2LentB
February 25, 2024
Suffering. Rejection. Deny. Take up your cross. Lose life
This Gospel reading is heavy.
It is Lent, So I’m thinking we are ready;)
A while ago I was at a workshop
For three days we reflected on three different questions
Why…Why did it take the Incarnation to save us?
Why did it take the cross/crucifixion?
Why did it take the resurrection?
These are really fundamental questions
But it seems to me that we often
kinda just glide over them
with vague churchy language
I’m not the sort
Who is immediately impressed by the guy selling pillows on TV, or the beautiful newscasters who wear crosses front and center…
It seems too cheap…too easy
I need more…
I need more from myself.
As fundamental as these questions are
I found that I hadn’t given them much attention
I really hadn’t made them real
Today…Our Gospel reading is about as direct as it gets in asking us to:
Deal! Deal with the Cross…
what does it mean to me…to us
and how does it, somehow, give shape to the way we live out our faith
And because after 2000 years we are still wrestling with this question
It isn’t about THE ONE AND ONLY CORRECT answer
…it’s an over and over again invitation to ponder
[TEXT]
Today’s Gospel reading from Mark
is asking us to DEAL
WHY the Cross?
The lectionary has jumped forward a bit
And here we are in Chapter 8
Chapters 1-7 Jesus is healing right and left
He is alleviating any and all suffering
Placed before him
But here…in Chapter 8…we have a pivot point.
“THEN. Then he began to teach them”
That first word THEN
indicates that what follows has something to do with what came before
Just before today’s text, Peter has answered the question
“Who do you say that I am?”
And he (at least on the surface) gets it right…but even as he gets it right TECHNICALLY
He gets it very wrong.
You are the Christ!
Well…yes…but not the kind you have in your head.
And so THEN…
“THEN he began to teach them.”
It’s kinda like show and tell
7 chapters of showing
And now some TELLING
“THEN he began to teach them.”
One thing we can say for certain
For 7 chapters…with all that healing and alleviating suffering right and left.
we can be sure that
Deny
Taking up your cross
Lose your life
Isn’t about looking for suffering…or somehow glorifying suffering.
JESUS does not want more victims!
SO…How do we think about Denying oneself?
The word translated LIFE
Is something like how we use the word SELF
For us moderns, selfhood is the sum of everything I am
MY past experiences, my accomplishments, my traumas…it’s very individualized
So when I hear “deny myself”
I hear something like “that means that I can’t do what I want to do?”
Selfhood…or identity in the ancient world
Wasn’t something “I” construct
It’s given to me by my birth, my tribe, my trade…just the whole web of my world.
Denying in the ancient world would have a sense of losing one’s identity
Like breaking apart that web
Using words that might work for us today
Jesus might be saying to us:
“separate yourself from the things that PURPORT/PRETEND to make you who you are”
We know what that means…my career, my health and vitality, the fact that I can run 5 miles a day, --- just fill in the blank
Separate…not get rid of…Just remember believe that these are NOT your identity.
SEPARATE, why?
…to make room for a new belonging and a new identity
We are here
In our prayers and creeds and petitions
We confess our belonging to Christ
Christ crucified
But what does that mean?
I think there are as many ways of expressing the answer to that question as there are Christians who ponder it.
Obviously I’ve had a head start;)
But here is mine.
However incomplete
The cross is where God was willing to go
The place where God could say NO
Not with words but by way of Jesus’ actions…
Or better yet…actions done to Jesus.
Actions so vivid and in your face that we humans couldn’t miss it
In the crucifixion
God says: NO…absolutely NOT
I’m not playing your game
NO…the word is NO…to the never-ending cycle of revenge and violence
that you humans seem to think is the answer
On the cross God says NO to the over and over again cycle of winners and losers.
I won’t participate in victory parades arising out of that!
DO NOT EVER do THIS in my name!
[and later at the Last Supper I gave you another THIS…wash feet, share a meal…now that you can do in my name]
But NO not this…Not EVER!
But there is a promise in the text as well:
8:35 those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
So we lose our lives/our selves by separating ourselves from those things that purport/pretend to make us who we are SO THAT we can become grounded in Christ.
And this LIFE we are talking about isn’t individualistic.
And that means that just as my SELF/my LIFE is constituted corporately…communally
SO TOO…is the SAVING
I don’t go it alone.
We don’t go it alone.
Okay…so we can relax a bit knowing that we don’t have to take on the world by ourselves.
But still…The business of Jesus
The business of Messiah-ship
Is the business of turning (the tense is important)
…turning the world “right-side-up”
that is the role of a messiah…
Still…We have to live with the fact that it is VERY. SLOW. GOING!
Its true, right?
THUGS/Dictators/ Liars and Cheats seem to win more than their fair share of the fights!
Into this complaint, Jesus, THE GOSPEL
Is reminding us that there is no other way
The other way…the way of force
Just makes us into new Romans, new Thugs, new oppressors.
Losing my life
Means disentagling my life from all that I think makes me me
My job, my education, my family, accomplishments…
And subjecting it all to my life, my identity, in Christ
And…my life in Christ means that I continue to be drawn into a parade
I am being drawn into an ongoing, 2,000 year old parade
Not a victory parade
But a peace parade
A justice parade
A cross-bearing parade that many will call
naïve, immature, snowflakey, gun-hating, kumbaya
And that’s okay
Because it’s not a victory parade yet
We are living in the mean-time
In the middle of a story about our God
who raises people from the dead!
And, my friends, we have all glimpsed just enough of a right-side-up world
To keep parading
We parade to the food pantry
We parade to the ballot boxes
We parade to visit a grieving neighbor
We parade to this church for the company we so desperately need
on Sundays and sometimes carrying a large pot of soup
We sing in the parade too
If its not always a HAPPY parade
It is a joy-filled one
Joy-filled
Because we are propped up by an immense fellowship
Of the living and the dead
And parade
Inch by inch
Decision by decision
Loving choice by loving choice
As we contribute to the
slow bending [To paraphrase Martin Luther King Jr]
of the arc of the moral universe towards justice.
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