Second Sunday in Lent

12 March 2006

Chaplaincy of St. George’s

Orange City, Iowa

The Rev. Dr. Karen Wacome, Presiding

Dr. Donald Wacome, Lay Preaching

Self-Denial

“I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor anything else in creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord!” Thus St. Paul’s exhalant exclamation in his letter to the Romans. But then what about Jesus’ own harsh words here in Mark’s Gospel? It sounds as though there is something that can separate us from the Love of God in Christ: “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” If you’re ashamed of God, well then, tit-for tat, he’ll be ashamed of you, and you’re done for!

Should we hear these hard words as threatening ultimate rejection, condemnation, damnation? I don’t think we can. You can be ashamed only of someone you recognize as your own, someone who, for better or—in this case—for worse, you identify with. I can be ashamed of my friends and relations, but not of strangers. I can be ashamed of Northwestern or of the United States, but not of Dordt or Brazil. If Jesus is ashamed of you, then—even then—he acknowledges you as his, though obviously not in the way you would want to be owned by him.

Jesus has someone specific in mind. It’s Peter who has demonstrated that he is ashamed of Jesus. It’s Peter who has made Jesus ashamed of him. Today’s lesson immediately follows Jesus asking the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” The question elicits Peter’s bold response, “You are the Christ!”, a messianic confession that in turn elicits an unexpected response: Jesus tells Peter to keep quiet about him. And, as we move into the lesson for today, Jesus starts to portray himself as the complete opposite of the victorious messiah Peter wants him to be, warning that he will suffer, be rejected, and be killed by the authorities. He’s going to wind up like all the other would-be messiahs of Israel who have gone before, discredited, destroyed, forgotten, their humiliated disciples scattered. Peter, who regards himself as Jesus’ confidante and advisor, is appalled. Up to this point in the Marcan narrative, everything Jesus has done has given his entourage reason to be proud of him, and to take pride in being with him. Jesus has shown up the scribes, teaching in the synagogues with the authority they lack. He’s given the full-of-themselves Pharisees fits, flouting their purity codes and hanging out with the common people and lowlifes they despise. And he’s exercised powers that can come only from God, healing the sick, casting out demons, feeding the crowds, calming the waves, even raising the dead. Jesus has power and authority, a power and authority that he’s sharing it with his disciples, sending them out to heal and preach in his name.

But now Jesus is throwing it all away. He’s snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Peter thinks it’s his place to pull Jesus aside to tell him to cut it out. He’s not living up to his potential as Messiah. He’s embarrassing himself and his supporters. I’m imagining Karl Rove’s reaction to George W. Bush calling a press conference to announce he expects he’ll lose the next election by a landslide, and be indicted and impeached.

Peter passionately wants to be in on the deliverance of Israel; he wants the people of God vindicated and their enemies trounced, and for him Jesus is the means to this end. He has called Jesus the Christ, but he’s clueless; he doesn’t know who Jesus is. Jesus forces him to look into the abyss that separates his way from God’s way, the way of triumph from the way of the Cross, and Peter angrily rebukes him; he’s ashamed of Jesus’ foolishness, his weakness.

It is precisely this that Jesus targets with the famous words, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me!” Jesus calls Peter—and the rest of us—to self-denial, but it’s crucial that we do not mistake this for a platitudinous recommendation of altruism, or of some sort of quasi-Buddhist renunciation of the ego. What’s at stake is whether we forsake our own judgment, the common sense self-preservation that invariably latches on to power, propriety, plausibility and runs like

hell away from folly, weakness, contamination, and death, and against all odds accept the foolishness of God in Christ, the shameful way of the Cross.

Beginning with Peter behaving like an ass here in Mark’s account, there’s a long sad history of people ashamed of the real God who makes himself known in the real Jesus, and putting him to shame by insisting on their own way, devising, in the name of the crucified God, a religion on good terms with the powerful, arrogant in its certitudes, its rules of purity, its exclusions, condemnations, its moralizing respectability, and its cold inhumanity.

When I was an undergraduate, a fellow student, exasperated about something or other that Christians were doing in the name of Christ, exclaimed, “If Jesus saw this, he’d turn over in his grave!” The assertion of course suggests a less than fully internalized belief in Jesus’ resurrection, but it’s easy to sympathize with the sentiment. Which is to say that it’s easy to see how other would-be followers of Jesus get up to things that must make Jesus ashamed of them. It’s probably a bit too easy. I find that other people’s sin is always so much more important and interesting than my own. Yet the exercise fitting for this Lenten season is to ask ourselves how, in the name of Christ, we deny Christ rather than ourselves. Emo Phillips says, “When I was a child, I used to pray to God for a bicycle, but then I realized that God doesn’t work that way—so I stole a bike and prayed for forgiveness!” Unfortunately, the stratagems by which we sacrifice the true God for a god made a means to our ends are rarely so blatant, at least to ourselves.

Yet, we take heart. Peter’s denial of Jesus, implicit here, emerges full form on the night of Jesus’ arrest, lurking outside the temple, moved now more by fear than pride, he invokes a curse on himself and swears “I do not know this man of whom you speak!” telling more truth than he intends. But in the end even he at last does come to know Jesus. Peter is ashamed, he denies, he seeks to save his life, but Jesus gives his life, forgives, and saves. Our trust is that, despite ourselves, what St. Paul says is true: Nothing—not even all the ways we deny him and put him to shame—can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord. May we, like George Herbert, grow in confidence that the faithfulness of God outlives our faithlessness:

 
Love bade me welcome, yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eye'd Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning
If I lacked anything.
 
"A guest," I answered, "worthy to be here";
Love said, "You shall be he."
"I, the unkind, the ungrateful? ah my dear,
I cannot look on thee."
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
"Who made the eyes but I?"
 
"Truth, Lord, but I have marred them; let my shame
Go where it doth deserve."
"And know you not," says Love, "who bore the blame?"
"My dear, then I will serve."
"You must sit down," says Love, "and taste my meat."
So I did sit and eat.
 
Amen.