🦁 Epiphany 5-👑

Readings: Isaiah 40:21-31; Psalm 147:1-11, 20c; 1 Corinthians 9:16-23; Mark 1:29-39.

Reflection

Welcome to First Forward, advanced scriptural insight for Christian soldiers. Those of you who are subscribers know that on Sundays, I just get straight to the meat and potatoes of the readings, which this morning come to us from Isaiah 40, Psalm 147, 1 Corinthians 9, and Mark 1. 

Last week, I talked about Capernaum, the synagogue, and how Captain Marvel built it. Moving forward in Mark, there's this line that I want to go back to since it ties in with the reading from 1 Corinthians 9, with Psaul. And that line is "that is what I came out to do." Jesus says, "that is what I came out to do" after he retreats from the crowds coming to him for healing and exorcisms. Last week, we talked about Jesus exorcising a demon from a man and the spirit says, "Son of God, I know who you are," blah, blah, blah. And here Jesus is doing more exorcisms, more healings. Even Simon Peter's mom is healed, and the whole city, after this, has gathered at the door. Jesus cures some people, he casts out some demons and, just like before, Jesus tells them not to speak because the demons know who He is. Mark remembers Jesus wanting to keep a lid on what's going on. Maybe he thinks it's not the right time. Perhaps he knows that miracles put a target on his back from Herod Antipas, the northern area's ruler there. 

But everybody's getting caught up in this thing that Jesus is doing, this healing. And it says he goes off and disappears, and his disciples are like, "Where the heck is he?" When they find him, they say "everyone is searching for you." A verse prior says that "Simon his companions hunted for" Jesus, like prey. Jesus says, let's go somewhere else so that I can proclaim the message there because the signs and the healings are not really the bulk of what he wants to do. That's what everybody wants, but that's not what he's there for. And so he suggests they move to other towns, "so that I may proclaim the message there also; for that is what I came out to do." (v.38)

I want you to remember that because it echoes this line soldiers and veterans say all the time; "I was just doing my job." Congressional Medal of Honor recipients, almost to a man, say, "I was just doing my job," just doing what the circumstances dictated. But on the other hand, at the Nuremberg trials, many high-ranking soldiers said, "I was just following orders." In other words, I was just doing my job. I'm just human. I'm not a hero. I'm not a monster. 

Mark's Jesus is also cautious about celebrity. Celebrity happens when what people want out of you is not what God has put in you. 

God gives movie stars, musicians, politicians, and even theologians gifts, but the masses often fail to see the Message past the messenger. Celebrity takes what God does (through stories, songs, governance, or education) and makes it about Who God has sent. 

It reminds me of when I was commissioned to write a feature story on the Truth Commission on Conscience in War for Sojourners Magazine in January 2011. I was excited to have been paid to write about the message God had put on my heart rather than (what God had done through) me. I dutifully typed up what I was told would be an article about what I had learned as a testifier and why everybody should give a shit about reconciling combatants and civilians. 

But when it passed through the hands of Rose Berger, Ed Spivey, and Claire Lorentzen, they were like, 'You know what? We really like your story better.' And they took my TCCW testimony and just tweaked it a little bit to make it unique from my prepared statement. 

And I threw up my hands. I was like, "You know what? Fine. They've already paid me, but I'm going somewhere else with this because you don't want what God has put on my heart. You only want what you see in me." 

I became a mirror for them, and that's not what I am or what I came to do for Sojourners. Talking about myself is not what I think God put on my heart to do for the church, or for anybody. Beware when people ask of you only what they want, not what you bring. And that I say that in, in light of the military aspect.

Celebrity is relevant for a martial hermeneutic because of our job is The Mission. I don't know all the details of the Nuremberg trials, but I do know that "I was just doing my job" was said on several occasions, and it's continued to be said. War criminals and Medal of Honor winners say the same thing. 

Certainly, mid-level and lower-level soldiers, NCOs and enlisted guys, don't have much power. They're not supposed to. And so, to prosecute low-level soldiers for stuff for being a part of a system that they had relatively little power over has always bothered me. A guard at Auschwitz, there's a lot of fucked up shit I'm sure that person did, and maybe those specifics were laid out. I don't know. But I have a certain amount of sympathy for those who are at the bottom of a totally fucked up system and whose power was incredibly limited. And yet they are taken to be guilty for so much more than what they really are. As veterans, we get that a lot of civilians think that All Soldiers Kill; If I was a soldier, therefore I killed, especially in the two forever wars that our democratically elected government started. 

There's a disconnect between the social aspect of responsibility and the individual reality of guilt. This also ties us into the Corinthians reading. Psaul has this line he kind of riffs on the whole passage; "If I do this, proclaim the gospel the message of my own free will, I have a reward, but if not of my own will, I am entrusted with a commission." (v.17) And here, of course, I love in English, we have "commission," like commissioned officers, who are commissioned by the United States government. They are employees, but enlisted members are more than employees. Their oaths are from two totally different areas of federal law. 

If I do X, then I am responsible and incur guilt, but I also get the reward. If this thing that I take the initiative, if I'm claiming this message as my own, then I get the consequence whether that's good or bad. Right? But if I don't do something of my own free will, if I'm caught up in a bigger system, or if I'm doing something in response to someone else's request, like an art commission, then I don't get the reward. If I am entrusted with the commission then I get a paycheck, that's my reward. But the consequence, good or bad, doesn't belong fully to me. 

If I'm a lower enlisted soldier and my country sends me to war, and we do a bunch of fucked up shit, but I sat on a guard tower and slept and jerked off and played video games for 12 months, then I'm not guilty in the same way that other soldiers might be. Yes, the consequences of my actions are mine. But when I am entrusted with commission, I am brought into a system, or belong to a system not of my own free will. I chose to enlist in 2000 before the towers came down; I didn't know we were going to start two idiotic wars. I do incur some responsibility, but I don't incur as much guilt as many people might think. If I do something of my own initiative, of my own free will, then I get the consequences. All of them. But if someone else does, then the consequences, both good and bad, belong to them. The consequence of two Forever Wars belong to the entire American people. 

Now, some of the lies that were said by Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin Powell are another matter. If they knew they were providing false information, that is their free will. They bear a lot more burden and consequences than the average American. And certainly more consequence than some enlisted soldiers following orders on some dumb shit deployment. 

In the church, we have this idea that God is the same yesterday as him forever, and all sin is sin. And that's great. But adultery is not the same as winking at someone on the street. Murder is not the same as manslaughter. Like, let's be realistic; let's be honest. There are gradations of sin. It's all the same substance, but the density and the attachment to one's character differ. 

If you're preaching from the lectionary text, you might pick up on this language of "commission." You might pick up on Jesus's words, "This is what I came out to do" and tie them into what somebody is ordered to do and what someone does of their own free will and how that muddies the water. We sometimes want to think things are black and white before realizing there's much gray. Let's stop beating people over the head for overly simplistic, reductionist theology and ethics. 

There are different scales of culpability and responsibility, and soldiers need to hear this. Veterans need to hear this. Survivor's guilt is, in part, the result of somebody believing they had more power than they really did, that they had more agency than they really did. In the West we love to think that we're in control. We love to believe that we have agency. But sometimes we just don't. Sometimes, we only have a little agency. In those cases, we should not bear the consequences that don't belong to us. 

I hope the readings this morning help us parse out that very distinct, very subtle difference between guilt and responsibility and all shades of gray in between.