I Would Die 4 U
Sermon for February 28th, 2021 on Mark 8:31–38
Back when I was a camp counselor
We would teach the kids
A song called, “You Are Holy”
By Michael W. Smith.
The kids loved the song
Because the middle section
Was a rapid list of different
Names that we give to Jesus:
“You are Lord of Lords
King of Kings
Mighty God
Lord of Everything
Alpha, Omega,
Prince of Peace”
And there even more titles in the entire song.
The fact that this list
Still rings in my head today
Shows how powerful names can be
And how the definitions names provide
Can influence the way we think about a person.
But this week, after reading our Gospel
I started to wonder
What kind of image
All of those names generate?
A powerful ruler, right?
Someone who has the strength
To conquer all of the world
And control it with his righteousness
And perhaps a friend
But a powerful friend
Who will back us up if we need him to.
Such imagery is also
In the hymns that we sing
Where we imagine Jesus as Lord of all
Powerful and mighty and filled with majesty
Because we love the idea of a triumphant, powerful Jesus
And we love the idea that this triumphant, powerful Jesus
Is on our side
Working for us.
The only problem, of course,
Is that Jesus also has a very clear idea of what it means
To be the Messiah.
In this passage of Mark
He is not concerned with power, victory;
He does not desire to be a Lord or a King.
Jesus is committed
To being the child of God who is willing
To suffer and die
For the sake of humanity’s salvation.
And as embarrassed as I am to admit it
The camp songs I taught kids
The hymns I love to sing
The names we traditionally use for Jesus
Do not emphasize
That the name that Jesus gives himself
Is the one who will die for us.
I bring up the names for Jesus
We use in hymns and songs
To show that we can all relate to
Peter in this passage.
Peter, who hears his teacher, his friend,
The one whom he has called Messiah
Declare that his intention is not military triumph
Or the restoration of a golden age
But to live with such a radical, forgiving love
For all of humanity
That the Roman Empire will punish him with suffering,
His own people will reject him,
And both together will kill him
Before he rises again in three days.
Peter, like all of us,
Does not want to accept that love’s victory
Comes with the reality of suffering
And so he tells Jesus
That he is clearly wrong about his mission
Jesus doesn’t need to save humanity
Through sacrifice
Jesus doesn’t need to love others
To such an extent that he risks his life
Surely Jesus could just conquer the world
With his vast, righteous power
And save us all
Without having to suffer
And without asking us to suffer.
But what does Jesus say to Peter?
“Get behind me Satan!”
Peter’s attempts to dissuade Jesus
From living with radical, free love
Are equated with the same temptations
Of Satan in the wilderness.
Jesus rejects his closest friend’s
Attempt to define his mission and purpose
Though Peter named him the Messiah just moments before
Jesus declares that Peter
And all we humans
Do not get to define God
God alone defines God.
Jesus emphasizes that as the Son of Man
And the Son of God
He possesses God’s radical freedom
The freedom to create
The freedom to save
The freedom to love
Whomever Jesus chooses
However Jesus chooses
And just when this becomes terrifying
Jesus declares that in his immense freedom
Jesus chooses to love us so much, so intensely
So directly, so publicly
That Jesus is willing to suffer and die for us
To save us from sin
To show us that we are loved
By the God who would do anything
To make sure that we know
That we are beloved children of God.
Jesus emphasizes a painful truth
There is no salvation
Without struggle and suffering
No way to truly love one another
Without sacrifice.
This is true for Jesus
And this is true for us.
But Jesus also issues a beautiful promise
That in God’s radical freedom
God chooses to love us and forgive us so much
That God is willing to die for us.
For the moment that we give up trying to achieve salvation on our own terms
When we stop trying to control and define what and who God is
And recognize God’s freedom
Then we find a universe of love and forgiveness
Waiting for us.
Because God in God’s freedom
Chose to become Jesus
For us
To love us in every way
And call us to love each other in every way
Promising that God’s love will be with us wherever we go.
But we haven’t really been good at that throughout our human history.
For too long,
Jesus’ instructions in this passage
“Let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me”
Have been used to justify
All kinds of oppression.
Women, people of color,
People of African Descent forced into slavery,
And LGBTQIA+ people
Have all been told
That they must deny themselves
Accept their suffering
Accept their oppression
Because their willful suffering is holy and righteous
And is their burden to bear
To be saved by Jesus’ love.
But this interpretation of Christ’s words
Denies God’s radical freedom
And betrays Jesus’ message
By pretending that we have the authority to determine
Who Jesus loves and how Jesus loves
By claiming that one must earn God’s love
Rather than recognizing that Jesus declares
That we are not in charge of our own salvation
Nothing we can do,
No action
No conviction
No right belief
No victory
Can bring us salvation.
The only thing that saves us
Is the neverending love of Jesus Christ.
And when Jesus calls upon us to deny ourselves
Carry our cross
And follow him
He does not ask us to hate ourselves
To earn God’s love
This is Jesus’ request
To give up our need to save ourselves
To give up our desire to control God’s love
To give up our obsession with defining who God does and does not love
So that we can discover the beautiful, challenging truth
That God loves us exactly as we are
That God loves every piece of creation
That God has made
That God is radically free to do what God will with creation
And God chooses to love it,
Forgive it,
Restore it,
And save it.
Jesus does not ask us to hate ourselves
Jesus does not ask us to accept oppression forced onto us
Jesus asks us to respect God’s freedom
So that we can receive the eternal promise
Of God’s everlasting love
For each of us
And rise to the challenge
To love one another
With the same free and endless love
That God has for us.
We are not God,
We are not in charge of our salvation
And thank God for that.
For the minute we stop trying to name God
To force God to be lord, king, mighty, and triumphant
We discover the vast love of a free God
Who brought forth nations from Abraham, Sarah, and Hagar
Who chooses to be made known through acts of compassion and restoration
To the oppressed and abandoned
Who saves us merely from our fragile faith
Who loves the whole world with such intense love
That God comes into the world as Jesus Christ
To endure suffering with us
To die for us
To rise for us.
The minute we let go of trying to control God
We discover that the God of endless freedom
Loves us with endless love.
So how do we remember that
We are loved by an eternally free God
In a world that makes us feel
Like every ounce of respect
Every scrap of love
Needs to be earned?
For while Jesus does not call us to a life
Of suffering for suffering’s sake
He tells us the hard truth
Living like you are loved by God
And loving others like they are loved by God
Will enrage a world
That profits from pain
Is built upon prejudice
And exploits feelings of insufficiency.
Believing that we are loved
By a radically free God
Means that this God
We don’t get to hate
Dehumanize or oppress
We don’t get to practice violence
We don’t get to do whatever we want to our environment.
And a world that is built upon human control
Will not let us give control
To the free God of sacrificial love
Without a fight.
So how can we remember
That we are loved, saved, and claimed
By the radically free God
When it gets difficult
When we are in suffering?
I certainly don’t have every answer,
But this week of reflection
Has given me three thoughts.
First, we can find wonder in the world
That helps us remember
That God is free and loving
Beyond our wildest imagination.
The Perseverance mission to Mars
Has provided that holy marvelling for me
This past week.
Seeing the surface of Mars
Or the nighttime sky from the red planet
Is an absolutely stunning display of the cosmos
And a reminder
That God has created
Parts of the universe
That we don’t even know about yet
And this God
Who is free to create
An expanding universe
Chooses to love me
Chooses to love you
Giving me every permission
To love myself
To love others
Through whatever I experience.
The second thought
Is that suffering always opens up
Opportunities for greater sympathy and empathy.
For instance,
During this pandemic
Many health authorities
Are advocating for us to move
To a One Health model of understanding disease
That recognizes that the health of all living things
Is inextricably connected.
The health of animals and environments
Is connected to the health of humans
The health of the most marginalized in our societies
Is connected to the health of the most privileged
So in this era of strife and suffering
In this time of loneliness
Let us not retreat from these feelings
But be drawn to one another
Recognizing that God loves us
Especially in our weakness, fragility
And suffering
And calls upon us to love each other all the more
To give up prejudices
To give up divisions
To acknowledge the love and worth
Of all parts of creation
Because Jesus did not promise
Lives of triumph and victory and success
Jesus promised to suffer for us
And be the love that sustains us,
Heals us, binds us
And restores us in our suffering.
And the third thought
Is to reexamine the names we give to God
In our songs and hymns and praise.
Is our worship praising a God of triumph
Who serves our human wishes,
Or is our worship praising a radically free God
Whose love is expressed through solidarity in suffering?
And by carefully thinking about the names we give to God
We can practice giving up control
Letting God be God
Letting Jesus be Jesus
And trusting in Jesus’ promise
To suffer for us
To die for us
To rise for us
So that we may know that we are loved
By a God who can do anything
And chooses to love us
So that we can do everything
To love one another.
Amen.
