Title: How To Save Your Life
On Wednesday of this past week I was putting up the title of this week’s
sermon onto the sign outside the church, and as I was fiddling with the
letters, trying to get everything centered and neat, I finally noticed, that
maybe, just maybe, the title of my sermon “How To Save Your Life”
sounded a little over the top, a little grandiose. I mean, really, how would
I know what to do to save one’s life, or at least save someone else’s life
other than my own? I think I know what I need to survive, but what I need
may not be what you need to survive. And the reality is that so much of
what we think we need is really more “want” than “need.” And this past
week, especially with the remembrances around 9/11, that stark contrast
between those things I think I need to survive and those things I actually
do need came into sharper focus. Something about that day some five
years ago stripped me and so many of us in my generation of those
things we thought were our birthright: an easy life, a life totally free of
fear and danger from any outside force. All of sudden, the world on that
day became total chaos—it turned our world upside down, and it
reminded us that the way things were will probably not be the way things
are going to be in the future.
The passage from the text we heard a few seconds is also about
creating some chaos in the lives of its listeners, then and now: the
motives and morality of Jesus and terrorists are different, but both want
to shake us to our foundations and to strip us of comfort, of an easy
way. Its interesting that throughout the Gospels—at least through the
Synoptic Gospels, or in Matthew, Mark, and Luke—you have profound
resistance by the disciples to Jesus’ own words about his destiny, about
his future. When he begins to speak of his future, he tells them that he
will suffer, that he will be rejected by the folks he wanted to help, and that
after his cruel and unjust death, he would arise, he would live again,
whatever that might mean. Peter, especially, resists Christ’s claims of a
bleak future, and you see him in our passage today taking his Master
aside to correct him, and using the word correct is probably being
generous with Peter, since the Greek word translated as “rebuke” is
actually the same word used to describe Jesus’ actions in “rebuking”
demons, in those moments where Jesus attempts to silence them with his
words and sometimes his power.
I mean, this is no mere attempt by Peter to gently set the record straight:
what Christ is saying to the disciples is not acceptable to Peter, its not
the way things should be, because Jewish Messiahs don’t get crucified—
actually, they do the crucifying in the sense that they wreck revenge
against their cruel occupiers, whether it be the Greeks, the Persians, the
Babylonians, and now the Romans. Messiahs win in the Jesus tradition—
they don’t lose by getting themselves crucified by the oppressors of
Israel. In fact, you could guarantee losing your status as “Messiah of the
moment” by doing just that: by being beaten by whatever despots
happened to be in charge of Israel at that given historical moment. To
some degree, you see that in how quickly the crowds turned on Jesus in
Jerusalem, from palm branches and cries of Hosanna, to days later
crying out “crucify him” at the foot of Pilate’s court windows. Messiah’s
don’t get mocked and they don’t die at the hands of Israel’s enemies—
Peter is simply trying to correct the wrong headed beliefs of his Master.
And the reaction from Jesus is fierce—you just don’t get too many
moments like this in the Gospels, where you can imagine his eyes
blazing with anger, and his words dripping with disdain. ‘You are Satan—
you are embodying the worst of this world, its ambition, its desires, its
bloodlust, its violence!” Christ seems to say, as he rips into poor Peter. I
keep wondering if it is an anger at being corrected by those he normally
corrects, but there is something else here—I think it comes out of that
moment when you realize that the message and values you’ve worked
hard to instill in your students didn’t stick or haven’t stuck so far, and you
just can’t believe that all your hard work has led to this moment, to being
told by one of your students that you’re wrong! Though I am no teacher
and I have no disciples, I can imagine that being pretty frustrating,
especially when you’ve poured your all into their lives and you’re hoping
that they are going to share your message when you’re gone.
And so then comes the words about embracing crucifixion, some of the
most familiar words in the New Testament. Choose to be crucified, and
not the crucifier, choose to drink the bitter cup, rather than forcing
another to drink that cup. Choose death rather than easy way out,
choose death so that you can live. To save your life, you must end it.
The words of a madman?! Quite poetic, but is this crazy talk? Maybe,
maybe, but there is something there, something that I think most of us
instinctually cling to: something about this sounds right, something about
what he has said—not just said, but what he will do with his life—
something about it does ring true. But the problem that I’ve come to
have with it, and I think I reflect the struggle of many who have heard
these words even now, is that it seems to embolden the worst of the
would-be martyrs within us and among us…and what I mean by that is
those we often describe with a little bit of sarcasm: “my goodness, he’s
quite the martyr, isn’t he?” A former choir director I worked with in
Oklahoma City who has since become a good friend, once said
something that I have never forgotten, after I had complained about how
overworked I felt: “oh please, get off the cross!” That’s a pretty common
line, I found out, but being the quick witted choir director that he is, he
quickly added: “we need the wood - we’re building a church with that
wood!”
You know what kind of people I am talking about—people who genuinely
work hard, and who often make great sacrifices, sometimes even take up
a metaphorical cross, and yet who also seem to revel in being a martyr,
who enjoy not being appreciated, who seem to enjoy the chance to
complain about how overworked they are, or who love to share with
others how much they sacrificed for the rest of us. Most of us have
done it before…and though we complain about it, there is something
sweet about taking up the cross in full public view—those are the
moments when we actually welcome being on Pilate’s porch, receiving
our own 40 lashes—we become emotional and spiritual masochists, we
welcome the cross with joy, rather than with fear and horror as Christ did,
in the garden of Gethsemane. Even though Christ asks us to take up
our crosses, he never tells us to pretend that what we carry is anything
less than a cross, a symbol of the brutality of Roman imperial power, a
sign of our human willingness to throw away other human beings when
they become too dangerous for the religious and political powers that be,
when they become to dangerous for us.
So, how do we distinguish that kind of “taking up your cross,” that sort of
false martyrdom that we’ve all participated in at different points in our
lives, from “taking up the cross” the way that Christ did? How do I gain
the whole world and yet not forfeit my whole life? I tell you, the only thing
that has made Christ’s challenge real to me is what happened on 9/11—I
don’t think I got it until 2001, even after years of being a Christian.
When I was doing the new church start in Oklahoma City some years
ago, some of the pastors in the city and I got together to plan a joint
worship service for our four congregations, joining together our
worshipping communities in what was then an unusual scene of unity in
Oklahoma City religious scene. We had set the date for September 23,
2001 some months earlier and, for whatever reason, I was asked to
preach the service. And then 9/11 happened and everything you
experienced here in Coloma was everything we experienced in
Oklahoma City, in those dreadful days after the attack. The night of the
Sunday evening service came and the place was packed—just
PACKED! We were stunned by the turnout—there was a 40 plus choir,
and in a place that could probably really seat 250, we had 300 people
stacked in a building whose air conditioning was working overtime to try
to cool us down. I think the only reason the attendance was so high was
the same reason church attendance was so high for a few weeks after
the attack: we just had a need to be together, to be in the same room
with each other, during that time. And the images that haunted us during
that time—and still do—were incredible: the towers falling, the posters of
missing relatives and friends all over New York City, the candlelight
vigils. But the image that stayed with me and that informed the sermon
that I preached was actually those blurry photographs of the firemen
going up the stairs of the World Trade Centers, while everyone else was
going down the stairs. Choices are made at every moment of our lives,
and some of them are noble, and some of them are not so noble, but at
that moment those men chose the noblest way, the way of the cross, the
way home.
That has always been the mystery of this paradox, this choice the Christ
sets before his earliest disciples. To save your life, you must choose the
way of death, death to selfishness, death to the place within you that
says that it is only about me, and my needs, death to that place that says
only my family, my spouse, my country, my church, in this world matter;
death to the idea that someone’s else mother on the 92nd floor is not as
important as my mother. To gain the world, you and I must forfeit the
idea that the world only includes my needs, my hopes, my dreams.
Recently, in my own life, I’ve rediscovered this truth in my own life, this
idea that you give away want you most in this world, you run into the
place of your deepest fear and your deepest pain, knowing that it is
there that you and I will probably find our own healing. You take up the
cross, that thing you so feared in your own Garden of Gethsemane, and
you it put on your shoulders, with all your fear and hesitation, with all
incredible doubts about whether or not the way home includes this
horrible way, this choice to take up the cross and follow the way of
Christ. So, you and I, perhaps we want hope, more hope in our lives,
more light than shadow in our lives, and, if we are to believe this Jesus,
we are asked to give away the very thing we need so desperately, and
so if it is hope we need, it is hope we must give to another human being,
and in doing so, we gain the very thing, the very hope, we sought for our
own lives. If we wish for the healing of some spiritual or emotional wound
in our lives that will not close, a wound in us that has not yet even begun
to scar, then maybe it is our work in this world to help heal another, to
help bind up the wounds of another human being, and in doing so, in
giving away our work of healing another, maybe our own open wounds
will slowly close up, perhaps they will finally scar up. And scars, of
course, mean that we are finally being healed, just as they were when
the disciples placed their fingers in Christ’s healed wounds when he
greeted after his resurrection. It is the Golden Rule all over again—do
for others which you wish to be done for you—this call to choose death
so that you and I can find life. To find, to save your life, you give away
your life. The life we save, it may be our own, as the saying goes.
In the last few years, after 9/11, I think I get what Christ was saying,
though I don’t know if have practiced his words or met his challenge any
better in my own life. The blurry firemen in those pictures I saw
crystallized this text so much to me. Those men made me proud to not
only be an American in that moment, but most importantly and much
more profoundly, they made me proud be human, especially considering
the horrible deeds other humans did in God’s name on that day. I think I
know why Christ loved his disciples so much, why they and we matter so
much to God: God saw that we were capable of doing what Christ chose
to do on that day thousands of years ago, which is to choose a different
way, a way of extraordinary gentleness and hope, a way of self-sacrifice,
a way that sought not only the good of me but the good of all. Those
men knew that someone else’s children, wives, partner, mother, father,
grandchildren, friends, were up those stairs, and they knew they had to
do what they hoped other people would do for their own children, their
own wives, their own spouses, their own mothers and fathers.
How do we save our lives? We do as the Christ did, as the fireman did,
as all good women and men do despite our human instinct to preserve
only our lives and only the lives those we love in particular. We give
away the very thing we might need in our own lives, whatever that might
be. And so if we need help in our lives, we give help away to another; if
we need forgiveness, we give forgiveness away to those who have
wronged us; if we need friendship, we become the friend of those who
have no friends. It’s an absurd thing, this call by Christ to go against
human nature and to choose the way of the cross rather than the way of
sword. That is what so outraged Peter, and, in my worst moments, it is
what outrages me. But it is the way home, and if Christ was willing to do
match his word with his life, I can only hope that you and I can do the
same. Amen.
