February 25, 2018 – Mark 8:31-38
Mark 8:31-38
Taking up the Cross – Lent at the Movies II – The Post
Second Sunday in Lent – February 26, 2018
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
Steven Spielberg! Meryl Streep! Tom Hanks! John Williams!
How could The Post not be great!
Well, if it’s not great, it is at least a very good movie as you would expect from such a team.
The Post tells a story set in 1971 at the time of the Vietnam war.
The Post of the title is the Washington Post newspaper,
which at the time was a regional, family-owned newspaper.
In the hopes of becoming a more important, national newspaper,
it is just about to go public with an offering on the American Stock Exchange.
It is important that it attract investors and look like a solid bet.
But at just this moment in its history, a crisis develops and a difficult decision must be made.
What happens is this.
A top secret Pentagon document is leaked to the New York Times.
The document is a study commissioned by the government to assess the history of
U.S. involvement in southeast Asia since the second world war.
The document makes clear that much of what the United States has done
is both illegal and immoral.
And it makes very clear that successive governments have knowingly lied to
the American people about just what has been going on all this time.
This document has come to be known as The Pentagon Papers,
and to say it is a scoop of the highest magnitude is the understatement of the century.
This is a time when tens of thousands of American soldiers were being deployed to Vietnam.
But the Pentagon Papers made clear that even in 1965 – 6 years earlier –
the government knew that the war simply unwinnable.
Nevertheless, the U.S. government continued to lie about their prospects in the war and
encouraged people to send their children into combat.
When the New York Times publishes excerpts from the document,
the Nixon administration moves quickly to impose a court ordered a publication ban.
Anyone reporting further on the Pentagon Papers would be threatened with legal action and
possibly even go to jail for being in violation of the Espionage Act.
Well – when several thousand pages of the Pentagon Papers wind up in the hands of
the Washington Post editors, the question then becomes: to publish or not to publish?
That is the question Kay Graham – the owner and publisher of the Washington Post,
played by Meryl Streep – and Ben Bradlee – the editor in chief of the paper,
played by Tom Hanks – must decide.
Ben Bradlee, being a reporter, of course wants to publish!
It’s the story of a lifetime! It’s what he’s worked his whole life for! To report the truth!
But Kay Graham, on the other hand, is unsure: it could ruin her financially,
she could lose the newspaper that has been in her family for generations,
she could lose friends, and she could go to jail.
What is at stake is the First Amendment of the United States, which, among other things, protects the freedom of the press from government interference when, you know,
it feels the need to report on the fact that people in the U.S. Government
violated the Geneva Convention, lied to Congress, and lied to the public.
Kay’s financial backers tell her not to publish.
Ben Bradlee is all for publishing.
What will she do?
Jesus says: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross,
And follow me.
I have no idea whether this was in Kay Graham’s mind at all as she mulled over what to do,
but it could have been.
Jesus is not talking about the kind of self-denial that means becoming a victim,
or staying in an abusive relationship, or that glorifies suffering for any reason.
Jesus is not talking about a passive self-denial.
Rather, he is talking about an active following, an active walking in the path of justice,
an active striding in pursuit of the common good of all people.
Kay Graham must ultimately decide wherein the common good of the American people lies,
and just what she is willing to do about it.
Her paper is at stake as well as the jobs of all her employees – she has a big responsibility.
And her personal freedom is at stake as she could be convicted of a felony and do time in jail.
But she must weigh this against the common good.
What is she willing to do and what is she willing to risk for the common good?
To be honest, it has been difficult to think of these things this week in the wake of last week’s
school shooting in Parkland, Florida at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,
where 17 students and teachers were killed.
It is a great tragedy and sadly it is not an isolated tragedy, as we all know.
It is far too common.
What could taking up the cross and following Jesus possibly mean in such a situation?
I think there is something to learn, this Lent, not only from Kay Graham but,
maybe even more pressingly, from some of the surviving students in Parkland.
I was very struck this week by the surviving students who are using their voices to
call the U.S. government to do something about gun violence.
They are maybe the first survivors to be so vocal and active about doing something to
stem the tide of gun violence in American schools.
A large group of them travelled to the state capital Tallahassee on Wednesday to
speak to legislators about doing something to curb gun violence in schools.
“It’s sad,” says one student, “that a 16 year old girl has to do the job of 60 year old men in congress. It’s sad that . . . me and my friends have to be the ones to speak up against watching our own friends die. It’s sad that we’re the ones who basically have to represent themselves.”
It is sad – it is so so sad.
But maybe it is what is necessary.
I heard what she said, and then I thought about what Jesus says:
If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
The students are taking time away from their studies.
They are speaking out.
And in doing so, they have opened themselves to belittlement and
to accusations of being nothing more than crisis actors.
Some have even been accused of not even being students at the high school or present
the day the shootings happened – this has been disproved.
But they are doing what they are doing because they are committed to the cause that
this sort of gun violence will never again happen.
They are committed to a much larger common good that exists outside of themselves and
their normal everyday teenage lives.
And I think this is probably pretty close to what Jesus had in mind, when he said,
If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross
and follow me.
And when he adds “for my sake and the sake of the gospel,” he means for the sake of
the good news that God is acting right here right now for the common good of all people.
He means for the sake of participating in God’s current and ongoing mission to
love bless heal feed and set free this whole world and every person in it.
He means for us to participate in that mission as artisans of the common good.
And when he says to take up a cross, he means to stand with him –
as Debie Thomas writes this week – in “the hot white centre of the world’s pain.”
What that looks like will differ at the intersection of Sargent and Victor than
what it maybe looks like in Parkland, Florida.
But it is a good day to ask, “What does this look like for us on the day of our Annual Meeting?”
What does it mean to be a member of First Lutheran Church?
What does it mean as the congregation of First Lutheran Church?
What does it mean for our ongoing priorities in mission and ministry?
What does it mean for new ventures?
For standing with those who suffer?
I don’t know exactly, and maybe none of you here know exactly,
but I am pretty confident that together we can figure it out.
Our job is to figure out what it means to be followers of Jesus,
especially on this Annual Meeting Day.
Informed by the story of Kay Graham who finds her voice and her convictions,
and inspired by the young who are finding theirs and turning their grief into activism,
perhaps we can all learn something about what it means to be people of Lent,
people who trust that God’s designs are for life:
life for the common good of all people and not just the lucky few.
Perhaps they can help us figure out what it means to be people who are willing to
follow Jesus and risk themselves for the sake of the good news of God’s promise.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
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