Sermons

Aug 28 - Deacon Jan Bales

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Today’s gospel may not sound like good news. Jesus calls beloved Peter “Satan” and orders him to get behind him. He then tells his disciples that if they want to follow him, they just better pick up their crosses. In Israel 2,000 years ago, that meant certain death. One is going to have to lose one’s life before one finds life. Oh, Jesus. Why can’t you be that sweet baby in the manger? Why can’t you just be the good shepherd who carries me home? Why can’t you be the ever-forgiving father who throws open the door and gives me a party?

But, today’s gospel is, in fact, incredibly good news. It is a gospel that promises unceasingly abundant life. I am not preaching the prosperity gospel here, nor pie in the sky theology. I am preaching the good news of life in Christ Jesus, the good news of being a disciple, the wonder that occurs when one stops thinking the way men and women think and tries to see the big picture. As Jesus says so often, we need eyes to see and ears to hear. We are not talking about regular check-ups with the doctor.

Jesus and his disciples are making their way toward Jerusalem. They have just finished an incredible tour of healings and miracles. Last week we learned they are in the territory of Caesarea Philippi, a place of many gods. Jesus asks his disciples: Who do people say that I am? It is Simon who gives the right answer, who makes the confession: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Simon is given a new name, always a significant move in the Bible. He becomes Peter or Cephas, the Rock on which Jesus says he will build his church. In both the Greek and the Aramaic, the name Peter is a play on a common noun meaning “rock.” But in a few short verses, Peter goes from being cephas, the “rock,” on which the church of Christ will be built into being the skandalon, the stumbling block, the stumbling rock. Skandalon is the Greek root for our English word scandal. Jesus says, “Get behind me, Satan. You are thinking like men, not like God.” When Peter’s thinking comes from God, he is “solid as a rock.” But here, when he is thinking as a human, he is a stone to stub your toe on, a scandal at that!

What was Peter’s human thinking that got him into trouble? It is the very thinking that both you and I know a lot about. It is the thinking that saves us from risks. It is very human. Peter is so dear to so many of us because he often reacts the way you and I would in similar circumstances. Jesus has been telling his disciples that he is going to suffer much in Jerusalem and be put to death and to be raised again on the third day. Peter hears only the suffering and death part. He very humanly says: “Heaven forbid! No, Lord, this shall never happen to you.” Wouldn’t we say the same to anyone we loved? Wouldn’t we want to find a way out of suffering and death? Isn’t there an easier way? One without such risk? And, in Peter, Jesus is again confronted with the same temptation Satan presented to him in the wilderness at the beginning of his ministry! Opportunities for the easy fix, the easy way out! No wonder our very human Jesus looked at Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan.” Been there, done that. Go away.

Because, you see, Jesus has decided to risk everything. His cross is to be a literal one of great suffering and slow death. He tells us to pick up our cross and follow him. This is the sticky part. As humans we are always trying to hold on to life, to wiggle our way through on the safe side of things. Do we literally have to die a bloody death on a wooden cross? Well, many have done so willingly including many saints we remember throughout our church year. On the other hand, we all know pious people who try to live so selflessly that the word “martyr” has taken on an unhealthy meaning. We also know in our hearts that we do not have a God who wants us to be miserable and to die miserable deaths. There is just too much beauty and whimsy and joy in creation. What is ugly in our world is generally human. We also know there is something wrong telling an abused woman that her husband is “her cross to bear” and she just needs to tough it out. The Gospel of Luke is a little more helpful. Chapter 9:23-24 Jesus says, “If anyone wishes to be a follower of mine, he must leave self behind; day after day he must take up his cross, and come with me.” The phrase “day after day” indicates a process as opposed to a singular, crushing event.

On the other hand, I do not want to diminish the strength of Jesus’ command and dispense an idea of cheap grace. In The Cost of Discipleship, Dietrich Bonhoeffer writes: “Cheap grace is the grace we bestow on ourselves…..Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate.” Bonhoeffer goes on: “Costly grace is the gospel which must be sought again and again, the gift which must be asked for, the door at which a man must knock. Such grace is costly because it calls us to follow, and it is grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it costs a man his life, and it is grace because it gives a man the only true life. Costly grace is the incarnation of God.” (The MacMillan Co., New York, 1960, pp 36-7)

It seems we must learn to think how God thinks if any of this is going to make sense. It means we have to get beyond the suffering and death part and hear the resurrection part. I imagine Peter didn’t hear it because he didn’t understand it. Who could know what it was to mean for the Christ to be crucified and buried and to rise again? Who could know how God was going to break through our history 2,000 years ago? Yet, believing in the resurrection, life eternal in Christ, is the rock foundation of our faith today. Do we believe it? Can we risk it? C.S.Lewis, in A Grief Observed, says that we never know how much we really believe something until its truth or falsehood becomes a matter of life or death. It is easy to say you believe a rope is strong as long as you are using it merely to tie a box shut. But if you have to hang over a cliff on the same rope, you are going to find out how much you believe in it? “Only real risk tests the reality of that belief.” (New York: Bantam, 1976, p. 25)

So, how do we really risk? I am not advocating that we go out to play in traffic on Montano at 5:00 pm, or any other hour for that matter. Risk here is the opposite of always playing it completely and totally safe. Actually, quite a few of us are here today because a woman took the deliberate risk of having a child. If women were not afraid to risk, the human race would pretty well be wiped out by now. Risk also means throwing ourselves into paradox. Jesus always makes us look at things upside down, not right side up, the way humans like to think. How do we lose our life in order to gain it? For starters, we have to stop being afraid of suffering and death. Most of us are going to suffer something and all of us are going to die a physical death. Unfortunately, we are raised in our culture to save, to hold on to things, including our lives. We presently live in an atmosphere of fear of impending disaster via a terrorist attack. We must refuse to be manipulated by this fear because it is fear that facilitates evil. It is fear that keeps us in our place. It is fear that keeps us from speaking out. It is fear that keeps us from taking risks. It is fear that keeps us from living life fully and demanding that everyone have the same right.

Regarding this gospel, Barbara Brown Taylor writes of a life taking risks. We will never get to the never ending abundant life if we let suffering and death throw us off track and never take the risks that make life worth living. If we venture “forth only under very heavy guard and ready to retreat at the first sign of trouble” we will not enjoy life very much or accomplish very much. We will not be missed when we are gone. A life that matters — a life for Christ’s sake — and refuses “to put our own comfort and safety ahead of living a life like that, a life that pours itself out for others as a matter of course, a life that spends itself without counting the cost, knowing that there is always more life where our own life comes from, and that even when our own lives run out God will have more life in store for us, because our God is a God who never runs out of life.” (Taylor, The Seeds of Heaven: Sermons on the Gospel of Matthew, Westminster John Knox Press, Louisville, 2004, pp.75-9)

It is a mindset. It is a matter of faith. It is getting beyond suffering and death, bursting through the cross to the resurrection. I am always vaguely troubled by the phrase, “we preach Christ crucified.” I will never deny the crucifixion and the cost. I just want to preach Christ crucified AND Christ risen from the dead. I want to preach the good news of abundant and unending life in Christ.

I spoke of the danger of interpreting the way of the cross, the cost of discipleship, as meaning one must quietly bear the misery in one’s life as one’s cross because one will be rewarded in the sweet by and by. When I was Chaplain at the women’s prison in Grants, I was in charge of volunteers most of whom came in for Christian services and Bible study. Some of them did indeed espouse the belief that an abusive husband, a drug addicted mom, or a life of poverty et cetera ad nauseum were one’s cross to bear. That kind of thinking made me crazy. Did God really think that way? I was hired before the prison opened and one church offered to purchase a baptismal tank complete with heater, a beautiful oak case and so on.. I certainly am not against dunking for baptism, but I had put them off for some time feeling the tank would crowd the already small chapel. Well, they went over my head and got permission from the department of corrections in Santa Fe. Offering an olive branch, the volunteers came to me saying since I was the chaplain, I could choose the carved inscription that would be on the front of the oak cabinet. I looked at the choices and quickly decided on: “Alleluia! He is risen.” But when the monster tank arrived, solemnly carved on the front was: “Repent! And be baptized!” God does have a sense of humor, I like to think, because the tank couldn’t be squeezed through the Chapel doors and took up permanent residence in the gym. We certainly need to repent. Suffering and death are realities in life but we simply cannot get stuck there. We must always hear the promise of Jesus of life beyond the cross, beyond the grave. It is a promise of abundant and never ending life. Paradoxically, it is a promise of life which the more it is poured out, the more it will be filled up. We just have to quit thinking the way we humans want to think and start thinking as God thinks. If you don’t know how to start doing that, try walking out your door some starry night. Two weeks ago, Fr. Brian reminded us of the scene in the movie Contact where the astronaut flies into outer space and sees swirling galaxies of unimaginable color and form, and the only response she can utter is “I had no idea! I had no idea!” Gazing up into the heavens, you might find yourself thinking: “I had no idea!” Amen