Mark 8. 31-38
A cross happens … when real love and a real world collide!
You just never know when inspiration will strike. Or where it’ll come from. For the past month-or-so, a group of us has been getting together on Zoom to discuss a book we’re reading Accidental Saints: Finding God in All the Wrong People. By pastor Nadia Bolz-Weber. This week, it was chapter nine. “The Slaughter of the Holy Innocents of Sandy Hook Elementary.” In it, Nadia writes about her struggles with Christmas-in-general, but, specifically, about Christmas, 2012. About that Friday morning, two weeks before, when twenty-eight people were shot to death in Newtown, Connecticut. Needless to say, she compared that moment to King Herod’s execution of the toddlers in Bethlehem. “The Epiphany story of Herod and infanticide,” she writes, “reveals a God who has entered our world as it actually exists, not as the world we often wish it would be.”
The Epiphany story of Herod and the slaughter of the innocents
reveals a god who has entered our world as it actually exists,
not the world, more often than not, we wish it was.
Until I read that sentence, I was stuck. I’d read the gospel. All the usual phrases jumped out at me. Denying ourselves. Taking up our cross, our crosses. Losing our life to save it. And I was having trouble imagining what that all looked like. Was it literal or was it figurative? Is Jesus talking about really, truly dying? For Christ’s sake? For the gospel’s sake? Like back in the good really-old days? Or does he mean doing the kind of things we’re invited to do during this season? Self-examination? Repentance? Fasting and prayer? Sacrificial living and works of love? But then, I saw that sentence! About god coming to a real world, not into a make believe one!
Truth is, this world – literal or figurative – can be a pretty ugly place. Don’t get me wrong. It’s pretty amazing, at the same time. But all the finger pointing … all the talking behind backs … And that’s the least of it. We put on our happy face. We keep calm, carry on. All while the world cracks and crumbles beneath us. Take, for instance, ashWednesday, the day that kicked all this off. We’ve been doing it for a thousand years. Confessing our sins. A cross smudged on our foreheads. And nothing much has changed. What we confessed a decade ago is the same stuff we’ll be confessing ten years from now. Exactly the same.
We’d like to believe we’re getting better. Every day. In every way. But we aren’t. We travel to the moon, to mars, and beyond! We create towers that scrape the sky! We make more money that Midas and Croesus combined! Only thing? We don’t know how to care for each other! We don’t know how to love! And even if we did, even if we did know how, I’m not sure we’d want to! And the church isn’t immune to it! That’s what Jesus is telling us.
The Son of Man, he says, must undergo great suffering! Must be rejected! And killed! And after three days, rise! Naturally, Peter rebukes him. Rebukes and, in turn, is rebuked. Jesus, pretty much, asks him, “What planet are you from?” It’s a real world for a real god! A real god for a real world! That’s how Nadia puts it! And Jesus wants a church, a people, just as real! He wants one that knows the score. Right from the start. From the very beginning. Not a pretend people; a real people! For a real world; not a make believe one.
The world isn’t all butterflies and rainbows. It’s a place where people are abandoned and abused, as well. Where they’re forgotten and ignored. Belittled and betrayed. Yet this – THIS – is the world into which god comes. It’s the world god loves. The world god is saving. Not simply from sin, death, and the devil. But saving from itself! And we just can’t close our eyes to it. We can’t ignore it, hoping it’ll go away. Love – if it is love, at all … Love – if it is god’s love … has to face it! Has to enter it! With courage! With conviction! Love must take the world just as it is! Take it in its arms and never let it go!
No, this morning, Jesus isn’t giving us a recipe for getting into heaven. He’s not giving us a do-it-yourself on living forever. He’s, simply, letting us know what lies ahead. What lies ahead, for us, in a real world. It won’t be pretty. It’ won’t be fun. We won’t, always, be happy. There will be tears. There will be suffering. But … But there will, also, be joy. There will be joy, because there will be love! There will be love! Not the candlelight and soft music kind. The uncomfortable kind of love. The inconvenient kind. The kind that brings crosses and thorns. But it’ll be worth it. Life will have meaning. Importance. Lives will be changed! The world different and new!
The goal of faith, the purpose of believing, isn’t to make us more spiritual; it’s to make us more human! And it isn’t getting us into heaven; it’s sending us out! Out into the world! We not here to become better behaved. We’re here to be loved. To be loved and, then, to love. Just! Like! Jesus! Not reluctantly! Not half-heartedly! But with all our life! With all our being! We’re here to be authentic. We’re here to be genuine. We’re here to be real. Just like god!
No, we’re not masochists. Suffering for suffering’s sake. A cross just because it’s a cross. It’s just that pain – in this world – is the cost of loving. Our valentine isn’t a read heart surrounded by white lace. It’s a cross. Old. Rugged. Scarred. So, this morning, Jesus calls the crowd with his disciples and he says to them … Deny yourselves! Take up your cross! Lose your life! Don’t be afraid! This is where life begins! This is what happens! When a real god … and a real world … collide!