Rev. Noel Koestline, September 17, 2000
Mark 8:27-38
Before E. B. White moved to his farm to become the barnyard chronicler we know from Charlotte's Web, he lived and wrote in New York City. He wrote observations of life in the city, including one episode that occurred during the frantic shopping days before Christmas.
"Shopping in Woolworth's, in the turbulent days, we saw a little boy put his hand inquiringly on a ten-cent Christ child, part of a creche. 'What is this?' he asked his mother, who had him by the hand. C'mon, c'mon,' replied the harassed woman, 'you don't want that!' She dragged him grimly away--a Woolworth Madonna, her mind dark with gift-thoughts, following a star of her own devising,14
"You don't want that!," she said, meaning Jesus. Well, do we? Do we want Jesus? As Mark tells the story we're not too sure.
Jesus had just asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?"
They offered up some tentative answers--John the Baptist, some guessed; Elijah or maybe one of the other prophets. People weren't sure who Jesus was.
"Well, who do you say that I am?," he asked them.
Peter looked around, then blurted out, "You are the Messiah." Something in the way Peter said those words or some uncertainty in the disciples' voices caused Jesus to recognize that they had pronounced the truth without actually penetrating it.
Like a lucky algebra student, they had stumbled on the right answer without struggling through the difficult, painful equation. They knew but they didn't know, so Jesus told them to be quiet, to say nothing at all about him to anyone, and he began to teach them.
What he taught them was: "the Son of Man must undergo great suffering," Mark tells us, "be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed…. And after three days, rise again." The disciples must have been flabbergasted.
Peter probably spoke for all of them: "C'mon, c'mon, you don't want that!" Suffering,! Rejection! and, finally, death! Nobody wants that! You don't want that, do you?
What do people want, though?
Who do you say that Jesus is?
Who do you want Jesus to be?
What Jesus is it that you want?
A big question in American religious life right now is, What do people want? What are people looking for in a religion? In a church? In a Savior?
In the gospel of Mark Jesus describes his own time as an "adulterous and sinful generation." Kenneth Woodward, the religion editor of Newsweek magazine describes our generation as "an age of mix-em, match-em, salad-bar spirituality."15 You know how salad bars work: you take what you want, the mixed greens, the cherry tomatoes, a sprinkling of sprouts; you leave behind what you don't want, the cauliflower, the corn relish.
People assemble their spiritual lives in much the same way, says Woodward, and he cites a contemporary pilgrim who declares, "Instead of me fitting a religion I found a religion to fit me. 16 One can only suppose the fit is cozy.
"For our time the foremost theological question seems to be not, How can I fulfill God's purpose for my life? Or How can I find God? Or even Is there a God? But "What do I want?"
The church scene begins more and more to take on the shape of a suburban shopping mall.
According to some marketing studies people select a faith and a church the same way they select a new car or CD player. This model has these features and those options, but that model is a respectable name brand but that other model is indeed less costly. Perhaps Consumer Reports will publish a religion edition to aid church shoppers
By the same measure, Maybe we'd like to model our Jesus according to checklist. Check below the qualities that you want in a Messiah:
"C'mon, c'mon, You don't want that!"
Let me be clear. As much as anybody here, I want an uplifting, inspiring, strengthening religion. A religion that is an institutional version of a critical, scolding parent isn't going to help me claim and live into the purposes God has for my life.
However, I KNOW that you and I both want more than a "consumer comfortable" faith. We may start out there, but we don't want to end up there.
We know that a Jesus who does everything for us and asks nothing of us isn't for real. Yes, we want what we want, and among the things we want, we want the truth: the truth about me, the truth about other people, the truth about the world we live in, the truth about God.
Over the years we have come to suspect that the truth is a great deal larger and tougher and more complicated than my getting "what I want." There is no denying, however, that the thought that religious faith is only about getting what we want is a very appealing one.
Jesus' words, by contrast, are anything but pretty. Finishing his instructions to the disciples, Jesus turns to the whole crowd that come after him and says,
"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."
Take that verse and walk it around the shopping mall some Saturday afternoon!
C'mon, c'mon, you don't want that!
The only crosses most of us carry are on gold chains around our necks. How do we today "take up our cross"? Although some would suggest substituting the word "suffering" or "trials," for your cross, try substituting the word, "responsibility." "Take up your responsibilities and follow me."...
Rather than suggest responsibilities you might pick up and carry, (I'm sure you're thinking, "Oh no! I have too many of those already! I can't handle them as it is."), I want you to think about this question. This is a bottom-line kind 'a question:
It was asked us at the last session of the five-day seminar I attended last spring.
The topic at hand was managing ourselves as spiritual leaders and CEO's of the local church. Here it is:
"If you could identify ONE THING -- that maybe you avoid doing, maybe you procrastinate about, but IF YOU DID IT, IT WOULD MAKE ALL THE DIFFERENCE, what would it be?"...
Actually answer it for yourself; this is not a rhetorical question. I'm sure you could make a whole list, but just ONE THING that would be pivotal.) (You might think, "What am I letting myself get away with?"
What are you habitual, even addictive about that drives others and even yourself crazy?
What does God keep telling/showing you, but you choose to ignore… "you don't want that.")...
It might be as simple as getting a full eight hours of sleep a night or telling a special someone every day how much you care.
For example:
Could this be what it means to carry your cross?...
One of our members has been so discouraged, she has hardly had the energy to do more than flop on the bed after work. But she made herself do one thing: sign up for a computer course offered free by her work. Having done that, she found the energy to visit her uncle in the nursing home. At the nursing home, she caught a vision for a new career: recreation therapist!
After years as an office worker, all of a sudden, now there was a new surge of energy and enthusiasm. She made herself take that one first step.
It's not that our bodies that need to be crucified, but that willfulness, that resistance that keeps you and me bound to the old habits and patterns of self-protection.
Facing that stubbornness in ourselves may be the courageous act of carrying our cross. And carrying the cross leads to the crown! The victory.
A couple of years ago a fellow named John decided to take up his responsibilities toward his wife and two children. He had become estranged from them because he was headstrong, drifting, going his own way, by his own devices. They slowly came to trust his resolve, and carrying the cross won him the crown -- the renewal of his family circle.
The great lie of the culture that we've bought into is that we find life by getting more of it. We think we can add on faith and church and spirituality to our accumulation of things that make life more attractive and comfortable.
This is the Achilles heal of Consumer religion, the "I want what I want." : We never move beyond the small circle of "I," beyond the comfort zone. We never TOUCH the larger purpose for which God has made us!
What is your cross ? What is the One thing that God would have you do, that IF YOU DID IT, it would make all the difference?
Though the way of Jesus sounds strange--no doubt about that there is also something strangely appealing about it.
When we face our own dark side, confront it, refuse to indulge it, or, as the Bible has it, "deny ourselves," then amazing and wonderful and grace-filled things begin to happen, not only for those around us, but for us too.
The gospel is right: This is the way God, (blessing and fullness) come into the world: losing life that life may finally be given to all. "Deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me."
This is the strange thing about this religion of Jesus: At the very center is the cross.
One young mother who had dropped away from faith in college decided it was time to get her family back to church when her four year old pointed to a crucifix and asked, "What's that man doing, Mom?"19
"What's that man doing?" is not an easy question to answer. It is a much more profound question, a much more central question, than "what do I want?" It is a question which promises, in the end, life.
I would like to lead you in praying your response to these thoughts to God.
Acknowledgement: to Patrick Wilson, from whose article in Lectionary Homilitics magazine from whom I drew many of the ideas in this sermon.