A Sermon from Sunday, September 13th 2015
by Rev. Kadin J.G. Williams
Passage:
Mark 28:27-38
Storytelling:
This morning I want to recount a timeless story. In the Ancient World there was a part of the world that nearly every super-power was intent on controlling. Every couple hundred years a new superpower would arise and seize control of the region, overthrowing the previous power. You see, this region wasn’t particularly valuable because of its resources so much as it was valuable for its location. As the intersection for global trade routes, it was considered valuable more as a means of transportation and strategy, than a resource of industry or commodity – much like Syria is today.
The superpowers of the era didn’t care about the people or their culture to any greater of degree than necessary to guarantee political stability. Empires don’t have a strong tolerance for revolt, so they often employ a range of tools to pacify conquered peoples.
So it is in this world that I want you to imagine a small region – about the size of a county or two. You’re a person who lives there. For as long as you or your parents can remember you’ve been a conquered land, a conquered people. The weight of heavy taxation weighs heavy on your shoulders. Every year you work hard just to scrape by. Your clergy and elites cooperate with the foreigners and profit off the suffering of you and your family.
As you grew up you became used to the sight of your friends and neighbors being raped, killed, or executed in the most horrific of fashions. Your people groan under the weight of this oppression and yearn for a time when you can all be free. There was a time when you were free. Your land had its own kings. Your God protected you, but now it seems as though you are forsaken. Many of your neighbors believe that God will send someone to save you all. The street preachers say that God’s wrath is coming for the foreigners – that God has chosen a warrior to free everyone from the tyrants from afar. They proclaim a gospel of liberation!
The idea is exciting. You see the look in your neighbor’s eyes – a look of desperation, a look of fear and dread. You were once hired for a job in the nearby city. It was a day’s walk and the job took about a week, but you were eager for opportunity to earn a little extra. As you labored in the house of a local official you noticed a mirror. As you took a moment to stare into this, you noticed the person staring back at you. When you were a child you can remember playing in the stream; happy, free, and oblivious. Now you see a person with bags under their eyes, the look of experience carved into the brow, and a leathered look endurance. This, you wonder, is who I’ve become?
When you return home from your tasks in the city you reflect on this change. You think, where is the hope for my children? Where is the hope for my people? Then a day comes when you’re sitting around with your children as the heat of the day drops off and a traveling preacher comes to town with a group of his followers. He begins preaching about a new age, a time of peace and prosperity, and the Kingdom of God coming to earth.
This man seems so dynamic – so hopeful. He looks normal enough, but his spirit seems to offer hope and comfort. His stories are relatable, yet powerful. He seems to relate to you and your family in a way that’s so familiar. When he talks about God, it seems to bring everything alive. You can feel the shift of mood in the crowd as your friends and neighbors listen to this man. You feel the dread and despair fall away. In its place you find yourself yearning for freedom and liberation. If you had one wish it would be for the foreigners and Uncle Tom’s to be driven out of your land.
You and many of your neighbors, feeling as though there’s little to lose, pack up a few belongings and begin to follow this leader. You can feel the energy – the energy of a people who have had enough, the energy of a people ready to revolt!
One day, when you draw near to your newfound leader you hear him speaking to his lieutenants. He asks them, “Who do people say that I am?” You hear your friend reply “John the Prophet” and another reply “The wonderworker – the one who ascended in a whirlwind.” But the teacher remains quiet and composed until everyone around draws silent. Then he asks, “But who do you say that I am?” And almost instantly, one of your acquaintances – the guy who can never seem to shut up – almost yells, “The Anointed One.” You can feel yourself nodding in agreement. Everyone around can feel the electricity racing through their bodies. This person who sits before you is the liberator, the priest-king chosen by God to free you from your oppressors. God has not forgotten you. The time has come for a new start, a new age, a newfound freedom!
The small crowd nearly breaks into an ecstatic joy from this revelation. Yet, this “anointed one,” this “Messiah,” just sits there as everyone takes in this release from dread. Soon people begin to notice. One by one, the crowd begins to pay attention to its leader. Everyone falls silent in eager expectation. Then, finally, he speaks.
“This one” he says, “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.” You feel your heart break as he says this. What could he possibly mean? Why would he raise our hopes to only dash them against the rocks a moment later, you wonder? Then, your rather obnoxious friend pipes up and nearly yells, as he usually does, “WHAT ARE YOU TALKING ABOUT?” But the teacher turns to him, and nearly everyone, and says “Get behind me, Deceiver! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
The crowd falls silent. You can feel the confusion and frustration of those around you. More than anything else you long for release, but the one you placed your hope in seems to be saying something entirely different. As he continues to speak everyone listens intently longing for some sort of clarification or release. The teacher continues by saying,
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their death and follow me. For 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 Good News, will save it. For what will it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your life in the process? Seriously, what can you give in return for your life?”
As you listen you can feel the tension turn into confusion. You know that everyone around you is wondering the same thing – “What does he mean?” You realize that’s there’s wisdom in there somewhere, but you’re not sure what it is. What does this man mean when he says that he must suffer and die in order to win? What does he mean when he says that he will rise again after being killed? What did he mean when he told us that we have to lose our lives in order to save them?
Sermonizing:
Today’s scripture addresses the most basic of questions facing Christians –“What is Christianity?” What is the “Good News” that we lay claim to? Jesus tackles this question head on in this passage. You see, each of us is predisposed to think in a very human way. We all want to shape God’s message to humanity in our own image. But if we’re really going to find a truly liberating message we have to look at God’s word to us, rather than the words we tell ourselves.
I tend to think that another passage of scripture of really sheds some helpful light upon the story we just heard. This passage is from Isaiah 55,
“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
We have a tendency to long for certain things. We want to be prosperous, strong, successful and influential. We have very particular ideas about what it means to win or lose; and we have very particular ideas about what glory and failure look like, but God rises above all these ideas we create.
Rather than giving us a Good News centered on glory or prosperity, Jesus gives us the Good News of the Cross. This is not a glorification of pain or suffering for suffering’s own sake. It’s no doormat theology. We should have no tolerance for abusive relationships or injustice.
This Good News of the Cross is something else. It’s a message of love. It’s a definition of love. Christ’s life, death, and resurrection defines our idea of love! People in the ancient world tried to think about love as much as they do now. This isn’t a new question, but Christianity’s approach is! Our message of love never grows dull – it’s invigorating.
Our culture is full messages about the things that will make us feel happy or loved. The marketing agencies on Madison Avenue work tirelessly to convince us that a product will make us happy, secure, or fulfilled. We are entrenched in a world that continues to tell us that the immediate gratification of our desires will make us feel whole – make us feel like we’ve become complete. But here’s the thing. We’re being lied to. There is no product that can make you feel complete, or more human, or more adequate, or more accepted or loved.
This is our First World problem. We long for liberation as much as Palestinians did in the 1st Century. We may suffer from a different kind of ailment, but we too face the sense of loss. If you’ve been paying attention to the news I’m sure you saw the picture of Aylan Kurdi – a three year old Syrian boy who drowned after his boat capsized in an attempt to ferry refugees out of today’s version of Judea. As two of the world’s superpowers puff their chests and funnel money, arms, and aid into the same region the world faces the greatest refugee crisis it’s seen since World War II.
The way I retold the story we read from Mark, intentionally generalizes the original context. That story could just as easily be a story of Modern-day Syria as it is a story from 1st Century Palestine. But this is exactly where its power comes from! This isn’t the kind of story of political or material liberation that we would hope for. No! It’s far more than that.
This story presents a Good News that goes beyond particular contexts, countries, and conflicts. Our sense of meaning is to be found in the type of love that Jesus demonstrated. More than anything else, this passage tells us what is going to happen to Jesus and that our calling is to follow that example. If we do that, then we can “save” our lives and follow in Christ’s resurrection. In the death of our first attempts to fulfill ourselves, we can find the true path to a fulfilled life.
Jesus’ example calls us to focus on our connection to others. When we sacrifice to make a new type of community we can find something that frees us from our anxieties, our fears, and our feelings of despair. When we stop trying to worry about gratifying our wants and instead look to the needs around us, we can find more than we ever could have imagined – more life, more joy, more happiness, and more acceptance. We are social animals and just as God exists in relationship – between the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – so do we. When we build communities that focus on our relationships with each other, we can find a liberation better than any we ever could have found on our own.
God’s idea of strength and power is different than our idea of those things. Today’s passage tells us about the secret to ‘us’! We find ourselves in vulnerability and love, not in oppression or conquest. So when Jesus asks his followers, “Who do they or you say that I am?” he’s asking us the same thing. If we say: political revolution, prosperity, or happiness then we have missed the point. Jesus is love! Not a love that tolerates injustice or oppression, but a love that calls us to grow beyond ourselves. A love that embraces the death of our worst traits in order to build a world that better resembles the relationship God has with everything.
This is a hope beyond all other hopes. Many of us approach this scripture with as much confusion as Jesus’ original audience, but it’s so incredibly powerful. Jesus is redefining the type of hope and success we would normally think of. Jesus’ hope is a hope for the future, but it’s also a hope grounded in the present. When we take up Christ’s cross for ourselves, we find a life that is “more abundant” than we could have imagined (John 10:10).
We should be following Christ not because we are hoping to escape hell and get into heaven, but because following Jesus is worth it all on its own! The ‘Good News’ of Christianity is restoration and deliverance from the things we confine ourselves with. Like Jesus’ followers, we try to name God with the things of this world, but Jesus gives us a way out from that. Jesus gives us himself – the path of redemption and hope. This is our hope, our path, and our prayer.