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SERMONS

The Second Sunday in Lent
March 12, 2006

Lent 2B

“That fellow seems to me to possess but one idea . . . and that is a wrong one.” Something that the writer Samuel Johnson said after making a chance acquaintance one day.

Our Lord seems to face a similar predicament. Think of how many instances there are in the Gospels where Jesus is explaining himself, his very identity, to those who are following him, as well as to those who are accusing him. Everyone seems to have a pretty clear idea, perhaps one particular idea, of what a messiah should look and act like; and unfortunately it seems to be the wrong one.

Jesus is faced with the daunting task of having to live in the shadow of what others only know as an ideal; he shoulders the burden of those ideals. And Jesus meets with resistance because he is trying to give everyone he encounters another idea about the messiah – the right one.

We are at a turning point in Mark’s Gospel. This is the first mention of suffering and sacrifice; the first mention of an execution, and a cross. And then Jesus tags it as a way of finding life, rather than having it snuffed out.

Already Jesus has been doing the right things. He has received the prophetic baptism of John the Baptist. He has rejected the Tempter in the Wilderness. He has convinced some to throw down their lives and follow him. He is a healer, a wisdom teacher, and a mouthpiece with the courage to call down a corrupt religious and political authority.

Already Jesus has displayed the power of God in his midst. Jesus has already proven that he can fight fire with fire if need be.

In the first half of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus appears as the messiah that his followers can understand. Jesus the wonder worker, Jesus the wise counselor, Jesus the stalwart revolutionary. Jesus: a leader destined to victory, based upon terms that we can understand.

Another King David is what most thought they had found. “A messiah we can be proud of.” The one after our own hearts because he will give us a great nation, crush the Romans, bringing a peace in our time. The popular religious imagination of the day was satisfied with this image of a messiah – Jesus, “A Man in Full.”

“Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

Jesus is beginning the de-programming of the popular religious imagination. Where in one breath some might say “onward to victory,” Jesus is essentially saying “onward to defeat.” It is a turning point in the Gospel. This Messiah will build another sort of Empire; this Messiah will build another kind of Kingdom.

Of course Peter snaps. Peter is not a simpleton, nor is he selfish. Peter is simply trying to protect that which loves, and all that he hopes for in Jesus. Any one of us would do the same. Peter had found his holy grail, his guiding star, his one thing, in Jesus. Peter had found “his” Messiah, and God help the person who would take it from him.

But Jesus is teaching Peter that he must dream a new dream. Jesus is teaching Peter that although God loves us very much, God will not be controlled by our expectations, no matter how dear they are to our hearts. We may love God completely, heart, soul, and mind; however that does not mean we get to draw a circle around God with that love.

The castles in the air are coming down. Jesus is introducing his followers to the path of Abraham. Like Abraham, Peter and anyone who would follow Jesus, faces a sometimes terrible realization; the one who gives us our heart’s deepest desires also has the power, if not always the will, to draw this gift away from us.

Very much in the way that Abraham bound Isaac for sacrifice, carried him up a mountain, and looked between the lines of life and death to see God’s hand at work; perhaps understanding little, yet trusting much. So too Peter must bind his hero worship, and offer it as a sacrifice, so that God might do a new thing in a tired and predictable old world. My heart reaches out to Peter’s heart, because something within Peter is breaking.

Following Jesus is like having a seed planted within our hearts and minds. As this seed grows, as its roots fill us, our hearts and minds are like pots which at first shelter the plant, and then one day cramp its growth. There will come a day when either the pot must shatter, or the plant must die. For the great tree of holiness to grow, something within us must break open.

These are our crosses. Jesus is telling us that we must leave something behind that we have dearly loved. There is an invitation to leave behind the notions that we will get to both, have life as we want it, and to have God in the way he wants us. Actually, we do not get to have God; God gets to have us. The pot must shatter if we are to go on this journey.

And what are these pots of clay? Our time and attention. The energy of our ambition. The material aspect of our lives. Perhaps our own dearly held notions of “messiah.” How we give and receive love. These fragile pots will shatter if the roots that God would lay in our hearts would grow. In the very places where we are masters of our spirituality and religion, our feelings, our imaginations, all those things that we call our own, that we call ourselves, all that would keep us at the center of the universe, these must break apart if we are to make this journey with Christ.

Jesus is inviting us to dream a new dream about our lives.

It is a journey where losing means winning, and where dying becomes the path to a kind of living that never ends.