Community Church Sermons
Second Sunday in Lent – March 16, 2003
“A Cross In Every Direction:
We try to find ways to relate to God--to bring the Divine down to the level of the human--so we can somehow get our minds around God. It’s a futile attempt, often telling more about ourselves than about God.
I started wondering what might happen if God got with modern technology and installed voice-mail. I imagined something like this:
“Hello,” says an angelic voice. “Thank you for calling heaven. We value your prayer and will make every effort to take care of your concerns promptly and efficiently. Please stay on the line; we can deal with your prayers more quickly than if you hang up and try again.
“To help us direct your call to the party to whom you wish to speak please route your call as follows. If you wish to speak to one of the martyrs, press 1; to one of the saints, press 2; to one of the angels, press 3; to the Virgin Mary, press 4, to Jesus, press 5; to the Holy Spirit, press 6; and if you wish to speak directly to God, press 7”
I pressed seven. I wanted to go right to the top.
Beep and beep again.
There was a long pause. The telephone line played a recording of Bruce Springsteen singing a Bach cantata accompanied by a choir comprising 2000 clones of Linda Ronstadt. Then, a voice came on that was neither male nor female, neither loud, nor soft. In fact, I couldn’t even give it a quality—it seemed to vibrate through the very molecules of nature and permeate my cells and my thoughts. I knew it must, at last, be God.
“Thank you for calling,” the voice said. “your call is very important to me. I’m sorry, but I’m either away from my heavenly throne or tied up with another prayer request. If you wish to speak to my secretary, press 0.
“Otherwise, please leave a detailed message at the sound of the harp, and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can.”
Now sometimes it may seem, from our perspective, that the responsiveness of God to our needs is not unlike our frustrated moments caught in a voice-mail loop. But ultimately, we are thankful that the infinite ways of God are not the ways of humans.
We Christians believe that Jesus is God with us in some powerful and unique way. Jesus is the highest disclosure of the Divine life and will that we know. That is our faith. Emmanuel--God with us. God coming close to us in a human person. But at important moments, Jesus is also at great distance from us. Jesus reveals God to us, but also the difference between God and us. Sometimes Jesus stands against us. Jesus is God’s great bridge to us. He is also God’s great distance from us. There is a gap between God and us. That gap has a face, a name – Jesus. Discipleship is risking that gap in order that we can come closer to the true, untamed, undomesticated real and living God.
There is a great chasm between who we think Jesus ought to be and who Jesus is. The good news is that Jesus confronts the differences, ministers to us and our misunderstandings, and keeps calling us to follow him down his narrow, different, unconventional way that seems from our vantage point to be the way of death, but is ultimately the way of life.
But we have to learn this way. We have to learn to follow Jesus.
Not everything must be learned. You don’t have to teach a baby to cry when he is hungry. You do not have to teach a child to move her hand quickly when she touches something that’s hot. There is a whole category of behavior that does not have to be learned. Instinct. Reflexes. But you have to learn to follow Jesus.
My denominational background is the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) which was a Christian unity movement that developed in the late 1700s and early 1800s. The reason for that dual denomination name is historical. The two most prominent leaders of the movement out of which the denomination grew couldn’t agree on whether the most appropriate name for a follower of Jesus was Christian or Disciple. It was a friendly debate, but one of those typical theological debates for which there is no correct answer. But I do like the term “disciple of Christ”; it has an air of humility about it. A disciple of Jesus is a learner, a follower. The word disciple implies a process, a journey. It’s not static--it’s dynamic. We are not settlers, we are pilgrims on a road. The word defines our relationship to Jesus--people who have something to learn. That is still the case. We are above everything else—students.
No one is born a disciple. It’s not something we are genetically programmed to become. Following Jesus is not an instinct. It is like riding a bike, playing chess or speaking a language. We must learn to be a disciple.
The gospel lesson this morning is a conversation between a teacher and his students. The subject is discipleship. Jesus is teaching the first disciples where the path would lead them. Mark’s gospel frames it as a lesson that they were slow to grasp—not quickly or easily learned.
I’m a lover of books. I guess I caught that love from my Dad. I would spend hours browsing his substantial library. And, when I took a hiatus from pastoral ministry a few years ago, what else would I do but, naturally, work in a bookstore! I love books. Books are our friends. I particularly love books that are well written, and, if they are non-fiction, books that make you think, dig deep, even as they communicate complex issues in clear and understandable ways. I like those kind of books. I always wondered why Jesus did not hand his followers a book, or a succinct little manual of discipleship with all the rules and regulations, all the expectations and benefits clearly defined? Wouldn’t it be convenient if we were able to give people a little book – “How to Live the Christian Life,” “Seven Steps to Discipleship”? People write books like that--but there isn’t one you know. Not even the Bible functions exactly in that way. The Bible is a story, not a reference manual.
Why is there no such book? Well, for the same reason no parent hands her child a book on riding bicycles and says “read this, and you will learn how to ride a bike.” You learn to ride a bicycle by riding a bicycle. Falling off, getting on, falling off, getting on until one time – you don’t fall off. We learn to follow Jesus by following Jesus. If life is a journey, then discipleship is learned along the way.
How long, I wonder, had Simon Peter and Andrew and James and John and Mary and Martha been following Jesus before he told them that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer and die? How long had the disciples been disciples before he told them, “if anyone would be a follower of mine he must leave self behind and take up his cross and follow me”?
Peter was the spokesman for the group when he expressed the shock at the thought that Jesus had a cross in his future. “God forbid it Lord. This must never happen to you.” How did those first followers react when they learned that disciples must be like their teacher? How did they respond when they heard that discipleship is not a matter of power and glory, that following Jesus was not a matter of efficient management and feel-good experiences. It was not something to enhance one’s prestige and influence or legitimate one’s politics or cultural or nationalistic and socio-economic perspectives and self-interests. To the contrary. “If anyone would follow me, let him leave self behind and take up his cross . . .” How did the disciples respond? Were some disillusioned? Were some dismayed?
Did the disciples know when they signed on to this movement and left their nets by the Sea of Galilee where Jesus would take them? As Mark’s gospel tells the story, this is the first time the disciples hear Jesus say that following him involves self-denial and carrying a cross. Did some say, “that’s more than I bargained for, that isn’t in my contract.” Did some leave? Did some go back to their boats, farms or shops? And those disciples who stayed, those who continued to follow Jesus, even after they heard this dark, foreboding word about leaving self behind—did they understand at that time what all this talk meant? Did they hear that word once and comprehend with absolute certainty what would be asked of them if they followed? Is that how we learn to follow Jesus?
Mark frames this great central section of the gospel between two symbolic stories. This section of the gospel describes Jesus’ final resolute journey to Jerusalem and contains three solemn sayings about his impending death and resurrection, and speaks unflinchingly of discipleship as following Jesus on this journey.
At the beginning of this section, Mark places the story of the blind man of Bethesda. Jesus restores his sight in two stages. After the first, the blind man sees people, but not clearly, only as shadows: “They look like trees walking.” After Jesus lays his hands on him a second time, the blind man sees everything clearly. At the end of the section is the story of a blind beggar named Bartimaeus. He cries out to Jesus, “Have compassion on me!” Jesus asks, “What do you want me to do for you?” In superbly evocative language, Bartimaeus expresses his deepest human desire: “Let me see again.” Then we are told, “Bartimaeus regained his sight and followed Jesus on the way.”
By placing these stories like parentheses around this section, Mark gives them a symbolic, metaphorical meaning. Namely, gaining one’s sight—seeing again—is seeing the way of Jesus. A way or a path that involves journeying with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, the place of death and resurrection, of endings and beginnings. To see that is to have one’s eyes opened. But notice that the first blind man couldn’t see clearly at once. It took a second attempt. It was a process. He was slow to see. Just as the disciples were slow to comprehend what discipleship meant. Just as Peter, who had a short time before had recognized Jesus as Messiah, did not now have a clue what that meant.
Regarding some things we often say: “It’s like learning to ride a bike. Once you know how, you never forget.” That is the way to describe a skill, once mastered, we never lose. Either you’ve got it or you don’t.
It doesn’t appear on my resume, but I count as one of my greatest accomplishments in life the fact that I helped both of my children to learn how to ride a bike. It’s not easy on the teacher or the pupil. It requires a few band-aids and patience and encouragement in the extreme. But once they’ve got it, they’ve got it. Once you learn you never forget how.
Is that what it’s like—learning to follow Jesus? Discipleship in one easy lesson? Take up your cross, one time, and you’re home free? How do we learn to leave self behind? What does it mean to take up our cross?
There was a man in a city where I once lived who took this saying of Jesus quite literally. He would walk around town with this very large cross over his shoulder. There were only two things wrong with the picture. In the first place, the cross had wheels on the bottom so it rolled along the sidewalk. I always wondered if the Roman soldiers were so thoughtful. In the second place, he carried this cross day after day, week after week, month after month, but no one ever used it. People gawked at Dan, tried to ignore Dan, but no one ever tried to crucify Dan. It was a cross bearing with no risk. It was a cross bearing with no painful consequences. Is that what Jesus had in mind when he said, “take up your cross?”
Some think that carrying a cross is a matter of enduring difficult circumstances in life. The trials and tribulations of being a parent. The struggle of adolescence. The difficulties of carrying for older parents. The afflictions of disease or disability. I have heard all of those things and more referred to as “the cross I have to carry.” Is that what Jesus meant? That life is going to be hard, that disciples would have difficulties with which to contend?
There are struggles in life with which all people must contend. That is the condition of our mortality. But bearing a cross is not something that happens to everyone. It is something that you choose to do because you are a disciple, because you are a follower of Jesus of Nazareth. A cross is chosen, freely taken up. That was true for Jesus. Jesus could have stayed in Galilee, never gone to Jerusalem and put himself at risk. He chose the cross.
Leaving the self behind, carrying the cross is the very nature of discipleship. It is a way of life for those who seek to follow Jesus.
It is not a skill you learn from a manual or a guide to Christian living, or even the Bible, though the bible provides us a vision of that life. We learn to follow Jesus by following.
It is not an art that once mastered never again presents difficulty. It is something that we must learn over and over again.
Michelangelo had a maxim: “Still I am learning.” That speaks for you and that speaks for me. We are trying to live in such a way that something other than self is the focus of our life. That is why discipleship is not easily or quickly learned. That’s why being a follower is not something once mastered can easily be repeated. Following Jesus is a matter of deciding daily to do that which does not come naturally.
Our instinct is to look out for only for ourselves. To buy the motto “greed is good.” To seek our own pleasure at the expense of others, our own security, our own safety. Cultural conventional wisdom reinforces what comes naturally, “Look out for #1,” “Do unto others before they do unto you.” And Jesus says, if any would follow me, he must leave self behind . . . take up her cross, and follow me.” For it is in the path of death—metaphorically understood—that we find life.
Make no mistake, selfishness is the enemy. Self-centeredness is the problem. It is our pre-occupation with ourselves that estranges us from the Divine life of God. “You shall have no other gods before me,” that’s the first commandment. And we know that the most tempting idol, the most seductive idol, is the one that bears our image.
Every day life presents us with ethical choices:
Every day, every day we must learn again how to follow Jesus. Amen.