To Suffer, To Be Transformed by Carrying Your Cross
Lent II: Mark 8:31-38
“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.”Really? Are we Christians crazy? Who in their right mind would follow a man who tells us to pick up a cross and follow him? Really? But that was not part of the deal in the beginning, you know. Or we didn’t think it was.
First, Jesus gets baptized, and that part goes really well. Then Jesus spends time out in the wilderness, but Mark’s gospel does not dwell much on that time. Jesus calls Peter, James, John and Andrew to follow him and they leave their fishing nets to do just that. Next comes Jesus, miraculous healer, powerful preacher. He casts out demons. He tells parables about sowing seeds in all kinds of soil. In a midnight action drama, he commands the sea and wind to be still—and they obey. On the shore, he takes a few loaves of bread and some fish and feeds over five thousand people. This is all exciting! Who would not want to go along for this kind of ride--especially if you are Peter, James, John, Andrew and others who think that at the end of this ride is glory. They believe Jesus will overthrow the Roman government and set the Jewish people free.After all, Jesus has asked his disciples—just a few verses earlier—“Who do you say that I am?” When Simon Peter says “You are the Christ,” which means “the anointed One,” Jesus does not say “Are you crazy?” No. Jesus just tells the disciples not to tell anyone.Now in the first century Jewish culture, “the anointed one, the messiah, is someone who [is] commonly understood to be the hero who [will] come with super-human powers to rescue the people, who remain passive pawns in a divinely ordained game of geopolitics.”[1] Yet if we had been paying closer attention, we would already have seen some signs of tension and trouble with this anointed One.Jesus has already upstaged some scribes, Pharisees and priests by his words and actions. They are not amused. t one point, some folks send for Jesus’s family to take him home. “He’s possessed,” the people tell his mama. But what his mam and brothers get for their troubles is that when they show up at the door, Jesus pretty much disowns them. He asks, “Who are my mother and my brothers? Whoever does the will of God, that’s who.”So all is not sweetness and light in this journey with Jesus, but the disciples seem to have another ending in mind for this journey than Jesus does. Midway through Mark’s gospel, Jesus knows that he must cure his own disciples’ blindness with some blunt truth about suffering and death.We must keep in mind the context of the people who first hear Mark’s gospel. It was likely written in the 60’s or 70’s, but before the Temple fell in Jerusalem. If the original Markan community is in or near Rome, then Nero is in power, so this is “probably a persecuted community.”[2] In fact, it could well be that some of these folks who have followed Jesus’s teachings have recanted to the emperor to save their own lives. If that is true, then those who have remained true to the faith must remind others that following Jesus involves suffering. After all, Jesus has told God’s truth to Church and Roman power, and for his efforts, they beat him and executed him. Mark’s gospel must emphasize that Jesus of Nazareth has not chosen a life of glory, of power. Nor is Jesus some kind of super-man. Instead, Jesus uses the term “Son of Man,” a term from the Old Testament book of Daniel. In contemporary terms, we could translate that as “the Human One.” So Jesus wants his disciples to understand that if we are to live most fully, we must learn to live in real and authentic ways—which means suffering.What would our lives look like if we lived as fully authentic human beings? If we are honest, we know that it is very difficult to be authentic. Our society is one that glorifies good looks, lots of money, movie stars who walk red carpets. How does this affect our practice of our Christian faith—or does it? Jesus tells us that we can have the best of what society offers, yet lose our souls. What does this mean on a practical level?Some people in this congregation work for, or own, successful businesses. Many of you work for the government. There may be tension in such situations where your Christian faith is concerned. Some of you have told me that you cannot talk about your Christian faith in your business world. It is okay to act ethically, to be compassionate, to have a sense of peace about you—in fact, perhaps the actual practice of your Christian faith is a witness to the cross in itself. If someone notices that you act differently from others in the office and ask you about it, well, then I suppose that opens a door, does it not? Yet is it not ironic that on a micro-level, to pick up your cross and carry it means that you cannot talk about your spiritual journey unless someone explicitly asks you about it?A number of our families have youth whose coaches require Sunday practice or Sunday games. Here is tension. If you tell a coach that you cannot come to practice or play in a game because you have to go to church, you will either get laughed at, benched, or thrown off the team. Is it not ironic that on a micro-level, to pick up your cross and carry it means that you must negotiate the terms of walking your spiritual journey and practicing your faith with practicing a sport?In today’s gospel, Jesus makes it very clear that if we intend to follow him, to go behind him, to go where he goes and do what he does, then our lives will include suffering and rejection.I must admit to you that I have struggled with this concept as I have considered this gospel in the past week. Not being able to talk about our Christian faith at work or coordinating sports schedules with Sunday morning worship is hardly in a category of suffering. What do I, twenty first century Christian, really understand about suffering?
On February 15, ISIS terrorists led twenty-one Coptic Christians onto a beach in Libya. They forced the men to kneel. The camera panned slowly down the line. Only one had any look of fear on his face. The others looked resigned, or stoic. One was moving his lips—probably in prayer. As the camera moved slowly, one of the terrorists ranted about America and President Obama. Then they ordered the twenty-one Christians to lie face down in the sand. One by one, they cut their throats, then cut their heads off. The last scene on this video—which was entitled “To the Nation with the Cross”—was of the surf. All of the water was blood red. Twenty-one Christians died because they professed Jesus Christ as Lord. That is suffering. The people who loved these men now suffer from grief. Where are you and I compared to these men?Yet there is suffering in this world. To live is to suffer. Perhaps when Jesus calls us to go with the Human One, the Son of Man, he is telling us that to be fully human, we must suffer along with others. We must have compassion. Compassion. “Com,” which means “to love together with” has roots in Latin. Passion, or Passus is related to the English word “patient” or “one who suffers.”[3] Therefore, to be compassionate is to love together with one who suffers. Compassion is ranked as a virtue in many philosophies, and in almost all world religions, it is the highest virtue.With whom are we called to suffer as we walk this Christian journey? Is there someone who is dying? Compassion. Does someone grieve the loss of a love? We are there, with compassion. We can be compassionate with the homeless men, women and children who fill our winter shelters. Those of us who are white can suffer with our African American brothers and sisters who live daily with racial profiling. We open our hearts in love to others who suffer. In that openness, we may be transformed.To be fully human is to see beyond ourselves and our own sufferings to others. It is also to allow suffering to transform us in some way. I would like to close this sermon with one person’s decision to pick up a cross and follow Jesus and what that meant for his life. In 1960, the Christian Century magazine asked Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to reflect about the influence of his sufferings on his thought. This was Dr. King’s response:
“Due to my involvement in the struggle for the freedom of my people, I have known very few quiet days in the last few years. I have been arrested five times and put in Alabama jails. My home has been bombed twice. A day seldom passes that my family and I are not the recipients of threats of death. I have been the victim of a near fatal stabbing. So in a real sense I have been battered by the storms of persecution. I must admit that at times I have felt that I could no longer bear such a heavy burden, and have been tempted to retreat to a more quiet and serene life. But every time such a temptation appeared, something came to strengthen and sustain my determination. I have learned now that the Master’s burden is light precisely when we take his yoke upon us.“My personal trials have also taught me the value of unmerited suffering. As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways that I could respond to my situation: either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course. Recognizing the necessity for suffering I have tried to make of it a virtue. If only to save myself from bitterness, I have attempted to see my personal ordeals as an opportunity to transform myself and heal the people involved in the tragic situation which now obtains. I have lived these last few years with the conviction that unearned suffering is redemptive.
"There are some who still find the cross a stumbling block, and others consider it foolishness, but I am more convinced than ever before that it is the power of God unto social and individual salvation. So like the Apostle Paul I can now humbly yet proudly say, ‘I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus.’ The suffering and agonizing moments through which I have passed over the last few years have also drawn me closer to God. More than ever before I am convinced of the reality of a personal God.”[4]“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.”Be fully human. Walk with others who suffer, and know their hearts. In your own suffering, choose not to be bitter, but to be transformed, even when you do not know what that will look like. Know that in your suffering, your Lord goes before you, and he goes with you. Amen. © The Rev. Dr. Sheila N. McJilton[1] “Not a Super-Hero, but an Authentic Human, from http://scarletletterbible.com/authentic-human/. Accessed at www.textweek.com on Feb. 26, 2015.[2] David L. Bartlett & Barbara Brown Taylor, Editors, Feasting on the Word: Year R, Volume 2, (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 71.[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassion[4] http://mlk-kpp01.stanford.edu/index.php/encyclopedia/documentsentry/suffering_and_faith/All pictures accessed through Google Images