Peter JB Carman
Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
February 25, 2018
Readings: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Mark 8:31-38
I.
This morning we heard two passages from scripture that deal with God’s children facing an uncertain future.
Abraham and Sarah are issued a promise, an amazing promise by God—not just the promise of offspring, but the promise of a posterity that will be many people, and many nations. And yet their circumstances are such that they have trouble believing God.
We who look back can see that God fulfilled the promise to Abraham and Sarah, over and over. Today, if there is one thing that Jews, Muslims and Christians share, it is that we all claim Abraham as our ancestor—although Muslims look to Hagar and Ishmael, rather than Sarah and Isaac! There are indeed many peoples who point back to a common spiritual ancestry. It has happened in ways that the ancestors themselves could never have imagined. It is a world they could never have imagined. But it happened.
In our second reading, in Mark’s Gospel, we find Jesus asking Peter who Peter believes that he, Jesus, is. Having gotten the answer right, that Jesus is the messiah, the savior of his people, Peter is surprised when his teacher starts to talk about how the savior will have to suffer and die. How can this be, how can it be that the Victorious One, the Liberator, should have to experience the Roman cross? Peter starts to “go off.” He cannot separate the idea of success from the notion that Jesus is the messiah! And how can there be success with a cross—the sign of Roman domination over slaves and rebels and oppressed peoples—a cross planted in the middle of it.
Jesus first responds to Peter—pretty directly and harshly to say the least. He doesn’t mince any words. And then he turns to all the people around him and makes it very clear. Not only will he, Jesus, have to face the cross—they will as well. If they want to gain their lives they must be ready to give them up. If they want to have a role in God’s movement, they will have to be ready to sacrifice some—maybe even all—of their own success, some even their lives. If they want to follow Jesus, there will indeed be no turning back. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
II.
If there is one thing that makes us nervous these days, it is the idea of blindly following anyone. Where an earlier generation might have sung that old hymn “Trust and Obey” with vim and vigor, we have seen too much trust betrayed and too much unthinking obedience taken advantage of to want to live that way.
“Follow me” are words that make the prudent person pause. Many supposedly Christian leaders have presumed to tell folk what it means to follow Christ and tell them that they are not allowed to question… with devastating results. “Follow me” and a warped version of “self-denial” has been used to keep women in subservient roles; justify horrible doctrines of racial supremacy; and destroy the dignity and indeed on occasion the identities and lives of gay and trans people.
None of that is what Jesus is saying to his disciples in the eighth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, as he begins to turn his face toward Jerusalem. Quite the opposite.
The cost of discipleship is the risk --and cost-- of resistance to the powers that keep little people down, that dehumanize and denigrate and destroy. If we are going to take on these powers, however peacefully and nonviolently, the price tag can get very high.
The heart of the matter is this: Real Christianity is NOT about blind obedience to self-appointed authorities, neither ecclesiastical authorities nor political power-mongers. Christ calls us to walk in a very different path, march, as Martin Luther King Jr. liked to say, to the beat of a different drummer.
If we are going to be faithful to Christ’s radical call to love and justice for all of humanity and creation, it may mean losing everything in the process. In sharp contrast to blind obedience to the Caesars and the Herods and the temple authorities, when we question, when we call for inclusion, when we challenge profiteering and cruelty and bigotry, we indeed face serious consequences.
I am convinced this is the risk Jesus words mean for this time, in this community and nation: “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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”
To follow Christ’s path does not mean playing follow the leader. It may mean picking our way through unfamiliar and uncertain territory, knowing we are not alone. Someone else is walking ahead of us, just over the crest of the hill. Someone we can trust. The story of Love’s pilgrimage is never finished. Not even at the cross. The story of a new creation being born amid the ashes of the old is just beginning.
III.
I find both our bible stories acutely relevant, disturbing, and strangely comforting. You and I can relate to Abraham and Sarah. They remind me of my neighbors across the street in the 19th Ward of Rochester, the neighborhood where our family lived for almost seventeen years. Mr. and Mrs. Bostick were among the first Black residents to move to the 19th Ward. Mr. Bostick was a World War II veteran. The city had in the 1960’s forced their family to move from their beloved home in the next neighborhood over, a neighborhood slated for a renewal that never happened, except to destroy houses. But the Bosticks took the small amount of money they were paid and put it down on a house in what had up to then been an all-white neighborhood.
By the final months of our time in Rochester, both the Bosticks were getting older. Not as old as Abraham and Sarah! But they both had some trouble moving as fast as they used to. Both had serious health challenges. But they had not stopped yet!
In January of 2009, Mr. and Mrs. Bostick got on a bus—and they took their little great-granddaughter to Washington DC to the inauguration of the nation’s first Black president.
I happened to drop in on their living room a week or two later and was warmly ushered in, as ever. When I found out where they had been, I asked Mr. and Mrs. Bostick what it was like. They told me in some detail. The little girl was so short that people kept asking them to move and allow others in—so they had to point down so that others could see where their great-grandchild was. They stood for hours in the freezing cold. They were far from the podium. But they were there. Right there.
I will never forget the last thing Mr. Bostick said, these simple words. He paused after he finished describing their adventure. “I had kind of given up,” he told me, “Some years back I did. I don’t know if it was when they took our home in the “urban renewal” or when. But I did. And I never dreamed I would see this day, when a Black person became the president. So, I had to go. We had to go.” And then the old soldier, the still young spirit, fixed me with his clear eye and smiled grimly but gleefully and he said: “I guess I was wrong to give up. I won’t do that again.”
God has a surprising way of raising up fresh life when we have given up… God is faithful to God’s children—even when it takes a very very long time. And sometimes, just when we thought it was never going to happen, all of a sudden, God comes through in a surprising, amazing way. It is whatever God comes up with, that makes us say, “I guess I was wrong to give up. I won’t do that again.”
IV.
There are two words for us today, a word of honest costly summons, and a word of promise and faithfulness.
The first word: Christ invites us, Christ challenges us. We are cordially invited-- to a path of resistance and a path of witness. We are challenged to take up a prayerful way of living and acting that testifies-- with our lives-- to a better possibility than what the world seems to be up to. This is not about getting into heaven, but about making life a bit more bearable, a bit more just, a bit more truthful and loving, right here on earth! It is not a cheap or easy path—there won’t always be a map. And there may be severe costs…that’s what that cross talk is about. That’s the invitation. My advice? Grab hold and don’t let go!
The second word is the word from God to an aging couple long ago. In the language of the bible: “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” Or in the words of Mr. Thomas J. Bostick: “I guess I was wrong to give up. I won’t do that again.”
Emmanuel Friedens Church
Schenectady New York
February 25, 2018
Readings: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16
Mark 8:31-38
I.
This morning we heard two passages from scripture that deal with God’s children facing an uncertain future.
Abraham and Sarah are issued a promise, an amazing promise by God—not just the promise of offspring, but the promise of a posterity that will be many people, and many nations. And yet their circumstances are such that they have trouble believing God.
We who look back can see that God fulfilled the promise to Abraham and Sarah, over and over. Today, if there is one thing that Jews, Muslims and Christians share, it is that we all claim Abraham as our ancestor—although Muslims look to Hagar and Ishmael, rather than Sarah and Isaac! There are indeed many peoples who point back to a common spiritual ancestry. It has happened in ways that the ancestors themselves could never have imagined. It is a world they could never have imagined. But it happened.
In our second reading, in Mark’s Gospel, we find Jesus asking Peter who Peter believes that he, Jesus, is. Having gotten the answer right, that Jesus is the messiah, the savior of his people, Peter is surprised when his teacher starts to talk about how the savior will have to suffer and die. How can this be, how can it be that the Victorious One, the Liberator, should have to experience the Roman cross? Peter starts to “go off.” He cannot separate the idea of success from the notion that Jesus is the messiah! And how can there be success with a cross—the sign of Roman domination over slaves and rebels and oppressed peoples—a cross planted in the middle of it.
Jesus first responds to Peter—pretty directly and harshly to say the least. He doesn’t mince any words. And then he turns to all the people around him and makes it very clear. Not only will he, Jesus, have to face the cross—they will as well. If they want to gain their lives they must be ready to give them up. If they want to have a role in God’s movement, they will have to be ready to sacrifice some—maybe even all—of their own success, some even their lives. If they want to follow Jesus, there will indeed be no turning back. "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
II.
If there is one thing that makes us nervous these days, it is the idea of blindly following anyone. Where an earlier generation might have sung that old hymn “Trust and Obey” with vim and vigor, we have seen too much trust betrayed and too much unthinking obedience taken advantage of to want to live that way.
“Follow me” are words that make the prudent person pause. Many supposedly Christian leaders have presumed to tell folk what it means to follow Christ and tell them that they are not allowed to question… with devastating results. “Follow me” and a warped version of “self-denial” has been used to keep women in subservient roles; justify horrible doctrines of racial supremacy; and destroy the dignity and indeed on occasion the identities and lives of gay and trans people.
None of that is what Jesus is saying to his disciples in the eighth chapter of Mark’s Gospel, as he begins to turn his face toward Jerusalem. Quite the opposite.
The cost of discipleship is the risk --and cost-- of resistance to the powers that keep little people down, that dehumanize and denigrate and destroy. If we are going to take on these powers, however peacefully and nonviolently, the price tag can get very high.
The heart of the matter is this: Real Christianity is NOT about blind obedience to self-appointed authorities, neither ecclesiastical authorities nor political power-mongers. Christ calls us to walk in a very different path, march, as Martin Luther King Jr. liked to say, to the beat of a different drummer.
If we are going to be faithful to Christ’s radical call to love and justice for all of humanity and creation, it may mean losing everything in the process. In sharp contrast to blind obedience to the Caesars and the Herods and the temple authorities, when we question, when we call for inclusion, when we challenge profiteering and cruelty and bigotry, we indeed face serious consequences.
I am convinced this is the risk Jesus words mean for this time, in this community and nation: “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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”
To follow Christ’s path does not mean playing follow the leader. It may mean picking our way through unfamiliar and uncertain territory, knowing we are not alone. Someone else is walking ahead of us, just over the crest of the hill. Someone we can trust. The story of Love’s pilgrimage is never finished. Not even at the cross. The story of a new creation being born amid the ashes of the old is just beginning.
III.
I find both our bible stories acutely relevant, disturbing, and strangely comforting. You and I can relate to Abraham and Sarah. They remind me of my neighbors across the street in the 19th Ward of Rochester, the neighborhood where our family lived for almost seventeen years. Mr. and Mrs. Bostick were among the first Black residents to move to the 19th Ward. Mr. Bostick was a World War II veteran. The city had in the 1960’s forced their family to move from their beloved home in the next neighborhood over, a neighborhood slated for a renewal that never happened, except to destroy houses. But the Bosticks took the small amount of money they were paid and put it down on a house in what had up to then been an all-white neighborhood.
By the final months of our time in Rochester, both the Bosticks were getting older. Not as old as Abraham and Sarah! But they both had some trouble moving as fast as they used to. Both had serious health challenges. But they had not stopped yet!
In January of 2009, Mr. and Mrs. Bostick got on a bus—and they took their little great-granddaughter to Washington DC to the inauguration of the nation’s first Black president.
I happened to drop in on their living room a week or two later and was warmly ushered in, as ever. When I found out where they had been, I asked Mr. and Mrs. Bostick what it was like. They told me in some detail. The little girl was so short that people kept asking them to move and allow others in—so they had to point down so that others could see where their great-grandchild was. They stood for hours in the freezing cold. They were far from the podium. But they were there. Right there.
I will never forget the last thing Mr. Bostick said, these simple words. He paused after he finished describing their adventure. “I had kind of given up,” he told me, “Some years back I did. I don’t know if it was when they took our home in the “urban renewal” or when. But I did. And I never dreamed I would see this day, when a Black person became the president. So, I had to go. We had to go.” And then the old soldier, the still young spirit, fixed me with his clear eye and smiled grimly but gleefully and he said: “I guess I was wrong to give up. I won’t do that again.”
God has a surprising way of raising up fresh life when we have given up… God is faithful to God’s children—even when it takes a very very long time. And sometimes, just when we thought it was never going to happen, all of a sudden, God comes through in a surprising, amazing way. It is whatever God comes up with, that makes us say, “I guess I was wrong to give up. I won’t do that again.”
IV.
There are two words for us today, a word of honest costly summons, and a word of promise and faithfulness.
The first word: Christ invites us, Christ challenges us. We are cordially invited-- to a path of resistance and a path of witness. We are challenged to take up a prayerful way of living and acting that testifies-- with our lives-- to a better possibility than what the world seems to be up to. This is not about getting into heaven, but about making life a bit more bearable, a bit more just, a bit more truthful and loving, right here on earth! It is not a cheap or easy path—there won’t always be a map. And there may be severe costs…that’s what that cross talk is about. That’s the invitation. My advice? Grab hold and don’t let go!
The second word is the word from God to an aging couple long ago. In the language of the bible: “I will establish my covenant between me and you, and your offspring after you throughout their generations, for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you.” Or in the words of Mr. Thomas J. Bostick: “I guess I was wrong to give up. I won’t do that again.”