(Homily for Gayton Road Christian Church's Worship on March 31, 2019, Fourth Sunday of Lent)
A Bad Defender, a Good Father
Running relaxes me. The steady strides, the focused
breathing, the outside world of squirrels and snakes and lakes and trees—all of
this helps to clear my mind. It is
meditative. I become attuned to
the present in a way I am normally not.
Maybe for you, it’s not running but another activity: crafting, cooking,
building something, gardening, washing dishes. Whatever it is, I wonder if these mind-clearing activities
are not sometimes forms of prayer.
I wonder if they don’t sometimes reset our mind in a good way—or perhaps
even set our mind on divine things, as our scripture puts it today.
Last week as I was
running-praying at Deep Run Park, I watched intently out of the corner of my
eye a father and his son playing soccer.
The son, maybe five or six-years-old, was wearing a replica jersey of a
superstar. He was dribbling toward
the goal without much control. His
father was playing defense—but not really. When his son lost control of the ball, he did not swoop in
and steal it as a good defender would have done, but rather he hovered in place
and waited for his son to recover.
It was a delicate, loving dance.
At the end, of course, the son smashed the ball into the goal and
wheeled away in celebration.
As I reflect on that tender
scene, one in which I see my own childhood before me, I ponder a paradox. There is such a thing as getting it
right in the wrong way. The father
could have defended the goal much better.
He could have kept his son from ever scoring. But to do that would have been getting it right in the wrong
way. To play to the best of his
ability would have been to deny his son the opportunity to practice, to
improve, to be encouraged. It
would have stifled his son’s dreams.
To be a great defender in that moment, would have been to be a terrible
father.
The Right Words in the Wrong Way
Earlier this semester, I explored
the book of Job with my students at VCU.
The book of Job is another example of getting it right in the wrong
way. After Job suffers great loss,
his three friends come to share his grief. For seven days, they sit with him in silence. But when Job starts to air his
grievances with God, they break their silence. They answer each of his complaints with well-intended pious—today
we might say “churchy”—comments.
Much of what they say, actually, bears close resemblance to what is said
elsewhere in the Bible. In other
words, they get a lot of things right about God. But what they say does not help Job one bit in his
grief.
We have all probably seen or experienced
this in our lives. Someone close
to us dies, and a friend consoles us with well-meaning claims of faith: “He’s
with God now.” “You’ll see him
again one day.” “Things will get
better.” At the end of the book of
Job, God intervenes and says to Job’s friends, “You have not spoken of me what
is right.” In other words, they may have been the right words, but they've been shared in the wrong way. What
Job needed was not pious consolation, but a companionship deeper than words—a
companionship that his friends had shared with him the first seven days when
they were silent.
Satan Gets It Right
One of the curious patterns in the
gospel of Mark is Jesus’ frequent admonition to his disciples and others to
keep silent—not to spread the
news.
We see it in today’s
scripture. Jesus asks his
disciples who people say that he is, and after a host of wrong answers, Peter
gets it right: “You are the Messiah” (8:29). In response, Jesus “sternly orders” them to not tell
anyone. Why in the world would
Jesus want to keep the right answer under wraps?
We get a hint, I think, in the
very next verse. “Then,” Mark
tells us, “he began to teach them.”
In other words, they need to be taught. They have the right answer, but Jesus is afraid that if they
were to tell people about him, they would get it right in the wrong way. His concern is immediately confirmed. When he tells his disciples that as the
Messiah he will undergo great suffering and rejection and even death, Peter
takes him aside and rebukes him.
“Jesus,” I imagine him saying, “You’ve got it all wrong. The Messiah will bring our victory, not
our defeat.”
Jesus’ response shows just how
wrongly Peter has gotten it right. “Get behind me, Satan!”
The suggestion here is startling.
We all recognize Satan in the obvious shapes: greed, envy, pride, lust;
racism, sexism, nationalism. But
here Satan takes the shape of the right answer. Here Satan dresses up in his Sunday best, carries a Bible
under his arm, quotes scripture with us, prays with us our prayers. Here Satan gets it right—Jesus is the
Messiah—but gets it right in a very wrong way. The Messiah, according to Satan, means our success, satisfaction,
security. The Messiah, according
to Satan, means we are on the winning side.
Call It Jesus Christ and the Way of the Cross
After Peter (or Satan) gets it
right in a very wrong way, Jesus sets him and the disciples straight, which is
to say he sets their minds not on human things but on divine things (cf. 8:33). The Messiah, he says, is not about the
self. It’s not about us
winning. The Messiah is about the
loss of the self for the sake of others.
Call it altruism, call it ego-death, call it selflessness, call it Jesus
Christ and the way of the cross—call it whatever you want, but it’s the
awareness that the self in fact makes life smaller, sicker, a shadow of death,
and that the loss of self paradoxically makes life bigger, richer, and more
abundant. I think again of the
father playing horrible defense, how on the level of the self he was getting it
so wrong, and yet how on a deeper level he was getting it so right. I think of a quarrel between friends,
how winning an argument can satisfy the self and simultaneously strain the
friendship of its joy and vitality, how we can get it right in such a wrong
way.
In today’s scripture, Jesus
values the way that we live over the words that we say. In fact, at the very moment that Peter
stumbles upon the right words, Jesus tells him to shut up because he knows
Peter’s got it in the wrong way. After
that, Jesus teaches his disciples the right way and invites them to follow
him. He effectively counsels them,
“Less talk, more walk.”
Of the Church’s Survival and the Kingdom’s Arrival
In Matthew’s version of this
passage, Jesus famously declares that Peter is the rock on which he will build
the church. I wonder, then, if
Peter might not serve as an example for the church today. Could it be that Jesus calls the church
like Peter to focus less on its words and more on its way?
Author and Christ-follower Philip
Yancey tells the heartbreaking story of a down-and-out prostitute in
Chicago. She confided with a
social worker just how bad things had gotten. She had started using her two-year-old daughter to support
her drug habit. But now she had
spent the last of her money and was unable to buy even a scrap of food for her
or her child. The social worker
was stunned speechless. He was
legally liable and would have to report the woman for child abuse. But even so, he looked upon the woman
with compassion and asked if she had ever thought of going to a church for
help. “Church?” she asked
incredulously. “Why would I ever
go there? I was already feeling
terrible about myself. They’d just
make me feel worse.”
It is noteworthy, I think, that
the broken and hurting in our world flee less and less to church and more and
more to humble AA gatherings, soup kitchens, and other special communities that
reach out compassionately to persons in need. Could it be that like Peter the church sometimes proclaims
good news in a not so good way, because it proclaims love in a prideful,
overbearing, and impatient register?
I know from my conversations with
you that Gayton Road is different from this caricature of church that I’ve
sketched out. Many of you have
shared with me that the reason you began coming to Gayton Road in the first
place was the warm welcome and humble, unpretentious character of our church
family. Even so, I wonder if
Jesus’ words to Peter and his disciples might issue a healthy challenge to us
as well: namely, to worry less about ourselves and more about our way. To worry less about the survival of the
church—the building and the programs that it houses and how many people fill
the pews—and to ask rather how we are loving and building up our neighbors,
especially the needful among them.
The point, after all, is not for the church to survive, but for the
kingdom to arrive.
Prayer
Self-giving God,
Whose love is
Not a doctrine
But a person—
Show us your way
Of selflessness
And save us
From ourselves,
That we might
Share life abundant
With others
In your kingdom.
In Jesus, who took up his cross:
Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment