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Sermons at Saint Mary's
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost: Fall is in the air. The sugar maples are tinged with red. It’s back to school time. Summer is nearly over. And as happens this time of year for me, Robert Frost has been very much on my mind these days. Especially what is perhaps his best known poem. You remember it. “Two roads diverged in a yellow wood. And I, I chose the one less traveled by. And it has made all the difference.” Frost was a consummate New Englander, so he knew a thing or two about change, and how hard one season shifts and turns into another. He knew something too about the turning points in life, and how difficult these can be, often fraught with pain and trouble. And yet, he knew how these turning points can bring opportunity, to stretch and grow, to move into a deeper, richer experience of life. I’d like to think, if the poet were here with us today, he’d take a shine to today’s Gospel. Because it too is about a turning point. Ostensibly, it’s about a turning point in Jesus’s life. But as we shall see, it is a turning point for anyone who would follow in his steps. The disciples had no idea they had reached this crossroads. Yes, Jesus had inspired them with his healing, and his teaching, and his courage. Some in their number had even suggested he was a prophet, much in the mold of a new Elijah, or a resurrected John the Baptist. Peter himself had gone so far as to proclaim Jesus as the Christ, the long expected Messiah. For Peter and the others, it was already more than they could have hoped for or dreamed. Here they were, God’s champions; their turning point lay at the axis of history; they were the ones to witness the coming of Israel’s Messiah. No wonder they marched jubilantly toward Jerusalem. No wonder they held great expectations for their Master. No wonder they jockeyed for position around their Lord, asking who was the greatest among them. And no wonder, they totally missed the turning point at which Jesus had arrived. For when Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised, the disciples rebuked him. “God forbid it, Lord,” they cried, “ this must never happen to you.” Have you not read the prophets, Jesus, the coming of the Messiah means a return to greatness, and honor, and glory? The turning point for Jesus, however, meant not a turn toward greatness, but a turn toward suffering, a turn toward the cross. Our reading from Matthew today begins what is known as the way of the cross, the road to the Passion. Think for a moment if Jesus, at this critical moment, had tested the political waters and plunged in. Set up an exploratory committee, sent his disciples out as handlers and spin controllers, did his best at damage control and courting new followers. Did the world really need another politician? No, he chose instead not the direction of glory and greatness, but the way of suffering. Instead of choosing power and worldly prestige, he chose ignominy, shame, that execution reserved for a criminal, the cross. This is not an easy Gospel to swallow. Like Peter, we prefer a conception of discipleship which leaves the cross out of it. The future’s not secure, we say? Get a piece of the rock. We can’t face reality. Find a new painkiller, put down an extra martini, turn on the t.v. set. More and more, instead of facing the world’s suffering and our own, we look for better insulated cocoons, more comprehensive insurance packages, crime protection, a safe secure existence. Today, two of the fastest growing industries in America are gated communities and prison construction. Go figure! Our Gospel is hard to swallow because it places us at a crossroads. One road is wide and straight and well-paved and full of traffic. The other is narrow, and bumpy, and dark and lonely. One road invites all who travel on it air-cushioned comfort and the constant company of others. The other invites each person to travel it alone, and to learn through struggle and pain. The question posed to each disciple in every time and place is simply this. What must we do to follow our Lord? What is the cost of discipleship? How can I change the road I’m on? Carl Jung once put it this way: “Change comes through pain and struggle, not through mere wishes or idealistic requirements.” Listen again to the words of Jesus: “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself. Let her take up her cross. Let them follow me.” It is one thing, you see, to recognize that Jesus is the Christ. It is quite another to become his disciple. Dom Hubert Van Zeller, the renowned Benedictine monk, wrote that we, as Christians, die standing up. In other words, we live by dying. Each of the steps matters. If anyone would come, Jesus says. The choice is ours. It is not forced on us, or even expected of us. We are free to choose. Let him deny himself, Jesus says. Denial is an obtrusive word. It takes all that we are and negates it. Indeed, if we choose to follow our Lord, at some level we must say to ourselves what Peter said of Jesus when he denied him: ‘I do not know this man.’ Self-denial is not asceticism. It is not suicide. Self-denial only means knowing Christ and ceasing to know ourselves. It means ceasing to make ourselves an end in itself, and to begin to make ourselves a means for furthering the Kingdom. It means arriving at the turning point that we can only take in and by and through Christ. It this too much to expect of us? Is it possible to follow Jesus in this world? Let me end with the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the German theologian jailed for most of World War II due to his resistance to the Nazis. Just before the war he wrote a letter to his friend, the American theolgian, H. Richard Niebuhr, confessing “I have no wish to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life after the war if I do not share the trials of this time. Christians in Germany will face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive, or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying our civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot not make this choice in security.” Earlier, Bonhoeffer had written; “When Christ bids a man, he bids him come and die.” He knew well the road he had chosen, as two weeks before the Allies liberated Germany in 1945, Bonhoeffer was taken from his cell on hung on the Gestapo’s gallows. What road are we on this morning? Where is it taking us? Is the road less traveled? The way of the Cross? The direction Jesus bids us come? If not, are we ready to follow him now? And if so, has it made all the difference? top | home | site index |
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