Take Up Your Cross

Sermon 8.28.2011 “Take Up Your Cross” Matt. 16.21-28

The church I served years ago in Kansas City was right on the southern edge of Wyandotte County, where the suburban edge of the city met corn fields and farms. The site was chosen because a demographic projection of the area predicted that a very large population of Spanish-speaking people were going to move there from a more urban part of the city. The two-lane road in front of the church was projected to turn into a four-lane boulevard. A Spanish-speaking pastor was brought in from Puerto Rico to start the church up. After eight years the latino migration never occurred, the street never became a boulevard, and the pastor left a small, somewhat confused, English-speaking congregation behind and went off to where a Spanish-speaker was actually needed.

Some time later I arrived to help the English-speaking congregation, who assured me they were in a prime location to grow, since quite a few very large housing developments had been built within just a couple miles. What I learned after arriving was that the housing was in Johnson County, to the south. Now, I could stand on the church property and throw a rock into Johnson County. The problem was that in Wyandotte Co., where the church was, numbered streets ran north and south. In Johnson Co., to the south numbered streets ran east and west. So... to get from the housing developments to the church, you had to successfully negotiate the intersection of 47^th and 47^th, then make the correct turn at the intersection of 55^th and 55^th! It's almost funny --how doomed that church was. 1000' south and it would've been fine!

Sometimes the plans we make just don't work out. How many of us can look at our own lives and say, “Well, it's not exactly what I had in mind for myself.” Maybe things turned out OK, but it's a far cry from what you had expected when you were starting out. I think a lot of us have lived lives like that.

Jesus' disciples had some of expectations for Jesus and themselves when out of the blue, Jesus starts talking about going into Jerusalem and letting his movement blow up – letting himself be arrested and humiliated and killed in the worst possible way. Which would have the effect of putting all of his disciples at risk as well. “Gee, swell plan, Lord! Let's go right now!” When Peter protests, Jesus speaks the famous line, “Get behind me, Satan.” And in doing so he draws a line back to the beginning of his ministry, the Temptation in the Wilderness. At that point Jesus resisted three temptations to short-circuit his ministry and make it something less than it needed to be. So here again near the end of his ministry, Jesus says, no, we're going to do this right, all the way to the end.

Jesus' life was one of sometimes-bewildering and sometimes-infuriating consistency. He called who he wanted to call. He ate with those he wanted to eat with. He touched and healed those he wanted to touch and heal. And he wasn't afraid of anything or anybody. Not afraid of hunger or loneliness or temptation in the desert. Not afraid of lepers. Not afraid of Herod. Not afraid of Pilate. Not afraid of the cross.

We sometimes wonder how to follow such a one as that. How far can we get imitating one like that? I mean, you'd have to be Jesus Christ! And none of us can do that. Our efforts to imitate Jesus are doomed to fail. We don't have Jesus' power, we don't live in Jesus' world. We live in this world – a world where our best laid plans result in planting a church in the only corner of KC that won't grow! Our best laid plans for ourselves run smack into the unpredictable circumstances of life! We can't go very far in imitating Christ... so what we do is internalize him. We listen, we eat and drink. We hear to the words of faith coming out of own mouths and try to get used to the sound. We expose ourselves to the Good News and let it change and transform us. In doing so we find that we might be giving up some of the plans that we originally had for our lives. We might find that instead of climbing some ladder to fame and fortune that we have these strange impulses to feed the hungry, clothe the naked, find the lost, share a cup of cold water, or share the Good News. We might find that some of our life's plans aren't lost altogether, but are placed into a new context, that of doing the best we can to live faithful lives as God leads us.

I don't believe that taking up one's cross means throwing your life away. I don't think it means living as a hermit and forgoing all worldly comfort. Jesus did not recruit followers to be suicide bombers. Bearing a cross does not mean making oneself a martyr by putting up with your stupid in-laws, or enduring chronic pain without seeking medical treatment. We are not called to seek suffering and love suffering. And we are not called to seek out suffering and endure suffering because in doing so we will earn a reward. We are called to make a witness. And we don't have to have the wealth of a Warren Buffet or the power of a Washington politician to do so. Any believer can make a witness. It just so happens that those who make their witness when they are poor or suffering frequently make the most impact. They're considered more credible.

And in every denomination since the beginning of the modern church, the poor have always given a larger percentage of their income to the work of the church than have the wealthy. Logic says the wealthy have more to give. Most wealthy people apparently don't feel that way.

Taking up your cross doesn't mean you go out looking for trouble. It means you make your witness, wherever you are, and with whatever means you have at your disposal. If you find yourself in front of Pilate you tell him the truth and you don't blink. If you find yourself in front of your best friend who's talking about doing something really hurtful, or violent, or dishonest, or selfish you tell him the truth and you don't blink. If you find yourself in front of a total stranger who says that because her life has been tough she has nothing to live for and life is just a cruel joke, you can tell her the truth of what you believe, that yes, sometimes life is really hard and seems really unfair, but she is known and loved by the God who made her, who asks her to lift her eyes from her own pain to see the God that loved her this much (arms spread) on the cross. That God knows what pain and rejection feel like and has hope to offer her of new life and forgiveness and Christian fellowship and people who will encourage and support her.

You can bear a cross and not even know it if you just do what your heart – formed in faith – tells you is right. And if you do what your heart tells you is right, it doesn't matter how many times your life has changed direction or how many surprising turns you've taken, because you will have no regrets.  

Canaanite Women and Klingons

Sermon 8.14.11

It's hard to say whether the woman who asked Jesus for help in today's Gospel lesson was an insider or an outsider. She was a Canaanite, a Philistine, a Palestinian. Her people were in the land before Moses and Joshua and the Jews moved in. From her perspective she was in insider. She was there first. From the Jew's perspective she was an outsider cuz she wasn't one of them. The Jews and Canaanites lived in the same land, but without dealing with each other. Separate languages, separate customs, separate faiths, separate cooking rules, separate families. Separate planets.

She crosses all those boundaries and asks Jesus for help. Jesus tests her to find out: which is stronger, woman, your belief in the separation of Jews and Canaanites or your belief in my ability to help. She believes in Jesus, she needs Jesus, and with great boldness she asks again for whatever help he is willing to give. The story has a happy ending. Barriers are broken, walls torn down, generations of prejudice and tradition go out the window and a precedent is set for Jews and Canaanites to interact in ways that please God.

Which leads us naturally to science fiction and the Klingons. In the Star Trek series the Klingons are the villains of the universe. Not much was done with them in the original Capt. Kirk series. There were a few episodes, and the Klingons looked a lot like Vulcans. But in the second series, Next Generation, the Klingon empire is much more fully developed, the budget was bigger, make-up and costuming was more extensive, and we have the Klingons like the one pictured on the bulletin cover.

So what does sci fi have to do with religious faith? It's simple. Good science fiction is not about gadgets or space ships or phaser beams. It's about people—about human relationships. A good story creates a new situation, a strange situation, but a plausible, believable situation in which people may one day find themselves, like, let's say, time travel. The interesting part of the story is not the technology, it's the relationships, the human emotions, the overcoming of a challenge, the test of the human mind, the human will, or the human heart. That's what good science fiction does and Star Trek is good science fiction.

In the Star Trek movies and TV series, the Klingons are a force to be reckoned with: will our heroes respond to the Klingons' violence and aggression with violence of their own? Can the whole lot of Klingons be written off as irredeemably, hopelessly, blindly violent? Aren't there any good ones? Well, as Star Trek Next Generation progressed, they had a Klingon on the Enterprise crew, named Whorf. He is highly placed, the security officer, a position of tremendous trust. Eventually the Klingon Empire join the Federation of Planets, which Earth is part of. Now there is regular, peaceful interaction between the Klingons and other races. But there is lingering tension, as the Klingons have a history with just about everyone at some point.

Do you know this story? Even if you've never watched Next Generation you should know this story. It's the story of your own American culture:

• Here comes a boatload of starving Irish into New York harbor. Where are going to put them? Are any of them any good? Are any of them sober?
• Here come a trainload of blacks up from Mississippi to Chicago. Whose jobs are THEY going to take? They better not try to move into MY neighborhood.
• Here come a thousand Mexicans over the border who can't speak English. How much is this going to cost us?
• A mosque in my town? Really?

The issues are entirely the same. The Star Trek movies and TV series are really about US! They always have been. They challenge us to look at our values and decide what it means to be human.

As followers of Jesus Christ we look to Jesus as the ultimate example of what it means to be human: to be loving, forgiving, fearless, inviting, willing to risk oneself physically, financially, socially on behalf of another, to speak out for those who don't have enough power to have a voice, to take responsibility for the well-being of those who have been pushed off to the margins of the life we enjoy. In Jesus we are challenged to look at ourselves, our values, our behaviors, and see if we are human-- that is, if we are living as God intends us to live.

In Matthew 28, in the Great Commission, Jesus tells his disciples to do what? To clone themselves? No. He tells them to “Go, therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you.” The words of Captain Kirk in the intro to the original TV series are not so out of line with this idea. Do you remember? Say it with me if you can: The mission of the Starship Enterprise, to seek out new life, new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.” That's what Jesus did later on in his career, branch out beyond Israel more and more. And that's what Paul did-- take the Gospel message to new lands, to boldly go where no one had gone before with that message.

So what do we do with this in St. Germain?

There are two competing views about how the Church should be the Church. In the first view, conformity is everything. We prove our faithfulness by proving our conformity. There is a strongman at the top of the organization (maybe in Rome, maybe at the local congregation) – and he interprets things for us; tells us what to think, do and believe. The culture of the group comes first, the Gospel comes second. There are very clear lines indicating who's in and who's out. Those who look like the insiders and sound like the insiders can be IN. This is a community turned in on itself. The primary emotion of this group – don't believe the tight-lipped smiles – is fear: fear that your slip might show on your way to communion, fear that God won't find you worthy, fear of the devil, fear of those with different experiences of life, different values, ideas, dress cods, skin colors, fear that the world is just too big and bad for God to handle. Primary loyalty is to the group. Jesus, well, Jesus is something of an afterthought. Jesus reminds us to be nice, at least to those inside the group.

Here's a contrasting view of what the Church should be. In the second view, the only conformity that counts is loyalty to the cross. Any other issue can be on the table for honest people to disagree about. Politics, clothes, music, etc. people can agree to disagree on those things who agree on the Cross. There is no strongman at the top of the organization – the only one who matters is Christ. There is no fear of Christ nor of judgment because we believe what Jesus says about the cross and empty tomb, namely that it works! Resurrection is real. Salvation works. There is no fear of the devil; God's power is much much much greater. There is no fear of the big bad world; the world is full of God's beloved children. This is a community that is not turned in on itself. It is turned outward toward those who are not there yet, because Jesus is to be found, not only on the inside, but also on the outside. The community is oriented toward the stranger, the alien... because Jesus was.

There are two competing views about how the Church should be the Church. One view is a country club, feeling sorry for itself, and covering the windows with stained glass so no one has to look at the world going to hell. The other view is a reflection of Jesus Christ, fearless reaching out with Good News to those who have not yet heard it.

When Jesus spoke his harsh-sounding words to the Canaanite woman about dogs and the children's table he was really asking her this: what do you believe in more?

• The artificial boundaries that separate us?
• Or do you believe in me?

In the way this congregation chooses to conduct itself we answer the same question. Which vision will we follow? What do we believe? The whole world is watching.

Alittle Faith

Enough

Podcast Sermon 7.31.11 "Enough"

Choppy for the first 10 Seconds-- Uploaded during a Thunderstorm.... It sounds fine on Real player...LJ