Win or Lose

Highlands UMC
March 8, 2009
Rev. Kerry Greenhill

Mark 8:31-38

31Then 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,
and be killed, and after three days rise again.
32He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33But turning and looking at his disciples,
he rebuked Peter and said,
“Get behind me, Satan!
For you are setting your mind not on divine things
but on human things.”

34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them,
“If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves
and take up their cross
and follow me.
35For 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.
36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world
and forfeit their life?
37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?
38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words
in this adulterous and sinful generation,
of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed
when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Heavy stuff.

Like the thought for meditation today,
this text is a difficult word for us;
it probably doesn’t feel much like good news.

There is judgment in it,
and suffering.
There is rejection and death,
and hard hard choices
that we may or may not understand.

This Lent we are focusing on the theme of “turning,”
the original meaning of repentance.
This story is a turning-point in Mark.
Jesus goes around Galilee healing and exorcising demons,
teaching and proclaiming the good news of God
and the coming of the reign of God.
So far, so good.
Immediately before this scene,
Peter has proclaimed Jesus to be Christ.

Amazing. Jesus praises him highly.
But when Jesus explains what that will mean,
Peter rebukes him
and Jesus calls his head disciple Satan.

Harsh.

You kind of get the idea
that things are only going to go downhill from here.

And of course, in terms of Jesus’ popularity,
and the rejection, suffering and death he has just explained,
they do.

The way we talk about having to “bear our cross” today
has become a sort of joke,
or a sign of the minor forms of suffering
that people understand to be “martyrdom”:
we often mean to say,
“look at how holy I am
by putting up with this terrible situation.”

It can apply to something as trivial as an irritating in-law,
chronic allergies, or – more dangerously –
sometimes to a situation of abuse
or unhealthy and unhappy relationship.
I’m pretty sure that none of these are what Jesus meant,
that he was in fact trying to tell us something essential
rather than trivial
about his kingdom.

Because of the views and values of our culture today,
we risk grossly misunderstanding the message of Jesus
if we don’t consider the context
of the ancient world.

“Take up your cross” should not be interpreted
to mean that any suffering we face
is God’s will or God’s plan,
or that those who are oppressed or abused
should suffer in silence
because suffering is redemptive.

Quite the contrary.

In ancient times, suffering was not an exception
but the norm;
it was simply how life was.
Life was hard: hunger and disease were endemic,
the vast majority of people lived in poverty
that we in the 21st-century U.S. can barely imagine.
The Romans were taxing the life out of the lands
and peoples they had conquered.

Many women died in childbirth;
many children did not live to see their 5th birthday.

So you had to be able to endure suffering
if you were to survive.

There was no great redemptive value in suffering itself;
it was simply part of the human lot in life.

In the Gospel of Mark, the author makes clear
that the present age is a time when evil forces
still have power in the world,
but that Jesus has come to proclaim a new age,
a time of God’s rule.

This is what the title “Son of Man,”
or “The Human One,”
is all about.

Remember, the Son of Man is a figure
from the prophet Daniel’s visions,
indicating the “one like a human being”
who inaugurates the kingdom or reign of God
after the human kingdoms or empires –
represented by beasts, not humans –
all fall.

Jesus takes this phrase and applies it to himself
several times in Mark,
though often in what seems to us an indirect way.

So Jesus is going about proclaiming the new age
through his ministries of healing, exorcism,
feeding, and reconciliation,
making visible the values of God’s kingdom
and demonstrating the power of God
to end the illness, disability, alienation, grief
that are part of ordinary, daily suffering,
for God desires wholeness and right relationship
for all people.

In other words,
everyday suffering is not part of God’s desire.

But though Jesus proclaims and initiates the new age,
God’s power is not yet fully established,
and so Mark shows what it means to follow Jesus,
to live as part of the community of God’s kingdom:
resisting the powers in charge of the world by following Jesus
and proclaiming the reign of God over the reign of Caesar –
that will bring suffering of a different kind,
in the form of persecution.
That is to be expected
and even, in other gospels, seen as blessed.

Because to be a disciple of Jesus,
a student and follower of the one called Messiah,
is to understand that God has different values
than those of the culture around us.

Jesus’ answers to what it means to be a disciple
and what it meant for Jesus himself to be Messiah
are as unacceptable now as they were then;
this is a vision of failure.
We are called to be losers in the eyes of the world.
But everything around us says “Be a winner!”

Relinquishing status and power
in favor of service to others
is not easy.

But trust in God offers the promise
of life abundant in Christ,
a life beyond death
and a life participating in the timeless life of God
here and now.

The root meaning of sacrifice, after all,
is to make holy
(by giving wholly).

We can become part of the economy of production,
contributing to the common good
by giving of ourselves,
instead of only participating
in the economy of consumption,
taking and taking and taking.

Denying oneself in ancient times
would have related more to giving up
one’s kinship identity
from the family of origin or marriage
in favor of the family of choice in Christ.
It wasn’t so much about individual ego –
that’s a modern concept.

But there is a literalness about the second part:
many will lose their physical lives
for the sake of the good news,
starting with Jesus himself.

The church as the Body of Christ is peculiar,
unique in its calling:
to bear witness to the love of God
as revealed in Jesus Christ,
and to initiate God’s reign on earth
by implementing signs of the reign or kingdom of God
in our faith community
and working for them in the wider world.

Signs like choosing forgiveness instead of vengeance,
as in the case of the Amish community in Pennsylvania
that forgave the killer of five young girls.

Signs like seeking justice for janitors,
offering hospitality to immigrants,
refusing to take up arms against an enemy,
speaking out on behalf of those
who have no voice or power.

We bear witness to God’s love
not through words alone,
but also more holistically,
whether we realize it or not,
through every decision, action, behavior, and relationship
in our lives.

We are stewards of the gospel,
the good news of God that Jesus proclaimed
(to bring sight to the blind, proclaim liberty to the captives,
bind up the brokenhearted, announce the year of Jubilee).
How we live,
the visible and incarnate form of our discipleship,
will tell the world whether the gospel is true
and a radical way of life in the world,
or just another philosophical or moral theory.

So when we talk about stewardship,
we’re not primarily concerned
about those of us who will be out of a job
if the church doesn’t meet its budget.
We are interested in how the church as the Body of Christ
is in mission in the world,
proclaiming the Good news of God’s love in Jesus Christ.

And we as the Body of Christ are called
to be a counter-cultural movement,
not conformed to this world
but hearts transformed by God’s renewing of our minds.

We are called to resist
the death-dealing powers of the world:
consumerism, militarism, nationalism, fear,
knowing that these choices will put us at odds
with many of our friends, family, coworkers.

Resistance is never easy;
by definition, it implies opposing forces.

It sounds risky.
Dangerous. Radical. Extreme.

For some, it is, and must be.
In the first few centuries,
it meant just following Jesus could get you killed.
Later it meant resisting
the cultural accommodations of Christianity
in the Roman Empire
by fleeing to the desert
to take up a life of discipline
either in solitude or in community –
each option presenting its own set of challenges.

Jesus knew how hard this would be,
and while he didn’t sugarcoat it,
I think he also had compassion
for the struggles his followers would face.

He knew how seductive the powers of the world can be –
he confronted them face-to-face in the desert.
And if we can hold onto any of the sense of victory
in the meaning of the empty tomb,
I think we can see the Resurrection
as proof of the power of God
working through faithful people
to overcome the death-dealing powers
that are opposed to God’s reign.

Taking up your cross today
would sound something like
“take up your electric chair,”
take up your hangman’s noose or your FBI file,
take up a symbol of shame and death
imposed by the powers of the empire
and carry it with you
as you expose the truth about God’s reign,
the Kin’dom of light and life
and God’s love and justice for all.
It doesn’t mean submit to your daily suffering
as though God wants you to be unhappy
because you are imperfect.

It means God is at work in the world
to end the suffering of illness and alienation,
the pain of oppression and injustice,
the grief of loneliness and of death.

But it also means
that living out God’s kin’dom in the world,
which is still in the hands of the powers
that rely on people staying fearful
and numb and downtrodden,
will draw the opposition to stand against you,
and you must know this in advance
if you are going to try to shine a light into the darkness.

Because when you knowingly take up your cross,
turning your back on your family identity,
the privilege that comes
from participating in unjust systems,
and all the pressure to just be “normal,”
understanding that you may well lose everything—
that is when you can live fully
in God’s promise of abundant life,
knowing that clinging to anything, even life,
will diminish it, will strangle it,
but letting it go…
that allows it to break open
like a seed in the ground
and be transformed.

It begins by acknowledging
that we are complicit with the powers of the world –
we all buy clothing that is cheap
because it was assembled in other countries
where wages are lower;
most of us eat food that contains additives
or relies on animal exploitation
or traveled hundreds of miles
to keep us in bananas through the winter.

I am complicit, and I cannot judge you.
I can only repent of the ways in which I sustain these forces,
and try each day to make choices
that increase the power of God’s reign
and diminish the power of the world.

Resistance is as radical as
Christian Peacemaker Teams,
traveling to countries where war, corruption, and violence are the norm,
and standing in the way of violence
to draw attention to it and defuse it.

Or as radical as living in a new monastic community,
such as the Simple Way in Philadelphia,
where members give up personal belongings
to live together in intentional community,
to share all things as the original disciples did,
and to be in service to those in need
and participate in work for justice in the name of Christ.

And resistance can be as simple
as a victory garden in the church flower beds;
or looking the homeless man or woman in the eye
and buying them a cup of coffee instead of driving by;
or deciding not to buy new clothes or go to Starbucks
or eat dinner out so often;
it can mean choosing recycled, biodegradable,
organic, union-made, or longer-lasting goods
instead of cheaper products;
or increasing your charitable giving
even though your 401K has lost half its value.

Losing your life to save it
is giving up security
for the promise of wild adventure with God.
It is giving up the trappings and distractions
that numb our fears and anxieties
for the dangerous gifts of silence, stillness, emptiness.

It is deciding not to forfeit our lives
for the sake of the world
as the demonic voices offer it to us.

It is choosing to risk everything,
win or lose,
knowing that loss and grief are not the end
so long as we trust in God’s care.

As we journey through the wilderness this Lent,
I challenge you to consider:
what cross are you taking up for the sake of the gospel?
What in your life are you willing to risk,
even to lose,
to follow Jesus more faithfully?

You might just win it all.

Amen.