Sun Kwak, “The Fellowship of Difference”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPSFqHqbdLk

TEXT: Mark 3:7-19

[7] Jesus withdrew with his disciples to the sea, and a great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea [8] and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon. When the great crowd heard all that he was doing, they came to him. [9] And he told his disciples to have a boat ready for him because of the crowd, lest they crush him, [10] for he had healed many, so that all who had diseases pressed around him to touch him. [11] And whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.” [12] And he strictly ordered them not to make him known.

[13] And he went up on the mountain and called to him those whom he desired, and they came to him. [14] And he appointed twelve (whom he also named apostles) so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach [15] and have authority to cast out demons. [16] He appointed the twelve: Simon (to whom he gave the name Peter); [17] James the son of Zebedee and John the brother of James (to whom he gave the name Boanerges, that is, Sons of Thunder); [18] Andrew, and Philip, and Bartholomew, and Matthew, and Thomas, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Zealot, [19] and Judas Iscariot, who betrayed him.

SERMON: “The Fellowship of Difference”

There’s this French aristocrat by the name of Alexis de Tocqueville. He wrote a book in the early 1800’s titled Democracy in America. You see, America was such a fascinating idea and reality that people came over from across the Atlantic to study us — like, how did that even happen? And you read some of the early writings of the founding fathers, things just kind of happened. So, De Tocqueville comes over from France, and this is shortly after something we know as the Louisiana Purchase. And so, America has just expanded, and new things were happening. And as he takes some time to study the habits and patterns developed with Americans, he makes the following observations. These people are very religious, they’re out for the common good, and they’re highly individualistic. You fast forward over 150 years, and you have sociologists coming together — Robert Bellah among those. And they form an important book we know as Habits of the Heart. And with more modernized, sophisticated, and collaborative methods, they essentially do the same thing that de Toqueville did. They make observations about the habits of Americans. And what do they observe? That Americans are out for this thing called the public good, the common good. And we are still radically individualistic. And about this radical individualism. Americans, as observed by Charles Taylor, who was a Canadian sociologist. We live out of what he calls an expressive individualism. Which is not just an individualism kept to ourselves but something that is imposed and expressed upon others in society. This incessant need to impose your personal views on others — be it politics, sports, religion. And you think about what this means and how it’s all played out today. It’s not enough just that people respect our right to believe what we want to believe. But we get offended when other people don’t believe what we believe. Because we live in this society of expressive individualism. You couple that with this consumer-driven market, and it’s almost impossible to be in deep community among people outside of our own personal preferences. We move to neighborhoods that make us feel comfortable, that share similar bedtime routines and parenting philosophies and voting tendencies. Because we join communities where people think like usand act like us and are like us.

You look at our passage today, and so much of that mindset is challenged. We have in this gathering of the twelve disciples, among others, zealots with tax collectors. And if you could write a slogan for what a zealot might say today, it might be — Make Israel Great Again. These were what you would call nationalists — and of the most extreme variety. And we’ll get back to how extreme they were later. But if they were one extreme of Jews, then on the other extreme were the tax collectors. These are people who sold out on their own people in order to find employment with the Romans. And so, it would be a massive understatement to say that the zealots weren’t fond of tax collectors. And yet, here is Jesusassembling to himself this community that makes no sense. In no other scenario would you have this assembly of people dining together, let alone doing life together. And I think it puts before us a significant and important challenge for us as the church. In his reflection of Robert Putnam’s E Pluribus Unum, Jonathan Haidt gives this picture of a merry go round. And with this merry go round are a people of difference, a diverse community. And they’re holding hands and keeping the community intact. But as more people are added in, the more differences are created, and the longer the diameter gets, the greater the centripetal force, and the greater the tension on the outside. Meaning it takes great effort to hold onto one another. All it takes is one weak link to initiate the collapse of this practice of the merry go round of diversity. His concluding observations — diversity and doing community with people of differences is hard work, and it takes a lot of effort. And you look at these disciples, there were plenty who could have served as that weak link or a disruption to the chain. But Jesus not only keeps this group together but he changes the world through this community. And as we consider this text, I want us to ask how and what that means for us as a gospel community. For we are, as Scot McKnight says, a fellowship of difference. And what we’re going to conclude — the only way this works is by the gravitational pull and power found in the person of Jesus Christ.

We noted that there is this diversity that’s happening around Jesus. This is a new thing. You first consider the crowds and the places that are mentioned. You have in verses 7-8: “A great crowd followed, from Galilee and Judea and Jerusalem and Idumea and from beyond the Jordan and from around Tyre and Sidon.” And what’s noted here is that the fact that the following happens from beyond the Jordan shows that Jesus’ gathering and influence has now exceeded that of John the Baptist’s. His Kingdom influence is expanding. Because you get places like Tyre and Sidon, which the Old Testament prophets make mention of when talking about the foreign nations that are the far places and regions. You could say for the Old Testament people, this represented the ends of the earth. And so, all these people are coming from all over. They’re hearing about his healing, which in the thoughts of Jurgen Moltmann is about restoring the world to what it’s supposed to be. And so, with all the diversity of thoughts that come from different cultures and languages, there seems to be this greater pull with this one person than the differences of the multitude. And it’s as this is happening that Jesus calls his disciples. The picture I get here is of what we know as the fellowship of the ring which was assembled in the beginning of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings. And there, in the beginning of their quest together, there is this gathering known as the Council of Elrond. And this council is called to determine what should be done because there is this great evil, and it comes with the character of Sauron. And the way to end this evil was by getting rid of the ring that was the ring of power to rule them all. And so, it’s all important for them to do away with the ring, by sending it to where it came from at Mordor. But this is a perilous journey, because the ring itself taxes the soul of the ring bearer and there are constant threats who are allied to Sauron. But because there is this gravity and importance to completing this mission, there are all these combatants of differences who come around the ring bearer. And here, you have this diversity of different creatures (some of whom Tolkien notes don’t otherwise get along with one another). You have hobbits and elves and dwarves and a wizard and humans. And they’re gathered together for a common purpose, a commitment — to protect the ring bearer at all costs and to fight for good and against evil. And you picture here the people that Jesus is bringing to himself, this diverse gathering. And it signals something greater and bigger than some of the differences they had amongst one another. It’s this common mission around a common person.

And something that William Lane notes in his commentary is that there is a parallel pattern found in chapter 1 that we find here. That back when Jesus was calling his first disciples, it was proclamationthat preceded the commitment to follow. And here, it’s as Jesus is preaching to the crowds that his disciples assemble around him. And what was it that Jesus is preaching of back in chapter 1? It’s about his kingdom. Here is the king assembling his combatants to battle formation. And you consider some of the details. Where is Jesus coming from in verse 7? It’s the sea. And where does he assemble his people in verse 13? It’s on top of a mountain. And when you look at the specific word for diseases in verse 10, it’s the same Greek word that’s translated as plagues. And where else do we have a story involving plagues and the transition from sea to mountain? We’re brought here remembrances of the Exodus story, where Moses, on behalf of God, announces to the people of God from the mountain — Mount Sinai — the law of God. And that was what kings in antiquity would do when establishing their reign. They would position themselves at the highest point of the kingdom and would establish their law, their rule over their people. And when these tribes are arranged in the Exodus story, God arranges twelve tribes who come from a formless people. And so, it’s no accident that Jesus here is naming twelve disciples from the midst of a crowd. And Herman Ridderbos, in his Coming of the Kingdom, notes that the twelve disciples represent not something from the past but rather something into the future. That this was not so much a reclamation of Israel but the new creation entity that would become the New Testament church. In fact, the word for appoint we find here in verses 14 and 16 regarding Jesus gathering the twelve to him is perhaps better (or at least more literally) translated as create. It’s the same word used in the LXX, the Greek translation of the Old Testament, back in Genesis 1:1, with how God created, how he made all things in the creation story. And just as Adam was tasked with naming his creation, here we have the calling out and spelling out of the names of the disciples Jesusgathers to himself. And so, about this moment here in Mark 3, Herman Ridderbos calls it the eschatological creation of God, which is a fancy way of saying God’s creating of the last things, this new age. This new creation story that comes from the redemptive work of a king rescuing a people in bondage.

And you think about how the Hebrews understood the creation story — that the formless mass of the waters in creation was a turbulent chaos. And here, we have what seems like the least likely of fits in Mark 3, with those within the twelve who would never identify themselves with some of the other twelve. Those who not only had a disdain for one another but had a history of violent actions toward one another. I mentioned earlier that zealots were these hardcore nationalists who had an utter disdain for tax collectors. And the reason they hated tax collectors was that they were sellouts to the Romangovernment. These zealots were said to carry daggers in their pockets. And the common commitment was that if they met a Roman on the road, they would slit their throats. And not just with Romans but for those who were employed to Rome, like tax collectors. And so, when Simon the Zealot meets Levi, who already had bad association with some of the others called. But when Simon the Zealot meets Levi the tax collection, what would have been the expected interaction? You would have to assume murder and violence. But of course, that’s not how the story unravels. This was not a mistake. But here was Jesus creating anew from what looked like a turbulent chaos assembled. To show that there is a greater power that makes peace amongst this hostility possible. Because who has the kind of power to maintain peace in the closed company of a tax collector with a zealot than the one who in Isaiah 11:6 is to make all things new, where the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the young goat, and the calf and the lion and the fattened calf together. And in Isaiah 65:25 — The wolf and the lamb shall graze together; the lion shall eat straw like the ox, and the dust shall be the serpent’s food. They shall not hurt or destroy in all my holy mountain, says the LORD. This is God’s new creation community, which is how the church is described. And so, what does this tell us about the church and how we are to look and operate?

I grew up in a pretty diverse neighborhood in the Twin Cities of Minnesota. And Ira Glass did this episode on the social complexities of middle school. And in my middle school, we had a pretty sizable representation of many ethnic groups. And so, while classrooms and hallways were incredibly diverse, it all broke down, in consistency with Ira Glass’ observations, during lunch time and in the cafeteria and with lunch tables. This is where there is not so much a celebration of difference but some clear theme of sameness that went against the diversity of the school. And when Jesus is calling these twelve, this is him calling them to share meals with him for three years. And in this countercultural way, the lunch tablewas even more diverse and dangerous than the open crowd. And where murder and violence was expected, you instead get this unnatural, or might we say supernatural, unity. But it isn’t something that just happens. We noted earlier the thoughts of Jonathan Haidt, that diversity is hard. And for the gospel community, it’s not only difficult, it’s costly. Because I want to take note of something here. Who’s at the bottom of this list? Judas Iscariot. And I don’t know how you take this, but some might be inclined to think — Well, Jesus slipped on that one. But our God doesn’t make mistakes — this is all intentional. He’s appointing. And in order to create this new creation community for his people, this appointment was necessary. Because something Jesus will teach us about this new creation community is that the church is not about damage control. It’s about repair and restoration. Because the church, just like this community, is messy. It involves betrayal and broken trust. Even so, Jesus commits not only to keeping it but being in the very midst of it. And I know some of us have been hurt by the church and have experienced betrayal and broken trust by those in the church. But don’t you see? Wouldn’t Jesus understand? And would Jesus really take us through to being a part of these kinds of communities if he wasn’t certain that he would sustain it? And after all that he went through, he doesn’t snap his fingers and make the problems in the church go away. But his promise is that he’s invested, he’s in these problems. Because what we’re shown here is that even with the presence of evil, it is no match for the goodness of Jesus. Somehow, in this new creation story of the wolf dwelling with the lamb, with the leopard lying down with the young goat, with the calf and the lion together, with wolf and the lamb grazing together, with the zealot and the tax collector sharing lunch tables. Here, animosity is overpowered by a greater unifying power found in Jesus. Because they were held together not by their own doing but by this supernatural power that forms and shapes broken communities to radiate with gospel life. And it’s not just the power of Jesus’ conjoining. But at the center of it all is the power of great sacrifice. And what do I mean? For here was Judas, who was one who was to betray Jesus, as we read in verse 19. And this word for betray or hand over is the Greek word παραδιδωμι.

And this is how I want to land the plane, how it applies to us. Because this same word used to describe Judas and his actions — this παραδιδωμι. This is the same way sinners are described in relation to Jesus. Which means it describes all of us. That we are those invited into community with Jesus, and we are those who betray him, who hand him over. You look over at Romans 1, and the apostle Paul sets the scene, in describing how we are those who give up and hand over, who do this παραδιδωμι. And he mentions it three times. And the way he describes this is regarding how we are those who are handed over to our desires and our passions and our sinfulness — those subject to the wrath of God. And who among us can’t relate to that? But in this book of Romans, after these three uses, the very next time that word παραδιδωμι is used is seven chapters later in Roman 8:32, where we read of another who handed over. That it wasn’t us to our sinful passions who betrayed Jesus. But there, it would be the Father for the sake of our sins who turned his back on his Son. Where we read — He who did not spare his own son but gave him up — παραδιδωμι — but gave him up will he not with him also graciously give us all things? That for a community of those who regularly betray and hand over Jesus. In all of our diversity of sinning and rebelling, we come together to a common redemption. Because unity in diversity is not free but incredibly costly — it cost Jesus his life. And for us to be on mission with one another in this gathering of a fellowship of difference, what we must look at is the commonality we have in Christ above anything else. That there is more gravitational pull with the Son of God who draws himself to us into gospel community.

So friends, let’s come week after week to the story of forgiveness, where Jesus committed to being handed over in order that we might be kept in his sacred community. To ensure that we will never be handed over and given over to the wrath of God. Even when we give in to our sins and our pleasures at times, there is a unifying force that’s even stronger. For as the apostle Paul concludes in that great chapter. For I am sure that neither death nor life, nor angels nor rulers, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers, nor height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. We will surely bring our diversity of sinning and our differences with us in the community. And sometimes, these differences are going to hurt others. And sometimes, differences from others are going to hurt us. But can we commit to something? Can we commit to the mission of creating a culture of forgiveness, which is the new creation culture? That which breathes life in surprising ways and into unexpected places. That sure, we’ll offend, we’ll disappoint, we’ll hurt each other. Because diversity is hard. It takes effort. But I look out at our diverse gathering here and know that while it takes our efforts to come across and come alongside one another, it ultimately comes through our regular observance of the efforts, the sweat, the agony, and the blood of another. We look to King Jesus who is using this imperfect gathering of people to display to this world his perfect grace. Let’s lean into that and join the mission as a community painted by Christ’s blood.