Jesus said, ‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’
The last time this gospel reading was part of our lectionary was three years ago, and I preached a great sermon on having compassion for Peter in his moment of rebuke. In fact, it was such a great sermon--at least I thought it was--that I almost printed it from my files to preach again this morning. But I didn’t. You see, sometimes, it’s easier not to wrestle with the hard stuff of the gospel--like Jesus telling those around him “‘If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” It’s easier to be compassionate with Peter than to be told to deny ourselves and take up our cross. Yay for Lent--confronting us, challenging us, making us face fierce wild beasts in the wilderness. So let’s dig in. To deny oneself...what’s that all about? If we start with the dictionary, we’ll find that there are other words to describe denying oneself: altruistic, generous, charitable, magnanimous. Let’s try Jesus’ statement again: ‘If any want to become my followers, let them become altruistic and take up their cross and follow me.” ‘If any want to become my followers, let them become generous and take up their cross and follow me.’ ‘If any want to become my followers, let them become charitable and take up their cross and follow me.’ ‘If any want to become my followers, let them become magnanimous and take up their cross and follow me.’ Wow! That’s so much easier! I can be altruistic, generous, charitable and magnanimous. Sign me up! But somehow that doesn’t sound like what Jesus is getting at. Let’s go back to the dictionary. There are other words that might fit. How about self-sacrificing, devoted, selfless. ‘If any want to become my followers, let them become self-sacrificing and take up their cross and follow me.’ ‘If any want to become my followers, let them become devoted and take up their cross and follow me.’ ‘If any want to become my followers, let them become selfless and take up their cross and follow me.’ I think we’re getting closer to what Jesus meant. To deny oneself as Jesus has called us to do, isn’t about self interested martyrdom or resume building philanthropy. It isn’t about doing good for others to make yourself look or feel better. And as a professor in seminary used to tell us, watch out for the Messiah complex...this belief that somehow we can fix, heal, and save everyone. That’s not what Jesus is talking about in this call to take up the cross. To deny oneself and take up the cross is really about letting go of our own agenda. It’s about being open to connections and relationships that aren’t of our own making, but God’s making. It’s about standing in solidarity with others, giving voice to the voiceless, and being free of the “stuff” that gives us that false sense of security--our pride, our ego, all the material possessions that we WANT but don’t need. In our world, we are told to be self-sufficient, self-reliant, and fiercely independent. We are told that we don’t need anyone else. And while independence, self- sufficiency and self-reliance are all good qualities to have, the truth is we can’t do it alone. We are meant to be whole, to be communal and connected. And that includes, being connected to God. This is part of what it means to deny ourselves and pick up the cross...that we are made whole by being connected. A friend of mine used this illustration once. If you have a tray full of ice cubes, you’ll notice that each cube is it’s own being. It was once part of a whole--water--that became separated through constructed division. Now the ice cubes are content to stay individual, and the lifespan of an ice cube is pretty limited depending on the temperature. If you hold the ice cube in your hand, it will start to melt. And it will become water again, but not with all the water it originated from. If you crack the tray and put all the ice in a bowl together, it too will start to melt, and over time, as it becomes water, it’s hard to determine the boundaries of the individual ice cubes...they meld into one body of water. This illustration, or metaphor, is meant to help us understand what it means to be self-denying and take up the cross...letting go of false boundaries and separations, seeking wholeness and community, and doing so all for the building up of the body--the Kingdom of God. Last Sunday I shared a prayer with you to get you started on your Lenten journey. And you’ll find another one in the newsletter as well. But here’s one I found as you continue your wilderness wandering, pondering the cross you will carry and the freedom of self-denial: God of Love, through this Lenten journey, purify my desires to serve you. Free me from any temptations to judge others, to place myself above others. Please let me surrender even my impatience with others, that with your love and your grace, I might be less and less absorbed with myself, and more and more full of the desire to follow you, in laying down my life according to your example. (Creighton University Online Ministries: http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/Lent/Daily-prayers-02.html)
0 Comments
“The wilderness is a dangerous place. You only go there if you have to.”
This is one of the key phrases that storytellers use in the Godly Play program. It is an introductory line to the many stories of the people of God who find themselves in the wilderness…Abraham and Sarah, Jacob, and Jesus all go out into the wilderness. As I was thinking about our gospel lesson from Mark today, the question that I kept wrestling with was how is it that in one moment God declares that Jesus is the Son with whom God is well pleased, and in the next, the Holy Spirit pushes/forces/drives Jesus out into the wilderness? How does one go from a moment of joy to a moment of struggle in an instance? In a lot of ways, the story of Jesus’ baptism and wilderness wandering is a metaphor for our own lives. How often have you experienced moments of great joy or happiness, only to be faced with challenge or moments of isolation shortly after? I’ve seen it at the hospital. A new mother brings her long expected baby into the world, and within minutes, the baby is on the way to the children’s hospital in Portland because they have a heart problem. Joy and struggle in an instance. I’ve heard stories of couples getting engaged, and then within a few days, one of their parents dies unexpectedly. Joy and struggle in a moment. Of course, there are other stories as well that illustrate this point. And this is the life we live. We are the beloved children of God, but that doesn’t exempt us from the challenges or isolation we may feel in moments of struggle...our own wilderness wanderings. What happened to Jesus at his baptism and subsequent wilderness wanderings was disruptive. It is this event that starts his ministry according to Mark. Disruptive isn’t always a bad thing...disruption can change us, motivate us, and force us into a new way of engaging with each other and our community. Disruption isn’t always easy or pleasant, but if we are open to the invitation that comes with it, our lives can be transformed. Our gospel story from Mark this morning--Jesus’ baptism and wanderings-- serves as a model of discipleship. We too are God’s beloved children, and when the Spirit engages us, we are changed and pushed out into the world. Being a disciple isn’t about being safe and comfortable, it’s about being pushed into the world—the wilderness if you will—to face the challenges of life, while at the same time, doing our part in bringing about the Kingdom of God. For Jesus, he has to go into the wilderness in order to return to the ‘civilized’ world to do his ministry. The season of Lent is about our wilderness journey. It too is 40 days. During this journey we will have to make decisions, face temptations, and from time to time, we’ll encounter wild beasts. But we won’t be alone. Like Jesus, we will be surrounded by all the company of heaven. And hopefully, when we return from the wilderness, we will be ready to go back into the world to do our ministry, knowing that we are God’s beloved. Part of my Lenten practice this year is to spend time with new prayers and poems about our relationship with God. I want to share one of these with you as we begin our wandering in the wilderness: God of hope, help us who struggle in our daily work. When we lose our purpose, When we bow to hatred, When we despair of bliss, When we take offense at others, When we compromise our values, When we cherish regrets, When we surrender to despair, renew our hope in you. Hold us, and all people, in your loving care, and may we be hope for others. (adapted from Daily Prayer for all Seasons) Today we begin the long journey of Lent. With fasting, prayer, almsgiving, the placing of ashes on our foreheads and confession, we begin the walk with Jesus through the wilderness. It is a time of self-reflection and a time of corporate confession. It is a time that we remember not only that we are dust, but that we are also intimately connected to one another and to the Divine.
I have been searching for just the right words to start us on this journey together, and have come up short. What can I possibly tell you that’s new or unique about Lent? To tell you to give up chocolate or facebook or red meat...trivializes the importance of this most holy season. So I thought I would share a poem that I found that calls to mind the interconnectedness that we share, our responsibility to one another, and perhaps might inspire your journey through the wilderness. This is from Sister Elizabeth Smoyer, a nun with the Sisters of Notre Dame: (http://www.sndden.org/en/gospel-reflections/ash-wednesday-3/) Everybody, stop everything! Let our tomb-like hearts and systems be broken open in lament and compassion. We weep as we see the bondage of our cut-off-ness from the suffering, invisibility and aching of those marginalized by our busyness: the hungry of body and spirit, the immigrants, the refugees, the trafficked, and the fracked/de-forested/trash-heaped soil, oceans and rivers of our earth. All these peoples and places made poor by systems of race, economics, politics, religion or our refusal to look. We admit our greed and indifference remembering that “the Lord was stirred to concern for his land and took pity on his people.” We allow grace to change us now, in this chaotic and painful time. For this time, we believe, is “very acceptable,” a time rooted in the generative love that connects all. We sense a wide and deep conscious connection seeping up, under and through our small ego - size slice of “reality.” We respond by emptying out, creating space in our hearts, minds and choices: praying, fasting, giving alms in ways hidden from others’ approval and recognition. We step into the mercy that holds all. “He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up...and she began to serve them.”
When I first read this part of the text, I was struck by a number of things. My first inclination was that this was one of those pieces of text that has been used by the church for years to continue to keep women “in their place”. That here was a woman who was sick, sick enough that she needed the healing touch of Jesus, and as soon as she was healed, she’s back to work in the kitchen. Is this the model we’ve been given of what a woman’s responsibility in this world is...to serve others--to keep up the household? And what happens when we transfer that message into the real world? The stories of women across the ages have shown us, that the place of women has often been relegated to the household. And even now when we’ve made so much progress for workplace equality, women still struggle with balancing the “second shift”--after a full day of work, coming home to another full time job of caring for the household and family. And so my feathers were ruffled by the retelling of the healing miracle of Simon’s mother-in-law, and I wanted to outright dismiss it. “He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up...and she began to serve them.” With a more patient reading of the text, I went back to look at some of the key words in the original text. The word for “lifted up” or “raised up”, egeire, is the same word that is used in the resurrection story of Jesus. So in a sense, Simon’s mother-in-law is resurrected. When we consider this possibility, we can appreciate her experience as one of a miracle. She was ill and now she has been fully restored to life. The verb “to serve” is the same word that will later be used to describe the action of the early apostles who serve in the early church--diakonia. It is the word from which we later derive the title “deacon”. The role of the deacon is one of service. They stand with one foot in the church and one foot in the world...helping the church to know the concerns of the world, and bringing the love of the God into the world. With this in mind, perhaps Simon’s mother-in-law was the first deacon. Through the healing of Jesus, she is able to serve others. As Ofelia Ortega explains: “Her diaconal work is the beginning and announcement of the gospel. Simon and the other disciples won’t understand it until Easter. They will not want to become servants of each other. She has overcome all the selfishness and restrictive teachings and has been close to Jesus…[she is a] servant of the church gathered in her son-in-laws house.” “He came and took her by the hand and lifted her up...and she began to serve them.” Have you ever been so exhausted, so wiped out by the daily tasks and commitments that you find yourself unable to keep moving forward? Have you ever been so overwhelmed that you feel like you need to be lifted up? Sometimes I think we all experience moments when we’re like Simon’s mother-in-law. We become consumed and depleted--sick if you will--and that in order to continue to do our work, our ministry, to offer our service to the world, we have to be raised up, resurrected, given new life. When I was serving at the church prior to St. Mark’s, I was feeling pretty wiped out. I was contemplating leaving parish ministry because it wasn’t life giving and I didn’t feel like I was making much of a difference in my community. But when I started interviewing here, and then was called to be priest here, I did so with a spirit of resurrection...I had been raised up and my response was to serve. My ministry here has been reinvigorated by the people I have been called to serve--my work not only in the larger community, but right here with our youth group, with the women who gather for bible study, talking and praying with those I visit in their homes, offering ministry to each of you in different ways--this service has breathed new life into me as a servant of Christ. And so this morning, I ask you to reflect on how you might need to be raised up by Jesus, and then once resurrected, how you can offer service to others. Amen. |
AuthorI don't know what the future of the church is, but I know that we will continue to be a place of sanctuary and hope, working towards healing in the world. Archives
October 2017
Categories |