Prayer –

         It seems that our assigned scripture lessons in September and October often focus on Jesus’ teaching about discipleship.  This isn’t an accident, but reflects the flow of the last quarter of the liturgical year.  The first half of the year, from Advent through the Easter season, is more or less devoted to the life of Jesus, and the second half, from Pentecost on through November, focuses more on the life of the Church.  As we come closer to the end of the liturgical year we hear more and more about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. What does it mean to live in the Kingdom of God?  These texts can be hard–sometimes hard to understand, sometimes just plain hard.  They say things like “Take up your cross and follow me” and “Those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.”

         I can tell you that texts like these are hard to preach on just when you want to lift up the grace and hope and invitation of the gospel to the re-gathering community in the fall.  This is Rally Day, after all!  Sunday School is starting up again!  Students are beginning to arrive, or perhaps are moving from Middle School to High School or from their Junior to their Senior year, expectant and in need of encouragement!  And today is a day of celebrating Susan’s and my return from a wonderful sabbatical and your conclusion of a sabbatical journey of your own as a congregation! 

         We think we know what we need.  Not only would we prefer to be uplifted, we also have among us those who are carrying very heavy burdens — illness and worry and loss of work, among other things.  What good does it do to add the weight of the cross to their already weary and overburdened shoulders?

         Peter, too, thought he knew what was needed.  When Jesus asked his would-be followers who in the world they thought he was, I can imagine them huddling in a circle going over the options and Peter stepping forward as the spokesperson with their best guess and hope:  “You are the Messiah.”

         Fine, Jesus seems to say.  They’re starting to get it.  But a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing, so Jesus tells them not to start spreading this idea around until they understand more about what it means.  And then he tells them what it’s going to mean–that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.  And , to put it mildly, Peter doesn’t like it.  We don’t need that, he tells Jesus, even rebuking him for it.

         Oh yes, you do need to hear it, Jesus says.

         Why do we need it, people?  Why is this good news?

         Because it changed the game plan.  This is the turning point; this is the scene in the movie that if you miss it you’ll never understand the rest of the film!  Peter–and we–learn that getting the words right is not enough.  We have to follow Jesus into places we would rather not go.  But in that following we learn that no longer do we have to constantly shore up our lives.  No longer do we have to be so defensive, thinking, “My survival at all costs.”  We need not focus on building ourselves up so as to diminish or even impoverish others.  There’s more, much more, to our life with God than that.  We’re freed to live without fear, to give of ourselves generously.  Jesus has our back, so to speak; we’re freed to take risks in love.

         Early in our marriage, Susan and I lived for a year as caretakers of a household of elderly people.  One of them, Elsa, who was virtually blind, almost completely deaf, stiff and stumbling, was a woman of radiant faith.  I would say that she taught me as much as anyone about discipleship and I give thanks that she entered my life when she did.  She would say firmly, in a loud voice as she fiddled with her hearing aid, “Christ didn’t call us just to survive.  Christ calls us to a triumphant life.”  And she was living it.  Despite her difficulties, despite her daily and real reasons to feel isolated and without hope of physical improvement, she was living a life made triumphant by the one who went to hell and back for our sake, the one who died rather than depart from the path of love and who was raised again in resurrection glory.

         Since returning and visiting with many of you who have experienced hard things over this past summer, I am struck again with the way that this “triumphant life” is present among us, shown forth perhaps in its most naked beauty and truth in the midst of weakness and hardship.  Even in the struggle of faith, even in the struggle WITH faith, that very struggle can witness to the call to discipleship that Elsa placed before me:  “Christ didn’t call us just to survive.  Christ calls us to triumphant life.”  Now “triumphant life” isn’t often on the tip of our tongue these days, but perhaps if we say a life of meaning and grace and service we’re getting at what Elsa, an early 20th century missionary, meant by the term.  In other words, she’s speaking of a life not ultimately defeated by the forces of despair or destruction or even death.

         And the fact is, Christ calls us to that triumph not be a means of denying the reality of suffering and death but by walking with him through it.  It’s a different kind of power to be sure, a power from below made accessible to all rather than power from above given only to a privileged few.  It’s certainly different than the kind of power Peter expected from the Messiah. 

           The in-breaking of the kingdom Jesus was inaugurating DOES mean joy, feasting, healing and the overcoming of much suffering.  Jesus is shown repeatedly alleviating suffering.  God’s new reality is breaking in.  But it’s time now in Mark’s gospel to begin to teach those following him more about what walking with him (or what his walking with them) in that kingdom is going to mean.

         Jesus “comes clean” with them in today’s gospel text about the path that he’s on and where it will lead.  As an aside, it perhaps is helpful to realize that Jesus, after the beheading of John the Baptist, would have had to have been a fool not to realize how things were going down.  Jesus decides the time is ripe to share this with his disciples so that they can decide for themselves whether to keep on following; whether his is the kingdom in which they want to live.  And Sunday after Sunday, you have the same decision before you too.  Is the kingdom that Jesus tells us about the one in which we want to live?  Are we willing to follow Jesus?  Let us be clear, this is really good news for the poor.

         In this pivotal scene, Peter has the right words, but not the right understanding.  But even though Jesus recognized Peter was way way off, so far off that he became the very voice of Satan tempting Jesus to depart from the lowly way of love, Jesus never gave up on Peter.  Jesus never stopped teaching Peter and the others, by word and by deed, by parable and by action, even by death and resurrection.  And in the end, Jesus called Peter to strengthen his fellow-believers in the same way.

         Now, isn’t that good news?  Isn’t that better news than the same old, same old, of our world and its ideas about who is important and what is important and how to use others to your advantage?  Rather Jesus shows us a vulnerable messiah, where weakness and–apparent–failure need not be a disaster.  (Loader).  And Peter’s rocky on-again, off-again life as a disciple most certainly shows us that, with Christ, weakness and failure are not disasters beyond redemption but can be the very path by which redemption occurs.

         The good news is that Jesus has our back.  Jesus has already saved our life, so we don’t need to devote ourselves to survival at all costs.  We can devote ourselves to him and to the kingdom of God.  Like Elsa.  And like so many of you who let the light of Christ shine forth into a world that thinks it knows what it needs, but has a lot left to learn.

         Amen.  I pray that it may be so for all of us.

Michael Thomas, OSLC

Rally Day / Return from Sabbatical, September 13, 2009

Pent 15B — Is 50:4-9a, Psalm 116:1-9, James 3:1-12, Mark 8:27-38

Print This

Email This