March 4, 2012 – Mark 8:31-38
Mark 8:31-38
One Step at a Time
Second Sunday in Lent – March 4, 2012
First Lutheran Church – Winnipeg, MB
This week my wife Sue and I saw the film Iron Lady.
It stars Meryl Streep as Margaret Thatcher,
who was the Prime Minister of Great Britain through the 1980s.
Streep gives a great performance, and we are given a portrait of a person who
was not just a formidable world leader but also a human being with
domestic cares and health concerns.
We are also shown a person, apparently, whose childhood values – as the daughter of
an independant grocer whose family were devout Methodists – shaped
her later outlook and political philosophy,
particularly the value of self-reliance.
“I’m a doer,” she claims early in the film: she wants to get things done.
Which is admirable, of course, although I suppose it depends on what, exactly,
you want to do.
Later in the film we are shown her as a frail elderly woman.
At a dinner party at her home, she tells a young woman,
“In my day we were about doing something.
Nowadays it all seems to be about being somebody.”
But the film shows, perhaps, the danger of doing and doing and doing without regard for
who you are or who you have become.
We are shown, for sure, a very strong person, a strong woman who became
the first female world leader in the West.
As time goes on, however, particularly in the later years of her prime ministership,
we are shown a person who is not just strong, but who has become,
perhaps, power-mongering and who regularly rides rough-shod over
the opinions even of trusted and valuable colleagues.
She has done, maybe, without regard for who she is.
I am sure that way back when, in the days of her childhood, she heard this
well-known passage from Mark’s Gospel.
The whole things starts just a few sentences before when Jesus asks the disciples
who people are saying he is and then asks them who they think he is.
Peter gets the answer right, of course: he is the Messiah!
And that is who Jesus is, but Jesus knows he is not the kind of Messiah anyone is expecting,
a great military hero who will defeat and kill Romans for them.
In this morning’s passage, Jesus begins to tell the disciples what he must do as the Messiah:
undergo great suffering, be rejected and killed and then after three days rise again.
Peter rejects this, of course.
Jesus, he thinks, maybe should have taken a church growth seminar!
The Baptist pastor Kyle Childress has a great paraphrase of Peter’s speech on his blog this week:
No, no! We’ve got a good thing going here. People are having their needs met and more and more of them are joining up. For Pete’s sake, we have a movement started. We’re going to be successful. Some of the boys are already drawing up blueprints for a new Center for Ministry complex in Capernaum. James and John want to be co-directors and I’m putting together ‘Jesus Tour: A.D. 31’ with t-shirts and kid’s action figures and a possible book deal. Jesus, just think, you could become an author. People might even start quoting you.
See: the desert isn’t the only place Jesus was tempted.
Jesus rightly discerns this morning that it is Satan tempting him to forget who he is and
what he’s called to do once again.
That’s not who I am, says Jesus, and this is not what God is calling me to do. And if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
What Jesus is calling us to is the way of the cross rather than the way of glory.
As Pastor Childress asks, “This is the hard stuff and we have a hard time getting people to show up for the nice stuff. How do we lead a congregation to follow the hard way of Jesus and the cross?”
He might have asked, “How do we stay anchored in who God calls us to be,
in such a way that we don’t lose our way and do stuff that is, at worst, harmful, and
at best ineffective, stuff that is not part of God’s loving mission to
bless heal restore and set free this whole world and every person in it?”
One thing that is helpful is this Lenten opportunity of discovering more and more who we are.
Lent allows us time – and gives us permission – to slow down.
Take time to return to the God of mercy and compassion.
Establish some helpful spiritual practices.
Like the silent prayer we practice at Oasis of Prayer.
Silent prayer has many, many benefits.
One of them is simply to learn to become attentive in a moment of time.
To learn not to be distracted by remote, past, or future things.
But simply to attend to God in the moment.
And so to one’s own self in relationship to that God.
This is a real gift, one we do well to give to our children,
who will be buffeted and swayed and tempted by many things.
What you discover in the moment is God’s very gracious presence.
That who you are is beloved, even when you’re not doing and producing and achieving.
And what you learn is the ability to be fully present.
This has been an invaluable skill for me in ministry.
How to attend fully to another person as they sit in front of you and talk with you.
You learn how to be, with others, with God, with creation, even with yourself.
You learn, I think, how to remain fully who you are – and who God calls you to be –
in each small, mundane encounter and task throughout your day.
Okay: maybe you don’t have to decide whether to invade the Falklands or
institute the poll tax like Margaret Thatcher.
But you do have to decide how to deal with the child who is sick,
or who wants to participate in something you are less than thrilled about.
You have to figure out how to deal with the person at school you are having a
big disagreement with and who used to be your friend.
You have to decide how to work with someone you don’t quite like.
It’s easy to get distracted and let these things dictate your response to them,
rather than thinking and acting from your core, from who you are:
a disciple of Jesus of Nazareth whose very own spirit lives and breathes in you.
So: how be his follower?
This is hard.
First: in prayer, anchor your whole being in him.
And second: take very small steps, attending to the tasks that are immediately in front of you.
Take a page out of Coach Noel’s book.
You know: are the Jets gonna make the playoffs?
Where are they going to end up in the standings?
Will it be good enough? Is it even possible?
Coach Noel’s response at one point this season was:
I’m not telling my guys to think about that. I’m not telling them to look that far ahead.
I’m telling them to focus on one game at a time.
And actually, I’m not even telling them that.
I’m telling them to focus on one period at a time, or even a half a period at a time.
Even better, I’m telling them to focus on just one shift at a time.
Then, maybe, when you look up at the end of the game, you find you’ve won it.
Maybe that’s the way it is with following Jesus.
You just take each person, each encounter, one small step at a time.
And you think: This person is before me. This child is with me now.
This co-worker is here. This task is before me.
How, in this moment, is Jesus inviting me to deny myself and
place his priorities ahead of my own?
How is Jesus inviting me to take up the cross and be willing to take the consequences of
being faithful and loving?
How is Jesus inviting me to follow him into places that may be very uncomfortable for me
but in which he has promised to be present?
How can I do in this situation and with this person that which is consonant with who
in my baptism God made me to be?
Or, more mundanely, how can I not become Margaret Thatcher?
Friends: this kind of living is hard.
Peter doesn’t try to dissuade Jesus for nothing!
He’s a disciple: he follows his teacher.
He’d rather follow the successful seminar-giver or even the successful warrior rather than the
dude who dies on the cross.
But that, Jesus says, is where real life – the kind of life God calls us to – is found.
This is the age-old paradox and mystery of Christian faith and life that we
continue to affirm on this day.
Self-indulgence leads to death but self-sacrifice gives life.
In giving we receive. In self-forgetting we find. In dying to ourselves we find fullness of life.
So together, let us say, “Amen.”
Pastor Michael Kurtz
If you enjoyed this post, please consider to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
