The Reverend Mike Riggins 2/25/24

Upside Down

Psalm 22:23-31
Mark 8:31-38

Scholars generally agree Mark wrote the earliest of the Gospels. A few hold out

for John. John is like a comet, soaring in and out of the narrative the other three

share. Depending on who wrote it, the Apostle John or some other John, that Gospel

could have been written any time from AD 35 to 100. For various reasons too involved

to dive into here, the consensus is that a disciple of John's wrote it in the '80s or '90s.

Meanwhile, almost the entire text of Mark appears in Matthew and Luke. A school of

Bible scholars working in the 1800's realized this probably meant Matthew and Luke

had copies of Mark in front of them as they wrote their Gospels. Also, biblical experts

have long felt that Mark's identity as the Apostle Peter's scribe is solidly established.

Peter likely would not have been able to read and write. He needed a scribe. The

Book of Acts tells us of the close connection between him and a disciple of his named

John Mark. It takes a hop (not a leap) of logic to get from all these facts to the idea

that Mark wrote first. After years of reading on the subject, this pastor buys it.

Why does this matter? First, if true, this theory puts Mark at one remove from

Jesus. If Peter was indeed his primary source, this means Mark has first-person

accounts to use as source material. Events like the transfiguration and even the

resurrection (Peter was the first male to see the empty tomb) came to Mark in first-
hand accounts. Perhaps Mark had been present for some of Jesus' life, perhaps not.

But all four Gospels make it clear Peter had attended to virtually Jesus' entire ministry.

Second, the sooner an account of a life appears, the more likely it is to be accurate.

Thus, while Mark is the shortest of the four Gospels, its importance lies in its

immediacy, both temporal and physical.

Today we read Mark's account of the first time Jesus told his followers he must

die to accomplish God's plan. Mark 8:31: “(Jesus) began to teach them that the Son of

Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers

of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.” That word began can

mean “he started talking”, or it can mean “told them for the first time.” As one principle of

biblical interpretation holds to Occam's Razor (the simplest explanation is usually best; or as

Professor Collin Story at my seminary said, “The longer it takes you to explain it, the less I

believe you.”), I believe this verse means Jesus was telling his disciples of his passion for the

very first time. This episode follows immediately after the strange story of Jesus restoring a

blind man's sight by scraping up some dirt, spitting on it and rubbing it on the guy's eyes. The

disciples have just witnessed a miracle—not the first in the Gospel of Mark but an early one.

Jesus may want to prevent them from assuming that because he has such power they have

hitched their wagon to a star. “Hey,” they might be thinking, “maybe dropping everything to

follow this guy was a good career move after all.”

To which Jesus appears to be saying, “Not so fast.” The African American slaves of the

south had a saying, “Watch out for the easy gold.” The longer the slave trade lasted, the

farther into Africa the slave traders had to go to capture their victims. By the 1820's virtually
all of the slave traders in the first stage of the process were themselves Africans. Quite often,

their method of snaring future slaves was the night-time raid. Commonly, however, they used

a small payment of gold with the promise of far more if their victims would come with them to

a city beyond their dreams. Beyond their nightmares was more like it. When the

unsuspecting people walked through the palisade walls of that “city” they discovered it was in

fact an armed fortress. Their exploiters would take back that little bit of gold and slap them in

manacles. Soon, they would find themselves picking cotton or harvesting indigo in the

beastly humidity of the American Southeast. Their whole lives had been turned upside down.

One thing we can say for Jesus: he did not try to trick anybody into coming along with

him. He forthrightly told people what signing up with him meant. He told them what would

happen to him and in other passages what would happen to them. They thought a being with

the power to restore the sight of the blind had to be God, and since God had all power, he

would prevail against all the forces of the universe. By extension they—who had after all,

dropped everything to walk around behind him—would rise in this world to heights they had

never believed possible. “Not so fast,” Jesus in effect tells them. “I must die, and spend three

days dead.” We will come back to his next next point—which is Good News—in a few

minutes. For now we must address more bad news. Jesus tells his hearers that if they really

want to follow him they must “take up their crosses”. This image foreshadows the day the

Romans would force him to drag his own cross through the streets of Jerusalem. Not only

must you get killed, you must carry the instrument of your own death.

Well this is a cheerful message, sure to win the hearts and minds of all who hear it! In

truth it is a chilling prophecy. But Jesus means it. He adds one of his favorite themes, that

the first shall be last and the last, first. God will turn every human expectation upside down.
We still hold onto the fallacy that following Jesus makes us winners, above those who do not

follow Him. In fact, as Matthew 25 makes clear, he calls us as his followers to serve the last

and least, not to lord it over them. A woman named Naomi, an American Reformed Jew, ran

a distribution center for a network of food banks that is the largest in the country. Located in

the South Bronx, she supervised the utilization of an abandoned factory as a storage and

transport hub. (The South Bronx, with the exception of Yankee Stadium, is basically

substandard, multi-unit dwellings and abandoned factories.)

Naomi had that uniquely American Jewish combination of personality traits, one-third

wry humor, one-third tart negativity and one-third compassion. She briefed our group of youth

and sponsors on exactly how to do the work of sorting and loading we had come to do. Use

gloves the whole time she told us, for, “You never know who else has handled those cans and

what diseases they may have.” Do not climb down into a dumpster, even if you drop an entire

flat of product into it. Things like that. She spent far more time briefing us on who their

clientele was, and how they had come to so deeply need the food we would process for the

next six hours. Then she talked about where that food would go. Churches and former

churches mostly, churches still operating and church buildings abandoned by their now-

extinct congregations. All over four boroughs. Step vans full (think UPS or Fed Ex), because

it was too hard to navigate New York City in a semi. They had developed a profile of their

“average client”. I forget the numbers save one. The average annual income of their clients

did not come to even half of the federal poverty line.

And yet. Naomi introduced us to Joaquin, an extremely thin man who appeared to be

in his thirties. He spoke to us with a strong Hispanic accent. Joaquin had come to America

on a makeshift boat with no motor. He and twenty-some others had left Cuba under the cover
of darkness and prayed their rudimentary sail would propel them the ninety miles across the

Straits of Florida. They landed without much incident on one of the Keys. He walked into a

police station and declared himself a Cuban refugee. At the time he knew only a few words of

English. But the intake officer spoke Spanish, though Joaquin said he had a “terrible Mexican

accent”. Soon, he had asylum and a bus ticket to the Bronx, where his cousins lived.

Joaquin had risen to become the Assistant Director of the food pantry distribution

center. He had worked as a peon, a field worker, in Cuba. He had maybe a third-grade

education. He was a devout Roman Catholic. So here he was, working for an American

Jewish woman to facilitate the feeding of literally thousands every day. He said something

our youth repeated to each other for as long as any of them present there that day remained

in our youth group: “If I can do this with Jesus, you can do anything with Jesus.” That the

youth would usually say this with a fake Hispanic accent only added to its power. If I can do

this with Jesus, you can do anything with Jesus. Sometimes we feel like the last and the

least. No one present listening to these words can remotely consider themselves the least

economically. Yet at times we can feel lost, defeated, downtrodden. We can feel like we have

dragged our crosses through the city. Yet Jesus offers consolation—through the piece of

good news we mentioned earlier. For while he speaks of dying on his cross, he does not stop

there. He adds that after three days he will rise again.

In Mark eight Jesus does not put this final implication into words, yet it hangs in the

passage with a palpable force. And he does speak of it elsewhere—as does the Apostle Paul

—so we can confidently add it here as well. If we must die with Christ, so we shall live with

him. Because he rose, we can too. If I can do this with Jesus, you can do it with Jesus. And

this resurrection of ours works in both this world and the next. So far as I can remember,
Joaquin did not make this connection, but I will. Think of the mast and spar. Do they not form

the shape of a cross? Did he not put his life into his hands while trusting in the work of a

cross? Absolutely one of the last and least, he rose to the relative heights of an executive

position in a humanitarian organization operating in one of the great world cities.

One of the youth listening to Joaquin that day in 2005 grew up on a Christmas tree

farm in Northern Michigan. Now she has a PhD in physical therapy and practices in Grand

Rapids. One of the adults survived breast cancer and now travels with her husband. They

have visited Cuba. Other youth there that day work as a sound engineer for a quality brand of

audio speakers, a mother of three whose live-in boyfriend had to go on disability a decade

ago, a nurse, a pediatrician and one who served time for attempted arson but who now leads

a Bible ministry in the county jail. What do all these people have in common besides having

heard Naomi and Joaquin that day? They are all follow Jesus. They come from diverse

backgrounds. They have diverse life experiences. But I am in contact with most of them,

mostly through social media, and I know enough about each to make this statement

confidently: each one them, and quite a few more beside, understand that following Jesus

does not guarantee a cushy life. He has this habit of turning our expectations upside down.

But upside down is his intention. It is his strategy for gaining our attention and teaching

us. He seriously wants us to get it. We do not follow him to gain riches or power, nor even

happiness. No, we follow him to gain the spiritual maturity to serve the last and the least, and

somehow, to enter into his presence when our time comes. Take up your cross and follow

Jesus. It leads down before it leads up, but lead up it does. Take up your cross.