Imagining Our Cross The
Dover Church
September 16, 2012 –16th Sunday after Pentecost Scripture: Mark 8:27-38
As many of you know,
I rowed in high school and college. Rowing involves a lot of what is now called
“cross
training," doing other forms of exercise to gain complementary strength
and endurance. We did a lot of running. We biked, racing each other the 8 miles
to and from practice on the river. We did endless calisthenics, had competitive
pushup, pull up, jump up and sit up parties, lifted weights, and rowed, rowed,
rowed, in shells at 5 AM in all kinds weather on the Connecticut River, on an
indoor tank in the basement of the gymnasium, and on ergometric machines which
bore a striking physical and emotional resemblance to torture devices.
Looking back, the hardcore fitness and the
camaraderie were the big hooks for most of us. After all, we only had 8 races
every year, so the winning and losing part only took up perhaps one hour of the
more than 750 hours we spent on rowing every year. We took real pride in being
strength and endurance maniacs. We loved competing against one another,
recording times, passing personal bests, trying workouts that looked impossible
until we actually did them, and then raising the bar the next time. We gloried
in the knowledge that our workouts would kill the guys on the football,
basketball, baseball or hockey teams…you know, the teams in the spotlight. We loved
it when our coach would announce with a smile that our warm up, our warm up
mind you, would be “The
Death Loop,” a
seven mile run for time which somehow managed to go uphill, sometimes steeply
and sometimes only gradually, but uphill nonetheless, for the whole course,
except the last mile back to the gym. The
memories have me scratching my head now, wondering how I pushed myself so hard
and still studied and had a social life. Looking at me now, you're probably
scratching your heads too.
We loved it. We loved the fact that we were
getting better and better, stronger and stronger, faster and faster. We loved
the fact that we were pushing each other to become better. We loved that there
seemed to be no limits to how far we might be able to push ourselves. We loved
to imagine that we were becoming the biggest, toughest, most fearless team who
just couldn’t
possibly be out powered, out lasted, out gutted, or out sprinted down the home
stretch. I have never known such intense physical suffering, and yet I loved it
for what it brought me and taught me and the friends I made.
When any of us reflect on how we got to where we
are with something we are passionate about, we know it involved suffering:
degrees in medicine, law, engineering, performing arts, business, any study,
professional advancement, the armed services, parenting, staying happily
married, you name it. We know that to excel in life we have to push ourselves,
push ourselves beyond what we think we can do, beyond what we have previously
done, beyond what others tell us we can do. If we cared about it, we went for
it, all the way. In a word: achieving goals involves suffering. Getting to
where we wanted to be involved suffering. Can I get an Amen?
And then we come to church. If we have been
coming to church for any length of time, we know what Jesus is going to say, “if you would be my
follower, then you have to first deny yourself, then take up your cross and
follow me.” And
for many of us, our gut response is “Whoa-ho-whoa, Jesus. Take it easy there. You’ve got the wrong
Christians. We’re
happy Christians, relaxed Christians, not gung-ho, uptight Christians. That sort
of religious enthusiasm makes us uncomfortable." A lot of us prefer our
faith to be more of a spectator sport, with us, comfortably on the sidelines,
watching God and Jesus do their thing. Jesus said, “the measure you give will
be the measure you receive.” So if
you prefer sitting on the sidelines watching God and Jesus, what are you going
to get? You’re
going to see God and Jesus sitting on the sidelines watching you watching them.
We know through experience that anything worth
achieving has involved suffering in our lives, but when Jesus says it, we go, “ehnn.” Savior. Messiah. “Ehnn.” Kingdom of God. “Ehnn.” Salvation. Newness and
fullness of life. Joy. “Ehnn.” I’m really busy right now.
That’ll
have to go on my honey do list for after Christmas.
I hear a lot of grumbling about all the hoopla
around the various elections coming soon. I see an enormous surge of energy,
enthusiasm and generosity of time and money. I see millions and billions of
dollars being spent and countless human hours applied to competing causes. All
that enthusiasm on both sides, both positive and negative, all that money and
effort, both positive and negative, it all translates into enormous aspiration
for something better, something different, of striving towards a dream. What disturbs
me is how so much of that energy, enthusiasm, ingenuity, time and money is
creating fear, distrust, anger, division, blame, and shame which no winner will
be able to pull everyone together over afterwards. The winners are set up to be
next cycle's losers.
I read the Bible and dream. I read the Bible
and dream about what would happen if all that enthusiasm, money and effort were
applied instead directly at the thing standing between each of us and what we
aspire to for all of us. I dream about what would happen if, instead of
funneling all of our enthusiasm into a candidate who, in all likelihood, is
going to do his or her best but will fall far short of our wildest expectations
and may well not even get to the thing that really troubles our waking and
sleeping mind, if each of us and all of us together with like minded people,
addressed our time, money, ingenuity and effort to working towards our personal
goal for a better life for all of us. It's been done before, to remarkable
effect if we think about Gandhi, Walesa, Mandela, King, and others.
“If you
want to be my follower, first deny yourself.” Get off the sidelines, step out of your
comfort zone. “Then
take up your cross.” Fix
your heart and mind on one thing that stands between you and what you aspire to
for all of creation. That’s also
denying yourself, by the way. Your aspiration can never be just about you. It
has to be for all creation. “And
then follow me.” Do it
the Jesus way. Read the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 5, verses 1-16, the
Beatitudes, the crib notes on the Jesus way. And just so you don’t come back to me later
and tell me I misrepresented the whole thing, Jesus spells out the suffering
you will run into along the way. If it's worth doing, it will be tough.
Imagine if we, you and I and all the people in
our church, applied all the money, ingenuity and emotional energy we are
individually expending on the various elections to a real problem that really
troubles us right here in Eastern Massachusetts. You may not know it, but right
now, one in nine people in eastern Massachusetts is facing hunger on a regular
basis. For children, that number is one in four. 48% of those people don't
qualify for government assistance because they are working and making too much,
yet not enough to eat regularly. They have to choose between food, utilities,
mortgage/rent, medical care or transportation.
Feeding hungry people is neither a liberal or
conservative cause, but a Jesus cause. Can I get an Amen? Jesus is quite clear
on this one, but from a purely utilitarian perspective, it's also clear that
being hungry is the root of so many things we want to improve in our
Commonwealth: poor school performance, which leads to un- or underemployment,
crime, family break ups, neighborhood disintegration, community polarization,
everything we read in the local news which disturbs us, wishing it were
different.
I was down at the Greater Boston Food Bank on
Thursday and they want to partner with us. Their goal is that by 2013 every
hungry person in eastern Massachusetts will have at least one meal a day. One
meal a day. They are distributing over 35 million pounds of food to 545,0000
people every year, but they have a ways to go to one meal a day for everyone.
We can help make that happen.
The Savior’s already come and he wasn’t named Obama or Romney,
Brown or Warren, Bielat or even, believe it or not, Kennedy. It is everyone's
responsibility to vote and it will make a difference who is president, senator,
and congressman next year. We just don't know what that difference will look
like or how it will play out. What we can know for certain is the difference
our faith convictions want to see in our neck of the woods: no more hungry
people. You and I, all of us here and wherever two or three gather in Jesus'
name, we are the Body of Christ, the hearts and hands of God in Jesus Christ in
this place at this time. As such, we have some serious work to do, but we're
going to have to get in the game, get with the Jesus way, and do the hard work
that needs to be done. It's going to require education, volunteerism,
leadership and money, denying ourselves and taking up our cross in Jesus talk,
the very same things a political campaign requires, except where our present
political climate is creating fear, distrust, anger, division, blame, shame, we
will be sowing love and compassion, building trust and community, and replacing
shame and blame with dignity and hope. Imagine that. If we think of giving food
to hungry people as a hand out, it may conflict with our economic or political
principles and we're less likely to do it. If however, if we think giving food
to hungry people allows us to be the instrument of answering peoples' prayers
when they pray "give us this day our daily bread," that we are quite
literally a vehicle of God's will, then we will be acting from religious
principles and want to do more. Imagine who we'll become, what we'll learn, the
friends we will make. If you do imagine that, please speak with me after
worship and we'll start a team to do just that.
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