| Then 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. He said all
this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began
to rebuke him. But 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." He 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. 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.
For what will it profit them to gain the whole world
and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in
return for their life? Those 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." |
|
| Mark 8:31-38 |
| Last Friday I was a guest at Brith Kodesh a Reformed Jewish
congregation near Twelve Corners in Rochester. Brith Kodesh
annually hosts “Clergy Days” an event open to all
area clergy and interested congregation members. Each year
the Rabbis arrange for a speaker to lead the interfaith community
in substantive dialogue. The congregation, Rabbis and staff
also provided us with gracious hospitality and a delicious
lunch. It was my first time in Brith Kodesh’s synagogue.
Shortly after entering I realized the temple’s design
and ambiance radiated with a theology of the goodness of life
and the knowledge of God’s love. Every corner I turned
held historic artifacts lovingly preserved by the faith community.
Both ancient and modern artwork depicted God’s story
with Israel throughout the ages. Different rooms and hallways
had appropriate words from the Torah etched into stone, stitched
on tapestries or painted on the wall like markers pointing
toward God. Entering the room where the seminar took place
a smile of joy crept across my face. The room was filled with
natural light from window walls displaying gardens on two sides.
On the front wall a massive collection of menorahs was displayed
with the words “The Lord is my light” painted above.
I was mesmerized! The synagogue had turned communal testimony
written on the hearts of God’s people into a display
for all to see. I considered all I took in signs of life, of
God’s good word for us! |
| At home that evening I reflected on what I had witnessed.
Behind the signs of life, I became cognizant of the fact that
much of what I had taken in was a witness to God even amidst
great pain and suffering. These testimonies of faith proclaimed
that God’s saving hand and steadfast love brought the
people through times of persecution and darkness. The holocaust,
slavery in Egypt, the Babylonian exile and even the troubles
in an individual’s life have eventually born witness
to the triumph of life over death. At Brith Kodesh on Friday
I felt like I was seeing what Abraham and Peter couldn’t
yet see in their situations; the fidelity of God’s love
believed and claimed in the best and worst of times. |
| Abraham laughed at God in our Old Testament lesson. Who can
blame him? Can what has been “dried up” since a
marriage began create new life? Mark portrays the disciples,
especially Peter, as one of disbelief too. My favorite line
in our story from Mark is this one, “He said all this
quite openly.” Mark as narrator gives us a clue that
Jesus’ words were the last thing the crowds or the disciples
expected to hear. “He said ALL
THIS quite openly.” This
open proclamation of Jesus’ death was scandalous in Peter’s
mind. That’s why he took Jesus aside to reason with him.
Peter confronts, head on, what we often wonder inwardly about
when he rebuked Jesus. Can glory shine through suffering as
a sign of life? Can there be a way of hope if we can’t
see it or comprehend it at this time? |
| Paul wrote to the Corinthians this instruction “we
proclaim Christ crucified… Christ the power of God and
the wisdom of God. For God’s foolishness is wiser than
human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human
strength. (1 Cor. 1:23-25) That which we reckon now as foolish,
could be God’s way of showing us new life. |
| If we are to follow God’s signs of life our own ideas
of what is life giving will have to change. Soren Kierkegaard
once said “Jesus’ whole life on earth, from beginning
to end, was destined solely to have followers and to make admirers
impossible.” (1) We worship the One who made
a new way of life in the descent to death, transforming death
into life forever. To follow Christ is to be set free from
the bondage that daily tries to claim our minds, which are
set on human things instead of God’s things. The world
believes that personal gain is wise and fulfilling. God declares
worldly gain to be void of life. God insists that real life
is found in the freedom of losing ourselves in God’s
loving embrace through faith. |
| God was busy making a way where there wasn’t one, but
Abraham and Peter don’t know it. Covenant faithfulness
is a sign of life, yet neither Abraham nor Sarah could believe
it before it became true. How could bearing the burden of the
cross be a sign of life? Peter didn’t understand. If
such pillars of faith seem clueless where do we come out in
our understanding of God’s will and ways? |
| The good news for us is that at some point, Abraham, Sarah
and Peter, put their faith in God’s desire to be in an
ongoing relationship with them. They found that this relationship
offered new life when they least expected it. They began to
understand that God worked outside of what is rational. When
they found a new way of life to be true and God’s promises
kept, they shared their story with others. Isaac was named
laughter! We hear God’s redemption in the allowance to
laugh at our own disbelief. Peter claimed and preached forgiveness
as one who denied and abandoned Jesus as we all do. |
| During Lent we proclaim the paradox that new life can stem
from repentance. Repentence is not about shaming ourselves,
but about truth telling and placing faith in God’s forgiveness.
Kathleen Norris tells a story about teaching parochial school
children to write their own poetry based on the Psalms. She’s
found that children are often uninhibited in their emotional
directness in writing and this practice offers them a way to
work through their desires for vengeance. One little boy wrote
his Psalm titled, “The Monster Who Was Sorry.” He
began by admitting that he hates it when his father yells at
him: his response in the poem is to throw his sister down the
stairs, and then to wreck his room, and finally to wreck the
whole town. The poem concludes: “Then I sit in my messy
house and say to myself, ‘I shouldn’t have done
all that.’” Norris says that if the boy had been
a novice in the fourth-century monastic desert, his elders
might have told him he was well on the way toward repentence,
not such a monster after all, but only human. The boy’s
imagination gave him a way to see that he could bring all his
feelings of frustration before God and put them in their proper
place.(2) You could say he was willing to take up his cross
in a powerful way by working his anger over the disappointing
parts of his life. |
| This is what Jesus did for us. The cross was transformed
to a sign of life. Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote, “Self-denial
means knowing only Christ, and no longer one’s self.
It means seeing only Christ, who goes ahead of us, and no longer
the path that is too difficult for us. Again, self-denial is
saying only: He goes ahead of us; hold fast to him.” (3) God is ahead of us beckoning us forward to catch on to the
transforming life we’ve been promised. Each cross we
have to bear has already been tempered with God’s grace,
love and promise to be with us always. We have to scurry to
catch up with the Spirit’s beckoning call to discipleship.
Stubbornness and lethargy set in often as we struggle to claim
new life. Engage in the struggle! Pick up your cross and carry
it. Better yet share it and proclaim what you are going through.
Repent and believe that you can make it with God’s help.
Your crosses and mine will be full of burden, but that burden
will be transformed through grace. |
| Amen |
| Beth E. Godfrey - March 12, 2006 |
| Central Presbyterian Church, Geneseo, New
York |
| 1. Wendell Berry, Dorothy L. Sayers, … Bread
and Wine: Readings for Lent and Easter (Plough Publishing House: USA,
2002) 55. |
| 2. Ibid, 11. |
| 3. Ibid, 49-50. |
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