SERMON Disbelief

Lent 2 (B): Genesis 17:1-17; Psalm 22:22-30; Romans 4:13-25; Mark 8:31-38

This morning we hear about disbelief. Disbelief from an incredulous Abraham who is told that he and his barren wife will have a son. Disbelief from a stunned Peter when he is told that the Son Man will suffer and die.

Whenever I think about this kind of disbelief I think of Caroline, our younger daughter. I think of one summer afternoon when she was five. Her older sister who was then seven had come to me. She wanted to know if she could ask me something. I had said, "Of course" and sat down. Caroline was standing nearby. What her sister wanted to ask was whether or not it was true that we were all going to die. Her two very best friends had told her that afternoon that everything alive would die, and they said that meant we would also die someday. Was this really true?

Caroline by now had joined the two of us, standing in front of me, intently interested in what had been said -- and what was going to be said. They both looked at me. I confirmed it was true: we would all die. I explained that unless death were a part of life, we wouldn't be here because there could never be new life. That's why, I added, life is such a precious gift.

The big sister looked off processing what I was saying. Caroline had not taken her eyes off of me and was looking more and more intently. Finally she could not contain herself. "Well," she said with all the determination and authority at her disposal, "somebody's made a big mistake!" Her sister and I both looked her. When she had our undivided attention, she announced: "I'm not going to die." She meant it.

She was, of course, wrong -- dead wrong. Or was she?

She certainly had grounds for saying she would not die. What, after all, makes any of us really believe that we are going to die? And in this regard she was like Abraham who knows that 100 year old men and 90 year old women do not have babies. She was also like -- especially like -- Peter.

About Peter. Peter had heard the good news Jesus was proclaiming. And had left the family business to follow Jesus. He had seen the miracles and heard the teachings. Jesus has just asked the disciples,"[W]ho do you say that I am?" Peter confidently answers, "You are the Messiah." Only to be told by Jesus that the Son of Man will suffer and be executed.

Like Caroline that afternoon 35 years ago, Peter is appalled. Caroline's five years and very being affirmed that she was not going to die. Peter's ministry and his life with Jesus confirm that Jesus will not suffer and die.

Like Caroline, Peter wants to say, "Somebody's made a big mistake!" So he takes Jesus aside and begins to rebuke him, probably asking, "How can you say that? What gives? It makes no sense."

But Jesus knows that what he is saying is true. And he knows that Peter is dead wrong. What to do?

With Caroline, I had tried to suggest ever so gently that she was wrong.

This is not Jesus' approach. Jesus turns and rebukes Peter in front of all the disciples." Get behind me Satan," he says -- a remark so astonishing that commentators have long agreed that this is a genuine saying of Jesus.

But Jesus does not stop there.

If Peter's expectations about what being God's anointed means are dead wrong, then so, too, are the expectations of the crowd following Jesus. So having rebuked Peter, Jesus brings the crowd, his would-be followers, in on the lesson.

And this is where we come in, right? We may not be Peter, but we are presumably followers or would-be followers.

Jesus says to Peter, the disciples, and all those would-be disciples that if they want to follow him they have to deny themselves and take up their crosses. To his listeners this meant -- no question -- crucifixion, a gruesome but common public sentence imposed on lower classes and non-citizens. One that frequently involved the prisoners' carrying the cross beams of their crosses to their crucifixions. And, as if saying "take up your cross" were not enough, Jesus adds:

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.

Jesus is saying nothing less than "be prepared to be executed" for me and the gospel. That's very heavy duty.

While it is heavy duty, it is also easy to dismiss as heavy duty for Christians then, not Christians living now, at least not here. We believe that the author of Mark was writing from a Christian community in Rome sometime around 70. That community knew first hand about persecution. The Emperor Nero had blamed them for starting the Great Rome Fire in 64. As punishment, he had sent some Christians to the dogs to be killed and eaten, crucified others, and burned still others. It was a terrible persecution. And the first.

So Mark's community knew from its own experience that Jesus's saying "take up [your] cross" was for real. There was no mistake.

And if we only go this far, and leave it with Jesus's telling us to take up our crosses and be willing to die, we can easily say this is for that community of faith in Rome, not for this community faith in Wicker Park. We are not going to be persecuted for our faith. We are not going to die for the gospel. There is no mistake.

But that isn't where Jesus stops, is it? Jesus also tells that community of faith that to follow him they will have to lose their lives in order to save their lives. And in doing that, he is describing a way of living, not just a plan for dying. And, as plans go, it is far more social and political than spiritual.

We know that because the word Jesus uses here for "life" is the Greek word yuch. (psu-kay´) -- our word "psyche" comes from it. For Jesus it means both a person's ordinary social life and true self. It does not mean physical, biological life. Nor does it mean what we understand as psyche or self -- something personal and private, very individual, an "inner child" kind of thing. Jesus is not talking about a spiritual loss of identity, absorption into the divine, passivity -- withdrawing from this world to gain the next. That's not what Jesus has in mind.

It's not because neither he nor any of his first century followers thought of themselves as lone rangers. The concept of the "individual" is not one they understood. They would not have recognized an "inner child" if they stared one in the face. Instead, a first century person defined himself or herself in terms of his or her public place in society and what society expected of him or her and what he or she did in light of those expectations. What this means was summed up by Richard J. Daley -- the Father, not the Son -- who, in the context of Chicago politics, advised: "Don't make no waves, don't back no losers."

That is exactly what being a person and having a self meant in the 1st Century -- not making waves, not backing losers. It meant playing out roles defined by family structure and society. Doing what family and society expected.

And that is exactly what Jesus was telling everyone they could not do. And by the time the author of Mark wrote his gospel, the Christians in the Roman community had discovered what Jesus meant by losing their social lives. Nero had offered a pretext and a reason for deciding that the Christians could safely be persecuted for starting the Great Rome Fire. The pretext was that the Christian part of the city had been spared. The reason was that the Christians had gained a reputation as "haters of humankind."

And that reason is telling.

Christians had gained a reputation as "haters of humankind" because it was impossible to function socially or in government jobs in Rome without being caught up in the worship of the imperial cult -- worship that involved the Roman gods that included the emperor. That was true whether one went to the theater or a sporting event or served in the army or had a job as a civil servant. The Christians actively went against everything that was expected of them as social persons living in Roman society, even to the point of being asocial "haters of humankind." They went against their concept of "self" to do what their God, the gospel, and their faith told them they must do. And in doing that, they lost their lives to save their lives.

And as for making waves, a great many of them were martyred after the Great Rome Fire. One of those martyrs was probably Peter.

But what about us? What about this community of faith? We are not forced or even allowed to worship our God or any gods at public events. Our society is not the Roman society. We do not have that community of faith's problem. Our understanding of self is not the same either. But -- a big "but" -- we do have the same Lord and Savior who says "those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it." And we, like that community of faith, are charged to be the Body of Christ in and for the world.

On the deepest level, what losing our lives to save our lives and being the Body of Christ in the world means is the same for us as for those 1st Century Christians in Rome. It means making waves and, when appropriate, backing losers -- something that also goes against our concept of self. And that, in this society, is no small task. We risk exposing ourselves and being vulnerable, both as individuals and a community of faith.

Which is why losing our life for the sake of the gospel is a challenge that can only be met in faith.

For us, acting in faith means putting aside the ego, id, and inner child. It means acting like Abraham by accepting in faith the promise of a God who is both just and faithful -- a God who, as Paul tells the Romans, extends that covenant and promise to the Gentiles through faith in Christ. And a Christ who, in turn, promises to be with us, and is with us, here and now, in Word and Sacrament, that we may live out our lives in him.

To lose our lives for Christ's sake is to live new lives in that promise, through the reality of this community, in the arena of this world. Here in Wicker Park. In working for equity and justice. In serving, empowering, and protecting our neighbors and all of God’s people and creation.

And that means that we can make waves, have courage, and, above all, take risks. In different ways, Caroline and Abraham and Peter were willing to risk their "somebody's made a big mistake" disbelief by expressing it.

That was a first step. They were all wrong but also in some ways right. As Caroline now knows, this life ends in death but for Christians also can entail new life in Christ here and now. As Abraham and Sarah came to experience, they could become parents and the ancestors of a multitude of nations but only through God's intervention. As Peter came to know and experience, Jesus suffered but in that suffering was the Messiah who saved. For Peter, losing his life for the sake of the gospel, eventually meant a new life where, in active leadership of the church, he could put aside his very real and socially-conditioned aversion to things gentile and accept gentiles into the church. And for Peter, it meant he could and did die for the gospel.

In these days, may God give us the grace and courage to risk nothing less. Amen.

March 8, 2009

Ruth VanDemark, pastor

Wicker Park Lutheran Church . Chicago