Tag: Jesus

Evolutionary Thoughts: Kingdom Come

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Evolutionary Thoughts2 Comments

God’s presence in our history and in the evolution of creation at large is that of a Spirit-power, wisely shaping and forming the inter-connected web of relationships that holds everything in being.  The divine is first and foremost a wisdom-force, forging unceasingly the relationships that sustain and enhance life.  In our Christian story, that relational process is encapsulated in the concept of the new reign of God, traditionally described as the “kingdom of God.”

The wisdom that imbues the sacred writings of many great religions, the wisdom that Christians perceive to be embodied uniquely in Jesus of Nazareth, is that same wisdom that gave birth to stars, pulsars, planets, and people.  Although I have drawn mainly on the Christian story, I want to acknowledge that the wisdom story is bigger than Christianity and indeed exceeds in grandeur and elegance all the insights of the great religions.  It is the prodigiously creative energy of being and becoming.  It is the heartbeat of the evolutionary story in its elegant, timeless, and eternal unfolding.

Evolutionary theology requires us to honor the big picture where God in time begins prior to the evolution of the major religions as we know them today.  The wise and holy God was at work for billions of years before religious consciousness began to develop.  And that same creative wisdom will continue to beget radically new possibilities, forever defying and challenging the outstanding theories and inventions of the human mind.

–Diarmuid O’Murchu, Evolutionary Faith, p.72

Prophetic Preaching: Hoodies on Palm Sunday

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon, UncategorizedLeave a comment
I preached in a hoodie this week in solidarity with the collective cry for justice in the Trayvon Martin case.

The text is Mark 11:1-11.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

It probably feels a little strange to see your pastor preaching in a hoodie on Sunday.  Half of you are probably wondering if I’m trying to make some kind of point.  The other half of you are probably wondering if maybe we need to turn up the heat in here.  Both groups would be right (in a manner of speaking).

It all got started earlier this year when I realized that Palm Sunday would fall on April Fools’ Day this year.  I said to myself then, “Oh man, that’s too good.  I’ve got to have some fun with this!”  And the beauty is that it doesn’t even take that much work to find a connection between these two days.

The setting of the scene, as we already know, is the Jewish festival of Passover.  Jesus and his disciples were joining crowds of their fellow Jews as they made their way on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem for the holiday.  Passover is an annual celebration of Jewish liberation from slavery in Egypt.  They get together each year and tell the story of how God set them free from foreign oppressors.  The message of Passover was particularly powerful to Jews in Jesus’ day as they survived under Roman occupation.

In order to halt any bright ideas about rebellion during this festival, the Roman governor (Pontius Pilate) made a point of marching his troops through the city as a display of Imperial dominance.  He wanted to send a clear message that Rome was in charge.  The troops marched through town with their banners proudly waving.  At the head of the line, Pilate sat mounted on his mighty steed.

Contrast this image with the image of Jesus riding into Jerusalem on a donkey, surrounded by his usual riffraff as they waved palm branches and made a scene.  It was a deliberate mockery of Pilate’s procession.  Jesus was making fun of it!  It was like an April Fools’ prank, but with a point.

Jesus’ parody of Pilate’s pride was actually a brilliant and prophetic display of political and spiritual theater.  I call it prophetic, not because it was predicting the future, but because, in that moment, Jesus was engaged in the exercise of “speaking truth to power.”  People have this funny idea that prophecy is all about predicting the future or the end of the world.  In reality, the job of a prophet is to reinterpret the present from a spiritual point of view.  They present us with a vision of reality as it could be, if we would only open our hearts to what God is doing in our lives at this moment, or a warning of reality as it might become if we remain closed.

Jesus was hardly the first or last person in history to “speak truth to power” as a prophet.  We can all think of others who, through their words or actions, presented us with a vision of reality as it could be.  I have my own litany of saints who have affected me like that: Dorothy Day, Mother Teresa, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Oscar Romero, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Gene Robinson, and many others.  Maybe you know of others.

Jesus had his favorites as well.  One of them was an ancient Jewish prophet by the name of Zechariah.  Zechariah had this crazy vision in his day that Jesus decided to make come true.  Jesus knew that people wanted him to become king of the Jews.  So, he decided to show them the kind of king he would be.  You might call this his “royal mission statement.”  He borrowed this donkey-riding image from the mind of Zechariah.  Zechariah said,

Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion! Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem! Lo, your king comes to you; triumphant and victorious is he, humble and riding on a donkey, on a colt, the foal of a donkey. He will cut off the chariot from Ephraim and the war horse from Jerusalem; and the battle bow shall be cut off, and he shall command peace to the nations; his dominion shall be from sea to sea, and from the River to the ends of the earth.

Jesus would be a humble king and a peacemaker, not a guerilla fighter or imperial overlord.  And his reign of peace would include all the nations of the earth, not just his own ethnic group.  This, by the way, was also another slight against the Roman Empire.  They prided themselves on their large and (relatively) stable territory.  They rejoiced in what they called the Pax Romana (Roman Peace) that would one day spread to the ends of the earth through the imposition of military order.  Jesus shook his head at this idea and laughed.  He used the words of the prophet Zechariah to introduce another vision of world peace.

In this hilarious lampoon of Rome’s arrogance, Jesus is reminding his followers (and everyone else) where true power lies.  It doesn’t rest in the hands of the privileged few who happen to wield the death-dealing resources of an international superpower.  True power comes from God.  And it is not on display in the exercise of intimidation, but inspiration.  True power, as God sees it, doesn’t come from dealing death, but giving life.  It’s not about exclusion, but inclusion.  Real power, according to Jesus, doesn’t come from our ability to condemn, but to forgive.  This is the upside down vision of reality that Jesus is proclaiming to us on this Palm Sunday.

This leads me back to the hoodie that I’m wearing.  Most of you are probably aware of certain events that took place in Florida over a month ago.  An African-American teenager by the name of Trayvon Martin was on his way back from the store with a bag of skittles and an Arizona Ice Tea when a vigilante neighborhood watchman named George Zimmerman, who has a documented history of aggressive and violent behavior, called 911 about a young black male in his gated community.  The 911 operators specifically told him to leave Trayvon alone, but Zimmerman picked up a gun and went after him anyway.  The facts of what happened next have not yet been established (it appears that there was some kind of fight), but we know that it ended with George Zimmerman shooting an unarmed minor in the chest and killing him.

Over a month later, George Zimmerman is still free.  He has not been arrested or charged with a crime.  The state of Florida has not even suspended his license to carry a concealed firearm.  In theory, this means there would be no legal barrier to prevent this same person from walking into this room with a gun right now.  If this had happened to one of our kids in Boonville, would we be satisfied to wait a full month before the authorities investigated deeply enough to make an arrest?  How safe would we feel if it was a student from Adirondack High School lying on the ground with a hole in his chest while the person who pulled the trigger was happily mowing his lawn a month later?  Wouldn’t we, in the very least, be passionately asking questions about the truth of what happened that night?  Of course we would.

In the weeks following Trayvon’s shooting and death, members of the media have been weighing in on this.  I realize you might be sick of hearing about it, but I’m following the advice of theologian Karl Barth this morning: “Preach with the Bible in one hand and the New York Times in the other.”  Some pundits have tried to paint a mental picture of Trayvon Martin as a no-good thug by appealing to stereotypical images of young black men.  Geraldo Rivera went so far as to blame this incident on the fact that Trayvon was wearing a hoodie (like this one) on the night of his death.

There has been a widespread response to Geraldo’s ignorant comment.  Last Sunday, pastors in churches all around the country joined together in a prophetic display of political and spiritual theater, just like Jesus’ famous entrance into Jerusalem on the first Palm Sunday.  They all preached in hoodies.  Since then, folks in other public professions have followed suit.  There have even been some of our elected officials who have worn hoodies into the halls of Congress.  I’m a latecomer to this action, since I didn’t hear about it until after-the-fact, but that’s okay because it fits well with what we’re talking about today.

Geraldo Rivera implied (intentionally or unintentionally) that wearing a hoodie somehow makes a person eligible to be shot.  If that’s really true, then I’m eligible to be shot right now and, as I already noted, there is nothing to legally stop George Zimmerman from walking into this room and doing so.

Now, you and I know that such an idea is ridiculous.  No one out there really believes that hoodies justify murder.  The importance of this symbol lies in its association.  This style of dress is associated with the hip-hop subculture which, in turn, is associated with negative stereotypes of African-Americans.  So really, underneath the surface, this is still a conversation about race.  Geraldo used the word  hoodie, but what he really meant to say was black.  Trayvon Martin was shot and killed because he was black.  The only thing that disturbed George Zimmerman was the sight of a young black man walking down the street in a suburban gated community.  Why?  Because young black men aren’t supposed to live in gated communities, according to the racist subconscious assumptions of our society.  We may have outlawed segregation on paper, but racism is still very much alive in reality.  And that, brothers and sisters, is a gospel issue.

We agree with the apostle Paul when he says that, in Christ, “there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.”  We could easily add “black nor white.”  When I and my fellow-pastors wear these hoodies into our pulpits, we are standing together to make a bold prophetic statement.  We’re not doing it because we’re cold (although we are trying to “turn up the heat” on this issue).  The prophetic statement we are making has to do with the equality of all people in the eyes of God.  We’re saying that one black life, ended in violence, is no less disturbing or tragic than a white one.  This prophetic action is shining the light on this truth, which we all hold dear.

In a few moments, we’ll all be participating together in another bold prophetic action as we celebrate the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.  Around this table of Christ, we gather together and partake of one loaf and one cup.  We remind ourselves that we are all members of one family.  The same blood, the blood of Christ, flows through each of our veins.  This is the truth we believe in that trumps any other division or distinction we try to make among ourselves.  We are connected, through the mystery of this sacrament, to each other and to God.

On this Palm Sunday, we remember Jesus’ prophetic proclamation of the power of peace.  Likewise, we are making our own prophetic proclamations as we wear hoodies and share Communion with each other.  This celebration leads us into Holy Week, the final stage of our journey toward Easter.  We will be reminded during the coming week that there is a price to pay for speaking about God’s vision so boldly.  This willingness to confront is what ultimately got Jesus crucified.  He spoke out against the dominant system of power in his day and the system pushed back.  The system used all the terrible might at its disposal to silence his message.  But Jesus wasn’t afraid of them.  He didn’t keep quiet.  He continued to proclaim the prophetic vision loud and clear, even though he knew it would get him killed.  Why?  Because Jesus believed that love is stronger than death.  He believed that the prophetic vision of the kingdom of God was bigger than his own individual survival.  He trusted in resurrection more than survival.

As Christians, we are called to do the same.  We are called to be Easter people who believe in the power of resurrection more than survival.  Jesus has handed this prophetic vision to us, so that we might continue to proclaim its truth in the midst of a world that doesn’t want to hear it, but needs to hear it.  As a church, a household of faith, we are called to take chances.  We are called upon to risk our very lives for the sake of truth.  We are called to embody this truth in our words and actions at church, home, school, work, or play.  We should make those uncomfortable observations and ask the hard questions that we would rather ignore.  It will not make us popular or successful.  If we’re doing it right, it will lead us, as it did Jesus, to our own crucifixion and death.  But it will also lead us to experience the Easter-power of resurrection and eternal life, which will continue to stand firm long after the systems and the nations of this world have passed away.

The Hour Has Come

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Common Sense Liberalism, Evolutionary Thoughts, SermonLeave a comment

Today’s sermon from Boonville Pres.

The texts are John 12:20-33, Jeremiah 31:31-34, and Psalm 87.

Click here to listen to this sermon at fpcboonville.org

Whenever my friends and acquaintances find out that I’m a minister, it usually opens up some very interesting avenues of conversation.  This will sound weird, but the very first thing that most people do is apologize.  I haven’t quite figured out why they do that, but it happens about seven times out of ten.

Once that’s out of the way, the conversation usually gets interesting.  I don’t know of any other job that generates the kind of small talk that this one does.  When accountants meet people at parties, I doubt that folks immediately start talking about their bank account balance.  When teachers meet people in public, I doubt that folks immediate start talking about their high school GPA.  However, when I meet people out in the world, I find that many folks almost immediately want to talk about their personal beliefs and practices.

I get to learn a lot that way.  I learn about peoples’ individual life stories.  I learn about the way they see the world.  I learn about the importance that spirituality holds for most people, even those who don’t go to church.  Most of all, I learn about the way we Christians are perceived by the rest of the world.  I find that a lot of people admire us for our commitment to a particular way of faith but don’t want to limit their own spiritual journey to such a small circle of beliefs and morals.

We Christians have done plenty of things throughout our two-thousand-year history to establish the idea that ours is a small-minded and judgmental faith.  Even today, in the twenty-first century, those who most loudly and proudly broadcast their Christianity to a national audience tend to be rather one-sided in their view of the world.  It makes me sad sometimes that the incredible depth and diversity of our tradition seems to have become lost in all the hubbub.  I really can’t blame people who reject Christianity on the grounds that being Christian (from their point of view) means being like these big-time televangelists or members of the Religious Right.  I don’t blame them.  If I hadn’t met certain people or read certain books at just the right moment in my life, I would probably think as they do.

More and more, I’m also finding Christians within the church who operate with a similar mentality.  They value their Christian faith but wish there was some way they could practice it that is more thoughtful and less judgmental.  They hate feeling like they have to close their hearts and minds to the world in order to be faithful believers but don’t know of any other way to be truly Christian.  Some of these folks slog it out, longing for something better.  Others eventually give up and just leave altogether, thinking there’s no place for people like them in church.

I want to tell you today that I think there is another way.  Whether you’re sitting in church this morning, hanging on in quiet desperation, or listening to me on the radio at home, thinking the roof would cave in if you ever tried to walk through the door of a church building, I want you to know that, whoever you are, there is room for you to be you in Christ’s church.

If the church has failed to send that message clearly, it’s our own fault.  We need to learn how to be more like Jesus and do the kinds of things he did, like the one we heard about earlier in this service in our reading from the gospel according to John.

The story opens as Jesus is visiting Jerusalem with massive throngs of pilgrims on their way to celebrate the Jewish holiday of Passover.  Mixed in with this group are a number of Greek people.  They weren’t Jewish by blood, but they had come to believe in and respect the monotheistic faith of Judaism rather than the many gods worshiped by their own people.  These Greek folks wanted to take part in the Passover festivities as well, but they were only allowed to go so far.  Jewish law prevented them from entering the great Jerusalem temple because of their race.  There was one, single area set aside for them at the very farthest back end of the temple.  We would call the nosebleed section.  They called it the Court of the Gentiles.  Unfortunately, even this one distant space had been taken away from them and filled up with all kinds of vendors exchanging foreign currency and selling animals for the ritual sacrifices.  Feeling like the odd ones out, these Greek folks were definitely getting the message that there was no place for people like them in the “church” of their day.

In the midst of all this going on, these Greek people somehow managed to hear that there was this remarkable new rabbi named Jesus who happened to be in Jerusalem for the festival.  They were intrigued by what they heard and wanted to meet him, so they tracked down someone from Jesus’ entourage.  They found Philip and said, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus.”  I can’t imagine what the look on Philip’s face must have been in that moment.  Why would these foreigners want anything to do with Jesus, the Jewish Messiah?  Philip was confused enough that he thought he needed a second opinion, so he went and talked to Andrew, another one of Jesus’ disciples.  Even together, they still couldn’t figure out what was going on, so they decided to bring the issue to Jesus himself.  Jesus’ reaction to this news probably shocked them even more.  He said, “The hour has come.”

What does that mean?  Well, there’s a lot of talk about Jesus’ “hour” in John’s gospel.  Early on, when Mary asks Jesus to show his power by changing water into wine at a wedding, Jesus refuses (at first) saying, “My hour has not yet come.”  Later on, when people try to get Jesus to use another Jewish holiday as a publicity platform, Jesus again refuses (at first) saying, “My hour has not yet come.”  Finally, when he had enraged one crowd to the point where they tried to kill him, the text notes that they were unsuccessful because “his hour had not yet come.”  It was like the whole book had been building toward something big that was about to happen.  What would it be?  Maybe when his hour came, Jesus would finally confront the corrupt religious and political leadership in Jerusalem.  Maybe when his hour came, he would go kick Pontius Pilate and his Roman thugs out of the holy city once and for all.  Maybe when his hour came, Jesus would restore the nation of Israel to the glory of its golden age under King Solomon.

But no, it turns out that Jesus’ hour came when these no-account foreigners came looking for him.  Greek people.  What’s the matter with Jesus?  Didn’t he realize who he was?  Didn’t he remember where his loyalties lay?  He was Jewish.  He belonged to his own people.  His mission, as the Jewish Messiah, was to be with other Jews and help them, not these foreigners.  Yet, when these Greek people seek him out, Jesus says, “This is it.  The hour has come.  This is why I’m here.  This is what it’s all about.”

Huh?  Don’t be ridiculous, Jesus.  What about us?  What about our people?  Our security?  Our prosperity?  Our survival?  When times get tough, human beings tend to think like that.  We want to batten down the hatches and circle the wagons.  We instinctively want to protect what’s ours.  Look out for number one.  Be responsible.  This is how evolution has hard-wired us.  Truthfully, it has allowed to survive as long as have.  But, Jesus says, there comes a time, a moment, an hour, when all of that needs to be set aside.  There is an hour for opening up, reaching out, and taking risks.  These are the moments when evolution actually happens and we take small steps or giant leaps toward our destiny.  In such moments, ironically, it is our evolutionary instinct for survival that may actually be killing us.  Jesus said it like this, “Very truly, I tell you, unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains just a single grain; but if it dies, it bears much fruit. Those who love their life lose it, and those who hate their life in this world will keep it for eternal life.”

We, as individuals, churches, institutions, communities, countries, a planet, are meant to be so much more than single grains.  We are meant to bear much fruit.  We are meant to grow and evolve beyond what we have been.  For Jesus himself, this meant pursuing a vision of the kingdom of God as a spiritual community that was multi-national and multi-ethnic.  Even though he was a faithful Jew, he realized that God’s activity in the world was bigger than Judaism and the special interests of his own nation.  We take it for granted today that God’s “got the whole world in [God’s] hands,” but that was still a relatively new idea in Jesus’ day.  It got him and the early Christians in a lot of trouble.  Some, like Jesus, even paid for that vision with their lives.

Jesus said, “I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”  He didn’t say all Jews, Presbyterians, Protestants, Americans, or Christians.  Jesus said all people.  This meshes pretty well with what we heard earlier today in our Old Testament reading from the prophet Jeremiah.  Jeremiah talked about his vision of a new covenant that God would make with people.  He said, speaking in God’s name, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.”  Jeremiah said that, under this new covenant, we will all know the Lord and the essence of the Bible will not be carved in stone or printed in books but written on our hearts.  Whose hearts?  The hearts of all people, from the least to the greatest, for we will all know the Lord.  Christians have believed for thousands of years that this new covenant is exactly what Jesus came to accomplish.  This theme also appears in Psalm 87, which we read from this morning as well.  That poem describes how all kinds of foreign nations, like Egypt, Babylon, and Ethiopia will one day be counted as citizens of Zion and included among God’s people.  You could say, based on these prophetic visions, that the kingdom of God is meant to be an all-inclusive trip.

So, this is why I think, as I mentioned earlier, that there is another way to be Christian in this world.  We are not obligated to sell out to narrow, one-sided interpretations of our religion.  There is room in this church for everyone.  Whoever you are and however you are hearing this today, I want you to know there is room in this church for you.

I think there’s also a challenge for all of us in Jesus’ words.  I think it’s worth continually asking ourselves whether our “hour has come.”  Are we currently, in our personal or collective lives, at a point where, in order for evolution to happen, we need to let go of our evolutionary instinct for survival and takes risks?  Back in Jesus’ day, it was a moment for reaching out beyond one’s ethnic and national identity to grab hold of a religious vision for a spiritual community that was open to Greeks as well as Jews.  During the millennia since then, the Christian church has continued to wrestle with other issues.  We have worked to build a church where people of different races are welcome to worship side by side as equal partners.  We have opened our doors to acknowledge members of other churches and denominations as friends in Christ.  We have opened our pulpits for women to preach the gospel and administer the sacraments.  Each of these developments involved a certain amount of risk in its day, and there were those along the way who resisted, often citing Scripture to justify their fear, but I think we can all agree that each leap of faith was one more positive step in the direction of evolution and we are a richer church today for having taken those steps.

What challenges are we now facing as a church?  Once again, we’ve fallen on hard times.  It’s true that church attendance in this country is not what it used to be.  Many churches are tightening their belts and trying to do the best they can with shrinking financial resources.  A lot of folks are worried for our future and our survival.  They think we should circle the wagons and batten the hatches.  Some think mission and service projects should take second place to institutional survival.  Some have shut their ears to new ideas or new interpretations of ancient truths.

There are two particular areas where I think the hour has come for us as Christians in this generation.  In these two areas, I believe we are being called to open our hearts, minds, and doors just as Jesus opened his to those Greek foreigners who came looking for him in Jerusalem.

The first is one you’ve heard me mention before and will hear me mention again.  I don’t mind admitting that I am personally passionate about this issue.  I’m talking of course about the full-inclusion of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered people in the life of our church.  Last year, the Presbyterian Church voted to open the doors for these folks to be ordained as pastors, elders, and deacons in our denomination.  This summer, our General Assembly will decide whether or not these same people are allowed to get married in our churches.  I think this issue, in particular, holds a key to growing our little congregation here in Boonville.  For lack of a better term, I think we have a niche market here.  There are plenty of churches in Boonville who have bigger budgets and flashier programs than we do, but there are not very many who share our convictions about the full and equal inclusion of people of all sexual orientations.  Believe it or not, there is a gay community in our neck of the woods and there are people in it who are longing to find a spiritual home where they know they will be fully loved and accepted for who they are.

The second area where I think our hour has come is in our relationship toward people of other religions or no religion at all.  We live in a society of unparalleled diversity and interconnection.  Our neighbors aren’t just Protestant, Catholic, or Jewish anymore.  They’re Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, Taoist, and Muslim.  We have the opportunity to learn and grow by listening to one another and casting our neighbors in a positive light.

For the last ten years, we’ve struggled with a particularly strong bout of Islamophobia in this country.  The fear and anger generated in the wake of 9/11 has spread beyond the fanatics of Al Qaida and tainted our perception of all Muslims.  We need to unstop our ears to the voice of progressive Muslim clerics like Feisal Abdul Rauf of Cordoba House (aka the Ground Zero Mosque) in New York.  Leaders like him are calling for peace among their own people and opening the doors to dialogue, respect, and learning.  When we hear the Muslim call to prayer from the minarets, let’s respond by adding our Christian ‘Amen’ to their ‘Allahu Akbar.’

The way to fuller and greater life for ourselves, our church, and our country does not lie in circling the wagons and battening the hatches.  We need to realize that the hour has come for us to take risks and reach out in the name and Spirit of Jesus, who has promised to draw all people to himself in the all-inclusive kingdom of heaven-on-earth.

The Art of Letting Go

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Sermon1 Comment

Over in Africa, they have a very interesting way of catching monkeys.  First, they secure a hollowed-out coconut to the end of a line and make a small hole in one end.  Next, they put something small and tasty (e.g. some nuts) inside the coconut.  Eventually, a monkey comes along and realizes that there’s a treat inside the coconut.  It reaches inside to get the treat.  Here’s the catch: the hole in the coconut is only big enough for the monkey’s hand to get through if it is empty.  As long as the monkey is holding onto the treat, it can’t get out.  If the monkey wanted to, it could let go and get away any time.  However, they almost never do that.  Instead, they hang on for dear life, even though it means their death.

Letting go is a hard thing to do.  Just ask parents who have ever dropped a sons or daughters off at college.  You hope that everything you’ve said and done over the past 18 years will be enough to guide them on their way, you draw out the goodbyes for as long as you can, but there’s no stopping that inevitable moment when you just let go, get back into the car, and drive away without them.

Our Buddhist neighbors have a lot to teach us Christians about the art of letting go.  Their entire spiritual path is built around that idea.  They start with the observation that life is full of suffering.  We never suffer, so they say, for the reasons we think we do.  We think we suffer because we lack something we want.  We say things like this: I wish I had a better job.  Why?  So I can make more money.  Why?  So I can buy more expensive things.  Why?  So I can impress this other person.  Why?  So she or he will like me.  And so on and so forth.  Happiness, we think, is always just one step outside of our reach.  We think it lies in some other job, object, or person.  If I could just have that, then I would be happy.

“No,” the Buddha says, “you won’t be.”  Real suffering doesn’t come from your lack of something, but from your desire for it.  If you can learn to let go of that inner urge to always be reaching and grabbing for the next big thing, you’ll find real happiness.  Along the way, you’ll also begin to find out who you really are inside.  We tend to lose sight of that in our endless pursuit of the next big thing.  We get lost in the rat race.  As we learn to let go, we find ourselves again.  The end result of this process is what Buddhists have always called Enlightenment.  All of their rituals and meditation exercises are oriented toward this one goal.  It’s all about letting go.

The art of letting go factors rather highly in this morning’s reading from the gospel according to Mark.  Our story is part of a series of stories that we started talking about two weeks ago on Transfiguration Sunday.  It began with the story of a blind man who Jesus had to heal twice.  After the first time Jesus touched him, he was beginning to see, but everything was still blurry.  After the second time, he could see clearly.  We took this as a kind of metaphor for Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, who was in the process of learning how to see (in a spiritual sense), but wasn’t quite seeing things clearly yet.

In the section just before today’s passage, Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”

Peter boldly replies, “You are the Messiah.”

Then Jesus begins to explain what it means to be the Messiah.  He tells his disciples that the Messiah “must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

At this point, Peter steps in and pulls Jesus aside with some friendly advice.  One might say that Peter saw Jesus as the hot new presidential candidate and himself as Jesus’ campaign manager.  Peter’s idea of Jesus as the Messiah (or “Christ”) was very different from Jesus’ idea of himself.  Peter thought the Messiah was supposed to be part political leader, part military revolutionary, and part spiritual guru: Che Guevara meets Barack Obama meets Dr. Phil.  With God on their side, they were supposed to have a meteoric rise to fame and power.

But Jesus, it seemed, had a very different idea of what his life is supposed to be all about.  Instead of fame and fortune, he talked about suffering and rejection.  This really got under Peter’s skin, so he got up in Jesus’ face about it, but Jesus let him have it right back.

“Get behind me, Satan!”  He said, “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  In other words, there’s a bigger story going on than the one you see right in front of your face.  Jesus knew how he fit into that bigger story because he knew who he was as God’s beloved Son.  He would conquer the world, not through violence, but through the power of self-giving love.  This was not an insight he could have had if he had been busy selling out to his culture’s idea of what a Messiah should be.  But Peter, as it turns out, was having a hard time letting go of that idea.  He was holding onto it so tight because he was absolutely convinced that the future security and prosperity of his country depended on it.

Don’t people still do that all the time?  If you flip through the various noise news channels on any given day, you’ll find no shortage of people angrily shouting at each other because everyone is convinced that their idea holds the key to peace and plenty in the future.  Whenever they stop to take a breather, the audience is instantly swamped with commercials for products that also claim to hold the secret to happiness.

We human beings have this crazy tendency to get so caught up in our own egos, ideas, products, and relationships that we forget who we really are inside.  We are God’s beloved children.  Our lives are part of a bigger story that has been going on since the beginning of time and will continue until its end.  Jesus never forgot that truth.  His faith in his identity as God’s beloved Son gave him the strength to resist the temptation to sell out to the popular ideology of his day.  Suffering and rejection didn’t scare him one bit because he knew the great Love at the center of the universe that transcends fear and death.

Today, God is inviting you to enter into a greater awareness of that Love by letting go of your attachment to those things, people, or ideas that compete for your trust.  Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and 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, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?”

You are invited to participate in the art of letting go and trust in the Love that is stronger than death.  Maybe the thing for you to let go of is an idea, thing, or person.  Maybe it’s an old grudge or crush.  Maybe it’s an unhealthy attachment to work or a cause you believe in.  It can be good things too:  like your attachment to your family, church, or system of beliefs.  Many of these are wonderful things, but they can’t tell you who you are or give you lasting happiness.  Whatever your attachment is, Jesus is inviting you to let it go and rediscover your true identity as God’s beloved child.

It’s not an easy path.  Christians call it “the Way of the Cross” for a reason.  You will have to face your own fear of mortality.  You will have to sacrifice your sense of security.  But the promise, as Jesus gives it, is that you can ultimately save your life by letting go of it.  That’s what faith in the Resurrection is all about.

None of us does this perfectly.  We’re all refusing to let go of something inside that keeps us from embracing who we really are and living the kind of full life that God intends for us.  The good news is that our refusal to let go doesn’t change who we are as God’s beloved children; it only keeps us from recognizing the truth about ourselves.

As I was writing this sermon, I got a message about an old college buddy who passed away quite suddenly this weekend.  Like all such announcements, it reminded me of the fragility of our biological existence.  It also reminded me that the call to let go extends even to letting go of life itself.  God asks a lot from us (everything, in fact).  I compare it to doing a trust fall off the edge of the Grand Canyon, believing that we are held, as the apostle Paul says, by a reality that is higher, deeper, longer, and broader than we can possible imagine.  It is the Love that passes knowledge and the peace surpassing understanding.  When we are called upon to trust and let go, whether it’s letting go of some person, thing, or idea that we’re clinging to for happiness and security or letting go of life itself in our final moments, we journey forward in faith, trusting that we are not wandering into the darkness, but are being welcomed into the light.  We are not enveloped by oblivion; we are embraced by eternity.

The Preacher’s Prayer

On By J. Barrett LeeIn Uncategorized1 Comment

A prayer that I wrote for my friend, Rodney Duke, about ten years ago.  Pastors, priests, and ministers: feel free to borrow it for Palm Sunday.

God, may your Holy Spirit ride upon my words into the hearts and minds of this congregation, just as Jesus rode a donkey into Jerusalem; and may that serve as a reminder that you can still use a jackass to reach your people.  Amen.