April 01, 2012
On the Nothing Train to Nowhere
By The Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
Morningside Presbyterian Church, Atlanta
On the Nothing Train to Nowhere
John 12:20-33
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
April 1, 2012
On the Nothing Train to Nowhere
John 12:20-33
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
April 1, 2012
There are turns of phrase that one encounters in life that have a certain lingering effect; certain poetic sentences that imprint themselves on our imaginations either by jarring us or tickling us. I encountered one such haunting word some time ago in the unlikely place of my gym. I was working out with a friend of mine and a young man came walking by. He looked different from us. He had music blaring on his iPod so loudly that it filled the air around him, louder even than the repeated admonitions of the overexcited aerobics instructor down the hall. There were myriad piercings in imaginative locations, and he wore a look of utter disdain and boredom with life, the surrounding gym, and the insignificant mere mortals contained within it. It was at that moment that my friend blurted out the line that has come to linger with me, “Man, he is just on the nothing train to nowhere.”
On the nothing train to nowhere. There’s no way we could know that about him – I’ve been suddenly very aware in the past weeks with the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin of the dangers of making assumptions about people based on any aspect of their appearance: clothing, skin color, affectation – anything. I found myself wondering though, is that what Pilate thought he saw? I wonder if Pilate thought that he saw someone so bored with life, so completely over everything going on in the Jerusalem scene that he had decided to throw it all away? Mark certainly presents Jesus as one who would appear to the casual observer to have a death wish. As Jesus wound his way through the Judean countryside on his way to Jerusalem, Mark presented to us a very human picture of Jesus, a very limited picture that leaves us wondering, perhaps, what is going on in Jesus’ mind as he enters the holy city.
It all started so well. Jesus was the local boy, the hometown hero, the preacher who interpreted scripture so that it made sense and gave you something to hold on to. As Jesus rounded the bend in the road and Jerusalem looms on the horizon, it is clear in Mark’s telling of the Gospel story that something has gone terribly wrong. Jesus, the healer, the preacher and teacher, has been on an increasingly adversarial trajectory with the powers that be. Somewhere along the way, Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem became a march toward the cross. Somewhere along the way, the exchanges with the scribes and the Pharisees became less friendly and took a darker, more cutting tone. Somewhere along the way, politics became involved and folks wanted to make Jesus their poster-child. Somewhere along the way, a grim determination set in as Jesus continued to preach and teach the kingdom of God.
So clear were the implications of continuing on this path that the realization dawned and Jesus began to predict what would come…this is going to get me killed. So when Jesus got up on that donkey’s back and started that ride, it must have felt and seemed like he was on the nothing train to nowhere.
Harvey Cox likens this event to the airplane’s point of no return, “when it is racing down a runway for takeoff so fast it cannot possibly turn back. His [Jesus’] bold public entry into the seat of authority of the elite temple establishment and the administrative hub for the occupying Roman militia was comparable to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C. It meant he was courting confrontation, and after it happened, there was indeed no turning back.”
In Mark, Jesus’ suffering and death comes as the natural result of an avoidable clash with authority, a clash that results from Jesus persistent, obstinate refusal to be anybody other than who God called and begotten him to be, and ironically, the Gospel narrative that seems to suggest the most questions about Jesus’ human identity is the one that presents him as fully human, fully living as God created humanity to live, in love and community and obedience to God. And in Mark’s telling, we knew it not, and it ended in crucifixion.
It could have been avoided so easily. A softened word, a criticism turned aside, a little well placed pandering, the slightest placating of the right people. It didn’t have to end in a cross. The nothing train to nowhere didn’t have to make a stop at the cross. But it wouldn’t have been Christ riding that donkey if it were any other way. Jesus’ kingdom message wouldn’t turn aside, wouldn’t be bought off, couldn’t be leaked away, it had to come to full fruition. Jesus couldn’t not preach.
So surely did Jesus pursue his calling, his holy identity, his fully human existence that the inevitable result was a spectacular clash with the all-powerful Romans. But everything Jesus did, he did to teach us how God calls us to be.
The whole thing was a farce, a mockery of Roman domination. Roman custom was that the entering victorious army would stage a grand entry, complete with spectators primed at the point of a spear to appreciate the drama being offered for their benefit. As the conquering heroes arrived dragging slaves and the spoils of war, the citizens would be rousted from their houses and compelled to come and cheer the arrival of their occupiers. After all the local dignitaries had intoned their canned speeches welcoming the “victors,” everyone would adjourn to the local temple where sacrifices would be offered to the appropriate Roman gods who had assured victory, the founders of the feast, so to speak.
And then, here comes Jesus, not astride a prancing warhorse, but riding on a donkey. Not surrounded by battalions of elite troops but instead by peasants and children with a crowd calling out titles that gave him the authority of assent. It was a mockery, a comic reinterpretation of the Roman milieu.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem had all the hallmarks of a colossal finger in the air.
So I imagine that Pilate might have shaken his head in bemused bewilderment, wondering, “Who is this fool riding the nothing train to nowhere?”
But you know how the story goes. You know the stops along the way, the betrayal, the falling away, the trial…the charges of blasphemy from the religious and sedition from the civil authorities. It’s a slippery slope from the point of declaring one’s allegiance entirely in God. At any point, a deviation to the left or the right, a word uttered, a loyalty just implied…it all could have ended so differently. Perhaps that is the temptation in the Garden as Kazantzakis so provocatively portrayed…to have it all end differently. A different course of obedience…an easier way. It wouldn’t take so very much.
But it didn’t. That’s the real point Mark makes about Jesus. It didn’t end differently. The course of his obedience didn’t turn to this side or that. It reminds me of that wonderful quote from Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
When you think of it, it’s a relatively simple plot: one person followed God without fail. One person lived as God wanted him to live without fail. One person made a declaration of who God is and what God is about through every action, word and intimation in his life. One person sought God’s way no matter what the consequence.
The Romans were nothing if not predictable. They were nothing if not consistent. This affront to Rome’s authority would not go unnoticed. Rome ceded its authority to no one – God or otherwise.
The Romans had this way of dealing with troublemakers. It was called crucifixion. I don’t see any point or value in going into the finer points of death by crucifixion. It is not really important how bad it was. In fact, it really wasn’t unique. The Romans raised the death penalty to low art. Early and often was the rubric. Getting yourself crucified was no big deal.
Getting yourself crucified was no great accomplishment. Anyone could do it. The Romans prided themselves on the Pax Romana, the establishment of peace in their occupied territories. However, the reality was that the peace was established by killing the dissidents. Kill enough of them, and the dissents stop. We know how tyranny works – it worked the same then as it does now in Syria. It was an extreme application of the old adage, “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”
When Jesus predicts his suffering and death three times in Mark, what I hear is, if I keep this up, I’m going to get myself killed. And when he warns his disciples that if they follow him, persecution will follow them, I hear, and you will too.
But he couldn’t not preach. He couldn’t not heal. He couldn’t not teach. Not and be who he was called to be. Not and be who God wanted him to be. Even if it meant riding that nothing train all the way to nowhere, even if, by any normal standard, this means the whole thing looks like a monumental failure.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells a wonderful story about a visit she made to a museum gift shop. As she checked out, she noticed a bowl by the cash register filled with pebbles. Each one had a word etched in it. Remembering a recently widowed friend, she reached into the bowl to fish out a pebble as an “I’m thinking of you gift.”
“Loss,” read the first one she pulled out. Back it went. “Tears,” read the next. On and on she went, pulling out tears and loss. Finally, deep within the bowl she found the words she was looking for, “Gratitude.” “Forgiveness.” “Hope.” “Love.”
She laid them all out to pay for them and looked back into the bowl and saw all the tears and loss. Perhaps that is the problem, she concluded, that no one wanted to own them too, so she added them to her pile.
She writes, “I felt almost cruel giving them to my friend, but then her sad mouth softened when she saw them. She may not have wanted them but she knew they were hers and seeing them in her hand with all the others told her story better than the edited version I first had in mind. Tears belonged next to love, and hope took on more luster when nestled next to loss. Gratitude was no longer a platitude, and forgiveness had something major to forgive. Holding all of the pebbles in one hand turned out to be exactly what she needed.”
From her experience, she concludes we have a false standard of success and we need to allow ourselves the possibility of failure. Being a successful human comes to mean super-humanity: making straight A’s, keeping a well-paying job with good benefits, remaining happily married to an attractive person, raising well-adjusted, preferably smart children, not gaining too much weight, staving off depression, having a hot car, a cool cell phone, young looking skin and the list goes on. Beneath it all lurks the specter of failure: the reality that we might try to measure up and be found wanting.
But where I found hope for us in her article was in the end that while she called it a “theology of Failure,” it was, in fact, a theology of the Cross. In the end, what she concludes is that there is more strength and mercy for us in knowing that Jesus would carry on, even to the cross, than in propping up an artificial existence that offers us only superficial hope of something better.
The knowledge that Jesus couldn’t not be Jesus even to the cross, is as strong a message of hope as the gospel gives. So, Taylor concludes thus:
“Jesus was not pretending while he was hanging there. He really did lose everything, buying up all the tears and loss that no one else wanted. Because he did, I can at least hold my own in my hand, trusting that when I am feeling my most hurt and futile, my most abandoned by God, I am not far from him, but as close as I can get, poised to fail, spectacularly, in my own bid for true and lasting life.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
On the Nothing Train to Nowhere
John 12:20-33
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
April 1, 2012
On the Nothing Train to Nowhere
John 12:20-33
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
April 1, 2012
There are turns of phrase that one encounters in life that have a certain lingering effect; certain poetic sentences that imprint themselves on our imaginations either by jarring us or tickling us. I encountered one such haunting word some time ago in the unlikely place of my gym. I was working out with a friend of mine and a young man came walking by. He looked different from us. He had music blaring on his iPod so loudly that it filled the air around him, louder even than the repeated admonitions of the overexcited aerobics instructor down the hall. There were myriad piercings in imaginative locations, and he wore a look of utter disdain and boredom with life, the surrounding gym, and the insignificant mere mortals contained within it. It was at that moment that my friend blurted out the line that has come to linger with me, “Man, he is just on the nothing train to nowhere.”
On the nothing train to nowhere. There’s no way we could know that about him – I’ve been suddenly very aware in the past weeks with the tragic killing of Trayvon Martin of the dangers of making assumptions about people based on any aspect of their appearance: clothing, skin color, affectation – anything. I found myself wondering though, is that what Pilate thought he saw? I wonder if Pilate thought that he saw someone so bored with life, so completely over everything going on in the Jerusalem scene that he had decided to throw it all away? Mark certainly presents Jesus as one who would appear to the casual observer to have a death wish. As Jesus wound his way through the Judean countryside on his way to Jerusalem, Mark presented to us a very human picture of Jesus, a very limited picture that leaves us wondering, perhaps, what is going on in Jesus’ mind as he enters the holy city.
It all started so well. Jesus was the local boy, the hometown hero, the preacher who interpreted scripture so that it made sense and gave you something to hold on to. As Jesus rounded the bend in the road and Jerusalem looms on the horizon, it is clear in Mark’s telling of the Gospel story that something has gone terribly wrong. Jesus, the healer, the preacher and teacher, has been on an increasingly adversarial trajectory with the powers that be. Somewhere along the way, Jesus’ trip to Jerusalem became a march toward the cross. Somewhere along the way, the exchanges with the scribes and the Pharisees became less friendly and took a darker, more cutting tone. Somewhere along the way, politics became involved and folks wanted to make Jesus their poster-child. Somewhere along the way, a grim determination set in as Jesus continued to preach and teach the kingdom of God.
So clear were the implications of continuing on this path that the realization dawned and Jesus began to predict what would come…this is going to get me killed. So when Jesus got up on that donkey’s back and started that ride, it must have felt and seemed like he was on the nothing train to nowhere.
Harvey Cox likens this event to the airplane’s point of no return, “when it is racing down a runway for takeoff so fast it cannot possibly turn back. His [Jesus’] bold public entry into the seat of authority of the elite temple establishment and the administrative hub for the occupying Roman militia was comparable to Caesar’s crossing of the Rubicon in 49 B.C. It meant he was courting confrontation, and after it happened, there was indeed no turning back.”
In Mark, Jesus’ suffering and death comes as the natural result of an avoidable clash with authority, a clash that results from Jesus persistent, obstinate refusal to be anybody other than who God called and begotten him to be, and ironically, the Gospel narrative that seems to suggest the most questions about Jesus’ human identity is the one that presents him as fully human, fully living as God created humanity to live, in love and community and obedience to God. And in Mark’s telling, we knew it not, and it ended in crucifixion.
It could have been avoided so easily. A softened word, a criticism turned aside, a little well placed pandering, the slightest placating of the right people. It didn’t have to end in a cross. The nothing train to nowhere didn’t have to make a stop at the cross. But it wouldn’t have been Christ riding that donkey if it were any other way. Jesus’ kingdom message wouldn’t turn aside, wouldn’t be bought off, couldn’t be leaked away, it had to come to full fruition. Jesus couldn’t not preach.
So surely did Jesus pursue his calling, his holy identity, his fully human existence that the inevitable result was a spectacular clash with the all-powerful Romans. But everything Jesus did, he did to teach us how God calls us to be.
The whole thing was a farce, a mockery of Roman domination. Roman custom was that the entering victorious army would stage a grand entry, complete with spectators primed at the point of a spear to appreciate the drama being offered for their benefit. As the conquering heroes arrived dragging slaves and the spoils of war, the citizens would be rousted from their houses and compelled to come and cheer the arrival of their occupiers. After all the local dignitaries had intoned their canned speeches welcoming the “victors,” everyone would adjourn to the local temple where sacrifices would be offered to the appropriate Roman gods who had assured victory, the founders of the feast, so to speak.
And then, here comes Jesus, not astride a prancing warhorse, but riding on a donkey. Not surrounded by battalions of elite troops but instead by peasants and children with a crowd calling out titles that gave him the authority of assent. It was a mockery, a comic reinterpretation of the Roman milieu.
Jesus’ entry into Jerusalem had all the hallmarks of a colossal finger in the air.
So I imagine that Pilate might have shaken his head in bemused bewilderment, wondering, “Who is this fool riding the nothing train to nowhere?”
But you know how the story goes. You know the stops along the way, the betrayal, the falling away, the trial…the charges of blasphemy from the religious and sedition from the civil authorities. It’s a slippery slope from the point of declaring one’s allegiance entirely in God. At any point, a deviation to the left or the right, a word uttered, a loyalty just implied…it all could have ended so differently. Perhaps that is the temptation in the Garden as Kazantzakis so provocatively portrayed…to have it all end differently. A different course of obedience…an easier way. It wouldn’t take so very much.
But it didn’t. That’s the real point Mark makes about Jesus. It didn’t end differently. The course of his obedience didn’t turn to this side or that. It reminds me of that wonderful quote from Atticus Finch in To Kill A Mockingbird, “I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what.”
When you think of it, it’s a relatively simple plot: one person followed God without fail. One person lived as God wanted him to live without fail. One person made a declaration of who God is and what God is about through every action, word and intimation in his life. One person sought God’s way no matter what the consequence.
The Romans were nothing if not predictable. They were nothing if not consistent. This affront to Rome’s authority would not go unnoticed. Rome ceded its authority to no one – God or otherwise.
The Romans had this way of dealing with troublemakers. It was called crucifixion. I don’t see any point or value in going into the finer points of death by crucifixion. It is not really important how bad it was. In fact, it really wasn’t unique. The Romans raised the death penalty to low art. Early and often was the rubric. Getting yourself crucified was no big deal.
Getting yourself crucified was no great accomplishment. Anyone could do it. The Romans prided themselves on the Pax Romana, the establishment of peace in their occupied territories. However, the reality was that the peace was established by killing the dissidents. Kill enough of them, and the dissents stop. We know how tyranny works – it worked the same then as it does now in Syria. It was an extreme application of the old adage, “the beatings will continue until morale improves.”
When Jesus predicts his suffering and death three times in Mark, what I hear is, if I keep this up, I’m going to get myself killed. And when he warns his disciples that if they follow him, persecution will follow them, I hear, and you will too.
But he couldn’t not preach. He couldn’t not heal. He couldn’t not teach. Not and be who he was called to be. Not and be who God wanted him to be. Even if it meant riding that nothing train all the way to nowhere, even if, by any normal standard, this means the whole thing looks like a monumental failure.
Barbara Brown Taylor tells a wonderful story about a visit she made to a museum gift shop. As she checked out, she noticed a bowl by the cash register filled with pebbles. Each one had a word etched in it. Remembering a recently widowed friend, she reached into the bowl to fish out a pebble as an “I’m thinking of you gift.”
“Loss,” read the first one she pulled out. Back it went. “Tears,” read the next. On and on she went, pulling out tears and loss. Finally, deep within the bowl she found the words she was looking for, “Gratitude.” “Forgiveness.” “Hope.” “Love.”
She laid them all out to pay for them and looked back into the bowl and saw all the tears and loss. Perhaps that is the problem, she concluded, that no one wanted to own them too, so she added them to her pile.
She writes, “I felt almost cruel giving them to my friend, but then her sad mouth softened when she saw them. She may not have wanted them but she knew they were hers and seeing them in her hand with all the others told her story better than the edited version I first had in mind. Tears belonged next to love, and hope took on more luster when nestled next to loss. Gratitude was no longer a platitude, and forgiveness had something major to forgive. Holding all of the pebbles in one hand turned out to be exactly what she needed.”
From her experience, she concludes we have a false standard of success and we need to allow ourselves the possibility of failure. Being a successful human comes to mean super-humanity: making straight A’s, keeping a well-paying job with good benefits, remaining happily married to an attractive person, raising well-adjusted, preferably smart children, not gaining too much weight, staving off depression, having a hot car, a cool cell phone, young looking skin and the list goes on. Beneath it all lurks the specter of failure: the reality that we might try to measure up and be found wanting.
But where I found hope for us in her article was in the end that while she called it a “theology of Failure,” it was, in fact, a theology of the Cross. In the end, what she concludes is that there is more strength and mercy for us in knowing that Jesus would carry on, even to the cross, than in propping up an artificial existence that offers us only superficial hope of something better.
The knowledge that Jesus couldn’t not be Jesus even to the cross, is as strong a message of hope as the gospel gives. So, Taylor concludes thus:
“Jesus was not pretending while he was hanging there. He really did lose everything, buying up all the tears and loss that no one else wanted. Because he did, I can at least hold my own in my hand, trusting that when I am feeling my most hurt and futile, my most abandoned by God, I am not far from him, but as close as I can get, poised to fail, spectacularly, in my own bid for true and lasting life.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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