Divine Discomfort
“What’s your favorite Gospel?” This sounds like something on a list of “first date questions” from a Christian dating website, but it’s actually a question I like to ask fellow clergy and Bible nerds as it gives me some insight into their personality. Folks are often surprised when I share that Mark is my favorite gospel, because it's not a super common pick. In many ways, it's the most boring of the four books. It doesn't have the “messianic flair” of Matthew. It doesn't have the grand miracles and sense of divine destiny of John. It doesn't have the special focus on social justice like Luke. It doesn't even have a birth story for Jesus. How can I love a gospel that we can't even reference for a Christmas pageant because starts when Jesus is already an adult?! It's the oldest gospel. It's the shortest gospel. And because it was used as a source for the gospels that came later, you can pretty much find all of the stories in Mark included in the other books.
After listing all these reasons why this book lacks flash and flair, you may be wondering why anyone would claim it as their favorite. Mark is my favorite gospel because of the special way that this book speaks to being a follower of Jesus. Written as a source of encouragement during a time when the earliest followers were experiencing persecution as the Roman empire tried to squash this new movement we call “Christianity,” Mark makes it very clear that being a follower of Jesus is not always an easy path. Most of all, I like this gospel best because of the special ways that it characterizes the disciples.
Early in the first chapter of Mark, we see Jesus in Galilee, recruiting his first followers. Now it’s significant to note this was in Galilee, and not Jerusalem or Rome or any other urban center that would have likely housed the great scholars, the great public speakers or the folks that had the most political, social, and economic capital. It would be like Jesus walking over to Mountain Home, Arkansas to recruit his first followers. Mountain Home is apparently the best fishing town within the general vicinity of Memphis according to Field and Stream Magazine, and we know that these first disciples that were called were fishermen. Jesus calls out to Simon and his brother Andrew, “Hey! Come with me and I will make you fishers of people.” Now here’s where it gets interesting…
The text says that immediately they left their nets and followed him. “Immediately.” It feels significant that that word – immediately – made it into the text. The text doesn’t say that they looked at each other and asked, “Who is that guy? Do you know him?” They don’t ask follow up questions like, “Fishers of people? What does that even mean?” The text says that they immediately left their nets and followed him. Then Jesus walks a little farther up the shore, sees James and John, calls out to them, and again they follow him right away. The text says that James and John even left their dad sitting in the fishing boat with the other hired workers and went away with Jesus.
It doesn't make any rational sense. These four men who become disciples leave their homes, their jobs, and their families to follow a stranger who calls out to them. Perhaps there was a greater sales pitch that didn't make it into the text? Perhaps there was some way that they knew that Jesus was an incredibly unique or even a divine individual? We don't know for sure, but the text doesn't include any of those clarifying details.
What we do know from historians is that life during this time was incredibly structured around family, and we know that the business of these families was fishing. These four men walked away from their families, their responsibilities, and their livelihoods to follow Jesus without any apparent sense of understanding of where they were going or what they would be doing. This account stands out as an incredible act of faith to give up everything they knew and the securities they had in an instant to follow Jesus. They willingly left the comfort of their lives and took on the discomfort of the unknown. What a powerful act of faith!
This initial encounter and decision to follow Jesus is all the more significant as we watch how the disciples operate through the rest of the Gospel of Mark, because discipleship in this gospel is not always a pretty thing. The disciples are often confused and afraid. A classic example is that Jesus performs the miracle of feeding thousands with just a small amount of bread and fish – for the second time no less – and upon getting in a boat with his disciples, they immediately start freaking out that there's only one loaf of bread on the boat! Several times in Mark, Jesus turns to his disciples and says, “Do you still not understand?”
In some ways, it's like we needed that big, first act of faith by the disciples in Mark because it balances out all of the later accounts when they just don't get what is happening. The fact that they even started their journey, took that big, first leap of faith, helps to lessen all of the later bumps in the road.
I confess that I very much enjoy those portrayals of disciples in the Gospel of Mark that make them look a little bit more like the Three Stooges than the chosen 12. It helps me to know that those disciples in Mark were handpicked and commissioned as apostles by Christ himself because the truth of the matter is that being a follower of Christ is as hard, confusing, and scary today as it was back then. It is hard because so often Jesus invites us to take on discomfort in order to be a follower. Some of us today will even be called by God to leave our well-paying and secure jobs and take on a new path of uncertainty – ask anyone who's been to seminary about that one!
When Jesus calls us to do the work of God it is very often not something we were already planning, or something that most of us would willingly choose to do on our own. The way of God is not always the path of least resistance. It is usually not a downhill stroll. This oldest Gospel of Mark gives us the line that is repeated in the later gospels where Jesus says, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me, for whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me, and for the gospel, will save it.” The story of God entering the world through the person of Jesus is a story that opts for discomfort over comfort. Jesus was not born in a palace. He was born in a barn. He didn't select his followers from the educated and elite who would have had means of amplifying his message through positions of influence or power. He chose common workers. He didn't align himself with the power of the Roman Empire or the Jewish elites. He traveled by foot and usually taught to large crowds of people that gathered outside. And he submitted himself to a crooked system and an angry mob and followed that path to the ultimate discomfort of a brutal death through crucifixion. This is the story of God among us on earth. The roadmap we are given to follow is not one of luxury, power and comfort. It is one with a lot of discomfort woven in.
Some theologians contend that the Christian movement was always intended to be a fringe movement, never aligned with economic or political power but working to transform the world from outside of established systems. Many Christian historians and ethicists, including Mennonite John Howard Yoder, point to a time in the 4th century when everything changed. Christianity had been a small, often secretive movement, where followers met in private homes and were frequently imprisoned or killed when outed in public. Then along comes Emperor Constantine, who on the eve of a great battle against his political rival has a vision from the Christian God and instructs his soldiers to write the letters Chi Rho, the first two letters of Christ, on their shields as they enter battle. He wins the battle and in declaring himself the sole ruler of the Roman Empire, he also now declares Christianity will be the official religion. This moment, often referred to as the “Constantinian Shift” is sometimes pointed to as the moment when the Christian movement starts to derail a bit, because of its alignment with the power of empire. Throughout the last 2000 years, the joining together of power, politics, and nationalism with the Christian faith seldom yields positive results for all.
The church that Jesus commissioned didn't have any ties to government or national identity. The early church actually broke many of those barriers as the movement spread and included groups who otherwise had very little to do with one another. Whenever our faith becomes aligned with systems of power – political power, economic power or racial power – the Gospel message becomes distorted, and used to prop up such institutions as slavery or Jim Crow, or becomes a justification for imperialism and war. This is why the discomfort taken on by those initial disciples in the Gospel of Mark is so important. When comfortable people sitting in positions of power do the work of interpreting the Gospel, we lose the part about how the Good News is first and foremost a message of liberation.
There's a common saying that goes, “The Gospel is intended to comfort the disturbed and disturb the comfortable.” While we all certainly know what it is to look to God for comfort in moments of disturbance, unrest, or crisis, we don't usually go looking for ways that we need to be disturbed out of our comfort. Jesus came to bring Good News to the poor and the oppressed, and if you, like me, do not find yourself in one of those camps, then perhaps we are in for a few disturbances. The founder of Black Liberation Theology, Dr. James Cone, names this call to discomfort when he says, “The Christian community is that community that freely becomes oppressed because they know that Jesus himself has defined humanities liberation in the context of what happens to the little ones.” He goes on to say, “Christians join the cause of the oppressed in the fight for justice not because some of some philosophical principle of the good, or because of a religious feeling of sympathy for people in prison. Sympathy does not change structures of injustice. The authentic identity of Christians with the poor is found in the claim which the Jesus encounter lays upon our own lifestyle, a claim that connects the word Christian with liberation of the poor.”
This is a hard truth to sit with: In choosing to follow Jesus, if you're not uncomfortable at times, you're probably not doing it right.
Discomfort is good for the mind, body and spirit. Scientific studies of the brain have shown us that exposing our brains to novel stimuli, or unfamiliar and uncomfortable situations actually releases dopamine, a chemical that makes us feel good. Meanwhile, scientific studies of the body tell us that micro tears in our muscles that result from exercise actually make us stronger as they repair. Discomfort can do some very good things for our minds and our bodies. So what then can it do for our souls?
A great deal of work that we are called to do today as followers of Jesus is uncomfortable work. How can we reflect on the ways that we need to become uncomfortable in responding to the call of Jesus today? Imagine yourself as one of those early disciples, fishing in Galilee and minding your own business, and then hearing the call to follow. What is Jesus asking you to do in your life to follow him? What is he asking you to learn? How is he asking you to grow? What is he asking you to give up or take on? Listen for that call and lean into the ways that we can all take on a little divine discomfort as we seek follow Jesus just a little more closely.
Amen.
