"Being Maladjusted"

Mark 9:30-10:16

A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley

January 19, 2003

University Baptist Church

Minneapolis, MN

 

            I’m not even going to try to deal with this entire scripture reading in this brief sermon time.  But what I will point out is that Jesus consistently tried to advocate for the least among the people.  Just like he healed the blind and the lepers and the demon-possessed, Jesus addressed children, people who are divorced, and eventually the rich and the poor.  As Ched Myers said, “The church is not to be a power base for its members but a community that redistributes power to the excluded.”(Myers, 1997:117).

            A large portion of this scripture is devoted to children. Children in Ancient Palestine not only represented innocence and trust, they also represented the least power of any human being.  They were the least of the least.  Our work is to root out injustice in the world, and also within our own lives.  For we are called to defend the least. As we remember Lynn’s adult child Eric, called this week to be God knows where, doing God knows what, I have to think that Jesus wants us to recommit ourselves to remembering the children.  As we remember other children, those fighting and those in harms way, we weep with God.  But Jesus doesn’t stop here to weep.  He lets out his anger.  He lets loose on people who would not defend the least of these, my children.

            Jesus saves his harshest words for those who scandalize the least of these, the little ones.  And we all do it from time to time.  We experience our relative peacefulness, our luxury, our prosperity and we don’t even realize that we are ignoring our even putting a stumbling block in front of a little one.  Jesus says that we are to awaken to our complicity.  But not only that, we are to cut off all that causes us to fall into sin.  It’s a bit out there to ask us to take literally Jesus’ admonition to cut off a part of our body.  “If your eye causes you to stumble gauge it out.  If your hand or foot cause you to stumble, cut it off.”  This is extreme and it really makes no sense to any of us.  But it does makes perfect sense to a person in recovery from addiction. 

A person in recovery will remind us that their healing has happened because they have amputated that part of them that is toxic.  Think about amputating our own codependency or our dependency.  When we do that, then we are set free to experience ourselves and the world in new ways. For Mark, the greatest sin is the desire to dominate.  As Myers puts it, “Disciples are called to defect from what society may see as natural, such as the ways “little ones” are routinely victimized by patterns of hierarchy and exclusion.  But to do this is to be perceived as “defective” (like the amputee) by the dominant culture.  These strange sayings, then, are arguing that it is better to be deformed than to conform to what oppresses more vulnerable members of the body politic.”  (Myers, 1997:118)

            Or as Saul Alinsky put it, “It’s better to collide than to collude.”  This struggle between collision and collusion is about being adjusted or maladjusted.  It’s about, in Paul’s words, “Being conformed to this world or transformed by the renewal of your minds.”(Romans 12:2)

           

 

Martin Luther King gave a commencement address at Lincoln University 1961.  He said: “Every academic discipline has its technical nomenclature, and modern psychology has a word that it used, probably, more than any other.  It is the word maladjusted.  This word is the ringing cry of modern child psychology.  Certainly all of us want to live a well-adjusted life in order to avoid the neurotic personality.  But I say to you, there are certain things within our social order to which I am proud to be maladjusted and to which I call upon all (people) of good will to be maladjusted.

            If you will allow the preacher in me to come out now, let me say to you that I never did intend to adjust to the evils of segregation and discrimination.  I never did intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry.  I never did intend to adjust myself to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.  I never did intend to adjust myself to the madness of militarism, and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.  And I call upon all (people) of good will to be maladjusted because it may well be that the salvation of our world lied in the hands of the maladjusted. 

            So let us be maladjusted, as maladjusted as the prophet Amos, who in the midst of the injustices of his day could cry our in the words that echo across centuries, “Let justice roll down like waters and righteousness like an everflowing stream.”  Let us be as maladjusted as Abraham Lincoln, who had the vision to see that this nation could not exist half slave and half free.  Let us be maladjusted as Jesus of Nazareth, who could look into the eyes of the men and women of his generation and cry out, “Love your enemies.  Bless them that curse you.  Pray for them that despitefully use you.”

            I believe that it is through such maladjustment that we will be able to emerge from the bleak and desolate midnight of man’s inhumanity to man into the bright and glittering daybreak of freedom and justice.  That will be the day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Catholics and Protestants, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro Spiritual, “Free at last!  Free at Last!  Thank God almighty, we are free at last!” (The closing paragraphs of The American Dream, a June 6, 1961 commencement address at Lincoln University)

            What might we need to maladjust ourselves to these days?  What might we need to amputate from our lives so that the least of these might have the same opportunities that we have?

Senator Mark Dayton this week likened the proposed Bush tax cuts to addiction.  We know they are bad for us, but we just can’t stop ourselves.  Think about what you might have an addiction to.  What might you need to cut out of your life, so that you can live free? 

Our propensity to violence?

            Our addiction to media depicting violence?

            Our dependence on the volatile stock market?

            Our easy answers to the hard questions?

            The myth that racism no longer exists?

            The myth that everyone who wants a job can simply get it?

            The myth that we have a free press or a free market?

            The myth that we export freedom and justice far and near?

            Or how about closer to home?

 

            Maybe we need to let go of the myth that we are all healthy, mentally, physically, emotionally, spiritually.

            Maybe we need to let go of the myth that we are comfortable with the institution that the church has become.

            Maybe we need to remember Jesus’ ministry to the least of these.  Maybe we need to look again at our faithful following of that one from Galilee. 

            In this passage, Jesus calls us to remember the children, and to enter into the commonwealth of God like a child does. May we have the wisdom of the loving children and may we protect them all. Let us give new meaning to the tired slogan of "Leave no child behind". Let us work to protect the children, the "least of these" mentioned in the scripture as we remember that in Jesus' logic, the last shall be first and the first shall be last.

The world is filled with bad news.  There are wars and rumors of wars that are engulfing our very lives.  It seems that anything we do to try to stop it feels like spitting in the ocean.  And yet, if we choose to be maladjusted to the world, then we know that the war-mongers aren’t really in charge.  They may have the guns and they may have the troops answering to their whims, but there is another power afoot.  There is another set of warriors who are putting on the armor of God. 

They have the belt of truth around their wastes and the breastplate of righteousness on their chests.  They have the shield of faith, the helmet of salvation, and the sword of the Spirit.   And they have a different vision for the world than those in positions of authority.  Two hundred thousand of them gathered in Washington, DC yesterday and another 50,000 in San Francisco.  They gathered in Paris, Tokyo and in towns and cities across the world.  They said no to war and yes to peace.  They called for an end to racism and yes to inclusiveness.  They said no to paranoid first-strike, preemptive unilateralism and yes to international standards and justice.

If the churches took the gospel seriously enough, then every church would be a peace church.  Every Christian would be advocating for justice and love instead of just us and narcissism.  A growing consensus of people are today remembering Martin Luther King’s words: "Violence begets violence; hate begets hate; and toughness begets a greater toughness. It is a descending spiral, and the end is destruction--for everybody. Along the way of life, someone must have enough sense and morality to cut off the chain of hate by projecting the ethics of love into the center of our lives."

The church was founded to make the world a safer place.  The church was founded to make a safe space for people, especially minority people, to proclaim their faith in freedom. 

That faith often includes calling into questions the ways of government and power.

And that makes our faith dangerous.  But it is dangerous faith to which we are called, and that is why our openness must be tempered with a surety that we are doing God's work for the good of all people.  If there is any question in that, then we need to pay attention to that voice inside of us and listen to what the spirit may be telling us to do or not do.

For Jesus came to maladjust us.  He came and said the first shall be last and the last shall be first.  Don’t ever forget the least of these my children.  Try to be like them and you are on the road to the only salvation that really matters.  It is a salvation that saves the world from itself. 

Until that day comes, may we be righteously maladjusted to this world of injustice and adjust ourselves to God’s plan of justice, love, peace, freedom and hope. 

That’s what Jesus lived and died for. 

That’s what so many of our Anabaptist forebears lived and died for. 

That’s what the abolitionists and suffragists lived and died for. 

That’s what Gandhi lived and died for. 

That’s what Martin Luther King lived and died for. 

That’s what we might live for so that we might have that beloved community here on earth. 

That’s a cause worth being maladjusted for. 

And that’s what the church is all about. 

Do you feel the power that is here? 

It is God’s power to make a difference in this world.  And it is in each of us. 

May we lean on each other, support each other, challenge each other and even maladjust each other until the first shall be last and the last shall be first and all people will see the salvation of God.  Amen.