Mark 8: 31-38
I do not remember how it was with me…I was too little to remember.
- But I have watched my own four children and eleven grandchildren.
- As toddlers they all strung out three words together.
- It was something like: “I to it!”
- Independence and self-reliance come quite naturally to us.
- Ralph Waldo Emerson had beautiful things to say about life and nature and contemplation.
- But his most famous essay was on “Self-Reliance” …
- An ode to individualism and the sanctity of self-sufficiency.
Much of the American ethos is based on this notion.
- Rugged individualism:
- Paul Bunyan…the unsinkable Molly Brown and the Marlboro man.
- Yes…I can “do it by myself!”
Even Christianity has colluded with this individualism.
- As in the new title we have given to Jesus in the last 100 years:
- “Personal Lord and Savior.”
- As though in our contact list between our Personal Assistant and our Personal Trainer can be found:
- “Jesus…our Personal Savior.”
But this is not the Jesus we meet in our text today.
- This Jesus says: “Deny yourself…take up your cross and follow me.
- And if you try to save your life…you will lose it and if you lose it for the sake of the Gospel…you will gain it.”
This saying of Jesus that we are to deny the self and lose our life to gain it has been abused.
- Twisted into things like: Denying your dignity and picking up your cross of continued domestic abuse.
- Or things like: Denying your self-worth and picking up your cross of being bullied at school.
When Jesus says…”deny yourself” …he means denying the self that wants to see itself as separate from God and others.
- Denying the self that believes that following Jesus is a suffering avoidance program.
- Denying the self that does not feel worthy of God’s love.
- Denying the self that thinks we are more worthy of God’s love than our enemy is.
- Denying the self that thinks we can “do it by ourselves.” That we don’t need anybody.
What I really want us to know today is this:
- That dying to ourselves no matter how painful…will bring us abundant life.
- But even Jesus himself was not able to convince his disciples of this.
The Lord be with you.
And also with you.
In our text for today Jesus tried to tell Peter that the Messiah must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders and priests and be killed and after three days rise again.
- He tried to tell Peter of this great mystery of God…and Peter was not convinced.
- Peter thought Jesus had lost his mind.
- You gatta love how Peter took Jesus aside to rebuke him.
- You know…so Jesus would not lose face in front of the guys.
Jesus tried to teach Peter the great mystery of Jesus suffering death and resurrection.
- But Peter could not get his arms around this idea of dying to self.
- Some things just must be experienced.
- Peter…honestly…is always a stand-in for us.
- You see…Peter had not yet experienced Good Friday and Easter.
Peter had not experienced how at the cross God can gather up all of humanity’s violence and abusive power.
- Peter had not experienced how even his own denial of Jesus could be gathered up into God’s own self.
- And then God responding with nothing but love and forgiveness.
Without experiencing the resurrection…after what Peter saw as the complete loss of hope.
- Without having experienced all of this…
- Peter could not know it just by being told it would happen.
- And we are in the same boat…we cannot know it just by being told either.
So…there is no way I can preach a homily that will convince you that “I can do it myself” is not the way of Jesus or the cross.
- But it is in dying to self and living for God where life is to be found.
- There is simply no way I can convince you of something that must be experienced to be known.
- I cannot lay-out a sound enough argument to convince you of the mystery of how God does this death and resurrection thing.
- But I so desperately want to because I have experienced it to be true.
I have experienced it in the way in which God takes the messes of my own making and makes something new in me and in my life.
- Something I never would have chosen out of a catalog or created for myself.
- It may be a small piece of wisdom or an unexpected friendship or an angel in the form of a person or yet another opportunity for me to be forgiven by you.
I have experienced the death and resurrection of this baptismal life so deeply and so often that it is no longer a belief.
- It is a knowing.
So…if you know someone who is faced with extreme pain and trauma in their life right now.
- That is…they cannot manage to stop addictive behavior on their own.
- They cannot stop using alcohol or drugs.
- Or stop shopping compulsively.
- Or stop hating themselves.
- Or stop liking someone who is hurting them.
- If they are filled with false pride.
- Or filled with fear and unable to find motivation to do what they know should be done.
- Tell them there is no shame in that.
- Because…as St. Paul said…God’s strength is perfected in their weakness.
Denying ourselves looks like letting ourselves off the hook for having to be God.
- As I like to remind myself.
- A big difference between me and God is that God never thinks he’s Pastor Chip.
- So…letting God be God for us means denying the cult of the self.
- Both self-aggrandizement and self-abasement.
So good people of God…I cannot convince you of this.
- I can only describe what it looks like.
- As your preacher all I can say is:
- This is abundant life found in the paradox of losing ourselves in Christ.
- May it be so.