Sermon for Second Lent

Preached at Canadochly Lutheran Church on March 1, 2015
Sermon text: Mark 8:27-38

A week or so ago, there was an article published in the magazine Atlantic about ISIS. It was arguing a number of points, not the least of which is how we Western-thinking Americans truly do not understand what makes these people tick. I think there’s a lot in the article that’s up for debate, but our lack of understanding of what motivates these people is rather disconcerting. There is a certain illogic to them. The author of the article summed up this illogic by comparing them to the Nazis of 1930s Germany and quoting from George Orwell.

“Whereas Socialism, and even capitalism in a more grudging way, have said to people “I offer you a good time,” Hitler has said to them, “I offer you struggle, danger, and death,” and as a result a whole nation flings itself at his feet … We ought not to underrate its emotional appeal.”

Utterly alien to us, isn’t it? The idea that people would seek out torment and suffering for its own sake. And yet, as the Nazis and ISIS and countless other groups have proven, there is an appeal here. We continue to hear stories of people from all over the world who are seeking out these ISIS barbarians to join up. The notorious killer in their beheading videos is a British national. Three men in Brooklyn, NY were arrested for trying to sign up and three young women from London hit the news this week after disappearing while trying to smuggle themselves into ISIS territory.

This make no sense to us. Why would people like us want this?

We don’t understand it because our culture has evolved (not always in a good way) to being all about our own self-fulfillment. Orwell was right. The economic systems of the Western world, capitalism and socialism both, offer different variations on a life of ease and pleasure. It’s all about us. They promise to look out for #1 and #1 is, of course, ourselves.

But there is another worldview and it is the worldview that says there are things in life that are bigger and more important than ourselves. Things worth fighting for. Things worth dying for. And while ISIS may have perverted this hunger to serve a greater cause into something monstrous, it is the heart of their appeal. Serve us and your life will have meaning and true value.

They are not alone in making this appeal. It is also at the heart of what Jesus offers to his disciples, to us, in our Gospel lesson.

“If any wish to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.” You do realize what he’s asking here right? Remember what the cross is to people of his day. It’s a device of execution, an instrument designed to inflict upon those nailed to it a most painful and horrible death. “If you follow me,” he essentially says, “I will promise you pain, suffering, and death.”

Scary to see the parallels, isn’t it? He’s calling us to give up our very lives for something greater than ourselves. He’s calling us to die for the sake of his kingdom. Not exactly something that would make most folks jump up and down to sign on to this Christianity thing.

So we’ve done our best to try to mute Jesus’ call here. We’ve tried to “Westernize” his appeal, to make our faith and our religion about something far more important than God, love, and compassion for others. We’ve made it about us.

First off, we’ve made the cross a whole lot less scary. In some ways, that happened naturally as history passed from one generation to the next. It stopped being used as an instrument of torture and execution. We no longer see the brutality of it except when someone decides to recreate it on film. Most crosses we see today are decoration, a piece of jewelry. Ours here behind me is nice and pretty, not scary at all.

Secondly, we’ve had to play up the worldly benefits of a life of faith and downplay all that pain and self-sacrifice. During the middle ages, the monastery and the convent became marketing tools. Sign up with the church and escape the horrors of the world. Get away from tyrannical nobles, plagues, constant war, and hide away on a mountaintop.

Of course, as history again evolved, that appeal had to change too. Nowadays, it’s all be a Christian, and you’ll gain riches, and popularity, and a beautiful spouse, and a great family, and you’ll have no problems in life. God will just love you so much because your devotion and loyalty that he’s just waiting to shower you with everything you want.

We make it all about us.

And yet, deep down, we soon come to realize just how empty that is. Life is more than escapism. Life is more than wealth. Life is more than success. Life is more than putting on appearances for the sake of others. All these things are fine and good for their own sake, but they don’t give life meaning. They don’t give life purpose. When we make of ourselves an idol, we quickly find that our god is much too small.

Deep down inside of us, I believe there is a hunger to be a part of something greater, something with more meaning and value than ourselves. Charlatans of all sorts have tapped into that desire. It’s the reason you have murderous cults like ISIS and diabolically evil political movements like the Nazis. For better or worse, they offer people meaning to their lives and people in droves respond to that.

Jesus does the same, but in a far better way. He says to us to “take up our cross, and follow him.” He asks us to leave behind our distractions and our isolation. To leave behind our comforts and delights. Leave them and go forth into the world, to do as he did, to confront the ugliness, the pain, and the suffering of the world. Not for our sake, but for the sake of others.

He is asking us to be agents of healing, as he was. He is asking us to be agents of justice, as he was. He is asking us to be speakers of the truth, as he was. And when you do these things, when you spend time with someone dying of AIDS, when you stand against the evils of bigotry, when you speak the truth when it is not popular or fashionable, you will feel the weight of the beam. You will feel the nails pierce you wrists and you will know the cross.

Why would we do this? Why would we put ourselves through such painful experiences, through such hardship? You already know the answer, because each one of us has something in our lives that we have already regarded as greater than ourselves. Something we already see as worth dying for: A child, a spouse, a country, a cause. Why is that important to us? Love.

Love. We loved those people. We love those things. Had we the power, we would spare those we love from all their troubles. We don’t often have that power, but we do what we can. We do all we can to make them better.

This is what it means to love. And because we love so deeply and so dearly, we endure every heartache, every tear. We would go into the very depths of hell for them, that’s how great our love is.

And that is what Jesus is asking of us, not merely for that one person or thing, but for everyone in the world. The way of the cross of which he speaks is nothing more than the way of love. He asks us to love his people as he does. He asks us to stand up for them. He asks us to embrace them. He asks us to be with them in their hours of need. No matter how painful. No matter how hard. He asks us to love.

And what Jesus asks is no more than what he himself has done. He heals the sick. He eats with the outcast. He challenges the powerful and unjust. And at the last, he took upon his shoulders the beam of the cross. He took into his wrists and feet the nails. He took on the anguish and the mockery. He embraced his own death, for by doing so, he saved the world and everyone in it. And all this he did out of love for us.

That, my friends, is the way of the cross. Amen.

(Pastor's notes: I owe something of a debt for this sermon to one I preached way back in 2006. I also have some additional reading that helped inform my ideas in addition to the two articles linked in the above text. The first is The 12 worst ideas religion unleashed on the world, paying particular attention to the nonsense there about the evils of "Glorified suffering" and notice how our "new morality" of self-fulfillment is at work in the critique. The second is this more political article about American conservatism and the Tea Party. Note in particular the quote from the anti-vaxxer in the third paragraph and his lack of concern his actions have on others. Self-fulfillment at work again.)