Lent 2B, 2012

“Divine Priorities in a Human World”, A Sermon preached by The Rev. Canon Dr. C. Denise Yarbrough on Sunday, March 4, 2012 at Grace Church, Lyons, New York

But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” (Mark 8:33)

This week the scenes of the devastation in Harrisburg, Illinois in the wake of the powerful tornadoes that struck that city, tore at my heart. While I have not ever lost a home to a tornado, I did lose one to a devastating fire three years ago and when I view scenes like those on the news this week, my heart goes out to the people who’s lives have been so radically changed in a matter of moments. Those Harrisburg residents went to bed in their comfortable middle class homes, and awoke in the wee hours of the morning to sirens, high winds and then found themselves clinging for dear life to door frames or anything else they could get their arms around. The stories of folks being sucked right out of their houses and deposited hundreds of yards away were mind boggling. And, sadly, some people didn’t make it through the storm. Those that did have spent this week sifting through the rubble, trying to salvage some fragments of the lives they had before the storm, knowing viscerally that life has changed irrevocably for them.

Life is often like that, as we all know. A biopsy shows cancer, the pink slip shows up in the pay envelope at the factory, a spouse walks out the door, and all the careful planning of our lives suddenly comes to naught. The fragility of human life and of the material things we create to buffer ourselves from that vulnerability drives much of how we manage our lives and of the activities we engage in as we go through our daily routine. At some point, however, we all hit the wall of some crisis that tosses all our plans into the air and leaves us breathless and disoriented. Our priorities are suddenly re-directed and what once seemed important often pales in the light of the trauma. Divine priorities in a human world are a challenge for us, but we are forced to confront them whether we want to or not.

Being a disciple of Jesus is like that. Today’s scene from the gospel of Mark is an example of the challenges and opportunities of discipleship, and of the full bodied commitment that being a disciple of Jesus brings with it. Discipleship is not about comfort and serenity and predictability in life. Quite the contrary. The life of a disciple is as filled with unexpected and disorienting surprises as were the lives of those in the path of the tornado this week. And unlike the tornado victims, who did not choose to put themselves in the path of the cyclone, a disciple of Jesus takes up her cross voluntarily, willingly subjecting herself to the unknown, becoming vulnerable and available to God in ways that might not feel comfortable or even rewarding in the moment.

Our lectionary reading today begins at the point in the exchange between Peter and Jesus that occurs just after Jesus has been quizzing his disciples about what they hear other people saying about him. They tell him that some people think that he is Elijah, others that he is John the Baptist, still others that he is one of the prophets. He asks them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answers, “you are the Messiah” at which point, Mark tells us, Jesus strongly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Having done that Jesus then proceeds to predict his passion and does so quite openly, which unnerves Peter who quickly grasps that Jesus is walking on thin ice with the religious authorities and this kind of talk could get him in big trouble with those authorities and the officials of the Roman Empire for whom they worked. It is in the wake of that understandable warning to him to be careful, that Jesus rebukes Peter and accuses him of setting his mind on human things rather than divine things.

Now one could ask, in Peter’s defense, what on earth is wrong with having one’s mind set on human things? And how is being concerned for Jesus’ safety a human concern and not a divine one? Hasn’t Jesus’ ministry to this point been a study in caring about human things? He has cast out demons, healed sick people, given sight to the blind and fed hungry thousands. Sounds like a lot of ministry focused on this worldly things like food and physical health and housing and mental health. Isn’t it possible that Peter is simply concerned that if Jesus gets on the wrong side of the Roman authorities his ministry will come to a grinding halt and that of his disciples with it? Isn’t Peter just being practical and realistic and savvy to the ways of the world? Is that a bad thing?

Jesus’ response to Peter, directed at the disciples and the crowd around them, is so well known and well worn in our Christian tradition that I suspect it’s lost it punch. The phrases about “take up your cross and follow me” and “those who lose their life for my sake will save it” and the challenge to those who gain the whole world and forfeit their life have been so often repeated and lifted up in our tradition that I fear we simply don’t grasp the spiritual wisdom about ourselves and our God that are embedded in them. What does Jesus invite us to in these stern words directed to the crowd, the disciples and impetuous Peter?

Often I hear folks talk about the crosses they have to bear in terms of having to deal with some kind of affliction or suffering that is completely not of their making, like a serious illness or disability, or the loss of a loved one or a catastrophic loss of home or job or property. But as I reflect on Jesus’ life and ministry, I don’t see his suffering on the cross as something that just happened to him and that he had to simply bear up under. He chose to go to the cross. He chose to engage in ministry to the outcast and marginalized and he chose to speak truth to the powers of the Roman Empire that were oppressing his people, knowing that such actions could and probably would get him into big trouble. He provoked those authorities with statements like the one he makes in today’s reading that gets Peter so unnerved. Maybe he rebukes Peter because he senses that Peter is more concerned with human measures of “success” and “power” as they continue their ministry than he is with divine values of compassion and love and reconciliation.

So taking up one’s cross is not so much about the fact that we suffer, often due to things beyond our control, but about how we react when the events that cause suffering hit us. And how we react will be a product of the extent to which we have trained ourselves in the ways of “divine things” like the love of God, and compassion for ourselves and others whom we encounter in our daily life. The extent to which we can maintain a commitment to divine priorities in a human world will determine how well we weather the suffering that life sends our way. Jesus summed up the Torah as “love God and love your neighbor as yourself.” When that kind of love is the foundation of all we do in our lives, then the material losses that we may endure, and even the emotional pain of grief, illness and broken relationships can be weathered because of the solid foundation we have in our loving relationship with God and neighbor. And if we have a solid relationship with the loving God whom Jesus called “Abba” we are far more likely to be capable of the love of neighbor that Jesus modeled so completely in his life and ministry.

When Jesus calls us to deny ourselves he calls us to a radical process of self-examination and self-awareness. He asks us to take responsibility for ourselves and our desires and to grow into mature adults of God able to put our own needs aside in order to serve others. In our tradition this has often been described as the virtue of humility, which is not self-denigration or self-loathing or low self esteem, but rather a mature and sincere appreciation of our own gifts and those of others and a willingness to share our gifts for the good of others. Our Christian monastic and contemplative tradition has long advocated regular self-examination, prayer and confession for the purpose of growing in our capacity to give ourselves away for the sake of others, out of genuine compassion that grows in the course of an intentional, prayerful life.

Jesus calls us to follow him not to believe in him. This is a call to a life of active contemplation modeled on Jesus’ own life. Jesus is pretty clear in today’s passage that if we make our life all about gaining the whole world in a material sense we will forfeit our life because nothing material endures for eternity. When he rails on about the “adulterous and sinful generation” he places himself in the tradition of the Hebrew prophets, calling God’s people back from their love of material comforts and worldly riches and earthly power to love of God and God’s call to them to be a light to the nations, living righteously by caring for their neighbors. Jesus was not against worldly human comforts, as his willingness to heal and feed and shelter the downtrodden repeatedly shows. But he is quite clear that how we use and how we value the human things matters greatly to God and to the health of our souls.

As I listened to the news reports from Harrisburg, one story caught my attention. The CNN reporter said she had just come from the local McDonald’s, where she had stopped for coffee, and in that McDonald’s there was a prayer meeting going on. She described a circle of men, several of them pastors from local congregations and the rest neighbors, friends and concerned citizens who were on their way to the scene of the devastation to help victims. For twenty minutes they prayed together, as she described it, heads bowed in silent prayer in a circle around the tables at McDonald’s. That, my friends, is what it is to take up one’s cross and follow Jesus and to be about divine things not merely human things. I suspect those men knew that in order to help the neighbors they had come to help and in order to bear what they would see that day and the pain they would have to carry with and for the victims, they needed that time in the presence of their loving God to ground them in the divine things so they could help folks cope with the loss of so many human things. The invitation to discipleship comes in the most unlikely of places at the most unexpected times….even in a McDonald’s in Harrisburg, Illinois on a windy Thursday in March.

Amen.