cup of forgiveness, gives us strength to handle suffering. This cup is a container that is bigger than any suffering. They would have thought of a cup of blessing and celebration, so it is part of Jesus' reversing things to claim that blessing will come through a cup of suffering. He will not shrink from that cup.
The Christian community that shares in the cup also becomes part of our container, part of our way of being held together. (We are earthen vessels but we hold that new wine of God's Spirit.) We may think back to the time of Christianity's birth, in the Roman Empire. The movie, Gladiator, shown the last two nights on TV, shows the hero at one point refusing to kill another man, despite the Emperor's thumbs down. That movement of mercy is what changed the world. The poor who were scorned and used up become members of a community. The historian, Peter Brown, claims that the idea of the poor is virtually the creation of the Bishops who rebuild society from the bottom up-- everyone who shares the cup.
The Baptism is the process of undergoing death and rebirth, of being born again. It marks our conversion, and we need to be converted again and again. But that is not changing direction each time, though it is course correction. It is being opened to new ways of seeing, new perspectives, insights, having "new eyes to see." Every hero story in the world is contained in the image of Baptism that Jesus must undergo, being arrested in Gethsemane, hastily tried, tortured and hung on the cross till dead. And then rising on the third day, after invading the one final evil empire that haunts all other empires.
(Which comes first, the cup or the baptism? The ancient church sometimes allowed converts to partake of the Lord's Supper only after extensive catechism and their being baptized. Now we allow some children to take the cup before they are baptized.)
The new way of living is summed up in those words about the leader becoming a servant. Jesus seems to be referring to the image of the Suffering Servant in Isaiah 53. The prophet may have been writing partly about the people of Judah being dragged into captivity, but Jesus took the words of Isaiah in particular as his script for embodying God's purpose in the world. That is a different kind of Messiahship, but in our view his way is the truth and the life given by God. (There are five "servant songs" in Isaiah that personalize God's purpose to a high degree. All the prophets help us understand God's purpose in history.)
Power, control, anxiety, fighting among the tribes, living for more, sacrificing others... Jesus says, reverse the flow. Do we live in fear about what this new life could mean? Or do we just live in captivity to fear or fear of captivity, like so many in this world today? We find more purpose in life when we live a different way of life. But more than purpose, or calling, or vocation, the promise is that if we live for love we will live in Love, God's love will be in us. That is the greatest reason to be a Christian. Amen.
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