“Jesus, please answer the question”
Lent 5B
John 12:20-33
25 March 2012
Have you noticed that as the days go on, people have a harder time answering questions that are asked of them?
Of course, in this election year, it’s easy for us to point to the politicians as master of this art. I stopped watching the presidential debates a couple of elections ago for precisely this reason. Please, don’t call them debates … they’re really promotion pieces for the candidates’ respective agendas, or media-provided platforms to “stick the fork into” one’s opponent.
But saying “it’s only the politicians who avoid answering the questions” would be unfair. Everyone’s doing it. Accused criminals and their attorneys. Corporate spokespeople. Religious leaders. Joe and / or Jane Average Citizen.
It doesn’t seem to matter … when the hard questions get asked … they don’t get answered. “What do you have to say about these accusations?” “Why is your company asking for a 300% rate increase to its customers?” “Why were you driving so fast?” “Who broke this vase?”
Do you expect a straight answer?
Well, you’re not going to get one.
What we get, instead, is spin. Excuses. Smoke screens. Deft avoidance. Ignoring or dismissing the question entirely, either in words or silence. And when we do get an answer, many times, it’s to a question we didn’t even ask.
And so, in this world full of unanswered, avoided, blown off questions, we come to Sunday worship, and anticipate, expect, long for, answers to our deep questions, the longings and sighings of our soul.
We are perhaps encouraged by the opening words of our Gospel reading … words which may well reflect our own state this morning, as we’ve come here:
Now among those who went up to worship at the festival were some Greeks. They came to Philip … and said to him, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.” Philip went and told Andrew; then Andrew and Philip went and told Jesus.
Aaaaaaah. Some people … here, outsiders, Jews but not part of Jesus’ usual entourage … in town for the Passover, and likely hearing of Jesus’ miraculous raising of his friend Lazarus from the dead (told in the verses immediately preceding our selection for today) … likely hearing of this miracle, these Greeks have come to see Jesus … to find out who he is, what he’s about, how their lives might interconnect and intertwine from here on out.
Good question, Greeks. And it’s our question, too … our quest … for many of us, we don’t want spin, excuses, smoke screens or avoidance, ignoring or dismissing our question, or getting answers to unasked questions. We, like those Greeks, simply want to see Jesus.
And so Jesus answered them …
Wait for it … wait for it …
Jesus answered them, “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified. Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it … now is the judgment of the world … and I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”
HUH????!!!!!
Hey, those Greeks just wanted to see Jesus. We just want to see Jesus. Those Greeks asked the question, to see him, as we do, too. But they didn’t get an answer to their question. Instead they got words about a glorified Son of Man, dead grain bearing fruit, hating your life, and losing it …
Do we have to get this song-and-dance here, too???
JESUS, PLEASE ANSWER THE QUESTION!
Well, now, wait a minute.
There is a line of thought … actually, a well-worn trail of thought … treatises written, commentaries commenting, sermons expositing, on how the words which Jesus gives to Andrew and Philip are really Jesus’ answer to those Greeks’ question, Sir, we wish to see Jesus.
Meaning that, if these Greeks want to see Jesus, then, they need to hear and obey everything Jesus says here … lose your life … hate your life … serve Jesus … follow Jesus … if, when, they would do these things, they, too, would glorify Jesus, be grain falling to the earth and dying, becoming more fruit, fruit of Jesus, fruit for Jesus, for his sake, for the sake of the Word of God and the sake of the world.
As I said, that’s the well-worn sermonic path for these verses, if you wish to see Jesus, then live like Jesus. Or at least, look for those who live their lives as Jesus says to live, and then you’ll see Jesus through their lives.
I know it’s the well worn path because I’ve preached that kind of a sermon before.
Now, it’s not a terrible way to go with this text.
It certainly points toward the cross, the cross-shaped denying-yourself-and-living-for-others way of life of which Jesus speaks here.
It’s just that … it’s an incomplete way to deal with this text.
For starters, it raises more questions than it answers.
How am I supposed to be like that grain of wheat?
How can I hate my life in this world? What about my friends, my family, the community that surrounds me?
It also ignores those Greeks.
Remember them? They’re still back there, waiting, waiting for Philip to return, and give them an answer. And one is not coming back to them, not in these verses nor in the ones which follow.
No, I think the real message of this text lies off the well-worn path. I’m not sorry that I’ve preached sermons like that before … they probably have their place, somehow, somewhere, perhaps better explored in a teaching context than preaching … I am sorry that I ducked the questions, didn’t give space for the questions, tried to close the questions too soon with another answer … yours, mine, and those Greeks.
Think about it. The context of this Gospel text is that Jesus has just raised Lazarus from the dead. Something no one had ever done before, at least, not since the early days of Israel, when one or two of the prophets did. People were starting to talk, people were telling other stories of other miracles Jesus had done … healings … casting out demons … people like these Greeks, Jews from another part of the world, were in town and they wanted to see the One who – they heard – had done all these things.
Jesus, for his part, was in Jerusalem like all the other good observant Jews, for the Passover festival.
Sir, we wish to see Jesus.
Philip receives the Greeks’ question, and leaves. The Greeks wait. Meanwhile, Jesus gives his answer to Philip and Andrew, words that point toward the Cross, the time, the place, to which he’s inexorably headed … but he’s not there yet.
And that’s precisely the point.
Hearing Jesus’ answer to Philip and Andrew would not have made any sense to those Greeks BEFORE Jesus actually lived these words out.
Grain of wheat falling to earth and dying? Losing your life, hating your life?
It made no sense to those in the time before the disciples, before the world actually saw what these words mean, in the Passion of Jesus. Jesus is going there, the Passion story in John’s Gospel starts in the very next chapter with the Last Supper scene … but he … they … and we… are not there yet.
In other words, what Jesus is doing here, by not answering the Greeks … is allowing them time, to rest for a while in their question.
There will be answers enough, lived out in Jesus’ arrest and trial, his beating, his being nailed to the cross, his dying upon it … Jesus’ three days in the grave, and his rising again. There will be answers enough. Answers enough … as the truth of Jesus’ final statement in this text, does, will come to pass, most certainly, for the immediate history of these words as well as all human history since them:
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
This “drawing” of which Jesus speaks is just as inexorable, just as bound to happen as is his path there … to his Passion, his suffering, his dying. The draw, the pull, of all people to Jesus through the event of the Cross is historic … magnetic … as I’ve heard another preacher put it, like a tractor pulling a trailer, or even, the Starship Enterprise pulling another ship to it with its ‘tractor beam.’
Inexorable because … everyone suffers, everyone has a moment of crisis, everyone dies … and in those moments, because of the Cross, Jesus is there, with and for us.
But in the meantime, don’t forget those Greeks. There they are, back there, sitting and waiting. They’ve asked their question … their question which is also our question …
We wish to see Jesus …
And so the Word for us this morning is … abide in the question. Rest in the question. Sit back, have a cup, light a candle, open your Scriptures, breathe, pray, cry, meditate.
Abide in the gift of time that comes while you’re waiting for the answer.
Now, I know that’s probably not the answer you wanted to hear. We are impatient people … we want things done yesterday and questions answered before they’re even asked. In some respects, that’s good, because much industriousness has come about for us because of our impatience.
But what is lost?
Time for pondering, meditating, in peace, in quiet, in prayer and thoughtful reflection. Time with God and our thoughts and prayers.
And you know we just don’t take it. We fill our empty spaces with noise, visual noise, audio noise, electronic gadgets, texting and tweeting every particularlity about our lives because if we didn’t … well, why, we wouldn’t know what to do with ourselves.
Exactly.
Many, many endeavors and exercises … in completely missing the point.
That’s why we need Lent. Because what “keeping a good Lent” asks of us, is resting, retreating, re-newing in that space between … the space between when the Greeks ask Philip the question … when we ask our question … we wish to see Jesus … and the time when, after Jesus has died and been raised … when they … and we … and the world … we all get the answer to our question.
Loud. Clear. Without spin, excuses, smoke screens, deft avoidance, ignoring or dismissing the question entirely, either in words or silence; or, as an answer to a question we didn’t even ask.
In our suffering, in our pain, in “losing our lives,” yes, even in our dying, Jesus was, is, and will be there with us and for us.
And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.
He will. He does.
Which gives us the time, the space, the freedom … to wait … with those Greeks … and wonder … and ponder … to cry … to cry out … to ask … to simply, be …
… to be with Jesus.
To be with Jesus in our questions.
Even as he is with us, in them.
With us … in Lent, in Easter, in death, in life, in all the questions and the spaces and the places between …
Amen.
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Sunday, March 11, 2012
11 March 2012
“Calling all fools”
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
3 Lent B
11 March 2012
Once again, ‘real life’ and our Scripture readings for today … in particular, those words from Paul in First Corinthians … merge and mesh this week.
Wednesday was National “Spread the Word to End the Word” day … sponsored by the Special Olympics, this is a national effort to end the use of the word “retarded” in referring to people with who have mental or physical handicaps that prevent them from full life-functioning.
The thinking behind this switch-of-language is that that word has so much negative baggage attached to it … sometimes, as an insult … that some new word or term needs to be used to describe these “differently abled” brothers and sisters.
Of course, some of us can remember when “the R-word” was the least offensive label used for mentally disabled people. Forty, fifty years ago, the legal terms were far, far worse … “idiot,” “imbecile,” “moron” and “fool,” used by physicians and the government to describe someone with a mental handicap or deficiency. Literary characters such as William Faulkner’s Benjy in “The Sound and the Fury” lived into the stereotype well … big adult-children who might hurt someone so they should be protected, fenced off, kept away from the rest of society because they could be dangerous, to themselves or others.
Those who wish us to stop using the “R” word say that it’s all about power … calling someone “retarded” takes power away from them, it implies that they must be dependent on another … and in many ways, words can create reality, a reality which, these linguistic revisers rightly point out, doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.
Words shape opinions and attitudes and beliefs and behaviors.
Which brings us to our Scripture reading from First Corinthians for today.
This is one of the more well-known readings from Paul’s letters … if you’ve been part of a worshipping community for any length of time, you’ve most likely heard it, in worship, as the subject of a sermon.
It’s Paul’s clearest word on what Martin Luther and his followers call “The theology of the Cross,” a Word, a way of living that seeks, sees, and finds God in many of the places we would guess would be the most opposite from God … weakness, humiliation, suffering, and death.
But what does this brief passage of Scripture have in common with the “word to end the word” … with which we began this Word this morning?
Like that debate, it’s all about power.
And we know this because of the word Paul uses for “foolishness.” It’s moria … yes, the same word which we say today as “moron.”
For the message about the Cross of Jesus Christ is moronic …
… moronic to those who are perishing …
The perishing … those who are living (and dying) outside the Word of Jesus Christ …
These … they see anyone speaking, worshipping, living in the Word of Jesus Christ, his suffering and death on the Cross … these see the followers of Jesus as morons … people who should be disempowered in the world … people who should have a legal custodian placed in charge of them … because they worship a dead peasant from Nazareth who was put to death for sedition … crimes against the state.
Talk of peasants dying was, at that time, no talk for people who wanted to “get ahead” in this life. Talk of the methods the state used to put seditious, treasonous peasants to death … torture and death on a cross … that was awful, a scandal. Obviously … so went the conventional thinking of the day … anyone who held to these ridiculous views, who spoke of them publicly … they had some kind of a mental defect, one which should keep them powerless and “in their place.”
And that was the way that the surrounding Greek/Roman culture thought of, and treated, Christians in that place and time in which, to which Paul was writing them.
Though it would get worse, far worse, for Christians in the Roman Empire later. Paul was most likely writing this letter to the Corinthian church sometime in the early 50s of this era; about ten years before the first Christian persecutions, economic boycotts and imprisonments began in earnest, during the reign of Emperor Nero in the mid 60s. But in the time of the original Corinthian readers of this letter … being labeled a “moron for Jesus” … this was certainly bad enough.
Bad enough … that at least some of them started to take on or return to the ways of the surrounding culture.
Thus the occasion of Paul’s letter to these Corinthians, to encourage them to stay in the Way of the Cross.
For the message about the cross is foolishness … moronic … disempowering … to those who are perishing … but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
And here Paul starts this wonderfully crafted text of reversal, topsy-turvy, things are the opposite of what they seem-ness.
Hey Jesus-followers! … says Paul … although “they” may call you morons, foolish, not worthy of having any power, authority or influence in the world … you, the ones who are being saved, you are the ones who truly have the power of God on your side.
Words shape opinions and attitudes and beliefs and behaviors.
From here Paul goes on to do some more word-play, but now instead of focusing on power language, he chooses to look at wisdom.
That word wisdom … this would also ring some bells for those Corinthians. Wisdom in the later books of the Hebrew Scriptures … some of these books, not even written in Hebrew, but in the Greek language of the “rest of the world” at that time … wisdom took on an almost personal characteristic for the Jews, nearly god-like, almost divine in its nature.
They got some of this attitude from the Greeks themselves, who elevated wisdom … the knowledge, the intelligence, the “head religion” to “know” God, God’s mind, God’s works and ways … the Greeks made wisdom fine art. When in the book of Acts Paul enters Athens, he soon finds that the people there loved nothing better than arguing over some new point of wisdom … thus there was a city full of temples and altars of all kinds, to every god and divine being one could imagine.
But here in these later verses of our reading, like in the first couple sentences, Paul is about God’s great reversal of things.
Has not God made foolish … moronic … the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.
People have tried, Paul says, people have tried to find God through the ages through “head religion,” logic, formulae … human wisdom. But God wouldn’t be found in this way, because the way people think leads to God … more and better, ever improving … is really the way to the opposite of God … emptiness, and nothingness.
Andrew Root is a professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul who thinks and writes about the theology of the Cross, with a uniquely North American perspective. Here’s his take on where “the wisdom of the world” leads us:
[In the post-modern world] authority has died. The practice of looking back to tradition has been overcome by modernity’s future orientation. Like an ambitious prince modernity has killed the king of authority [tradition] with the weapon of doubt, only to realize in shock that its own weapon has been turned against itself, destroying the new authority it has constructed.
Now as I walk the dangerous terrain of the future without any authority, the more knowledge, information, and examples I have the better off I am. That is why the Internet is the greatest tool for those living with the death of authority. Those who can acquire the most information [notes, rules, data, survey results, polls, etc.] will be the most successful.
[Yet in the overwhelming flood of information we find ourselves incapable of clinging even to it … thus the rise of addictions, fundamentalism (liberal or conservative), minimization of risk, lack of trust, shift of faith from communities to institutions, focus on our bodies, and creating our identities from consumption and intimacy … all of these, temporal, temporary … all of these, leading to, ending in, the death they all try so hard to avoid.]
“The wisdom of the world” is yet another permutation of “straight line” or “linear time” … time with a beginning, a middle, and an end … and that end is always, always, death of some kind … whether it’s the end of a smartphone or a job, a lifestyle or an economy, the wearing out of our bodies or the end of a relationship built solely on intimacy … all ends, all deaths, in their own way … pointing the way to The End to which each of us are headed.
And yet … and yet … “the wisdom of the world” continues to hang on and harangue on, sucking us in to its death-long slide. So how shall God’s wisdom … circular time … “Jesus time” … break in?
Through the foolishness of our proclamation.
Words shape opinions and attitudes and beliefs and behaviors.
God decided, through the foolishness of Paul’s proclamation, to break in and move into the death-bound slide of the Corinthians, “to save those who believe” through their hearing of the Word … God’s Word, what the world called foolish and powerless was really the all-powerful wisdom of God, the life-changing Spirit of God, coming to them through Paul’s proclamation of Christ crucified … God present to and for the world in precisely the last places “the wisdom of the world” would go looking for him … God present in weakness, humiliation, suffering, and death.
The Gentiles – Greeks, mostly – heard this proclamation as powerless moronic gibberish … while the Jews heard it as scandal (for why would the all-powerful God choose to become the emptiest of human beings, a dead peasant on a cross?)
And yet … and yet … he did … he was, re-presented into the hearts of those who believed when the Spirit of God moved upon them through Paul’s proclamation.
And God still decides, through the foolishness of Spirit-empowered proclamation, to break through the “wisdom of the world” and into the hearts of those who hear that word and believe.
The proclamation we have heard … which has brought us to this place.
And the proclamation we utter as we … God’s fools, speak God’s foolishness of a crucified God … a God who takes weakness, suffering, humiliation and death into his very heart, and becomes them, for our sake.
Now, those who are weak for God’s sake, are weak WITH God, in Jesus.
Those who are humiliated for God’s sake, are humiliated WITH God, in Jesus.
Those who suffer, suffer WITH God, in Jesus.
Those who die, die WITH God, in Jesus.
This is God’s foolishness, which is the only truth which brings real comfort, hope, peace … and from death itself, life.
And so this passage from First Corinthians, these “foolish” words of Paul … they are really about the repulsing of human arrogance … human arrogance, claiming … time is ours, earth is ours, life itself is ours … human arrogance which is really foolish … human arrogance which is really weak … human arrogance which is not a word about life, but a word about death.
Paul wrote these words to his friends, the church of Corinth, because he fretted that the Corinthians were buying into the “wisdom of the world” … the culture around them, which said that only by head-religion (self help, avoidance of suffering, and so on) could one “get to God.” In writing these words, Paul was issuing a call … “calling all fools” … fools by worldly standards, but who by God were truly wise … calling them to persevere in their proclamation of the Christ of the Cross.
And so for us too … as we also live in a world full of “wisdom” … “worldly wisdom” which tells us that “only the strong survive” … “suffering is God-forsaken” … “those who have the money and the power are obviously the ones who are closest to God” … in a world full of that sham wisdom, Paul’s word, God’s word of proclamation through Paul, continues to come to us, to remind us that the church can, should, will be a place where suffering and pain, weakness and humiliation and death are discussed, openly, without fear or embarrassment, because in that Word, God is truly present, for us.
As Andrew Root … he who I quoted earlier … writes …
The church should be a weird community in a world that hides from death. The church should be a community of people that talk about despair, that confront it, knowing that when they do God is present, working life out of experiences of death.
Calling all fools!
ATTENTION! Here, we proclaim Christ crucified … we do not shun the despairing, reject the hopeless, scorn the sad, mock the mourning, denigrate the dying. No, we welcome you … and your word of real Truth about life. For where you are, where we are with you, that time, that place, this is Holy Ground … for where you are, where we are, in the midst of suffering, pain, and loss … THERE is Christ … God For Us.
And where we are together … there we are together, with Christ … and through the power of his proclamation, even as it comes through us … there is nothing Christ cannot do.
NOTHING HE CANNOT DO.
Even rising from the dead.
Amen.
1 Corinthians 1:18-25
3 Lent B
11 March 2012
Once again, ‘real life’ and our Scripture readings for today … in particular, those words from Paul in First Corinthians … merge and mesh this week.
Wednesday was National “Spread the Word to End the Word” day … sponsored by the Special Olympics, this is a national effort to end the use of the word “retarded” in referring to people with who have mental or physical handicaps that prevent them from full life-functioning.
The thinking behind this switch-of-language is that that word has so much negative baggage attached to it … sometimes, as an insult … that some new word or term needs to be used to describe these “differently abled” brothers and sisters.
Of course, some of us can remember when “the R-word” was the least offensive label used for mentally disabled people. Forty, fifty years ago, the legal terms were far, far worse … “idiot,” “imbecile,” “moron” and “fool,” used by physicians and the government to describe someone with a mental handicap or deficiency. Literary characters such as William Faulkner’s Benjy in “The Sound and the Fury” lived into the stereotype well … big adult-children who might hurt someone so they should be protected, fenced off, kept away from the rest of society because they could be dangerous, to themselves or others.
Those who wish us to stop using the “R” word say that it’s all about power … calling someone “retarded” takes power away from them, it implies that they must be dependent on another … and in many ways, words can create reality, a reality which, these linguistic revisers rightly point out, doesn’t necessarily have to be that way.
Words shape opinions and attitudes and beliefs and behaviors.
Which brings us to our Scripture reading from First Corinthians for today.
This is one of the more well-known readings from Paul’s letters … if you’ve been part of a worshipping community for any length of time, you’ve most likely heard it, in worship, as the subject of a sermon.
It’s Paul’s clearest word on what Martin Luther and his followers call “The theology of the Cross,” a Word, a way of living that seeks, sees, and finds God in many of the places we would guess would be the most opposite from God … weakness, humiliation, suffering, and death.
But what does this brief passage of Scripture have in common with the “word to end the word” … with which we began this Word this morning?
Like that debate, it’s all about power.
And we know this because of the word Paul uses for “foolishness.” It’s moria … yes, the same word which we say today as “moron.”
For the message about the Cross of Jesus Christ is moronic …
… moronic to those who are perishing …
The perishing … those who are living (and dying) outside the Word of Jesus Christ …
These … they see anyone speaking, worshipping, living in the Word of Jesus Christ, his suffering and death on the Cross … these see the followers of Jesus as morons … people who should be disempowered in the world … people who should have a legal custodian placed in charge of them … because they worship a dead peasant from Nazareth who was put to death for sedition … crimes against the state.
Talk of peasants dying was, at that time, no talk for people who wanted to “get ahead” in this life. Talk of the methods the state used to put seditious, treasonous peasants to death … torture and death on a cross … that was awful, a scandal. Obviously … so went the conventional thinking of the day … anyone who held to these ridiculous views, who spoke of them publicly … they had some kind of a mental defect, one which should keep them powerless and “in their place.”
And that was the way that the surrounding Greek/Roman culture thought of, and treated, Christians in that place and time in which, to which Paul was writing them.
Though it would get worse, far worse, for Christians in the Roman Empire later. Paul was most likely writing this letter to the Corinthian church sometime in the early 50s of this era; about ten years before the first Christian persecutions, economic boycotts and imprisonments began in earnest, during the reign of Emperor Nero in the mid 60s. But in the time of the original Corinthian readers of this letter … being labeled a “moron for Jesus” … this was certainly bad enough.
Bad enough … that at least some of them started to take on or return to the ways of the surrounding culture.
Thus the occasion of Paul’s letter to these Corinthians, to encourage them to stay in the Way of the Cross.
For the message about the cross is foolishness … moronic … disempowering … to those who are perishing … but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
And here Paul starts this wonderfully crafted text of reversal, topsy-turvy, things are the opposite of what they seem-ness.
Hey Jesus-followers! … says Paul … although “they” may call you morons, foolish, not worthy of having any power, authority or influence in the world … you, the ones who are being saved, you are the ones who truly have the power of God on your side.
Words shape opinions and attitudes and beliefs and behaviors.
From here Paul goes on to do some more word-play, but now instead of focusing on power language, he chooses to look at wisdom.
That word wisdom … this would also ring some bells for those Corinthians. Wisdom in the later books of the Hebrew Scriptures … some of these books, not even written in Hebrew, but in the Greek language of the “rest of the world” at that time … wisdom took on an almost personal characteristic for the Jews, nearly god-like, almost divine in its nature.
They got some of this attitude from the Greeks themselves, who elevated wisdom … the knowledge, the intelligence, the “head religion” to “know” God, God’s mind, God’s works and ways … the Greeks made wisdom fine art. When in the book of Acts Paul enters Athens, he soon finds that the people there loved nothing better than arguing over some new point of wisdom … thus there was a city full of temples and altars of all kinds, to every god and divine being one could imagine.
But here in these later verses of our reading, like in the first couple sentences, Paul is about God’s great reversal of things.
Has not God made foolish … moronic … the wisdom of the world? For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of our proclamation, to save those who believe.
People have tried, Paul says, people have tried to find God through the ages through “head religion,” logic, formulae … human wisdom. But God wouldn’t be found in this way, because the way people think leads to God … more and better, ever improving … is really the way to the opposite of God … emptiness, and nothingness.
Andrew Root is a professor at Luther Seminary in St. Paul who thinks and writes about the theology of the Cross, with a uniquely North American perspective. Here’s his take on where “the wisdom of the world” leads us:
[In the post-modern world] authority has died. The practice of looking back to tradition has been overcome by modernity’s future orientation. Like an ambitious prince modernity has killed the king of authority [tradition] with the weapon of doubt, only to realize in shock that its own weapon has been turned against itself, destroying the new authority it has constructed.
Now as I walk the dangerous terrain of the future without any authority, the more knowledge, information, and examples I have the better off I am. That is why the Internet is the greatest tool for those living with the death of authority. Those who can acquire the most information [notes, rules, data, survey results, polls, etc.] will be the most successful.
[Yet in the overwhelming flood of information we find ourselves incapable of clinging even to it … thus the rise of addictions, fundamentalism (liberal or conservative), minimization of risk, lack of trust, shift of faith from communities to institutions, focus on our bodies, and creating our identities from consumption and intimacy … all of these, temporal, temporary … all of these, leading to, ending in, the death they all try so hard to avoid.]
“The wisdom of the world” is yet another permutation of “straight line” or “linear time” … time with a beginning, a middle, and an end … and that end is always, always, death of some kind … whether it’s the end of a smartphone or a job, a lifestyle or an economy, the wearing out of our bodies or the end of a relationship built solely on intimacy … all ends, all deaths, in their own way … pointing the way to The End to which each of us are headed.
And yet … and yet … “the wisdom of the world” continues to hang on and harangue on, sucking us in to its death-long slide. So how shall God’s wisdom … circular time … “Jesus time” … break in?
Through the foolishness of our proclamation.
Words shape opinions and attitudes and beliefs and behaviors.
God decided, through the foolishness of Paul’s proclamation, to break in and move into the death-bound slide of the Corinthians, “to save those who believe” through their hearing of the Word … God’s Word, what the world called foolish and powerless was really the all-powerful wisdom of God, the life-changing Spirit of God, coming to them through Paul’s proclamation of Christ crucified … God present to and for the world in precisely the last places “the wisdom of the world” would go looking for him … God present in weakness, humiliation, suffering, and death.
The Gentiles – Greeks, mostly – heard this proclamation as powerless moronic gibberish … while the Jews heard it as scandal (for why would the all-powerful God choose to become the emptiest of human beings, a dead peasant on a cross?)
And yet … and yet … he did … he was, re-presented into the hearts of those who believed when the Spirit of God moved upon them through Paul’s proclamation.
And God still decides, through the foolishness of Spirit-empowered proclamation, to break through the “wisdom of the world” and into the hearts of those who hear that word and believe.
The proclamation we have heard … which has brought us to this place.
And the proclamation we utter as we … God’s fools, speak God’s foolishness of a crucified God … a God who takes weakness, suffering, humiliation and death into his very heart, and becomes them, for our sake.
Now, those who are weak for God’s sake, are weak WITH God, in Jesus.
Those who are humiliated for God’s sake, are humiliated WITH God, in Jesus.
Those who suffer, suffer WITH God, in Jesus.
Those who die, die WITH God, in Jesus.
This is God’s foolishness, which is the only truth which brings real comfort, hope, peace … and from death itself, life.
And so this passage from First Corinthians, these “foolish” words of Paul … they are really about the repulsing of human arrogance … human arrogance, claiming … time is ours, earth is ours, life itself is ours … human arrogance which is really foolish … human arrogance which is really weak … human arrogance which is not a word about life, but a word about death.
Paul wrote these words to his friends, the church of Corinth, because he fretted that the Corinthians were buying into the “wisdom of the world” … the culture around them, which said that only by head-religion (self help, avoidance of suffering, and so on) could one “get to God.” In writing these words, Paul was issuing a call … “calling all fools” … fools by worldly standards, but who by God were truly wise … calling them to persevere in their proclamation of the Christ of the Cross.
And so for us too … as we also live in a world full of “wisdom” … “worldly wisdom” which tells us that “only the strong survive” … “suffering is God-forsaken” … “those who have the money and the power are obviously the ones who are closest to God” … in a world full of that sham wisdom, Paul’s word, God’s word of proclamation through Paul, continues to come to us, to remind us that the church can, should, will be a place where suffering and pain, weakness and humiliation and death are discussed, openly, without fear or embarrassment, because in that Word, God is truly present, for us.
As Andrew Root … he who I quoted earlier … writes …
The church should be a weird community in a world that hides from death. The church should be a community of people that talk about despair, that confront it, knowing that when they do God is present, working life out of experiences of death.
Calling all fools!
ATTENTION! Here, we proclaim Christ crucified … we do not shun the despairing, reject the hopeless, scorn the sad, mock the mourning, denigrate the dying. No, we welcome you … and your word of real Truth about life. For where you are, where we are with you, that time, that place, this is Holy Ground … for where you are, where we are, in the midst of suffering, pain, and loss … THERE is Christ … God For Us.
And where we are together … there we are together, with Christ … and through the power of his proclamation, even as it comes through us … there is nothing Christ cannot do.
NOTHING HE CANNOT DO.
Even rising from the dead.
Amen.
Sunday, March 04, 2012
4 March 12011
“How to rebuke Jesus”
Mark 8:31-38
2nd Sunday in Lent series B
4 March 2012
Often, when we’re presented with a character or characters in a Scripture reading, the message … following those readings, intending to draw us in and draw out our connection, response, action … the message will take one of two approaches:
• Either, holding up a character’s actions as “this is a good example in following Jesus,” or
• Or, holding up a character’s actions and say, “behave in exactly the opposite of how this character is acting, if you want to be faithful in following Jesus.”
Today, however, let’s shake things up a little, shall we? Based on Peter’s behavior in this episode in Mark’s Gospel … let’s explore “How to rebuke Jesus.”
First, probably, we need a definition, because “rebuke” isn’t a word that is a regular part of our daily vocabulary.
The word that our Scripture translates here as “rebuke” is most often used of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel … when Jesus commands forces that challenge him … evil spirits, and the wind (while they’re in a boat on the stormy water) … those are two examples.
There’s a sense of “rebuking” which is, “exerting some power over.” Meaning that, the one doing the rebuking – by the very act of rebuking, is putting themselves in a position of power over the one receiving the rebuking.
So what other words might we use here for “rebuke,” to make this more, ah, user-friendly for us?
Here are a few:
“Tell off.” “Diss” – like dismiss, but more hip and trendy. “Scold.” “Give a good talking to.”
Get the picture?
Good.
Now, second, we need to discuss … what might inspire us to this line of thought, “How to rebuke Jesus.”
We don’t have to go very far.
[Jesus] began to teach [his disciples] 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. He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
Although we don’t have his exact words here, we can guess what Peter said to Jesus. It probably involved phrases like “What are you talking about?” and “There’s no way I’m going to let that happen,” most likely, liberally sprinkled with the salty language of his day … remember who Peter was, and what he did for a living – a fisherman, with other fishermen … have you ever watched “The Deadliest Catch?” Heard how those guys on that show talk with each other? So you get the idea. Peter, a salt of the earth, straightforward man most likely used salty, straightforward words.
But what about us?
I mean, we’re likely far more polite than Peter. We ARE Lutheran and we ARE from Seattle, after all. How might we rebuke Jesus, without using such un-polite, Seattle Lutheran language?
First, make sure that you pay no attention whatsoever to how Jesus has been or is moving in your life or in the lives of others. Ignore what he’s said and done already, to and for you, where he’s met you in your life or through the lives of others.
This point recalls last week’s message, about straight line time and round time. We heard – last week – about how, when Jesus says “the time is fulfilled” he’s talking ROUND TIME.
Round time is time which doesn’t move in a linear fashion, like “one and done,” calendar time. Calendar time is straight-line time, time which we believe we can control … while with straight line time, we note and annotate it, mark and record it, shelve it away in notebooks and check stubs and income tax returns and statistical reports … while straight line time has a beginning, a middle and an end … Jesus’ time comes and comes and comes again. Continually. Always. And always, for you.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the Good News … that time keeps coming around, again and again, FOR YOU. Always time. Time for repentance. “Time for amendment of life.” Time to live and learn and grow in faith, in discipleship, in service. Time, and time, and time again.
But we’re talking rebuking Jesus here, today.
So to rebuke Jesus, we just have to stay in straight line time. Always. In All Ways. It’s All And Always About Us, Our Time is The Time, we live in it and by it and for it … so we have to control it, record it, abide by it … keep trying to “improve” in it, “more” and “better.”
Suffering … being rejected … being killed … everything Jesus describes to Peter … none of that stuff fits in straight line time, at least in the improving, increasing, more and better way straight line time requires of us. All that stuff Jesus speaks of here in TODAY’s Gospel reading, why, that equals failure, loss, emptiness … so Peter rejects it. And rebukes Jesus.
And so must you, too, if you want to rebuke Jesus.
Of course, eventually you’ll find out that straight line time really has the last laugh on you. You’ll still die from it. All your works and all your ways will be forgotten … remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Straight line time always has a beginning, middle, and … an end.
Nothing lasts forever in straight line time.
But maybe you’re feeling tired of hearing all this, two weeks in a row of the straight line / round time, chronological / kairos (Jesus’ time) dichotomy. Ah, but that’s out in the future. For now, I’ll do it my way. Forget this suffering stuff, Jesus. Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today …
No fear. I have two other ways to rebuke Jesus.
They are actually closely related; two sides of the same coin.
Believe / think / act like you’re not good enough to receive anything from Jesus.
And its flip side:
Believe / think / act like you’re too good to receive anything from Jesus.
They are two sides of the same coin, two roads reaching the same destination, because, in the end, they both lead us to turn our backs on Jesus.
“I’m not good enough to receive anything from Jesus” takes the uber-humility approach. Like our friend in Minnesota, the Lutheran pastor who we always joke that she introduces herself as “Hi, I’m Pastor X, and I’m sorry.” Yet this is also the attitude of obligatory, unimaginative religion … we might go to church every Sunday, we may have been Lutheran Christians all our lives … but we won’t tell anyone else about this; we won’t share our faith, tell others about this most important part of our lives …
… so are we ashamed of our faith? Asked, we’d say no … even though our behavior says different. What we tell ourselves is that we wouldn’t want to give anyone the impression that we think too highly of ourselves, or think ourselves better than them (although of course, we are, because we go to church and they don’t … but remember, this is the humble approach.)
And obligatory, unimaginative religion leads to “looks about right” faith. There’s a church not far from where we lived in South Dakota that Kathleen and I used to call “Looks About Right Lutheran.” Because the attitude you got from that church and it’s people was that “looks about right” was good enough.
The building was in disrepair. The cross on top of the roof had some old riveted sheet metal covering up the rotting wood. Inside, the pulpit was someone’s old empty Philco TV cabinet that had been re-used for another purpose. The pastor’s office was also the storage room, and the parking lot was full of muddy ruts so in the spring thaw you had to get pushed or pulled out of the mud.
They could have afforded better, easily. This was a congregation full of farmers and ranchers, most of them owning hundreds of thousands of dollars of farm machinery, most of them, living in very nice houses which looked much nicer than the church.
They just didn’t want anyone to think that they were thinking too highly of themselves, their church, their ministry. To them, it was better to be “the poor little church on the corner,” of which no one expected much at all, and reality fulfilled expectation.
Jesus can’t do anything for us. We can’t change. We can’t do it, we don’t have it in us, we’re not big enough or fancy enough or new enough or young enough or energetic enough or …
Well, you get the idea.
But what about the other approach? The “I’m too good to receive anything from Jesus” attitude?
This is consumer faith … ‘church shopping’ … I receive, and receive, and receive … and when I stop receiving, when my ‘felt needs’ aren’t being met anymore, then I’ll pack my bags and go somewhere else.
It’s also the “I’ll get around to having a faith life, deepen my spiritual walk with Jesus, once I get everything else accomplished … shopping, laundry, house cleaning, favorite tv show, hanging out with friends” attitude.
And it’s the place where inauthentic faith lives … you know, church congregations, faith communities, which, who say that “all are welcome” and “we encourage everyone to share their gifts” … until someone different actually shows up, or shares their gifts which are different from everyone else’s … and soon enough they find out that “welcome” is simply a word they walked across on the way in … rather than an authentic attitude shared by all.
If “looks about right” religion is the ditch of the “faithful,” then this approach, this attitude is the ditch of, if not the “faithless,” then, at least, the “faith half empty.”
Here is where the current conversation about Faith in America resides, full force.
A couple of studies, one funded by of all groups the Southern Baptists, bears this out.
The fastest growing group in this country, when it comes to matters of faith, turns out to be … the “so whats” … people like my friend. He has no interest in anything spiritual, no desire to explore this side of his life whatsoever. It’s just not part of who he is.
Almost half of those responding to these surveys spend no time seeking eternal wisdom … a fifth say “it’s useless to search for meaning” ... nearly a third have no desire for spiritual searching, deepening whatsoever.
These are not “agnostics” or “atheists,” these are “apatheists.” People who are just fine admitting that they have no spiritual curiosity whatsoever … when it comes to faith and religion, they just don’t really care.
Now, I’m not going to criticize people like this … people like my friend. I might feel bad for him, feel like he’s missing something in his life … but I congratulate him for being so authentic.
Because that’s better than a lot of “people of faith” are about their faith.
We might say “it’s all about Jesus,” but our actions belie that. Consumer attitudes toward faith, if I’m not getting filled here, getting my needs met, I’ll go elsewhere … inauthentic faith, people and communities which say one thing but live another … that simply says Jesus isn’t the most important thing. I am.
And so what happens when Jesus comes to break into our lives, to break through those walls we put up to separate, to protect ourselves from him? Because, Jesus time, round time, The Time is Fulfilled time means he will keep trying to break in, break through, get through to us? And yet … and yet … I’m not good enough for him. I’m too good for him.
[Jesus] began to teach [his disciples] 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. He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
Northern Irish philosopher / theologian Peter Rollins is one of the “new” brand of God-thinkers and God-talkers out there, holding the mirror up to people of faith and the so whats alike … an evangelical, rediscovering the ‘theology of the Cross’ of Martin Luther … as well as the path of the German 20th century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, exploring what following Jesus in a society, in a world which in so many ways is “post-religion,” religion-less … he’s trying to flesh out that enigmatic phrase which Bonhoeffer left the world in a letter from the Nazi Tegel prison where he was being held, “religionless Christianity” … how can one be a follower of Jesus in a time, in a world, where “religion” has failed to make the world better?
Rollins writes a regular blog on the Internet. This week’s posting was related to our Gospel text for today … and was affronting enough … perhaps, it will be as affronting to you as Jesus’ words about the reality of his coming suffering and death were to Peter.
And that’s precisely the point. So I’d like to share some of it with you now.
It’s no secret that life is difficult. Yet most of us expend a great deal of time and energy attempting to avoid a direct confrontation with this reality. The problem however is that our attempt to avoid the inherent difficulties of life does not mean that we are free from suffering but rather that we are most oppressed by it.
The truth that we suffer is one that we can avoid most of the time. While it always seeps out in other ways (through frenetic activity, health problems, self-hatred, hatred of others, etc.) we can generally maintain our inner facebook profile (the idealised image we have of ourselves).
However there are times when this is difficult and we must work hard to keep the image intact, times when we go through a particularly traumatic event.
My concern is that most of the actually existing church … does not help us face up to, speak out, and work through our pain. [What much of the church provides us instead are] songs, sermons and prayers that help us avoid our suffering. These … are very appealing because of the quick fix … they offer, hence the success of such communities. However they do not help us face up to, speak out and work through our pain.
In contrast … what if the church could be a place where we found a liturgical structure that would not treat God as a product that would make us whole but as the mystery that enables us to live abundantly in the midst of life’s difficulties. A place where we are invited to confront the reality of our humanity, not so that we will despair, but so that we will be free of the despair that already lurks within us, the despair that enslaves us, the despair that we refuse to acknowledge.
Another author / theologian, the more mainstream Douglas John Hall, puts it this way:
Christ forever returns to his cross, to his grave, to hell, in order to be “with us.” He can be for us only insofar as he is with us. God is found in the despair of the cross. God is found in our many deaths, bringing possibility out of nothingness.
In the desert of life … Jesus comes … offering you the water … the bread and wine … the Word … of life.
What will be your response?
Avoidance? Rebuke?
Or reception … embracing reality … repentance … and rebirth?
[Jesus] began to teach [you] 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. He says all this quite openly.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the Good News.
The time … is fulfilled …
Mark 8:31-38
2nd Sunday in Lent series B
4 March 2012
Often, when we’re presented with a character or characters in a Scripture reading, the message … following those readings, intending to draw us in and draw out our connection, response, action … the message will take one of two approaches:
• Either, holding up a character’s actions as “this is a good example in following Jesus,” or
• Or, holding up a character’s actions and say, “behave in exactly the opposite of how this character is acting, if you want to be faithful in following Jesus.”
Today, however, let’s shake things up a little, shall we? Based on Peter’s behavior in this episode in Mark’s Gospel … let’s explore “How to rebuke Jesus.”
First, probably, we need a definition, because “rebuke” isn’t a word that is a regular part of our daily vocabulary.
The word that our Scripture translates here as “rebuke” is most often used of Jesus in Mark’s Gospel … when Jesus commands forces that challenge him … evil spirits, and the wind (while they’re in a boat on the stormy water) … those are two examples.
There’s a sense of “rebuking” which is, “exerting some power over.” Meaning that, the one doing the rebuking – by the very act of rebuking, is putting themselves in a position of power over the one receiving the rebuking.
So what other words might we use here for “rebuke,” to make this more, ah, user-friendly for us?
Here are a few:
“Tell off.” “Diss” – like dismiss, but more hip and trendy. “Scold.” “Give a good talking to.”
Get the picture?
Good.
Now, second, we need to discuss … what might inspire us to this line of thought, “How to rebuke Jesus.”
We don’t have to go very far.
[Jesus] began to teach [his disciples] 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. He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
Although we don’t have his exact words here, we can guess what Peter said to Jesus. It probably involved phrases like “What are you talking about?” and “There’s no way I’m going to let that happen,” most likely, liberally sprinkled with the salty language of his day … remember who Peter was, and what he did for a living – a fisherman, with other fishermen … have you ever watched “The Deadliest Catch?” Heard how those guys on that show talk with each other? So you get the idea. Peter, a salt of the earth, straightforward man most likely used salty, straightforward words.
But what about us?
I mean, we’re likely far more polite than Peter. We ARE Lutheran and we ARE from Seattle, after all. How might we rebuke Jesus, without using such un-polite, Seattle Lutheran language?
First, make sure that you pay no attention whatsoever to how Jesus has been or is moving in your life or in the lives of others. Ignore what he’s said and done already, to and for you, where he’s met you in your life or through the lives of others.
This point recalls last week’s message, about straight line time and round time. We heard – last week – about how, when Jesus says “the time is fulfilled” he’s talking ROUND TIME.
Round time is time which doesn’t move in a linear fashion, like “one and done,” calendar time. Calendar time is straight-line time, time which we believe we can control … while with straight line time, we note and annotate it, mark and record it, shelve it away in notebooks and check stubs and income tax returns and statistical reports … while straight line time has a beginning, a middle and an end … Jesus’ time comes and comes and comes again. Continually. Always. And always, for you.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the Good News … that time keeps coming around, again and again, FOR YOU. Always time. Time for repentance. “Time for amendment of life.” Time to live and learn and grow in faith, in discipleship, in service. Time, and time, and time again.
But we’re talking rebuking Jesus here, today.
So to rebuke Jesus, we just have to stay in straight line time. Always. In All Ways. It’s All And Always About Us, Our Time is The Time, we live in it and by it and for it … so we have to control it, record it, abide by it … keep trying to “improve” in it, “more” and “better.”
Suffering … being rejected … being killed … everything Jesus describes to Peter … none of that stuff fits in straight line time, at least in the improving, increasing, more and better way straight line time requires of us. All that stuff Jesus speaks of here in TODAY’s Gospel reading, why, that equals failure, loss, emptiness … so Peter rejects it. And rebukes Jesus.
And so must you, too, if you want to rebuke Jesus.
Of course, eventually you’ll find out that straight line time really has the last laugh on you. You’ll still die from it. All your works and all your ways will be forgotten … remember you are dust, and to dust you shall return. Straight line time always has a beginning, middle, and … an end.
Nothing lasts forever in straight line time.
But maybe you’re feeling tired of hearing all this, two weeks in a row of the straight line / round time, chronological / kairos (Jesus’ time) dichotomy. Ah, but that’s out in the future. For now, I’ll do it my way. Forget this suffering stuff, Jesus. Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today …
No fear. I have two other ways to rebuke Jesus.
They are actually closely related; two sides of the same coin.
Believe / think / act like you’re not good enough to receive anything from Jesus.
And its flip side:
Believe / think / act like you’re too good to receive anything from Jesus.
They are two sides of the same coin, two roads reaching the same destination, because, in the end, they both lead us to turn our backs on Jesus.
“I’m not good enough to receive anything from Jesus” takes the uber-humility approach. Like our friend in Minnesota, the Lutheran pastor who we always joke that she introduces herself as “Hi, I’m Pastor X, and I’m sorry.” Yet this is also the attitude of obligatory, unimaginative religion … we might go to church every Sunday, we may have been Lutheran Christians all our lives … but we won’t tell anyone else about this; we won’t share our faith, tell others about this most important part of our lives …
… so are we ashamed of our faith? Asked, we’d say no … even though our behavior says different. What we tell ourselves is that we wouldn’t want to give anyone the impression that we think too highly of ourselves, or think ourselves better than them (although of course, we are, because we go to church and they don’t … but remember, this is the humble approach.)
And obligatory, unimaginative religion leads to “looks about right” faith. There’s a church not far from where we lived in South Dakota that Kathleen and I used to call “Looks About Right Lutheran.” Because the attitude you got from that church and it’s people was that “looks about right” was good enough.
The building was in disrepair. The cross on top of the roof had some old riveted sheet metal covering up the rotting wood. Inside, the pulpit was someone’s old empty Philco TV cabinet that had been re-used for another purpose. The pastor’s office was also the storage room, and the parking lot was full of muddy ruts so in the spring thaw you had to get pushed or pulled out of the mud.
They could have afforded better, easily. This was a congregation full of farmers and ranchers, most of them owning hundreds of thousands of dollars of farm machinery, most of them, living in very nice houses which looked much nicer than the church.
They just didn’t want anyone to think that they were thinking too highly of themselves, their church, their ministry. To them, it was better to be “the poor little church on the corner,” of which no one expected much at all, and reality fulfilled expectation.
Jesus can’t do anything for us. We can’t change. We can’t do it, we don’t have it in us, we’re not big enough or fancy enough or new enough or young enough or energetic enough or …
Well, you get the idea.
But what about the other approach? The “I’m too good to receive anything from Jesus” attitude?
This is consumer faith … ‘church shopping’ … I receive, and receive, and receive … and when I stop receiving, when my ‘felt needs’ aren’t being met anymore, then I’ll pack my bags and go somewhere else.
It’s also the “I’ll get around to having a faith life, deepen my spiritual walk with Jesus, once I get everything else accomplished … shopping, laundry, house cleaning, favorite tv show, hanging out with friends” attitude.
And it’s the place where inauthentic faith lives … you know, church congregations, faith communities, which, who say that “all are welcome” and “we encourage everyone to share their gifts” … until someone different actually shows up, or shares their gifts which are different from everyone else’s … and soon enough they find out that “welcome” is simply a word they walked across on the way in … rather than an authentic attitude shared by all.
If “looks about right” religion is the ditch of the “faithful,” then this approach, this attitude is the ditch of, if not the “faithless,” then, at least, the “faith half empty.”
Here is where the current conversation about Faith in America resides, full force.
A couple of studies, one funded by of all groups the Southern Baptists, bears this out.
The fastest growing group in this country, when it comes to matters of faith, turns out to be … the “so whats” … people like my friend. He has no interest in anything spiritual, no desire to explore this side of his life whatsoever. It’s just not part of who he is.
Almost half of those responding to these surveys spend no time seeking eternal wisdom … a fifth say “it’s useless to search for meaning” ... nearly a third have no desire for spiritual searching, deepening whatsoever.
These are not “agnostics” or “atheists,” these are “apatheists.” People who are just fine admitting that they have no spiritual curiosity whatsoever … when it comes to faith and religion, they just don’t really care.
Now, I’m not going to criticize people like this … people like my friend. I might feel bad for him, feel like he’s missing something in his life … but I congratulate him for being so authentic.
Because that’s better than a lot of “people of faith” are about their faith.
We might say “it’s all about Jesus,” but our actions belie that. Consumer attitudes toward faith, if I’m not getting filled here, getting my needs met, I’ll go elsewhere … inauthentic faith, people and communities which say one thing but live another … that simply says Jesus isn’t the most important thing. I am.
And so what happens when Jesus comes to break into our lives, to break through those walls we put up to separate, to protect ourselves from him? Because, Jesus time, round time, The Time is Fulfilled time means he will keep trying to break in, break through, get through to us? And yet … and yet … I’m not good enough for him. I’m too good for him.
[Jesus] began to teach [his disciples] 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. He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
Northern Irish philosopher / theologian Peter Rollins is one of the “new” brand of God-thinkers and God-talkers out there, holding the mirror up to people of faith and the so whats alike … an evangelical, rediscovering the ‘theology of the Cross’ of Martin Luther … as well as the path of the German 20th century theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, exploring what following Jesus in a society, in a world which in so many ways is “post-religion,” religion-less … he’s trying to flesh out that enigmatic phrase which Bonhoeffer left the world in a letter from the Nazi Tegel prison where he was being held, “religionless Christianity” … how can one be a follower of Jesus in a time, in a world, where “religion” has failed to make the world better?
Rollins writes a regular blog on the Internet. This week’s posting was related to our Gospel text for today … and was affronting enough … perhaps, it will be as affronting to you as Jesus’ words about the reality of his coming suffering and death were to Peter.
And that’s precisely the point. So I’d like to share some of it with you now.
It’s no secret that life is difficult. Yet most of us expend a great deal of time and energy attempting to avoid a direct confrontation with this reality. The problem however is that our attempt to avoid the inherent difficulties of life does not mean that we are free from suffering but rather that we are most oppressed by it.
The truth that we suffer is one that we can avoid most of the time. While it always seeps out in other ways (through frenetic activity, health problems, self-hatred, hatred of others, etc.) we can generally maintain our inner facebook profile (the idealised image we have of ourselves).
However there are times when this is difficult and we must work hard to keep the image intact, times when we go through a particularly traumatic event.
My concern is that most of the actually existing church … does not help us face up to, speak out, and work through our pain. [What much of the church provides us instead are] songs, sermons and prayers that help us avoid our suffering. These … are very appealing because of the quick fix … they offer, hence the success of such communities. However they do not help us face up to, speak out and work through our pain.
In contrast … what if the church could be a place where we found a liturgical structure that would not treat God as a product that would make us whole but as the mystery that enables us to live abundantly in the midst of life’s difficulties. A place where we are invited to confront the reality of our humanity, not so that we will despair, but so that we will be free of the despair that already lurks within us, the despair that enslaves us, the despair that we refuse to acknowledge.
Another author / theologian, the more mainstream Douglas John Hall, puts it this way:
Christ forever returns to his cross, to his grave, to hell, in order to be “with us.” He can be for us only insofar as he is with us. God is found in the despair of the cross. God is found in our many deaths, bringing possibility out of nothingness.
In the desert of life … Jesus comes … offering you the water … the bread and wine … the Word … of life.
What will be your response?
Avoidance? Rebuke?
Or reception … embracing reality … repentance … and rebirth?
[Jesus] began to teach [you] 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. He says all this quite openly.
The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the Good News.
The time … is fulfilled …
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