This sermon was preached for Sunday, September 3, 2023 at St. Mark's, East Longmeadow, MA. The texts for this sermon are: Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c, Romans 12:9-21, and Matthew 16:21-28.
This past Thursday, I got a chance to run a workshop on intentional community with the young adults of Lawrence House, the Episcopal Service Corps program in South Hadley. As I looked around the living room at each of the young person’s faces, I was brought back almost a decade to when I was sitting where they were sitting, an intern myself, trying to orient myself to a new household of young adults and a new pattern of work and prayer.
It was one of those where the heck does time go moments I've been having more and more of these days. How did I get here when I swear I was just there? How the heck is it my turn to be the priest leading a workshop?
Then I took a deep breath and refocused on the actual question that had brought me here today, the one that I'd been holding in my mind all week: what did I need when I was where they are now? What would I have needed from me then?
In last week’s Gospel, the passage just before the one we read today, Simon Peter eagerly proclaims that Jesus is the long-foretold Messiah - the one God has sent to save his people. But then Jesus starts explaining what that will actually look like: arrest, suffering, death on the cross. Peter’s shocked. This cannot be what’s in store for Jesus. Peter’s still focused on the glory that the coming of the Messiah is supposed to bring: freedom from the oppressors, restoration of Israel’s fallen kingdom, victory here and now. What Jesus is describing is the surely opposite of all that: it’s imprisonment, defeat, shame. Yet Jesus rebukes Peter and turns to the others and tells them - not only will this fate happen to Jesus, but it will happen to all who follow him. Soon, sooner than they imagine, it will be their turn. “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 will find it.”
Peter’s shocked reaction exposes how easy it is for Christians to take for granted that Jesus' life and ministry inevitably leads to the cross. The question of why Jesus’ death on the cross was so inevitable has kept Christian theologians debating for centuries. Was it inevitable because of who God is and what God demands to atone for sin? Was the crucifixion unavoidable because of who humankind is, because of our cruelty and malice and unwillingness to change? Or was Jesus' death on the cross always going to happen because of who Jesus is? Jesus' words here to the disciples imply this: his sacrificial death was inevitable because a life lived for love always leads to the full and complete giving of self.
Keep following Jesus and it will be your turn to pick up the cross, sooner than you know. Focus on what you have to win and gain - or what you’re owed, and you’ll miss out on what matters most. But focus on what you have to give - and give it away - and you’ll find life becomes filled to the brim.
All across the country this week, teachers of all kinds are welcoming students back to school. Some of them, probably the newer, younger ones, might just have the same kind of where the heck has time gone, wasn’t I just a student myself moment I did this week. But no matter how old or experienced a teacher they are, all great teachers have the ability to hold in their minds what it felt like to be the age and life stage of the students before them. Some teachers become teachers because of an educator in their own past who was there for them, who said the right thing, who made all the difference in their life at a crucial moment. Others are there to give children a better chance than they ever received - to be what they never had. Either way, all over the country this week, great teachers are determined to begin a new school year with this key intention: to be the teacher they needed when they were young.
When I met with people one on one last summer, I asked folks what brought them to St. Mark’s. From many of you, I heard beautiful stories of an older generation of St. Mark’s church folks - its founders and the generation after. How they invited you to join them at church, how they were there for you when your child was sick, how they welcomed you into small groups at their home, cooked you pancakes, and taught you what it means to be a church community. At the end of that reminiscing, completely unprompted, several of you did pretty much the exact same thing: thought for a second and remarked, huh, I guess that’s us now isn’t it? We are the older generation at church now. It’s our turn.
It’s our turn to give away what we’ve received.
When I first sat down to write this sermon I worried that these were the thoughts of a youngish person realizing they aren’t so young anymore, a new parent who is continuously surprised to find, oh wait I’m the mom. But I think a life filled with connection, especially connection across generations, will always have more turns to come. A turn to be the grandparent, then the great-grandparent, a turn to be the vigilant retiree in the neighborhood, the wise church elder. It will be all our turn, sooner than we know, sooner than seems possible, to be the one who is at the end of life.
After Jesus dies and returns, he’ll have more words for Peter. “Very truly, I tell you, when you were younger, you used to fasten your own belt and to go wherever you wished. But when you grow old, you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will fasten a belt around you and take you where you do not wish to go.’...Jesus said to Peter, ‘Follow me.’”
There is only one end to our stories. And nothing that we earn in this life, no objects we acquire, not even the accolades we collect, can be carried with us into the next life. Everything we build - even the churches - will crumble eventually. And that's Good News! For the one thing that’s eternal, the only thing that permeates that barrier into the beyond is love - the love we have spent our life giving away.
Life is full of realizing that it’s our turn to be for others what others were for us. And in my experience at least, it usually comes quite a bit sooner than we feel ready for. Surely we must have more learning to do, more wisdom to receive, before we are to give everything we have away. But then God shows us the person standing where we once stood, and we know, it’s our turn.
Sometimes it’s not just about not feeling ready though. There's a particular sadness in giving someone else what you never had a turn to receive yourself. I’m thinking especially about people who had to be their own parents or parents of siblings way too early in life, perhaps because of one or both parents’ alcoholism, addiction, mental illness or neglect. People who didn’t get a turn at just being a kid. Oftentimes, if life’s treated you that way, the question what does everyone else need right now? comes much more easily to you than the question what do I need right now? Self-denial is so automatic that there is, in some sense, no self to give away. And it is this aspect of self-denial that can be so tricky. Emphasize it too much and church can become yet another spiritually destructive place where people lose all sense of self in a harmful way - leaving them susceptible to abuse and bullying.
The intention, then, to be the teacher, the parent, the coach, the neighbor, the coworker, you needed, that’s much closer to what Jesus meant when he said “love your neighbor as yourself” or what we mean when we talk about treating others as you would like to be treated. That sort of self-denial requires self-empathy. It takes an awareness of your own needs as a first step. It means knowing and loving and caring for yourself as you once were.
I have seen it be profoundly healing for folks to be the sort of parent and teacher and mentor they had always longed for. I have seen how the act of giving another the love and care you had needed becomes a second chance to experience for yourself what you never had.
Let love be genuine, Paul writes in his letter to the church in Rome, do not repay anyone evil for evil…do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. Even when neglect is all you have known, even if great suffering is all you see ahead and behind, genuine love is still in your power to give. Gentleness and kindness and blessing is always an option.
A life connected with others can give us so many chances to be who we had needed - whether the care we had known or the care we had longed for. It is that love that we are asked to give away. In that giving, we receive. In that dying, we are born to eternal life.
Comments
Post a Comment