Escape Hatch

Mark 8:27-38

September 14, 2012

I have two warnings this morning:  First, this sermon is a little long.  And that might make you want to get up and leave right now. 

Second, from now until Advent – the first Sunday in December – the gospel readings for Sunday worship are brutal.  And that might make you want to get up and leave and not come back.  I did not get an “A” in the seminary class called:  How to use a sermon to grow a church.

But this is not all my fault:  The gospel of Mark – especially the part we are going to be reading over the next couple of months – has harsh truths about who we are, and what’s asked of us if we follow Jesus.  We are hit over and over again with our own failings as we watch ourselves in the failings of the disciples.  So, consider yourselves warned.

I also really need to say this – and this should really go without saying – even though I am up here, giving the sermon, I do not stand apart from you when it comes to struggling with the difficult parts of our faith.  There’s a danger, because I’m up here “preaching”, that it might appear that I think I’m ahead of the game, and I’m telling you what to do.  I’m not and I’m not. 

In fact, when I’m as honest as I can be about what these texts say, I dread being up here because it exposes me as the world’s biggest hypocrite.  I lack credibility because I don’t do in my life what I think the texts ask us to do.  Not practicing what I preach is a literal, daily reality for me.  So what right do I have to up here?  None, really.   And, as the title of my sermon says, I wish more than anything I had an escape hatch about right now.   I wish I had been smart enough to schedule my sabbatical for these two months J.

Yet, giving sermons is part of what I have chosen to do, and what you have chosen for me to do.  I have committed to myself and you to do the best I can at reading the bible, studying, and hopefully listening for the spirit of God as I put together my weekly attempt at a sermon.  I’m wrong a lot, to be sure.  But I have committed to try my best.  And to not say what I think a text is about – to give myself an escape hatch just so I can feel better and you will like coming to church – that too is hypocritical. 

So, I warn you that when I read the gospel of Mark – when I look at what’s on tap for the next two months, I think it’s brutal and I’m going to try and not deny and avoid that – as much as I would like to.

But let me assure you, it was brutal for the disciples as well, so if we aim to be disciples, maybe it’s only fair if we join them a little bit in this.

Today, when you listened to Max read the gospel, you might be thinking, “what’s so brutal about this text?”  I think familiarity has bred complacency on this one.  “Take up your cross and follow me,” is familiar to us.  It’s not like we think it’s easy, but I think it doesn’t affect us the same way it did Peter and the other disciples.  This wasn’t just hard for them.  They had done “hard.”  They left their family and their jobs to follow Jesus.  This wasn’t just asking a lot – they’d given a lot.  This was devastating.  And in the end – we know from the rest of the story – it was impossible for them.  Everyone abandoned Jesus when the cross got too hard.  It was the request that revealed their greatest failings.  They couldn’t do it. 

Throughout Mark, Jesus has been trying to keep something secret.  Many times, he instructs people to not tell anyone what he has done for them or who they think he is.  It’s not totally clear why he does this, but I’m going to suggest it’s because he thinks they will say the wrong thing – or that by telling, people will misunderstand Jesus, or worse, God’s purposes for humanity and the world.

In the first part of our passage, he does it again:  He asks the disciples who they think he is, and when Peter answers, he orders them not to tell anyone.  This time “sternly.”  And, interestingly, he says this right after Peter calls Jesus Messiah.  A bit strange, right?  This is a name we still use today to describe who we think Jesus is.  In fact, we have entire choral pieces based on this one word.  Add to that, Messiah is simply Hebrew for the greek word, “Christos.”  Christ.  Peter calls him Christ.  The number of times we call Jesus, “Jesus Christ,” simply cannot be counted…like grains of sand on a beach.  And when Peter says to Jesus, “You are the Christ,” Jesus says, “Don’t you DARE tell anyone that!”

This is kind of the first “ouch” in the passage for all of us.  Probably, every once and a while, we should wonder if we, like Peter, shouldn’t be using these words for Jesus.  If Jesus were sitting here today, and heard us pray, “In the name of Jesus Christ,” would he order us sternly to stop doing that…to not call him Christ?  Are we as off base in using this word as Peter was?

Peter calls him “Christ.”  But, when Jesus explains what is going to happen to him, Peter gets mad.  And then, Jesus calls him Satan.  Satan!  Misunderstanding what Messiah and Christ means seems to be a pretty big deal.  And whatever Peter thought Messiah meant, it did not include “undergoing great suffering and being rejected by the elders and being killed.” 

Peter, like other Jews of his time, thinks a messiah is a savior.  A grand figure who comes to save the day much as a popular, revolutionary hero might.  A messiah reigns over people – but in a good way…as God would reign.  Peter thinks Jesus has come to reign as God would, and Jesus says, “Get behind me Satan!” 

Jesus talks not of Messiah and Christ, but of the cross.  For us, a cross is something beautiful at the front of the sanctuary or hanging on the end of a necklace.  For Jesus, Peter and everyone else living in 1^st century Palestine, the cross was mode of execution for common criminals…nobodies…slaves; certainly not for kings and messiahs.  You are not killed on a cross if you have status, assets, property, land.  In most of us would not fit the description of a person Rome would hang on a cross.  Claiming the cross as his way, Jesus is saying not only will I not be the messiah you imagine, I’m going to give up everything to be the least – the common – the slave. I will reject ALL power, status, notoriety, etc.  I am not choosing to help the nobodies by being a better king than the one you have now;  I am choosing to become a nobody, and I will die a nobody.  If you want to be good news in this world, you will do the same.  Take up your cross and follow me.

I’m guessing our response to this is similar to what Peter’s was.  What good will that do?  Isn’t this all about how to help people, heal people, do good for others???  If I become a nobody – if I have no power, no resources, no standing – how can I do anything but be part of the problem?  I can’t help others – I won’t be able to survive myself. 

Peter probably thought he would get a pretty good return on his investment of leaving his old life; for giving so much up to come with Jesus – at least he was going to get a new leader, the world was going to change.  Now Jesus seems to be telling him that you didn’t give things up in order to follow a messiah to the throne:  Giving things up was the whole point. 

What I think Jesus is saying is that obedience to God is not as simple as “doing the right thing,” or “being a good person,” at least not as we usually think of it.  Being a good Christian is not ultimately about figuring out how to use our privilege and resources to help change the world.  Maybe it involves something much more radical.  Maybe it involves giving up any power you might that allows you to help others.   

It’s about right here that most of us bail on the cross.  And it’s not because we’re bad people.  It’s because we don’t get it.  What good will that do?  How does that change anything?  But, at some level, deep inside, I think we do get that as long as we cling to what we have – our privileged life – we are not what God wants us to be.  Because having privilege is necessarily linked to why there’s suffering in the first place.  We’re causing the problem even as we try to be the solution.  Instead of tweaking our current life, we must lose it completely.

I’ll be the first to admit that I both believe that this is part of taking up my cross, and I’m not willing to do it.

Will Willamon, who has a way of putting things so that you can’t avoid feeling them in your gut, writes this about “taking up the cross”:

“To help us avoid the cross, our theologies first minimize our participation in evil, and then inflate our possibilities for goodness…  Unable to be obedient or courageous, we are content to be decent.  [We tell ourselves] Jesus was an idealist who lived 2,000 years ago in a dusty, prescientific sort of place, whereas I must adjust to [living in the 21^st century], and keep up my car payments.” 

As someone who recently bought a new car, this one hit really hard.  I am unable to be courageous or obedient.  I am unable to accept that taking up my cross really does mean giving up everything: not just giving up my car, but giving up everything that makes it possible for me to buy a car in the first place.  Unable to do this, I am content to be decent.  This is why this passage today  brings me to my knees.  This is why this passage makes me question why I want to be a Christian at all.  Who in their right mind would choose this way?  The way of the cross?  Isn’t it good enough to just choose to be decent?  The cross means sacrifice greater than I’m willing to make.  It means suffering greater than I’m willing to endure. 

So, I reach for escape hatches.  I content myself with trying.  I pat myself – and others – on the back for being basically good people.  Privileged, but good people. – as if that were not a contradiction of terms.  I make Jesus into a friend who likes me.  I make the cross into a beautiful symbol that stands for love and grace, but not for sacrifice and suffering.  I make my faith about me, rather than giving up any sense of self for the sake of others. 

And when I get to this passage:  Take up your cross and follow me.  I do exactly what we will see the disciples do in the coming weeks:  they continue to follow Jesus for a while, pretending they don’t understand what he means, then abandon him in the end when they finally have to face where he is actually going.  Are we really Christian if we follow Jesus, but not to the cross.  Or is being a Christian defined by taking up the cross.  If we, like Jesus, don’t willingly give away our power and privilege, can we call Jesus, “Christ,” without being exposed as hypocrites?

I told you:  I think this is brutal stuff.  And it’s not even Lent.

And, maybe I should leave it there.  Our passage does.  But, I can’t, and I don’t actually think I should.  I really don’t. 

I have often warned in sermons of the danger of taking one passage from the whole bible and interpreting it as if it stands on its own. 

The big story of our faith – the arc of the whole bible, is that our God, Jesus, and our very creation is a movement from brokenness to wholeness, sin to redemption, alienation to reconciliation, despair to hope, death to life.  And it’s true: that is not always what we see – we take steps backwards, we suffer the consequences. 

But, we live somewhere between paradise and God’s realm fully here on earth.  We do not live in a perfect world.  We are not perfect people.  And I honestly don’t think religion is about trying to become perfect.  I think it’s about learning to live faithfully as imperfect people.  It’s about learning to join that movement of God whenever we can.  Joining that movement does mean sacrifice, it does mean solidarity with nobodies, it does mean taking up our cross, and it does mean the painful, heart breaking reality that when we don’t, people suffer.  

But, this is why we have the whole bible.  And it is definitely not all brutal.  I promise Advent will come.  I promise that, as we have in the past, we will get to the book of Acts – where we read about all the disciples who failed Jesus at the cross.  They are carrying on, imperfect though they may be, the ministry Jesus began – and we read about how massive their impact was.  It does matter when we help people, heal people, love people.  That’s not just an escape hatch to make me feel better:  That’s my experience.  That’s why I seek to follow Jesus, who did feed, love, and change people.

Finally, what I know is this:  If it weren’t for you all, I would be in the tall weeds on all of this.  If I didn’t have the church, fellow journeyers, and a place to help make meaning of it all, I’d be lost.  I can barely do any of the hard things, much less the brutal stuff.  On my own, it’s hopeless – I become hopeless.  Without you, I’m not even going to follow Jesus far enough to get to see him on the cross from a distance:  much less come out on the other side of the resurrection a changed person, ready to try yet again to be as faithful as I can in this broken world.  So, please, please, please – despite my warning – come back next week.  Amen.