Zero in on my sin and wake me up
Dear God, make clear my weakness, provide me with correction
“But later, as the Eleven were at table, he appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised.” (Mark 16:14)
Saturday in the Octave of Easter
Acts 4:13-21
Mark 16:9-15
Harsh words from Jesus.
Jesus didn’t appear to the apostles first, but rather to lower-level disciples and to a woman, Mary Magdalene. The apostles imagined that no filter of folks existed between them and Jesus. They had God’s ear, not these mere followers.
Shut up in a room, the apostles were reticent, afraid, feeling orphaned from their Father God and brother Jesus. One of them had betrayed Jesus and subsequently betrayed them all. Another did not act like he belonged to his band of brothers, hiding by himself. He only returned to them, urged by news that Jesus had risen from the dead. He meant to prove them wrong.
Jesus didn’t want his apostles to think and operate in this manner. He needed them for the biggest mission in human history. They must be assured, convinced, and bound together.
Jesus’ leadership had already set a different pattern for God’s evidence and presence than that of the Jewish and Gentile worlds — his birth announced to shepherds and his kinship to God revealed by a rogue member of the priesthood, John the Baptist. Jesus didn’t appear to royalty until he was introduced as a criminal. Nothing would change in this behavior once the apostles were in charge. Most saints in our two-thousand-year history were scoffed at, ignored, and many were martyred.
Jesus healed outcasts, whom he sent as witnesses to the high priests, unworthy laity to stand in the inner sanctum. The royalty and the leadership of Jesus’ inner circle should have been aware of this difference. The apostles were members of a royal priesthood, sacrificial lambs, stewards of God’s Word, weaned on wealth and poverty, and readied as vessels of the Holy Spirit. Their audience would be all of creation.
Yet, here they hid.
[But] later, as the eleven were at table, he appeared to them and rebuked them for their unbelief and hardness of heart because they had not believed those who saw him after he had been raised. (Mark 16:14)
There is a loveliness to Jesus’ rebuke. He reprimands his hand-picked men because he has missions for them. He did not condemn. Jesus formed them for the next phase of their relationship, when he would be bound to them in the Eucharist.
Jesus prepared them for the Holy Spirit. He said to them, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16:15)
In an earlier gospel recording, Jesus rebuked Judas about the treasurer’s improper focus. Regarding Judas’ dispute about Mary, Lazarus’ sister, wasting precious and expensive oils, Jesus said, “Let her alone. Why do you make trouble for her? She has done a good thing for me.” (Mark 14:6)
Judas’s response to this rebuke, and likely many other corrective measures by Jesus, was rejection and sabotage. When he betrayed Jesus after the Last Supper, Matthew wrote that Judas did realize the mistake of his actions, an evil he allowed to take over.
Then Judas, his betrayer, seeing that Jesus had been condemned, deeply regretted what he had done. He returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, “I have sinned in betraying innocent blood.” They said, “What is that to us? Look to it yourself.” Flinging the money into the temple, he departed and went off and hanged himself. (Matthew 27:3-5)
Jesus had not condemned Judas. However, due to an unsuccessful corrective relationship with Jesus through a litany of rebukes noted in scripture, Judas went to his “own place” and took his life.
There are two steps to a rebuke. One is reprimand, and the other is correction. God desires that we be drawn to him, not pushed away. His scolding includes a redress, a reorientation. He wants our mistakes or faults to stop so that he can lead us in a different direction.
A reprimand, however, does not always reach the intended target with good effect. A verbal spanking still stings. From God, or any proper authority, a scolding should shift our attention to something entirely different than stubborn disregard and subversion.
Rebuke wells up shame, which can send us into a funk. We go off to our “own place” as Judas did. In despair and sadness, God still loves us, but our exclusion by walling off the Holy Spirit hinders God from overhauling our character through submission to God’s will.
When Jesus rebuked Judas for calling out Mary’s excess, pouring an expensive oil on his feet, Jesus spoke for the ages. Judas disagreed with Jesus, fixated on the financial framework of relationships. Jesus’ organization wasn’t designed to distribute wealth or to be a charity. He wasn’t interested in building an investment portfolio, funding an army for military purposes, or restructuring social classes to attract followers. Jesus placed himself at the center of the apostles’ attention. He wanted them to be like him, not to take on the task of public relations.
In essence, whatever the cause of a rebuke from God, the full Trinity mends our thinking, straightens our path, and edits our language. The closer we are to God, the more intense the corrections and disciplines will be — a logical development of becoming more like God. We learn to trust him as he carves off the barnacled parts of our character.
It’s at the early corrections where God is cautious with us, but not too careful. He is bent on getting our attention, anyway he can. We should become more interested in cooperating with God than clashing with him. God is kind. He loves us. His corrections do not destroy us. However, he reveals our bad habits and selfish desires, and awakens us from cognitive dissonance. That’s quite a painful consequence of God’s love.
How else could Jesus, without compromise and with complete confidence, say to a group of men whom he’s just reprimanded and chastised, “Go into the whole world and proclaim the Gospel to every creature.” (Mark 16:15) The reprimand primed them for a correction. They had become familiar with Jesus’ authority. Do as he says.
The first reading for today tells the story of what happens to the redirected apostles. Jesus had ascended into Heaven, and the Holy Spirit had entered and anointed them just as Jesus prophesied. They were changed. “Whether it is right in the sight of God for us to obey you rather than God, you be the judges. It is impossible for us not to speak about what we have seen and heard.”
That’s what God is looking for.
Dear God, please make it clear to me when I’m messing up. Be blunt. Zero in on my sin and wake me up.