Sermon for Trinity 21B – Oct 20th 2024
This sermon is for the shamed, the bullied, the ostracised, the oppressed as we get to grips with our readings for today from Isaiah 53:4-end and Mark 10:35-45. I am increasingly aware that the gospel of Jesus Christ and the work of the Holy Spirit is for the shamed, bullied, ostracised and oppressed. God takes his place with them.
We may well have been bullied, shamed or ostracised.
And/or we may have been the bullies responsible for shaming and ostracising. Or we may have joined in because we were afraid that if we stood out from the crowd we, ourselves, would be bullied, shunned and ostracised.
To jog your memories, let me take you back to school. I’ll take you to my school all those years ago. It was an all boys school. Then, as now, the slightest difference was picked up and became opportunity for mockery and worse.
There was a boy we called Cheggers, even though he hated that name. We were probably 12 or 13 at the time. We’d do monkey impressions in front of him, making fun of the way his jaw was set slightly differently and the way he walked differently. Of course, I joined in. I joined in because that was the safest thing for me to do. It wasn’t that I didn’t like Cheggers. I didn’t know him – and the bullying kept it that way. How could he ever make himself known in those circumstances?
There’s a six part series on Sky Atlantic called Sweetpea featuring a young woman who was bullied and neglected. She becomes a “ghost” of her former self – always feeling invisible. People keep bumping into her, saying, “I didn’t see you”.
The bullied and ostracised are never seen for who they are. We see that in the fear-ful treatment of refugees when they’re not seen as people but as a threat. We didn’t “see” Cheggers. We only saw his difference and the opportunity for joking and banter – at his expense. We didn’t know who he was. We didn’t want to know how he felt. It didn’t matter that he probably felt awful. We didn’t know that, perhaps he was the bravest boy amongst us – brave enough to keep coming back, lining up with us to brave the taunts and humiliation again and again.
And here’s where it matters – in the scriptures we treasure, to the Jesus we follow.
In those days, my schooldays, he, Cheggers, was the one who bore our sin. Our hatred, anxiety and fear was turned on him and he suffered because of us. In the language of our reading from Isaiah, he was wounded for our transgressions. “He was oppressed” by us. “He was afflicted” by us, myself included.
Such is the emotional and physical suffering of the scapegoat.
We usually read this passage from Isaiah with Jesus in mind. It is normally read on Good Friday when we turn our minds to the suffering servant bearing the shame and pain of crucifixion. This is how we have come to know Jesus – mocked, bruised, afflicted and even numbered as one of the transgressors, one, two, three of them in the crucifixion scene.
But what we say of Jesus from this passage we can surely say of any we’ve scapegoated that he/she/they have borne our sin – our hatred, anxiety and fear. They are oppressed and afflicted when we, like sheep, have gone astray, turning to our own way of doing things. They are wounded by our transgressions and crushed by our iniquity.
It’s not clear who Isaiah is referring to as the scapegoat in this passage. He might have someone in mind, or a community used to suffering persecution (such as the Jewish people down the centuries) or any sufferer of bullying. We don’t need to narrow the scapegoat’s identity down to Jesus, though, certainly the choice of Jesus was to join the afflicted, tormented and bruised, becoming one such himself.
In the book of Acts we find this very same passage from Isaiah being read, and Luke takes us scripture readers to this particular scripture reader. (It’s Acts 8:26-40). It’s an angel who directs Philip to the reader who is on the road from Jerusalem to Gaza. He is an official in the court of the queen of Ethiopia. So important. But he was a eunuch. Historians of the period point out that although eunuchs could be given great responsibilities they were seen as “monstrosities”, stigmatised for being morally and sexually distorted and the objects of suspicion and derision. They were seen as sexual deviants. They were a laughing stock scapegoated for no fault of their own.
So, here, on the road to Gaza, we have a man who was seen as “not a man” reading of one who was “oppressed and afflicted”, who was “wounded for our transgressions” and “crushed for our iniquities” – and an angel of the Lord, from the realm of glory, had directed one of Jesus’s disciples to help him to read, mark and inwardly digest that he was reading about himself, and that he was also reading about Jesus – and there and then, he was baptised.
God’s realm of glory is very different to the realms of glory we have in the world, where glory is measured in wealth and winning, in power and popularity – and in importance. This is the way of thinking of James and John when they come to Jesus and ask him for the best seats in the house. Their request, “Grant us to sit, one at your right hand and one at your left, in your glory.”
The disciples are always getting it wrong according to Mark’s gospel. They’ve missed the point of Jesus and his mission. Jesus points out the ways of the world and underlines the suffering caused by the ways of the world. He points out that those we recognise as our rulers so often lord it over us, making themselves exceptions to their rule, enjoying the power they have over others – and in so many cases turning out to be tyrants, striking fear into people, upsetting their lives and causing suffering.
He said, It is not so among you: but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be your servant must be slave of all. This is not what James and John had in mind when they came to Jesus with their request to be one up on everyone else. (Nor is it what we have in mind when we choreograph our ecclesiastical processions or when we excuse the abuses of power in a culture of deference.)
No, scripture points us to another way of doing things. Glory in the kingdom of God is for those, in the words of Isaiah, afflicted, wounded and oppressed by the powers that be, just as Jesus was afflicted, wounded, mocked and shamed by those rulers of Jerusalem and Rome, the rulers of religion and empire – just as the eunuch would have been, just as whole groups of people are, just as certain ethnic groups continue to be.
Who will be on Jesus’ left, and who will be on Jesus’ right in his glory? Is it James? Is it John? Mark gives us the answer. The glory of Jesus is first witnessed by the Roman centurion, who, faced with Jesus, said “truly this man was God’s son!”. And on his left hand and on his right were neither James or John. They were nowhere to be seen. They’d deserted him. Instead, on his left and on his right were two “bandits” – together with Jesus – the three of them shamed, mocked, scorned and killed by empire and those who want the glory of being empire builders.
This, brothers and sisters, is where the gospel of Jesus Christ takes us – to the cross where one oppressed, afflicted and wounded was hung out to die – with one on his left and another on his right, neither of whom are James or John. They’re still glory seeking – they’re in hiding, saving their own skin. The glory of the kingdom is the salvation of those who bear the sins of the world – victims of shame, injustice and empire (maybe ourselves included).
Grits and Grains 