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Questions
on the Way to Cross II: “What Were You Arguing About?” Sermon by Cynthia A. Jarvis March 16, 2003, Presbyterian Church of Chestnut Hill Mark 9:33-41 "Then they came to Capernaum and when he was in the house he asked them, 'What were you arguing about?' But they were silent, for on the way, they had argued with one another about who was the greatest." "What were you arguing about on the way," Jesus asks the disciples as each step brought them collectively closer to Christ's cross. So much you and I argue about on the way--with ourselves, within our families, among neighbors and colleagues, between nations. Sometimes the argument has to do with a principle to be defended, a point of view that seems worth the effort, a way of life in need of justification. Other times the argument has to do with the details of daily life, with hills not worth dying on. Though often these little hills, when shoveled on top of one another, become the mountain of a marriage's undoing, a friendship's end, a church's demise, a nation's downfall. More often, our arguing has little to do with any given matter at hand, and has finally to do with our need to settle, on our terms, the argument the disciples were having on the way to the cross: with who is the greatest. Of course, at the beginning of everything we might argue about writes the playwright-turned politician Vaclav Havel, is what we argue with: is the word. "It is a miracle to which we owe the fact that we are human. But at the same time, it is a pitfall and a test, a snare and a trial. More so," says Havel, "than it might appear to you who have enormous freedom of speech, and might therefore assume that words are not so important. They are. They are important everywhere." "The same word," Havel goes on presciently for the living of these days, "can be humble at one moment and arrogant the next…. It is not hard to demonstrate that all the main threats confronting the world today, from [ethnic] war and ecological disaster to a catastrophic collapse of society and civilization…have hidden deep within them a single root cause: the imperceptible transformation of what was originally a humble message into an arrogant one. Having learned from all this," Havel concludes, "we should all fight together against arrogant words and keep a weather eye out for any insidious germs of arrogance in words that are seemingly humble. [What were you arguing about? Jesus asks on the way.] Obviously this is not just a linguistic task. Responsibility for and toward words is a task which is intrinsically ethical." So then, Havel would have us hear, along the way, not simply the words, but the unspoken claims of the one who speaks. For instance, we all know people who will declare that the sky is blue in such a way as to make us put up our fists and fight for the fact that it is green. There are others who, in noting the color of the sky, can cause us to see what, without their word, we would have missed. The words are the same, but our ability to hear has to do with what? Has to do with the vulnerability of the one whose words invite us into a lively relationship or the invulnerability of one whose presumed self-importance gets in the way of the word spoken, imperceptibly transforming what was originally a humble message into an arrogant one. What were you arguing about? Jesus asked. They were arguing along the way, you see, about who was the greatest: the sin of arrogance. If it is not listed among the seven deadly ones, it ought to be because its consequences will soon be precisely that! Webster defines arrogance as the quality of being "full of unwarranted pride or self-importance." The closest cousin of arrogance is pride, but arrogance is more nuanced than pride. Human arrogance rests on the presupposition that one possesses the only truth, the only word, the only possible perspective. Arrogance pronounces rather than announces, leaving no room for contrary response. It is not, "Whoever is not against us is for us," but "Whoever is not for us is against us!" It dismisses and diminishes everything in its path. Arrogance is that outward confidence that if the Lord God were to speak about the subject at hand, there would be an amazing coincidence between my words and the Almighty's. Now, what makes arrogance a sin is that, like all sin, it separates us from one another and from God. In fact, that is the point of being arrogant! Arrogance steps us back and up from the madding crowd, assuring us of our superior perspective. Strangely, it is no respecter of class, race, sex or politics. Hence, all the liberals are thinking of the arrogance of the conservatives they know, and the conservatives are shaking their heads at the arrogance of those liberals. Women are sure that men are inherently arrogant, and men have had it with female claims to being right. The height of arrogance, of course, is thinking arrogance is someone else's sin. Ironically, arrogance always undermines the substance of that about which we are being arrogant. As Havel says, we may begin with a humble word--say a word advocating another's human rights or ecological responsibility or global peace--but the more sure we become of our word's rightness, the less likely it becomes that the other will be grasped by the truth we would impose. Or the more we believe the only way to be heard is to be so self-possessed of the truth that no one will have any possible counter response, the more we imperceptibly begin to transform what was originally a humble message into an arrogant one, making it impossible for another to hear let alone respond. No doubt this is the very situation we find ourselves in today as citizens of this country about to start a war with barely another nation standing by our side. But there is actually no need in this institution to point fingers at another, because the church consistently does a better job of being arrogant about the truth it has been given than most any other institution I know! The church has, throughout the ages, taken the humble Word of God, Jesus Christ, and imperceptibly transformed it into an arrogant word of our own…a knowledge we possess that is better than all others…an ethic we embody that judges all others…a set of social commitments that mark us as the true guarantors of justice…a salvation that is only for those who have believe as we believe. Arrogance! Arrogance because the word we have been given, for the sake of the world, is not a word set in concrete to have and to claim as our own, but a Word made flesh. Vulnerable flesh, the witnesses tell us, that healed the outcast, dined with sinners, welcomed home the prodigal, roamed about with no place to lay his head until it was laid upon the cross. Not being able to bear such vulnerability ourselves, we have preferred to bear witness to something more certain. We have, the church has, I have taken this lowly Word and used it as warrant for our superior status, for our greatness in God's eye. In a sense, this is understandable. The claim that Jesus Christ is the only true revelation of the living God logically has led those who follow him to the conclusion that unless a person knows him as they do, that person will be utterly and ultimately in the dark. But therein lies the paradox. For to know him, says Paul, is to know one who "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross." Paul wrote these words to a church he loved with all his heart, and to a church that was threatened, as the church always is and as our denomination surely is today, with rumblings of schism. Paul counsels them, in the first place, to be of the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord and of one mind. The implication is that they were of many minds, each one claiming to possess the truth over and against the other. "Be of the same mind," he says, meaning not work out some compromise where you can all vote "yes" and keep unity in the body. The mind of which he speaks is Christ's, the love of which he speaks is Christ's, the accord of which he speaks is Christ's. In other words, stop claiming the truth for yourself and be claimed together by Christ. Then he writes, "Do nothing from selfishness or conceit, but in humility, count others better than yourselves." In the midst of conflict, most times, we count our opponents as less than ourselves. Think of the times that the church has split itself over this issue and that. Never have I read of a instance where a group of people thought themselves so unworthy of the church that they left to form a church of the less faithful. It is always those who believe themselves better, closer to the truth, more faithful to God's commands, who leave to form the true church. What Paul hears, underneath the pious rhetoric, is human selfishness and conceit. He is, in Havel's words, keeping a weather eye out for any insidious germs of arrogance in words that are seemingly humble. In humility, he advises, count others-count the very ones from whom you would be separate-as better…not equal to but better…than yourselves. Then finally he advises that they be taken not first with their own cause, but with the interests of others. In other words, you are not here for your own sake, but for the sake of every last person in the church and the world for whom Christ died, for the sake of every last person in the larger community to whom God in Christ has come, for the sake of every threatened child on this globe in whom God's image is made manifest. It was Paul's way of calling the Philippians to quit their arrogance for the sake of the gospel. Our hope, my friends, in times such as these, for the church and for the world, is in God's Word made flesh, and in the witness we are given to bear to him who humbled himself and was obedient unto death, even death on a cross. At his name, then, let us once again bow our knees and let our tongues humbly confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God. |