Lenten Sermon: Mark 8:31-38 in 2018

Mark 8:31-38

Three little gospel nuggets.

1.       You can talk yourself into defeat, or you can talk yourself into victory. When you speak to yourself the right way, strength, courage, vision and healing come.

2.       We have authority as believers in Christ to bring heaven’s will to earth by acting in partnership with God…What He allows or disallows—is all that we can allow or disallow here in the earth.

3.       You will only increase when you stop being stingy and release - There is a blessing in the release. Stop keeping your gifts to yourself! He gifted you so that you could provoke somebody else!

Joel Osteen.

Joyce Meyer.

T. D. Jakes.

Snapshots in messianic dreaming, Twitter style. American style.

Messianic dreaming. The idea that God will break into human affairs and make things right. Pain and wickedness will pass away. God will exercise authority over all things. It will work out.

Mix in a little American consumerism, and messianic dreaming turns out well for us. By us, I mean me. Our you (individual name). Or you (individual name). Or you (individual name). You can talk yourself into victory. You have authority to bring heaven on earth. You will increase. God can break in and make it all work out – with a little pinch of consumerist positivity – for you.

Thank you, Joel Osteen, Joyce Meyer, and T. D. Jakes, for making this all so clear. Messianic dreaming.

                So Peter calls Jesus aside. It’s what you do when you don’t want to embarrass somebody. You don’t correct them in front of everyone. You take a quiet minute, and you set them straight. It’s what David Mellott would do.

                For if ever there were a time for messianic dreaming, it would be right now. Pick your threat. Just pick one. It’s always the right time for messianic dreaming. You could be in a Syrian city, huddling cold and hungry with your children, and wondering why God doesn’t stop the shelling. You could be a student from Parkland, Florida, wondering why powerful men and women – who have never looked at a loaded gun from the wrong end – wondering how long they can evade your questions. You could live at low altitude, wondering what will happen to your livelihood when the rising salt water makes farming impossible – knowing people who matter don’t care, and wondering what kind of life your kids will have if you migrate. You could be the parent of a black or brown or Jewish child, seeing the rise in racial harassment in our public schools, and wonder why God won’t turn this country around. You could be pretty much anywhere, pick your threat, and wonder why God’s healing has not arrived.

                You could pull Jesus aside, couldn’t you, and maybe correct him? If you let your emotions out, come on now, you might just scold Jesus. Because as a messiah, as a messiah… let’s just hope Jesus has some time before the messianic evaluation forms are due. It’s only compassionate to tell him now. Because he seems to have misread the job description.

                Maybe Peter could go nicer on Jesus, but Peter tries to be kind. At least he pulls Jesus aside.

                Jesus does not save us by jumping in on our behalf. He will not save us by taking our place, even on the cross. He saves us by coming in alongside us. By becoming one of us, entering the fullness of human reality, by becoming vulnerable to growing, to grieving, to wondering – not instead of us, but right alongside of us.

                This is how Jesus answers Peter’s messianic fantasy. We may share in Jesus’ journey. We may walk the road with him. We will face opposition alongside him. We will learn the way of the cross. We hand over our deeds to our own lives.

                This gospel does not dominate the airwaves. It won’t sell many books. Those who proclaim it probably won’t need insurance for their private jets. Messianic dreaming sells. Christ-like living might not. Jesus’ gospel is poor marketing.

                Let’s face it… we’d rather not buy it, either. Or have to sell it.

               

These days, there’s no need for heroes. The kids from Parkland, Florida, like Emma González and David Hogg, staring down the emissaries of hate with clarity and truth, those young people are true heroes. Thank God for them. But we do not need them to take our place in the work of grace and justice. We need Jesus to walk alongside us, as we walk with one another.

                We don’t need another moment, another crisis either. We don’t have to look back to Fanny Lou Hamer, or Dietrich Bonhoeffer, or Daniel Berrigan – as if the days of dangerous witness have passed. Bishops and pastors are calling in. Right now, if we are fully engaged in ministry. Right now, if we speak of Syrian children as fellow human beings in need of shelter; right now, if we cry out for the need to invest in the health and education of poor children; right now, if we confront religious bigotry and dismissive racism, believe me (WINK), right now we won’t have to look for another moment. People will push us, “Pastor, just preach the gospel.” They will demand our silence. They will threaten our jobs.  

                Someone might say, “That’s easy for you to say, Greg. You’re a professor. You have tenure. You actually benefit from speaking out.” I hope you say that. Because there is no more demanding call right now than to serve as a pastor, or as a chaplain, or as a religious educator, as an agent of change – there is no more demanding call than to be out there doing the work of justice and grace. You would be absolutely right.

                We all want heroes. But Jesus call disciples. He demands our lives.

                And the challenge – for Peter, for me, for all of us – the challenge is to believe Jesus. To trust that Jesus, and Jesus alone, will provide a life so much richer, much more vital, and far more abundant than the life we hand over.

                This is grace, this life. We cannot create it for ourselves. We cannot even choose it. But from time to time we do receive a brush-by, a glimpse, a taste of this life. I see how you look after one another. I see you driving one another to the doctor, bearing one another’s burdens.

                Teaching in an outlaw seminary, banned by the Nazis, Dietrich Bonhoeffer remarked: “The physical presence of other Christians is a source of incomparable joy and strength to the believer.”

                May I share an extended quote from Bonhoeffer, his last circular letter from the underground seminary?

A sort of joy exists that knows nothing at all of the heart’s pain, anguish, and dread; it does not last; it can only numb a person for the moment. The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye, but it finds life precisely within it.

                We live at a moment of intense corporate pain. Our society, once declaring itself a haven for displaced persons, now seeks out black and brown people to deport. It tells our children they need teachers carrying heat. More obviously than we could have imagined, it takes from the poor and gives to the rich. It tells us all to be bitter, fearful, materialistic, shallow, anything but free, anything but joyful. And in the face of this some preachers, SOME PREACHERS, preach the shallow joy that does not know pain.

                But we know a Savior who plumbs the depths of human anguish. We know a Savior who will walk alongside us in our pursuit of grace and justice. We know a Savior who agonized on the cross yet lives in resurrection glory. We know a Savior who, when we hand ourselves over to him, walks with us in joy. Amen.