The Rev. John C. Bethell
Grace Church – Anderson
I speak to you in the name of God, the most compassionate, the ever merciful. Amen.
Today’s gospel lesson makes a little more sense if we put it within its own context.
In the last chapter, Jesus has come up against his own people on his home field who did nothing but insult him. He left the country and a foreigner knew who he was.
So now, he’s sitting with his followers and says, “Guys. Hold up. Who do people say that I am?” Some said he was John the Baptizer or some other prophet. Then he turns it to them and says, “But who do you say that I am?”
“Why are you following me? What am I to you?”
Then Peter opens his mouth and says, “You are the Messiah!”
Jesus tells him to shut up. Not because he’s right. Because he’s wrong.
Right after Peter calls Jesus the messiah, Jesus goes on to talk about the Son of Man who would undergo great suffering and be killed.
This doesn’t sit well with Peter. What was a messiah to him? What did it mean to be a messiah in the first century?
You don’t have to read much further in the gospel to see what they were looking for; take a look at the competing processions into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday. A militant messiah was supposed to overthrow Roman rule by force.
But here Jesus is talking about dying at the hands of the chief priests.
Peter pulls Jesus aside and rebukes Jesus. “I just called you the Messiah, Jesus! Be more Messiah-y!”
Jesus then turns and faces the crowd and openly rebukes Peter.
Interestingly, the word used for ‘rebuke’ is the same one used to exorcize demons in other parts of Mark. In other words, these are some strong words being tossed back and forth.
He tells everyone within earshot: I’m not here to live how you want me to; I’m going to die. And if you want to be one of my followers, pick up your cross.
Jesus wasn’t telling his followers to carry their cross the way we’ve softened it over two-thousand years. It’s not carrying your cross to sign a marriage license because you don’t like gay people.
In a forum held at the New York Public Library, write Malcolm Gladwell had something interesting to say about tolerance in America.
“What we call tolerance in this country, and pat ourselves on the back for, is the lamest kind of tolerance. What we call tolerance in this country is when people who are unlike us want to be like us, and when we decide to accept someone who is not like us and wants to be like us, we pat ourselves on the back… So when gays want to be like us and get married, we finally get around and say, ‘Oh, isn’t that courageous of me, to accept gay people for finally wanting to be like us.’ Sorry — you don’t get points for accepting someone who wants to be just like you. You get points for accepting someone who doesn’t want to be like you — that’s where the difficulty lies.”
It’s not carrying your cross to tolerate someone that you should be loving.
Jesus knew that what he was doing was making people angry. That provoking the local authority and speaking out against Roman oppression would only end poorly for him and his followers. That what he was doing could only lead to crucifixion.
So when he says take up your cross and follow me, he means it literally. “Grab your cross because they’re going to nail you to it.”
And after the fall of Jerusalem forty years later, that’s what Rome did – at the rate of five-hundred a day.
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If you think that Jesus isn’t acting the way he should, perhaps you should ask where your expectations of him are coming from.
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Unfortunately, or perhaps not unfortunately, we don’t have Jesus standing in front of us to rebuke whenever we get him wrong. And we get him wrong a lot.
With a presidential election coming up not soon at all, it’s already time to invoke Gods name for anything you want to.
Jesus is alternatively pro-gun and anti-gay or the other way around. Jesus weighs in on both sides of healthcare coverage. Jesus knows what to do about immigrants and more than any other country, Jesus loves America.
I can’t help but remember something Anne Lamott wrote once:
You can safely assume you’ve created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.
We would do well to sit loosely with what we think God would or wouldn’t want. No matter how certain it seems.
As Episcopalians – as Anglicans – we are taught, echoing Elizabeth the First, that “there is one Lord, Jesus Christ, and the rest is a dispute over trifles.”
Instead of using God to divide ourselves, we see God as the one thing that’s stronger than anything that could possibly divide us.
Which is why this church (or any that’s doing what it’s supposed to be doing) shouldn’t be known as either a conservative or a liberal one. None of that matters. Who you vote for or sleep with doesn’t matter.
Because we are never more ourselves than when we gather around this altar, acting as one body, eating one Bread, and sharing one cup.
Who do you say that Jesus is?