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“Staying Awake”
Mark 14:26-52
A Sermon Preached by The Rev. Douglas M. Donley
Here we are gathered together a
week and a half after B-day. That’s what
I call the day we unleashed our assault upon the people of
It’s hard to talk about all of this when we are surrounded by people who are on opposite sides of the fence. Last weekend, I attended a reunion of the a capella singing group I sang with in college. We were called the Hilltoppers and we had a lot of fun trying to remember those old tunes and to reconnect with friends. On Friday night, one member of the group trod into dangerous territory with me. We were political sparring partners in the early 80’s and some things never change. He said, “What do you think about the war?” I gave him a look of exasperation to which he said, “We had better not talk about it.” And then as if to break the awkward silence he added, “At least it’s going our way.” My eyebrows raised and I was trying to think of a calm response. I thought of plenty of responses about four hours later. Like, “You mean it’s good that we’re killing more of their people than they are of us, as if that were ever possible.” We started breaking into an old pattern and this was clearly not party talk. He then said, “It had to be done.” The only thinking I could say as I felt my blood beginning to boil and my rage seething was, “No it didn’t”.
This past week and a half, I have
found my mind consistently going to
I thought of my Soulforce friend
Kara who is just getting back from
I thought about the eight people
from my first church in
I thought about the children in
I thought about the millions of people taking to the streets calling for a bit more will and imagination that might have stopped this war before it started.
And as I watched the bombs bursting in air on CNN in their grainy green hues, I fell like Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks, ashamed.
Instead of fighting with him as I would have a decade or two ago, I remembered my nonviolent vows that love is more powerful than hate and that the goal of nonviolence is to rid ourselves and the world of violence of the fist, the tongue and the heart. I lodged my disagreement with him, put my arm around him and sang another tune. It’s hard to simply know how to “be” in this day and age.
So what insight does today’s scripture grant us?
It juxtaposes the falling asleep of the disciples and the betraying kiss of Judas. Two odd discipleship responses when your world is coming down around you.
It seems appropriate to look at these two betrayals right now. Many of us feel betrayed. We fell betrayed by a government that uses violence to put down prospective violence so that they cannot commit the violence they might have been thinking about. What was that song by Holly Near a few decades back? “Why do we kill people who are killing people to show that killing people is wrong? What a foolish notion that war is called devotion, when the greatest warriors are the ones that stand for peace.”
In Orwellian prophecy we now have heard our leaders say:
“War is peace.
Violation of international law is justice.
Cutting off civil rights ensures freedom.
Tax cuts in a deficit economy with an unfunded mandate of war will make the economy grow.
Oh, and by the way, we’re going to all pay for this war and its aftermath by giving contracts to certain select companies that just happen to have ties to the current administration. And they expect us to roll over and go back to sleep.
When we think of betrayal, of course we think of Judas and his thirty pieces of silver. Judas the responsible money-wise disciple who was concerned about the public image of Jesus, did a preemptive, decapitative strike to save Jesus and the world from himself
We love to hate Judas. He couldn’t handle the truth and so he sold out Jesus, colluding with the other side, perhaps so that he could save the rest of the disciples. We don’t know why Judas did it. But we do know that he did it in public. We know that when he did it, he lost all of his friends and in the midst of it he kissed Jesus. I’ve always found that an odd juxtaposition of intimacy and betrayal. Judas, the betrayer, gets the concepts of love and intimacy all mixed up. Jesus did not live up to his expectations. His movement did not come out the way Judas wanted it to, nor all of the rest of the disciples, for that matter. Judas felt betrayed. He wanted to preserve traditional discipleship. He wanted to go on being a good guy, helping the poor and ridding Jerusalem of Roman rule. He thought that Jesus had gone too far. He probably thought that by kissing him, that he was saying “I love you. I just hate your sinful ways, the way you hang out with outcasts and turn over the tables. I hate this martyr language you keep using. I know this is tough love, Jesus, but it’s for your own good. These scribes and other religious leaders will set you straight. I’m kissing you because I still love you even though you, Jesus have betrayed me and everyone else. Judas thought he was doing everyone a favor. He had read his Bible about who the messiah was and Jesus did not fit the Biblical model. Jesus therefore had to be wrong.
We self-righteously say, I would never be like Judas.
If nothing else we can know that we are better than Judas.
But you know what? I don’t think Judas was the worst disciple. I also don’t think that he was the only betrayer. I think that Jesus was betrayed by a whole host of his disciples, the very people who should have known better, the ones who were followers of the Way.
Jesus was betrayed more often by
Peter than he was by Judas. Peter tried
to talk Jesus out of being the kind of Messiah he was. Jesus’ retort to this one was classic: “Get
behind me Satan, for you are setting your mind on human things and not on Godly
things.” (Mark
We are called not only to be awake, but to stay awake.
This war might seem like a wake-up call to many of us.
We awaken to the fact that we are no longer living in a democracy.
We have awakened to the fact that there is a new unipolarist doctrine out there that says my way or to hell with you.
But it’s important to stay awake and we can only do that with the support of each other.
Oh and it’s tempting to fall asleep. When we surf the channels looking for news and we see the bombs bursting in air from every angle and we hear nothing about the international opposition to this, we hear about US and British casualties, but we hear precious little about the casualties in Iraq this week or for that matter what this policy has wrought over the past 12 years. We start to believe that there is no point to doing all of the work to stop the war, when it is inevitable. It will happen and it makes no sense to fight it. It’s like the Borg say on Star Trek: “Resistance is Futile. You will be assimilated.”
It could be that Peter was as bad if not worse than Judas. Judas stayed awake while Peter fell asleep. Peter was in denial. Judas was in a different kind of denial.
Jesus wants us to wake up and to stay awake.
John Vance is a fellow Hilltopper alumni from my class. Like me, he went on to Seminary a few years after graduating from college. I asked him on Saturday of last weekend what he would say if he were to preach right now. He thought for a moment and then said to me, “Tell them that we have missed the Messiah of Easter. We have chosen the Messiah of death and destruction. But I’m happy Easter in coming.”
In our propensity to play God, we have forsaken the God of Jesus and replaced it with a god of bitterness, distrust, and retributional violence. And if this was all there was, then we would be pretty demoralized people. We would have no hope.
But, my friends, Easter is coming. And if we are awake enough, we might even see it take shape around here.
We’ve seen it in the way we support each other as our world seemingly falls down around us.
When was the last time that such an overwhelming majority of people made such a public witness to say that warfare is wrong? It took years for this to happen in the Viet Nam War. It took less time in the Gulf War.
Easter’s coming.
I’ve seen it in myself as I have sought to make my time with my family have more of a quality nature. It is a way I am being awake. It’s the way I’m prioritizing my life.
I am awake to new kinds of poetry and music. There are artists out there who are making us look at things with new eyes. We need to live like Easter’s coming. And the ways of this world are not the final answer.
But we will only see it if we are awake.
We’ll only see it if we are paying attention.
We follow Jesus who called us all to love regardless of the consequences.
We follow Jesus who embraced the outcasts and turned over the tables.
We follow Jesus who opposed discrimination wherever he saw it.
We follow Jesus who gave his life on the cross so that he could expose the brokenness of the system of domination and violence.
We follow Jesus who showed through the resurrection that the methods of violence are no longer valid in God’s reign.
That spirit of Jesus lives on in this community.
That spirit of Jesus lives on in all of us who are brave enough and committed enough and awake enough to follow in his ways.
That spirit of Jesus is alive when we embrace each other with real love and commit our lives to a plan of justice which comes from God.
May we never betray our sisters and brothers at home or abroad.
May we always be true to God and love our enemies and pray for those who persecute us.
And may we live with the assurance that even in the midst of war, our ministry has not been in vain. It is just another stop on the road to resurrection.
It all makes the way for the day when people shall beat their swords into ploughshares and bend their spears into pruning hooks, when nation shall not lift up neither sword nor scud against nation. And they shall study war no more.
Remember that vision, my friends.
Remember it, and stay awake.
Amen.