When Weakness Is Power!
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Mark 8:31-39 My Mother, who is now in her 97th year, frequently says, “The golden years aren’t what they're cracked up to be.” Each one of us here who is beyond the age of, say 40, can attest to the reality of that statement. The reality is that difficult and trying times come into each of our lives. Our Christian faith is aware of that reality, and addresses the issue squarely. In their wisdom, the fathers of the early Church organized the Christian year into divisions that would acknowledge the realities of our lives. The Christian year begins with advent, when we address the issues of beginnings and endings; they are dramatically revealed in the birth of Jesus, situated near the end of the year, just before a new year filled with hopes and dreams begins. We learn of the growth of Jesus, in wisdom and stature and in favour with God and humans, as Luke puts it. We agonize with him as he wrestles in the wilderness with temptations that are great and ominous, and we rejoice when he arises as conqueror and begins his ministry. Then, all too soon, we see black clouds arise on the horizon, as threatened religious leaders seek to destroy this son of God. Aware of this reality, the early Church Fathers placed into the liturgical year the period we call Lent. It is a period of 40 days, identical to the time it rained, cleansing the earth and allowing Noah to build an ark and be the instrument of new beginnings. It also coincides with the days that Jesus spent in the wilderness during his temptations, and from which he came to begin his ministry. Lent begins with Ash Wednesday, skips Sundays (since they are the symbol of resurrection) and ends with Holy Saturday. As such, the date fluxuates each year, since Easter is always the first Sunday after the first full moon after the spring equinox- designated as such years and years ago, so that pilgrims would have the light of the moon to aid them in their trek to Jerusalem to celebrate. It is not coincidental that lent begins in the dreary days of winter, and ends in Easter, the beginning of spring and the time of year when resurrection is most apparent in our trees and plants. The entire event follows the pattern of our lives, and parallels the growth of faith. It is neither an easy nor an enjoyable time. It is a dark lamenting time, but for people of faith it ends in victory. Don’t look for Lent in your Bible dictionaries, because it isn’t there. It is a creation of the Church Fathers. Little by little, people began to forget the path that Jesus had walked. The better life was, the more they felt comfortable in equating their comfort with the Christian faith. The problem is that the more comfortable people felt, the less they began to depend on each other, and the more separated they became from the community that at one time had sustained them. Barbara Brown Taylor, puts it this way: “They no longer distinguished themselves by their bold love for one another. They did not get arrested for championing the poor. They blended in. They avoided extremes. They decided to be nice instead of Holy and God moaned out loud. Finally, the Church announced the season of Lent, derived from the old English word Lenten, meaning spring……not only a reference to the season before Easter, but also an invitation to a springtime of the soul. Forty days to cleanse the system, and open the eyes to what remains when all comfort has gone. Forty days to remember what it is like to live by the grace of God alone and not by what we can supply for ourselves.” (B.B.Taylor, Home by another Way,
page 66)
In our scripture of the morning, as the disciples are basking in the success of the ministry of Jesus in Galilee, Jesus shocks them. Mark 8:31 says “And he began to teach them that the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the chief priests and scribes and be killed and after three days rise again.” That was the last thing the disciples wanted to hear. Peter could not believe it, so he began to rebuke him. Can’t you just hear him: “What do you mean Jesus, things are going well, people are responding, surely the priests and the scribes will be happy with the growth of our faith emphasis. What do you mean suffer and be killed?" Jesus responded by scolding him: "Get behind me Satan, you are not speaking as one of the followers of God, but of humans.” Peter is actually reflecting the feelings that you and I have. How could they possibly kill Jesus? Here was God’s fullest revelation; here was love personified; here was one who sided with the poor, the lonely, the downcast and the troubled; how could they kill such as that? In this passage, Jesus states clearly “If you want to come after me, deny yourself, take up your cross and follow me. For whoever would save his or her life will lose it, and whoever loses his or her life for my sake and the gospels, will save it” (Mk. 8:34-36). Do we believe that? Isn’t it amazing that some of the most miserable and difficult people in the world are among the wealthiest? Look at some of the complaints of the well-to-do: Taxes are too high. Why do we spend so much on welfare for those ne’er-do-wells? What do you mean care for our enemies or care for our fragile environment? Why should I care about people in Asia, or those Africans and their HIV problems? And if that doesn’t depress you, look at the churches that are growing today. For man, the basic message is if you are in trouble, God will bail you out. If you give enough of your money to the work of the church, God will prosper you. If you truly follow the gospel, you will be healthy, you will be happy, your marriages will be successful, and your life will be joyous. It’s the old messianic idea, recast in contemporary terms- If you believe, you will be rewarded, and those who don’t believe will be punished. What is wrong with this type of thinking is that it is not the Gospel. Jesus came into the world and turned the thinking of the world upside down, but we still have great difficulty with his way. “Whoever wants to be first must be last and servant of all.” We don’t like to read or hear words such as that. Jesus was the ultimate religious realist. The truth is, people of faith do get sick. People of great faith do get ill and die from their illnesses or from accidents. People of faith do go broke, and people of faith do have children who are a disappointment to them. Jesus knew that fact of life, and he made no attempt to mask it. The journey to Calvary began earlier, in the little town of Caesarea Philippi, now called Banias. It’s a charming little place, where the Jordan River begins, bubbling up after coming underground from Mt. Hebron. There, tradition says, Jesus stood before an image of the Greek god Pan, and asked, "Who do humans say that I am?" They replied with many of the standard answers of that day, “Some say you are John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets." Jesus then confronted them and asked “Who do you say that I am?” Peter blurted out “You are the Christ, (that is the messiah in Greek), the son of the living God." And Jesus said to them, “Be sure that you tell no one.” Doesn’t that strike you as a strange answer? The reality here is that Jesus is well aware that this was the beginning of a series of events that would culminate in his death. We call this time of the year the time of Jesus's passion. Actually, as Marcus Borg and John Crossen point out, it is the beginning of Jesus's second passion. Jesus's first passion was the Kingdom of God. It was his passion to incarnate, that is make flesh of, the justice of God. It is important to see that the word God is essential here. It was not the desire of Jesus simply to create a kingdom; it was the Kingdom of God. It was to share the justice, care and love of God with all people, not just the wealthy or those in authority, but all people. Inevitably, this first passion of Jesus led to his second passion. Things have not changed. Just as happened to Jesus "those who live for nonviolent justice too often die from violent injustice” (Borg and Crossen, The Last Week, Page V111.) We need look no further than Mahatma Gandhi, or Martin Luther King, or any of a host of highly motivated and godly individuals who dared challenge the establishment and plead for an end to injustice and the alleviation of poverty. To be a follower of Jesus is to accept the potential of a difficult and lonely path. “If any one would come after me, let him or her deny self and take up his or her cross and follow me. For whoever would save his or her life will lose it; and whoever loses his or her life for MY sake and the gospels, will save it. For what does it profit a person to gain the whole world and forfeit his or her own life?" You see, Lent is a downer. Not only does it point out the error of the way of living that most people choose, it even tells the horrible details of what happened to Jesus, and it raises the question "If I follow Jesus, will that happen to me?" You and I have to endure the message and the example of Lent, and wrestle with these disturbing possibilities, before we can share in the joy and truth of Easter. The message of lent, heavy and depressing as it is, is that we are an Easter people and we live lives of hope. In 1985, Dominique Lapierre wrote a book entitled “City of Joy” Many of you, I suspect, have read it and perhaps some of you have seen the movie, which was almost as good as the book. Much of the book concerns itself about Stephen Kavolski, a Polish Catholic Priest who withdrew from the mainstream of life to live among and identify with the poorest of the poor- to live with Calcutta’s, lepers and other untouchables; to live in the City of Joy, to share his life and to die with them. After years of living on the Calcutta sidewalks as a rickshaw puller, Hasari Pal finally found a room for himself and his family in the slums, near the lodging of Father Stephen Kavolski. Tough, racked with the “red fever” of tuberculosis, Hasari spent entire nights telling Kovalski about his life and dreams. His whole tragic life, from proud farmer to starving refugee to human horse- was chronicled. Then, knowing that disease was about to kill him, Hasari pre-sold his bones to a medical research supplier, in order to provide a dowry for his daughter. He celebrated at her wedding festival for only a few hours before slipping away to die. Before dawn, the next day, the bone collector had knocked on his door. Lappierre himself lived in this Calcutta ghetto for two years. He writes: “I had to adjust to all sorts of situations. I learned how to live with rats, scorpions and insects; to survive on a few spoons of rice and two or three bananas a day; to queue for hours for the latrines; to wash with less than a pint of water; to light a match in the monsoons; to share my living quarters with a bunch of eunuchs. Before being adopted by the inhabitants of the slum, I had to learn their customs, experience their fears and plights, share their struggles and hopes. It changed my life. Living with the heroic inhabitants of the City of Joy completely changed my sense of priorities and my assessment of the true values of life. After this confrontation with the real issues of existence- hunger, disease, total absence of work…I no longer fight for things like a parking place when I return to Europe or America. Sharing for all these months the lives of a population who has less than ten cents each day to survive on also taught me the real value of things… and the beauty of sharing with others. For two years nothing was asked of me, but always was given. The generosity of my friends in the City of Joy showed me, ‘everything that is not given is lost.’” Isn’t it ironic that more joy is found in the slums of Calcutta,or around Cordova and Pender Streets in Vancouver, than in Garibaldi Highlands, Shaughnessy Heights or the bluffs at White Rock? That’s the way it is. Jesus said this to his disciples, but like us, they didn’t believe it! Whenever he began to speak about sorrow, capture and death, they cried out "No, no, it can’t be so." They didn’t want a leader who identified with the poor and sought to aid them; they wanted a messiah who would honour them for their faithfulness, and reward them for their trust and belief. They were shocked when he was captured. They could not bear to see him punished, and none of them save John was present when they hung him on a cross. Jesus said to John "Take my Mother home." Their hero was dead! Where was the victory in that? They sat in that boarded up place, and the words of Jesus kept echoing in their heads- “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself, take up his cross and follow. For whoever would save her life will lose it and whoever loses her life for my sake and the gospels will find it…………………… ……………What does it profit a man to gain the whole world and lose his own life in the process?..............Whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the son of man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father and the angels.” The name of the game is not how much can I get, or how comfortable can I become, but how can I help! How can I help to make this community of Squamish the most accepting and serving community it can be? How can I counteract the prevalent mood to build bigger houses, drive newer cars, and get rid of those who are poor, destitute, lazy or addicted? How can I help? How can I take that cross upon myself? That’s the question this Lent. The cross you see is not a nice piece of jewelery to hang around your neck. It is a horrible symbol of death. It represents living a different emphasis of life, a way that might lead to death; a way of life that that might find us ridiculed, shunned or worse, rejected. Yet that is the way of life that Jesus calls us to, and that is the way of life in which he suggests you and I will find joy and true life. Denial of self, caring for others, serving others, loving others; accepting, forgiving and serving the one whose legacy is not a castle but a cross; thatalso find it very difficult. Church leaders say "it’s not marketable: We have to find another way." But, there isn’t any other way. “Despite the brutal squalor, despite the everyday human tragedies, the City of Joy is redeemed by the sublime desire among its inhabitants to share, to give something to the next person even when there isn’t enough for oneself.” “Take up your cross and follow me” said Jesus, “for what does it profit you to gain the whole world and lose your own life.” It isn’t pleasant, but, my dear friends, never forget; Easter is coming! Dr. Doug. Lobb
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