16 September 2012

“Wisdom: the antidote for logorrhea”
Wisdom 7:26-8:1 / James 3:1-12 / Mark 8:27-38
OT 24B
16 September 2012


Again, this week, those wise Biblical scholars who long ago put together our lectionary series of Sunday readings ... once again, they seem to have chosen texts as if they knew our life-situation today quite well.
For here we are … in the midst of a season of words … so many words, too many words, spewing forth … so many that one might even go so far as to call it “logorrhea” ..”logos,” the Greek word for “word,” and the suffix “rrhea” … well, you can figure that out for yourselves, I think.
From the book of James , we get an incredibly timely text about that little body part that gets us into a whole lot of trouble … the tongue.

How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. No one can tame the tongue … with it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.

The text’s initial analogy is certainly ‘ripped from the headlines’ … as the smoke from forest fires has clouded our air this week.
But the whole quote speaks well to our season of words, our logorrhea.
These words come from the past, from a former statesman, a past national leader ... but they illustrate James’ words well, for us today.

To lower our voices would be a simple thing.
(We suffer) from a fever of words: from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.
We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another – until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices. *

Certainly, corporately, for us, those words ring true … but personally, in matters of faith as well. For we know, we feel it cut very close to us this morning, any morning – we start out with such good intentions, wanting to be right with God and each other, we come here, we sing the songs and hymns, hear the Scriptures, speak the words of confession and hear forgiveness proclaimed to us …
… but alas, it doesn’t stick during the week. The same tongue that praises God then goes out and curses those who are made in God’s likeness. And it always happens this way. Sometimes it takes a whole week – and sometimes, not even a half hour, as we’re arguing about where to go to lunch after worship and haven’t even left the parking lot; or when we feel the anger rise within us and spew out our mouths when that jerky driver pulls out in front of us as we turn out onto 140th.
Sometimes, cursing follows praise as closely as one breath follows another.
And how clearly we see this in today’s Gospel. This week we switch “punching bags” as the subject of our discontent; the object of the word given so well by James … My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so … it’s not the Pharisees … but, instead, James’ companion in apostleship, Peter.
Peter – the first one in Mark’s gospel to acknowledge that Jesus is the Messiah. Peter – who in the next breath tries verbally to take Jesus down, because Jesus’ description of what “Messiah” is, doesn’t match at all with his – Peter’s – idea.
What a clear illustration of James’ words! Jesus asks the disciples,

Who do people say that I am? And they answer him … John the Baptist … Elijah … one of the prophets. But who do you say that I am? You are the Messiah.

Peter’s blessing the Lord and Father, to be sure. He’s saying back to Jesus everything that he’s seen, witnessed, heard, and processed about this man Jesus who is standing right before him. The feedings, the teachings, the healings … here at this crucial halfway point in Mark’s gospel story … there are sixteen chapters, and right here we’re in chapter eight … at this halfway point, Peter gets it right. His words are the embodiment of the Wisdom spoken of, written of, in our Old Testament reading … wisdom which is truly the antidote for inane, hurtful, relationship-harming logorrhea. Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one, the one sent by God his Father to save his people from sin, and the power of evil, and death itself.
So Peter’s tongue blesses.
But as sure as James is about what follows, so Peter does with his next breath.
Because now that it’s out in the open … now that Peter has said what reality Is … You are the Messiah … Jesus now goes into what that reality means and will mean, for him.

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.

It is a prediction by Jesus of What Will Be. It is a description by Jesus, a definition of what Messiah really and truly means for him.
But there is more here. Did you see it? Did you hear it? Jesus is drawing some clear parallels between how the disciples answer his question, and how he answers it.

Who do people say that I am?
John the Baptist ... Elijah ... one of the prophets.
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by ...
The elders ... the chief priests ... and the scribes.

See, Jesus is doing a lot more here than just predicting his future. He’s pointing the way to the cross. The cross isn’t specifically mentioned yet … it comes in the following verses… and we’ll get there very shortly … but here Jesus is making a stark contrast between the way the world perceives truth … and the Way of Truth.
John the Baptist … as elder? Herod knocked him off, and the religious establishment rejected him. Elijah as priest? He ran off and hid in fear in a cave when the King came after him. The prophets as scribes? Ha! The Israelites didn’t listen to the prophets’ message for them … which was, “repent, turn to God and seek forgiveness and new life, lest something worse befall you” … something worse did happen, of course … they were carried off into exile, enslaved by foreign rulers, because they rejected God and God’s ways of truth, justice and mercy.
So what Jesus is saying here would not only sound The Opposite to the religious establishment and the world of his time … Peter would also have heard it as a total rejection of the reality he knew … because he’d been told it all his life, by the rulers of his religion ... he knew it to be true. Jesus may be the Messiah to Peter, but only as he could fit that concept into the way he knew reality.
And so what comes next out of Peter’s mouth … our translation says “rebuke” but the sense is far, far worse. Peter pulls him aside and, well, the polite term would be “upbraids” Jesus for his error. He curses the One made in the likeness of God, the One who is God, the Son of Man, the Son of God. For Peter, Jesus can be the Messiah, all right, as long as he plays by the rules of polite society, religion and government.
No wonder Jesus calls Peter “Satan.” He – Peter – has been duped by the world.
And now … now … we get to the Word about the Cross.

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.

Now the world … and here, we come into the picture … we … we have nearly ruined these words of Jesus; thinking, believing that “taking up our cross” is a word that’s ALL ABOUT US.
Lutherans hear this phrase … “take up your cross” … and the good self-loathing Scandinavian, German in us tells us that we “shouldn’t think too highly of ourselves” … “we’re not very good people” … “we should engage in some sort of spiritual self-flaggelation … living into the caricature of the typical, aw shucks, upper Midwestern, faithful Lutheran, like my friend used to introduce herself, “Hello, I’m Robin, and I’m sorry.”
My evangelical friends hear this phrase … “take up your cross” … and it comes to them in much the same way, but with the twist of conviction for not following The Order, the rules, the Laws of the Religion … “if only I would just get under that burden of law once more, hear those commandments, engage in Holy Living, become a New Pilgrim, very nearly … and sourly, dourly, tell everyone else how rotten and sinful they are too, we could all be miserable together, AND ISN’T THAT WHAT BEING A CHRISTIAN IS ALL ABOUT ANYWAY?”
And The World … and that means Everyone … Lutherans, Evangelical Christians … everyone and anyone … the person on the street … hear this phrase “take up your cross” and it comes to them, comes to us as “my cross to bear in life.” You ever heard that before? Someone speaks of a misfortune, a tragedy, or just a pain in the rear in their lives, and it’s “my cross to bear.” “My job is really hard, but I guess it’s my cross to bear.” “My kids … my spouse … my family are really giving me trouble, but I guess it’s my cross to bear.” “The neighbor’s dog always does her business on my lawn, but I guess it’s my cross to bear.”
What a load. What a cursing of the One who is made in the likeness of God … the Son of Man … the Son of God. That’s so individualistic … so about Me … of course, that’s why we hear that phrase “my cross to bear” in that way and so often, because we live in a place and time where The Individual Reigns Supreme … but it’s not right. It’s not True. And it is NOT what Jesus is saying here.
No … “taking up your cross” is neither about self-loathing or self-pitying. Those begin with “self” … and the cross is not about Self. It’s about Losing Self … Self goes away and we see Me and You as Us … part of something far larger than self-apology and flagellation and pity.
Peter could only see Jesus through his lens of Self … he could only “do” Messiah through his lens of Self … and when Jesus laid out Messiah as totally backwards and reversed from what he believed was true … out spewed the curses.
Jesus’ Truth says that “You are the Messiah” means that ALL those notions of Me First … in matters of faith … in all matters of life … must not only go away, will go away … they WILL die. See … he says it there … MUST is the word. It’s going to happen. It’s going to happen … but in a Very Different Way.
It will come … in a God who is willing to give up everything of Self … For Us.
In a God who Dies … totally empties Self … For Us.
In a God who Rises Again … For Us.
In a God who will come again and make everything right … joining together the disjointed, selfish, self centered and self loathing, furthest removed and blown apart ends of the Universe … For Us.
That is what The Cross means for him. That is what The Cross means for Us. No more self-hatred and self-loathing … for who can hate that which is made in the likeness of God?
But coming together … as We … Christ’s Body … seeing You and Me as WE … in Him … starting here in the Flowing Streams of Living Water, continuing here in the Bread and Wine which are him … going out and being WE in the world … serving others, caring for others, loving others because they are made in the likeness of God too … in serving them we are serving our own Body and serving and blessing the Lord and Father.
If it sounds kind of confusing, well, yes, it is. This is coming from a tongue … after all.
But it is a Word that calls us to more than just sitting and hearing … it calls us even beyond doing … it calls us to Being … faith owning Us and guiding our every act.
All we have and all we are … lived, breathed, dying and rising, waiting, watching, working … in Jesus Christ.
May our whole lives … not just our tongues … speak that phrase “You are the Messiah” … as we go forth this week, in service and praise. Amen.

*Richard Nixon's 1st Inaugural Address, January 20, 1969.