The 15th Sunday after Pentecost
Scripture
Epistle
– Romans 12: 9-21[1]
9Let love be genuine; hate what is evil, hold
fast to what is good; 10love one another with mutual affection; outdo
one another in showing honor. 11Do
not lag in zeal, be ardent in spirit, serve the Lord. 12Rejoice in hope, be patient in
suffering, persevere in prayer. 13Contribute
to the needs of the saints; extend hospitality to strangers.
14Bless those who
persecute you; bless and do not curse them.
15Rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those who
weep. 16Live in harmony with
one another; do not be haughty, but associate with the lowly; do not claim to
be wiser than you are. 17Do
not repay anyone evil for evil, but take thought for what is noble in the sight
of all. 18If it is possible,
so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all. 19Beloved, never avenge
yourselves, but leave room for the wrath of God; for it is written, “Vengeance
is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” 20No,
“if your enemies are hungry, feed them; if they are thirsty, give them
something to drink; for by doing this you will heap burning coals on their
heads.” 21Do not be overcome
by evil, but overcome evil with good.
Gospel
– Matthew 16: 21-28[2]
21From that time
on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to
24Then Jesus told
his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves
and take up their cross and follow me. 25For
those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life
for my sake will find it. 26For
what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their
life?
27“For the Son of Man is to come with his
angels in the glory of his [Creator], and then he will repay everyone for what
has been done. 28Truly I tell
you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the
Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
“This Is How We Who Live Will Love."
There is a climactic moment in Robert Bolt's play, A Man for All Seasons, where Sir Thomas
More confronts Richard Rich – a former friend turned accuser and perjurer for
the sake of power and office under King Henry VIII of Tudor England. As Rich turns to leave the court, More asks
him to come closer and after a moment of inspecting the medallion of his
office, attorney general of
I thought of that scene as I read Paul's appeal to his
companions at Rome that, not only should they not "be conformed to this
world,"[4] but that
the marks of a true Christian go well beyond what our culture or our politics
expect of us. The one thing that we
cling to the most, it seems, isn't a "thing" at all, but our sense of
self. Even up to the point of our deaths
we find it impossible to leave that behind.
It's one thing, we think, to be obsessed (as Richard Rich was) with
external things such as wealth, power and influence, but it's quite another
thing to talk about the loss of one's self.
That way, whisper the healers, lies psychosis.
In a sense, the therapists are right. Taking Jesus and Paul's words here literally,
some Christians have gone off into lives of austerity and self-neglect that are
hard to distinguish from mental illness.
Having very little ego to begin with, they become empty shells, claiming
that they've "turned their lives over to Jesus," when in fact they've
only found a way to legitimate the emptiness of their lives – their lack of a
sense of self. The centuries of
Christian self-denial that have masked the true dominance and manipulation by
the church, seems just to have given more strength to those who choose to engage
in this kind of behavior.
And yet there is a sense in which the therapists might be
wrong. Some Christians have been able to
see just how terribly wrong they've been.
They've been able to stand outside their own traditions – for example,
in nonwestern traditions like Zen (ch'an) Buddhism that emphasize the
delusional character of much that we call the "self." There is an important distinction to be
drawn, but it's not between an "outer" or "inauthentic"
self (the roles that we've been given and the status that they imply) and an
"inner," "authentic" self (our self-consciousness or simply
how we've come to conceive ourselves).
Instead we need to learn how to distinguish between a sense of self as
gift – however we conceive or have experienced that – and the sense of
ourselves that we believe we've achieved or earned. However we've come to think of ourselves,
though, doesn't matter half as much as understanding that who or what we are is
fundamentally a gift from God.
There are very few places in our lives that are harder to
work through, in this dialogue between Christian faith and the secular healing
professions, than this one. But if the
healing word spoken by people of faith is ever to work in harmony with the
healing words spoken by professionals in the fields of medicine, psychology and
social work, then very little is more important than knowing just how gifted we
really are. What's more, suffering,
while trying to remain faithful to this sense of being gifted by God, will
simply be inevitable. Jesus refuses to
be diverted from conveying this message to his would-be followers. It is just as important, though, for us to
realize that we've got to continue to work to avoid unnecessary pain in our
relationships as we struggle not to "be overcome by evil, but overcome
evil with good."[5]
Denise Levertov, in one of her poems that takes the form of
a prayer, sings of a couple that yearns for this kind of shalom:
….That
our loyalty to one another and our loyalty to our work not be set in false conflict.
That
our love for each other give us love for each other's work.
That
our love for each other's work give us love for one another….
That
our love for each other, if need be, give way to absence. And the unknown.
That we
endure absence, if need be, without losing our love for each other. Without closing our doors to the unknown.[6]
Over three centuries ago, a man named Sabbatai Zevi claimed
to be the Jewish messiah and so gathered a huge following. He sailed from
But did they? All
too often we see what we think is weakness and failure and echo the voice of
Peter's despair: "God forbid
it…. This must never happen to
you."[9] The Messiah should never be dragged through
the mud, should never enter so completely into such degradation, suffering and
death. The "failure" wasn't
just because there was no cataclysmic intervention by God, but because God
became so entangled in all of the blasphemy that even the one whom we have come
to call holy was destroyed.
It's too easy to preserve Jesus from this kind of charge by
claiming that his voluntary sacrifice wasn't like that of Sabbatai Zevi. Yes, Jesus' death was gruesome and painful,
but he wasn't degraded by it in even the deepest human sense. He was able to say yes to death without
saying no to God. The act of betrayal
here – whether it's Judas' or Peter's – happens on a different level. We've come to accept the witness of Jesus as
the Christ because his path toward death let him be fully in the midst of the
world's evil without ever being part of it or giving in to it.
Paul is saying the same thing to us in his letter to the
church at
Paul is inviting us to remember who we are, whose we are,
and what Jesus has called upon us to do.
He's reminding us of that fine line of division between following Jesus
and following anybody else – all other rabbis, teachers, politicians, preachers
and those who would presume to tell us how to live our lives in the face of
what they would name as evil. That's why
I am so sick and tired of a right-wing ideologue like Pat Robertson being given
such international attention as he claims to speak for Christianity. Not only has he said that our government
should assassinate the president of
ON
JUDGES: The threat to the
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ON
SEPT. 11: He agrees with Jerry Falwell
that the
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ON
DISNEY WORLD: He once warned that
hurricanes and other natural disasters would sweep down on
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FEMINISM: He once said that feminism
encourages women to "kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy
capitalism and become lesbians."[10]
This from a guy who actually
represents the viewpoints and voices of millions of so-called Christians!
The prophet Isaiah had it right when he said:
…my
thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways my ways, says the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.[11]
More often than not, the ways
of God that we claim to have discovered in one Jesus of Nazareth call on us to
make hard choices that clearly don't seem to be in our own best interest! What will we do in the face of evil? That's really what Jesus is asking Peter in
our gospel lesson for this morning. He
reminds him that to take the positions of the world's conventional wisdom is to
step across a terribly thin line. When
we do, even without realizing it, we change sides and now not only do we become
part of an "evil empire," we become a stumbling block to Jesus, to
the very purpose of his life and ministry.
We become his satan[12] –
an adversary of the worst kind.
So, as summer comes to an end, as school begins again, and
as hints of yet another vote to be taken hang in the air, I'm reminded of some
things that Walter Wink once listed in his study entitled Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of
Domination. He warns us of some
delusional assumptions that have no part in the
·
The need to
control society and prevent chaos requires some to dominate others.
·
Those who
dominate may use other people as a means to achieve their goals.
·
Men are better
equipped by nature to be dominant than women, and some races are naturally
suited to dominate others.
·
A valued end
justifies the use of any means.
·
Violence is
redemptive, the only language enemies understand.
·
Ruling or
managing is the most important of all functions.
·
Money is the most
important value.
·
The possession of
money is a sign and proof of political and social worth.
·
Institutions are
more important than people.[13]
And Jesus said:
"If
any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves…take up their cross
and follow me. For those who want to
save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will
find it. For what will it profit them if
they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? …what will they give in return…?"[14]
Sounds like the makings of a
great story. But just what is it that
makes for "a great story?" In
his book, East of Eden, John
Steinbeck wrote:
A great
story is about everyone or it will not last.
The strange and foreign is not interesting – only the deeply personal
and familiar….No story has power, nor will it last, unless we feel in ourselves
that it is true and true for us.[15]
Paul told stories.
We've been given them as letters, but these verses from Romans that we
hear as a set of guidelines for Christian living actually constitute a love
story. It says, this is how we who love
will live.
So think about all of the greatest narratives from the
Bible that you can remember. How do they
hold us together? In telling the story
of love in triumph over evil, you and I don't become powerful ourselves – like
winning the lottery or being elected President of the United States of America
– but we acknowledge the power that such a story has over us, we join with it,
live under and within its power. The
Aborigines of Australia, they tell me, believe that they help renew the world
by remembering its stories and singing songs that date back from the beginning
of time. Their dreaming tracks are not
just paths along which they walk, but stories that they tell, complete with the
marks of footprints of those ancestors who walked there before them. By reliving their stories they believe that
they participate in the ongoing work of nature by reaffirming creation itself.[16]
As you and I walk our own ground, on foot or in our minds
and hearts, we need to be able to recite stories too, about hills and trees and
animals, stories that root us in this place and that keep it alive. We can't create myth out of nothing. What we can do is recover or re-tell the
stories that help us see where we've been, how others have lived before we came
along, and how we ourselves should live.[17] We need a story to point to and say,
"This is how we who love will live."
* * *
[1] The
context of Paul's words here are from a section of his letter to the church at
[2] In
today's gospel lesson the hot-headed Peter again shows that he's certainly no
prophet! Like the outspoken person that
he is, Peter refuses to hear Jesus' words about his death until Jesus has to
publicly rebuke him. Who knows what word
he may have used in Aramaic, but the Greek word is skandalon (a root from
which we get the word "scandal" – literally, "something to trip
over"). And then he calls Peter a satan. I don't think that Jesus ever used that term
in the same way that the orthodox church has come to use it (i.e.,
as the personification of evil); he uses it, in this case, in its literal
sense, to mean "adversary" (It is, in fact, the title used for a
prosecuting attorney in Jewish legal cases.).
In any case, these are harsh words in view of the fact that Jesus, just
a moment ago (vv. 17-19), supposedly has made Peter the foundation upon which
he will build the church (the same verses, of course, to which the Roman
Catholic Church points for its authority to establish the papacy)!
[3] See the
URL http://www.nationmaster.com/encyclopedia/A-Man-for-All-Seasons
(as well as others); Bolt has characterized Sir Thomas More here as quoting
from the King James version of the Bible, Mark 8: 36.
[4] Romans 12: 2.
[5] Romans 12: 21.
[6]
"Prayer for Revolutionary Love," in The Freeing of the Dust (New York: New Directions Publishing
Corporation, 1972), p. 97.
[7] See the
URL http://www.jews-for-allah.org/Jewish-Converts-to-Islam/RabbiMessiahMuslimSabbataiZevi.htm
for the Muslim point of view. Yet
another point of view at http://www.panarmenian.net/library/eng/?part=1&id=60,
and a Jewish one at http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=531&letter=S.
[8] Gershom
Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism
(New York: Schoken Books, 1946), Chapter 8.
[9] Matthew
16: 22b.
[10] The San Francisco Chronicle front page
(Chronicle news services),
[11] Isaiah 55: 8-9 – and these verses continue with some of the most beautifully poetic verses that we have in the Bible (vv. 10-13):
For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven, and do not return there until they have watered the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
For you shall go out in joy, and be led back in peace; the mountains and the hills before you shall burst into song, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands. Instead of the thorn shall come up the myrtle; and it shall be to the Lord for a memorial, for an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.
[12] Again,
see the explanation of the Hebrew word, satan, in endnote #2 above.
[13] Walter
Wink, Engaging the Powers
(Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), pp. 95-96.
[14] Matthew 16: 24-26
[15] John
Steinbeck, East of
[16] Adapted
from Scott Russell Sanders, Staying Put:
Making a Home in a Restless World (Boston: Beacon Press, 1993), reprinted
in Parabola, Summer 1993, p. 9.
[17] Ibid.