|
Well, poop. I was so busy this past week that I couldn't get my homework done for next, nor my sermon written for tomorrow. The long and the short is that I had to stay home today rather than go to a family birthday party. It's Amy's nephew's 8th (I think it's 8) and I really would rather be there with family than here alone. I reiterate...poop. So now I'm hearing the neighbour kids playing outside, which is just depressing. Takes me right back to my school days, sitting inside doing homework and hearing my friends having a good time outside. Wait. I never did any homework and I didn't have all that many friends. Oh, well... The good news is that I did manage to get the sermon written. The gospel is Mark 8:27-38. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. "Who do you say that I am?" This question, and the answer, are typically referred to as Peter's profession of faith, and they are so called because Peter takes a leap of faith. He calls Jesus the Messiah. Up to this point in Mark's gospel, Jesus hasn't acted like a Messiah. He's healed and taught, but so had prophets before him. The majority report, that Jesus was a prophet who anticipated the Messiah, was far more logical than Peter's declaration. So who do we say Jesus is? Is he just some guy with good ideas? A wise teacher? Does he, like Elijah or John the Baptist, just point to a new way of life? Or do we agree with Peter, that Jesus is the one who will usher in the Kingdom of God? Or do we agree with Jesus himself? Peter got the first part of the equation right - he correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah. Gold star for Peter. But then, as only Peter could do, he messed it up. He didn't want to hear about suffering and death. You see, Peter wanted a victorious Messiah, a Messiah that won by winning. He wanted the Kingdom of peace and love that Jesus proclaimed - otherwise he wouldn't have followed Jesus to begin with - but he wanted it without the price, by winning an earthly victory, the Kingdom ushered in and Jesus as Lord. Isn't that what we want? Isn't that what Jesus wants? Doesn't he usher in the Kingdom? No. Jesus does not usher in God's Kingdom. He doesn't usher in the Kingdom because he is the Kingdom. He doesn't point to the new life because he is the new life. In him humanity and divinity perfectly dwell, not in spite of his humanity but because of it. Jesus is what we are to be, humanity reconciled to God in the New Adam. So when Jesus invites us to take up the cross and follow him, he's inviting us not simply to watch him win the victory, but to join him as adopted brothers and sisters in a new reality. Sounds pretty good, right? The problem is, that new reality isn't always easy to accept. Lose your life in order to gain it? Like Peter, we'd probably be more comfortable with a Messiah who conquered the powers of this world, in this world. We are, after all, competitive creatures and we like to win. But Jesus tells Peter and us that the real enemy isn't Rome, or its modern equivalents, but death. Death is the enemy Jesus must defeat and Jesus must die in order to do so. We might even be able to accept that, watching our leader go through that kind of life and death struggle. But then he says that we have to follow him. Gulp. This passage is a turning point in Mark's gospel. Before this, Jesus doesn't talk about his role as Messiah, about having to die. After this he won't do much of the healing that characterized the first part of his ministry. Neither will he teach huge crowds; from now on he'll teach his disciples in private. When reading scripture, we place ourselves into the story. That's why we know so little about the disciples - they are us. We're meant to step into their skin and be part of the story. So when Jesus takes them aside in the latter portion of Mark's gospel, he's taking us aside and we should pay special attention. And what is the message that Jesus imparts to his disciples, those of us who declare ourselves to be his followers? It's not going to be easy. We're not supposed to win in this world and we're not always going to be popular for the things we do and say. In fact, at times we're going to suffer because we serve a Lord who wins by losing. This past Thursday was Holy Cross Day, a day that celebrates the mixed symbol of our faith. The cross is an instrument of death - painful and humiliating death. Through Christ is has become a symbol of life - glorious and eternal life. The glory of the resurrection would not be possible without the ignominy of the cross. Only by allowing this world to kill him did Jesus make death irrelevant. Jesus could have raised an army and defeated Rome on the battlefield, as Peter might have wanted him to. But had he done so, another Rome would surely have risen to take its place. But Jesus allowed Rome to "win", let himself be killed, and then turned Rome's victory into Rome's defeat. Death was all that Rome could threaten and Jesus changed death from a punishment, an ending, into the gateway to eternal life and in doing so made death meaningless. Rome has since fallen, but it has been replaced by successive generations of empires made in its image. But no matter how many times Rome rises up, the only weapon it has is death and death no longer has any power. Life from death, victory through defeat - this is our symbol and it's the lesson Jesus would have us learn. It's not an easy lesson; we're not accustomed to seeing victory in the ashes of loss. Just as Peter did, we tend to set our minds on human things rather than divine things and we'd rather be doing well in the present than trust in Christ's ultimate victory. But the lesson of Mark's gospel, more than any of the others, is that only through loss in this life can we hope to gain victory in the next. How openly do we embrace this seeming contradiction? How well do we place God's standards at the centre of our lives, above the standards of the world? The Spanish conquistadors came to the Americas for the three G's - God, Glory (meaning military victory) and Gold. The unfortunate record of history suggests that God was lost in the mix and that Glory and Gold became the new symbols. It's a sad fact that we Christians often behave as if our symbol was the sword or the dollar sign, rather than the cross. I know I sometimes do. There are times when I'd rather be comfortable in this life than follow Jesus into pain. It's not easy to take up the cross; in order to do so we have to shed some of the things we consider important in this life. There's a wonderful, and almost certainly fictional story that comes to us from our Roman Catholic brothers and sisters. It describes the sacrifice necessary for taking up the cross in a way that only a Roman Catholic story can. Legend says that when Constantine built the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, just outside of Old Jerusalem, workers found three large wooden beams. Christians of the time decided that these were the three crosses from Christ's crucifixion, one for him and one for each of the two thieves. One of them quickly became known as the "True Cross." Centuries later the Persians sacked Jerusalem and carried off the holy relic. After a fierce battle in 627, Byzantine Roman Emperor Heraclius defeated the Persian army and took back the True Cross. As a good Christian, and a good politician, Heraclius wanted to personally carry the cross back into Jerusalem. But he was having some trouble. Apparently he found it unbearably heavy, far heavier than it ought to have been. He was about to give up entirely when his bishop suggested that he remove his imperial garb - his robe, his crown, his sword, etc. The emperor did so, and dressed in the clothing of a common man he found that the cross was light as a feather. What a perfect little lesson - the trappings of earthly power and wealth, all those things that we fight so hard to attain but that ultimately do us no good and that draw us away from the love of God - those are the things we need to shed if we truly want to carry the cross of life. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." Lord Jesus, give us the strength and courage to follow you into defeat, and thereby to victory. In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. |
