“FALLING BEHIND”

Scripture Lesson: Mark 8: 31-38

Dr. Matthew S. Brown

March 12, 2006

A few years ago the New Yorker dispatched their Talk of the Town writer to Macy’s to investigate a surging fashion trend. A counter that had once displayed pashima, scarves, and designer handbags had been renovated into a small boutique called “Cross Culture”. A suitably enthusiastic clerk explained that, “Crosses are a fashion statement. We’re doing trend type crosses here. We have one of the best selections in New York City, but honestly, I’m a little low on crosses right now. They’re flying out the door.”

“They’re flying out the door.” So, why have I always been intimidated by Jesus’ command to take up my cross? Maybe, I too, could purchase the cross my friends and neighbors would envy. For a mere $3800 I could acquire a stylish 18K white gold Forzieri diamond cross pendant from Italy. Or for 59 cents I could splurge on a Celtic cross pendant made of bone.

Jesus, which one did you have in mind? Or maybe I could go the classic route with an Elsa Peretti cross from Tiffany’s. Actually, you can see this very cross today modeled by our own Katie Buckley who received it as a gift. What a great idea! You know everybody yearns to receive something wrapped in that distinctive little blue box. Maybe I should pick up my cross and pick out one for that someone special. But, I’d better hurry, because, evidently, they’re flying out the door. In that vein, Jesus’ entreaty to take up your cross sounds no more daunting than the ad exhorting you never to leave home without your Visa Card.

Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” With apologies to retailers, and knowing the multitude of crosses which adorn our necks, walls, and communion tables appropriately bear significant meaning for us, I doubt Jesus had Macy’s on his mind when he made that statement. For the tone, tenor, setting and import of that invitation evoke not retail frenzy but fear and outright resistance.

This significant exchange between Jesus, Peter, the disciples, and the greater crowd which Mark means to include us, takes place as Mark narrows the focus of his Gospel. The people have been captivated by the power of Jesus to heal, the people have been enthralled by the power of Jesus’ teaching. It has been enough that many have left their homes and their lives to follow, but they don’t yet understand the import of Jesus’ presence. Mark is now directing us as readers to the ultimate purpose of Jesus’ incarnation. You see, to put it simply, Mark is a Good Friday gospel. The focus of Mark’s words is to direct us to one place - the cross. If you read Mark’s gospel, nobody really understands what is happening until the Centurion observing the death of Jesus on the cross says, “Truly, this was the son of God.” That’s the aha! moment in Mark.

Until then the people who follow are intrigued, they are moved, and some are even counting on Jesus to be the king who will re-establish Israel as a world power. So, like shrewd stock speculators, they are betting that a few shares of Jesus, Inc. would be a good investment.

Jesus has just put the question plainly before the disciples. “Who do you say that I am.” And after some initial conjecturing about Moses and the prophets, Peter offers the correct answer. “You are the messiah.” But that doesn’t mean they are on the same page. Peter’s thinking victory and power and prestige. Peter’s thinking about colors and carpet samples for his office in the king’s palace when Jesus demolishes his daydreams with the words church marketers love to hate: suffering, rejection, and death.

You don’t see many promotions, commercials, or church banners highlighting those sobering words. “Come to South Meck. for a little suffering, rejection, and death.

This is the opposite of what Peter was expecting. “Wait a minute. What about the king’s coronation Ball? I was going to look so good in that tux!” Suffering, rejection, and death. “Wait a minute, that’s what kings inflict, not what they experience!” Suffering, rejection, and death. “Wait a minute, I thought we were going to kick some serious Roman hind parts all the way back across the Mediterranean! I thought I’d be redecorating Pilate’s house in the next few weeks!” Suffering, rejection, death.

We really can’t blame Peter. Who ever would have thought that heaven’s throne on earth would be a splinter ridden, torturous instrument of execution? Offer a first century Judean a necklace with a cross on it and they would have called you sick.

When the people of that time contemplated the role of the Messiah, they thought power, they thought self-preservation. If any one was to suffer, it would be the enemy.

But Jesus shatters their expectations. This Christ spoke of love instead of power. This Christ would sacrifice his life so that others could live instead of sacrificing others so that he and his political cronies could live. This Christ would reign eternally in heaven rather than forge a small temporary monarchy on earth. And to make matters worse this Christ says that the people who truly experience the meaning of life will be the one’s losing themselves in the effort of carrying crosses.

I can’t help but believe Christ is scratching his heavenly head in confusion over our obsession with homeland security. O certainly, safety and security have their place, but if we live in paranoid fear, are we truly living and can we truly love? If we’re afraid/suspicious of everybody, how can we love anybody?

Jesus would not be deterred from his journey to Jerusalem, his love wouldn’t allow it. Was he afraid? To be sure, but as I John says, “Perfect love casts out fear.” There would be danger ahead but life’s meaning would be exemplified in the love he shared there. And so it is with us. Life is a gift to be received with gratitude and pursued with courage. Life with Christ is not insulation against the world’s suffering. No, to know Christ is to know that where there is suffering, there is Christ.

Instead of existing in fear, obsessing over how we can protect, insulate, segregate, and secure ourselves, maybe we need a little dose of recklessness in order to experience the power of Christ in the weight of the cross that bears our name.

There is something that the world calls a threat that could bear the meaning of life for you. What is your cross?

My wife Donna bears the unique ability to find lovely that which the world considers unlovely. Given her choice in spouses, you’ve already figured that one out. Donna received her master’s degree in Special Education a few days before I proposed to her, and believe me, when she said yes, I wasn’t sure whether it was love or because she saw me as the ultimate project.

Anyway, years before that, at an age when I and my friends were finding new ways to mock and mortify the kids who were different than us, Donna had already sensed that she would dedicate herself to special education. She already felt a deep seated calling to care for those the world so easily marginalized. She experiences great delight and profound satisfaction in places where I would feel extremely uncomfortable and awkward. We look at her students and we feel pity, she gets down on the floor with those students and feels joy. For her the weight of that cross is just about right.

Life for many of these students is what we would call short and tragic. Day in and day out there are life threatening health complications. Brittle bones, susceptibility to infection, the threat of death is often looming. Expenses can be crushing. And where physical issues aren’t front and center, the challenge of care is immense. 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Donna will talk about the courage of these parents.

Though exhausted and drained, their love for their children thrives. A colleague told me about an older couple in his congregation whose peers were enjoying vacation cruises, winter trips to Florida, theatre, just going out to the movies on a whim. But this couple’s lives were dominated by the immense challenge of caring for their severely autistic adult daughter. It was draining, consuming, and there were surely periods of despair, but in a brief moment of reflection my colleague heard the husband say to his wife, “You know, Janet, in the end the greatest thing that could be said to us is that we loved our autistic daughter.” The cross was heavy, but there was great meaning in the effort.

Faith does not provide an evasion from suffering, but infuses all of life including the suffering with meaning, purpose, and love. Indeed, faith draws us even into the suffering that we may represent and experience Christ there.

The New York Times reported this week that the cancer of genocide in the Sudan is now crossing the border into Chad. One young man, whose only “sin” was the tribe into which he was born, nervously accompanied columnist Nicholas Kristof to the edge of his village of Karmadodo. Eleven days earlier, Sudaneses military aircraft and a force of several hundred janjaweed had suddenly attacked the village. Mr. Haroun and his wife had run for their lives, with his wife carrying their 3-month-old baby, Ahmed. (They remain invisible to us but remember, they have names.)

The janjaweed raiders overtook Mr. Haroun’s wife and beat her so badly that she is still unconscious. They also grabbed Ahmed from her arms.

‘They looked at the baby,’ Mr. Haroun added, ‘and since he was a boy, they shot him.’”

Is not our silence, our indifference deadly? Is not our silence, our indifference the real Weapon of Mass Destruction? Individually, collectively, who will take up the cross and represent the Christ for Mr. Haroun?

Who will take up the cross and represent the Christ for the voiceless, right less detainee who has possibly been tortured under our flag for no reason other than mistaken identity?

Who will take up the cross and represent the Christ for the hungry, for the victims of domestic abuse, for the unlovely and unloved?

Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and the sake of the gospel will save it.”

Will Willimon tells the story of the time a representative of Teach America came to Duke University. He says, “Teach America tries to recruit this nation’s most talented college graduates to go into some of the nation’s worst public schools. This is Teach America’s means of transforming our schools into something better.

This woman stood up in front of a large group of Duke students, a larger group than [one] would suppose would come out to this sort of thing, and said to them, “I can tell by looking at you that I have probably come to the wrong place. Somebody told me this was a BMW campus and I can believe it looking at you.

Just looking at you, I can tell that all of you are a success. Why would you all be on this campus if you were not successful, if you were not going on to successful careers on Madison Avenue or Wall Street?

“And yet here I stand, hoping to talk one of you into giving away your life in the toughest job you will ever have. I am looking for people to go into the hollows of West Virginia, into the ghettos of South Los Angeles and teach in some of the most difficult schools in the world. Last year, two of our teachers were killed while on the job.

“And I can tell, just by looking at you, that none of you are interested in that. So go on to law school, or whatever successful thing you are planning on doing.

“But if by chance, some of you just happen to be interested, I’ve got these brochures here for you to tell about Teach America. Meeting’s over.”

With that, the whole group stood up, pushed into the aisles, shoved each other aside, ran down to the front, and fought over those brochures.

That may sound surprising but it really isn’t. At some level we know life isn’t just about routine, soccer leagues, affluence, and security, and that ever elusive, ever fleeting thing we call happiness. We want life to mean something, to be about something, and you know what? That’s what Jesus wants for us, too.

Jesus said, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

At times it will feel dreadfully heavy, but it can also hurt so good. Amen.

Resources:

1. Patrick Wilson, Christian Century

2. Nicholas Kristof, The New York Times

3. William Willimon, Duke University Chapel, The Christian Century

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