"When the Going Gets Rough"- Jeremiah 31:31-34, John 12: 20-33-- Mar. 22, 2015

Emily Heath, a UCC pastor in Exeter, NH, recalls her first day of preaching class in seminary. The professor read this passage from 2 Corinthians:

"We are putting no obstacle in anyone's way, so that no fault may be found with our ministry, but as servants of God we have commended ourselves in every way: through great endurance, in afflictions, hardships, calamities, beatings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights,hunger."

And then he said, "That's what the first Christians endured in order to preach the Gospel…you'll

probably survive this class."

Sometimes we contemporary Christians make the mistake of thinking we have it rough. [Emily writes].We have to compete with Sunday morning baseball games and yoga classes. Our pews

aren't full the way they were back in 1950. Our kids can't even sing "Silent Night" at school anymore! Some even say that modern American Christians are being "persecuted."

Except, really, we modern American Christians are pretty darn comfortable. [In fact, Emily suggests,] calling yourself Christian in our culture is one of the easiest things you can do. [Stillspeaking Devotional, 3/20/15]

Here in these last couple of weeks of Lent, we are closing in on the really tough part of the journey. We know where this journey is heading, and I don’t mean Easter–at least, not yet. The going gets rough here, as we re-tell, re-live, the story of betrayal, of arrest, of beatings, of desertion, of death and loss. It’s a story that is still literally being lived out in many parts of the world today, and even in our own comparatively "safe" lives, we experience betrayal, loss, suffering, and death. We cannot afford to skip over this part of the story, lest we lose the heart of what we claim to be our faith.

The passage from John that Sharon read for us this morning comes immediately after Jesus’ "triumphal entry" into Jerusalem and the growing dis-ease of the religious leaders about Jesus’ popularity. The "Greeks" who came to Philip, who wanted to see Jesus, are an indication of just how widespread Jesus’ notoriety had become–beyond the Jewish community. Jesus speaks to them about what’s on his mind–death. "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..."

In John’s gospel, Jesus is a man in control. Writing as an old man, probably sometime in the late first century, John can see Jesus’ life from the perspective of hindsight. Of course it had to happen this way, he can say. Jesus knew what he had to do. There is no Garden of Gethsemane scene in John, where Jesus asks God to find another way for him to go forward, where tears fall like drops of blood; but here in this passage, we see a glimpse of that. "Now my soul is troubled," Jesus says. That’s the glimpse–but then he’s back in control. "And what should I say–‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name."

From the very beginning, John talks about Jesus’ being lifted up on the cross as the ultimate expression of God’s glory. That’s a hard thing for us to wrap our brains around. "Glory" as we think of it is a matter of celebrity, of triumph, of pride. God needed Jesus to die on the cross to get glory?! How is that good news? But God’s glory is not bought with blood. It is in that self- emptying, that letting go into the greater light, that seed dying in the ground so that it might bear much fruit that is a much better way of understanding God’s glory–infusing glory into everyone and everything. In John’s gospel, Jesus nods to his mother and the disciple he loved from the cross and commends them to one another–Behold your son, behold your mother–and a new family, a new community is born.

This is a Jesus whose soul may be troubled, but who knows what he must do, who knows that his calling is to go through the confrontation with the powers that be, with suffering and with death–not because it’s already determined, but because he chooses to follow that path. God’s heart is in his heart. God’s vision is his vision. He knows the way forward "by heart."

In another rough time, in the midst of grief and loss, of exile and humiliation, when hearts

and spirits were broken, God speaks through the prophet Jeremiah,

"The days are surely coming when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah....not like the one they broke, though I was their husband...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’s "rant" against the people is over. He’s warned them of the consequences of their betrayal and turning away from God, even though God was their "husband," or "master." And they have indeed experienced those consequences of trusting in other gods, in foreign and military powers, as Jerusalem was destroyed and the elite carried off into exile.

But now it is time for a new message–a message of energy, of hope, of deep healing, and the restoration of relationship. "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." How often do we hear that the God of the Old Testament is the God of wrath, and the God of the New Testament a God of love? It is one God. Here in the "Book of Consolation," as this part of Jeremiah is often called, God is more like a loving, frustrated parent, who grieves over the consequences of a child’s actions. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wrote, "There can be no deep disappointment where there is not deep love." God grieves over Israel and Judah, precisely because of love. And I cannot help but believe that God is grieving over our world today.

"I will write my law upon their hearts," God says through Jeremiah. "... They shall all know me." The heart is not just about feeling. It is about our core identity. God’s vision, God’s law, God’s love at the heart of our identity. I read somewhere this week that our lives are not about acquiring skills and experiences and wisdom until we finally become who we’re supposed to be, but rather a stripping away, a letting go of everything until we uncover who we’ve always been and are meant to be.

"Lent is our season of honesty," Walter Brueggemann writes. (Odyssey Networks, 3/16/15) – honesty about our brokenness as individuals and as a society, about how far we’ve gone from our true hearts which are filled with God. Like Jeremiah warned ancient Israel, Brueggemann points to our "indulgent privilege and strident exceptionalism" as a nation–an indicting, biting summary as Walter is so capable of. As long as we are in denial and illusion about how we have broken the covenants of neighborliness and with God, wholeness is not possible. The prophetic tradition cuts through the denial and strips away the illusion so that radical newness can break through. We are called to live as neighbors, in our local and global communities, sharing and being stewards of the resources of this beautiful planet. It might even be said that this call to live as neighbors and stewards, in justice and peace, a call that is at the core of the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, is the only way forward to any kind of sustainable future–just as Jesus knew that the way forward for him would involve sacrifice and dying to self.

When the going gets rough–and really, before the going gets rough–it is important to know what–or Who–is in our hearts. We talk about coming here on Sundays to be reminded of who we are and Whose we are. What do you know by heart? We’ve been using games to help us remember important parts of the psalms, which we know Jesus knew by heart as well, calling them out from the cross–"My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" –Psalm 22. "Into your hands I commend my spirit." –Psalm 31. When we are wracked by guilt over something we did in the past, might we remember hopscotch and the line from Psalm ... – "Skip over the sins of my youth." When we feel like an utter failure, not fit for anyone to see us, might we remember hide and seek–"God, you do not hide your face from me when I am a mess." Feeling lost and abandoned? "Gather us in from north and south, east and west, O God." Think you’re the only one who seems to want to acknowledge God? "Day speaks unto day, and night unto night, the praises of God." Wondering how you should act? Follow the leader: "I will repeat aloud all the laws you’ve given. I delight in following your ways...."

"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..." That is not just way of wheat, it is the way of human beings, living in community in relationship with God. "I will write my law upon their hearts...and they shall know me." At our core, the most essential truth about us, is that we are filled and surrounded by the love and power of God. The challenge, of course, is to be open to that truth, and aware of that truth, day by day.

F. Forrester Church was pastor of All Souls Unitarian Church in New York until his death from cancer in 2009. In his book, Everyday Miracles, he wrote,

The power which I cannot explain or know or name I call God. God is not God’s name. God is my name for the mystery that looms within and arches beyond the limits of my being. When I pray to God, God’s answer comes to me from within, not beyond. God’s answer is yes, not to the specifics of my prayer but in response to my hunger for meaning and peace. Choose life and trust life. Grow in service and love. Take nothing for granted. Be thankful for the gift. Suffer well. Dare to risk much. Consecrate your world with laughter and with tears. And know not what I am or who I am or how I am, know only that I am with you. This is God’s answer to my prayer. There are times when God is not with me, so many times. Times of distraction, fragmentation, alienation, brokenness. But when I open myself to God, incrementally my wholeness is restored. Perhaps that which I call the mystery of God is no more than the mystery of life itself. I cannot know, nor do I car, because the power that emanates from deep within the heart of this mystery is redemptive. It is divine. By opening myself to it, without every hoping or presuming to understand it, I find peace. The mystery of God will remain a mystery. That, I suppose, is as it should be. Anything less would fail to do justice to the every day miracles of consciousness, of love and pain, of life and death. Responding to these miracles, responding to God’s yes, I can do not other than to answer yes in return.

When the going gets rough, remember what and who is in your heart. Remember whose heart you are in. So may we too answer yes.

Amen, and amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Let God Love You!"-- Numbers21:4-9, John 3:14-21-- March 15, 2014

I realize it’s probably treasonous, but I don’t watch many sports on television. I don’t watch that much television anyway, but that’s beside the point. I do know that when I have seen sports events, somebody almost always is in the background, holding up a sign that says, "John 3:16." It’s been called by some as their favorite verse in the Bible–"For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life."

In "born again," evangelical circles, it’s the last part of the verse that seems to be most important–"...everyone who believes in him may not perish..." If you "believe" in Jesus as God’s only Son, you get eternal life, or as they might say, you go to heaven when you die; but, if you don’t "believe," you will perish, that is, you’ll go to hell. Can I say there’s so much in that statement that is troubling and that has caused endless debates in the Christian Church? Back when John wrote this, folks would have heard this claim about Jesus in contrast to what was said about Caesar–Rome said Caesar was the only begotten son of God. Then there’s the whole understanding of "begotten" – wars have been fought over whether God and Jesus and the Holy Spirit are of one substance, and there was certainly no understanding back then of genetic material coming from father and mother. What is the substance of God anyway?

And I don’t even want to start today on what I think "heaven" and "hell" are about. Suffice it to say that I have seen plenty of instances of heaven and hell here on earth, right now, some of which I may have some influence over; but after death? I am willing to leave that up to God. But what I know and can affirm about God is in that first phrase–"God loved the world..."; and I believe God still loves the world.

What I’d like to see sometime is a sign that says, "John 3:17"–"Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him." After all, we’re talking about God’s love here–God loved the world like this... God sent the Son, or became the Son, so that the world might be saved, not condemned, through him. Now that’s good news!

The great preaching professor, Fred Craddock, once advised preachers that we are to "preach like you know they almost didn’t come." [Cited in Karoline Lewis, workingpreacher. org, 3/15/15] Now there are all sorts of reasons why maybe you almost didn’t come–it was a late night, sleep seemed more important, your kids put up a stink, you haven’t done laundry in a month, whatever–but one reason why some folks are reluctant to come to church is because they’re afraid they’ll be judged–judged by the people here, judged by God. Let’s be honest-- The Christian church in popular culture comes across as "judge-y." Do this, don’t do that, or else....if you’ve done this or that...shame. God loves you IF you do this, or don’t do that.

Isn’t that what the next verse is talking about–"Those who believe in him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are condemned already, because they have not believed in the name of the only Son of God." Lots of "judge-y" words there. But what if we read this simply as a description of what it’s like to trust in–which I almost always substitute for the word believe in–the God who became incarnate in Jesus as well those who choose to put their trust somewhere else. Those who trust in the God revealed in Jesus, who have experienced the love of God, already have a sense of what eternal, abundant life is like. Those who put their trust elsewhere–in other gods like money, success, power–have missed out on that profound love and life. The word "condemned" conveys how great a loss that is, even though they and we may have no idea what that really means. Money and power and success seem pretty good! That’s as good as it gets, right? But "Eye has not seen, nor ear heard, nor human imagination envisioned what you have prepared for those who love you," the apostle Paul writes.

"And this is the judgment," John goes on. John’s whole gospel is about judgment or moments of crisis, moments when you have to decide. That’s what this conversation with Nicodemus is about, although Nicodemus seems to have been left behind verses ago. Jesus keeps using words that can be taken in a number of ways–born again, born from above, wind, spirit–which are meant to keep Nicodemus–and us–off balance, keep us from thinking we’ve got it "figured out." Conversations like this create moments of crisis or decision. What is the source of your life? How were you born? Until Jesus – or John, really– says to this teacher in Israel, "God loved the world...God loves the world..." For all the law and the prophets, know this: God loves us. Sometimes that is harder to believe than God judges us.

Dan Clendenin is a self-described over-achiever. He’s tried all sorts of Lenten disciplines –giving up coffee and alcohol one year, another year eating only one meal a day to identify with the millions of people who, if they’re lucky, get one meal a day. He has found a certain value in all those experiences, in an effort, he confesses, to be good enough to earn God’s love. But this year, he said, he decided to try something different.

Trying to earn God’s love is a fool’s errand. [he writes] It isn’t necessary or even possible. So, for Lent this year I’m trying something different. I’m doing nothing at all. I’m trying to follow Edwina Gateley‘s wisdom to be quiet and still before God. To say nothing. Ask nothing. And do nothing. Nothing, that is, except [as Gateley writes] to ‘let your God/ Look upon you with his enormous love/ That is all.’ And that [Clendenin writes]is hard in a whole different way." [journeywithjesus, 3/9/15]

The Israelites, in that bizarre story which Lorna read for us earlier, complained about everything and everyone, including God, on their sojourn through the wilderness out of Egypt. So, the story goes, God "gave them something to complain about" and sent poisonous snakes to surround them and bite them. When they relented and apologized and went to Moses for help, God told Moses to fashion a bronze serpent and put it on a staff and whenever someone got bit by the snakes, they were to gaze upon the bronze serpent and so be healed. Who knows if this really happened or if it was just a really memorable story to teach a lesson–that God can use painful things to heal us? Sometimes it’s true–pain is often found on the path to healing and wholeness; but God sending biting snakes because he was angry? Not stopping the snakes from biting but offering the bronze serpent for after they’ve been bitten?

The serpent wrapped around the staff is still the symbol of healing, the Aesclypius, used by the medical profession. "So Moses made a serpent of bronze, and put it upon a pole; and whenever a serpent bit someone, that person would look at the serpent of bronze and live." Later on in the Bible, we read that the young king Hezekiah, who "did what was right in God’s sight," in rebuilding the temple after the exile, had to break in pieces the serpent Moses had made, because it seems the people had made of it an idol.

So, interesting that John should pick up on this image of healing--"just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness"-- to talk about the Son of Man being lifted up. Jesus "lifted up" on the cross, "that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life." Gaze upon him and be healed. How many of us, how many people in our community, our nation, our world, need to be healed of all sorts of things! God’s great outpouring of love and compassion, symbolized by the cross, was given not to condemn the world–not because God angry and punishing and could only be satisfied with Jesus having to suffer this much-- but to save the world. I wonder–is it possible to turn even the cross into an idol? To make it a thing in itself instead of pointing to the love beyond it?

Let God love you. "That’s hard in a whole different way," Dan Clendenin says. We do have a choice as to whether we will let the light into our lives and follow it. [Alyce McKenzie, patheos] Let God love you. Let God love you. "The love of God most High," wrote Julian of Norwich back in the 14^th c., "is so wonderful that it surpasses all knowledge. No created being can fully know the greatness, the sweetness, the tenderness, of the love our Maker has for us. By his grace and help therefore let us in spirit stand in awe and gaze eternally, marvelling at the supreme, surpassing, single-minded, incalculable love that God, Who is all goodness, has for us." [from Revelations of Divine Love] Let God love you–you who almost didn’t come this morning, you who may or may not have maintained any Lenten discipline you set out to maintain, you who may have been told or made to feel that you were unloveable. Let God love you.

For God sent the Son into the world, not to condemn the world, but to save it. That is really good news. Thanks be to God! Amen.

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

 

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"Taking Care of Business"- John 2:13-22-- Mar. 8, 2015

 

If you’ve been here in your seats for the past half hour or so and not just now settling in, wondering what happened to the beginning of the service, you know that Daylight Savings Time began this morning...as if we could "save" daylight. The sun shines as it will for as many hours as the earth’s rotation allows it in our spot in the northern hemisphere. Unless, of course, you’re talking about passive solar collectors that "save up" the sun’s energy, but that’s a discussion topic for another time.

Not only have our clocks shifted, but you may have noticed that the angle and location of the sun have shifted, so that sunlight comes through our windows at a slightly different angle than just a few weeks ago. I know this because all the dust and cobwebs in my house that have been lounging in relative obscurity for months now have spotlights on them. I know that the time for spring cleaning–and let’s be honest: winter cleaning–was weeks ago, but knowing that we still have weeks of grubbiness and mud season ahead of us, I just can’t bring myself to launch a full-scale cleaning. When it’s warm enough to open the windows, though, and feel the fresh air blow in, then, you never know–I just may have to haul out the white vinegar and lemon juice and Mrs. Meyers’ Clean Day and go to it.

Spring cleaning... "The Passover of the Judeans was near," John tells us, "and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. In the temple he found people selling cattle, sheep, and doves, and the money changers seated at their tables. Making a whip of cords, he drove all of them out of the temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their tables. He told those who were selling the doves, ‘Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!" Spring cleaning.

John’s Jesus doesn’t accuse the money-changers or animal sellers of being corrupt. He doesn’t call them "robbers" like he does in the other 3 gospels. He just says they’ve turned his "Father’s house into a marketplace." That was how the system worked. You came to the Temple in Jerusalem to offer sacrifice for your sins, but the animals for sacrifice had to be unblemished, and you couldn’t guarantee that even if they started off the journey to Jerusalem unblemished they would arrive that way. And you couldn’t use Roman coin in the Temple, you had to exchange it for Temple coins, so the money-changers and the animal sellers were providing a service. It wasn’t the sellers themselves who outraged Jesus–it was the system that blocked the way to God that "consumed" Jesus.

As always, there were folks deeply embedded in the system who were not at all pleased with Jesus’ actions. Not only did the money-changers’ and animal sellers’ livelihood depend upon this system, but of course the priests and the Temple authorities obviously had a vested interest in it. The same is true today, isn’t it? in systems and industries that employ millions of people and benefit all sorts of companies and communities, but which are either destructive and/or offer false security. The coal industry is one example. The economies of whole states like West Virginia and Kentucky depend upon coal-mining for employment and revenue, and yet at an unsustainable cost to our environment and to the health of their workers. The same might be said of the whole fossil fuel industry.

The cleansing of the Temple, writes Dan Clendenin, was a "stark warning against any and every false sense of security. Misplaced allegiances, religious presumptions, pathetic excuses, smug self-satisfaction, spiritual complacency, nationalist zeal, political idolatry, and economic greed in the name of God are only some of the tables that Jesus would overturn in his own day and ours." (JourneywithJesus.net, 3/13/06)

John puts this story of Jesus’ cleansing of the Temple at the very beginning of his gospel, not at the end, at the beginning of Holy Week, as the other 3 gospels do. In the other 3, it is the final straw that motivates the authorities to get Jesus arrested. In John, at the very beginning, it "announces the inauguration of a new era," as one commentator describes it, "one in which the grace of God is no longer mediated or accessed through cultic sacrifice, but instead is available to all who receive Jesus as God’s" anointed one. [David Lose, inthemeantime, 3/2/15]

By the time John’s gospel is written, probably sometime in the 90's, the Temple had been destroyed by the Romans for over 20 years. The Holy of Holies–where the Ark of the Covenant sat, containing the tablets of the 10 commandments, and the place where Israel’s God was thought to be present–was in ruins. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up," Jesus says, but John tells us, "he was speaking of the temple of his body." The word used here for "destroy" has many meanings, but the most common one is "to loose," "to liberate." Jesus was "liberating" the temple, just as he would be liberated in death. "Spring cleaning," indeed! Maybe I should think of "liberating" my house!

Before there can be room for the new, the old must make way. "No one puts new wine in old wineskins," Jesus said, "lest the new wine burst the old skins." Right at the beginning of his gospel, John lets us know that Jesus is ushering in the new, turning over the old. So, there is a letting go, a disruption, an upheaval, a grieving even. All those money-changers and animal sellers had to find new jobs, just as coal-miners and oil well drillers and refiners must be re-deployed. The old structures and systems of the church must be overturned, lest we simply become fossilized angels in our walls, so it’s just as likely that we pastors will be in the unemployment lines along with the coal miners.

Jesus said he was referring to the temple of his body, and so we too can look to the temple of our bodies and our personal lives to see what needs to be overturned there. Is it the food we put into our bodies, or what we do with our bodies? Is it our assumptions or our self-centeredness? Have we turned the temple of our bodies into a marketplace, thinking that buying and consuming more will make it somehow more holy or acceptable? "Create in me a clean heart," the psalmist prays, "and renew a right spirit within me." Spring cleaning.

"Another world is not only possible," writes the great prize-winning author and political activist Arundhati Roy, "she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing." To make way for that new world, that new church, that new life, there are tables that need to be over-turned, things that need to be thrown out, people that need to be upset. But in the great economy of God, nothing is lost, only transformed and gathered in. Perhaps Jesus’ anger and violence as he cleanses the temple frighten you. His dream–and God’s dream–for God’s people–the ushering in of the kingdom of God–was that sweeping, that comprehensive, that overwhelming. "If your dreams do not scare you," says Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia, "they are not big enough." Dare we dream those kinds of big dreams?

God has big dreams for us and for our world...a world where everyone has enough, a world where each person and creature is treated with respect and dignity, a world where the diversity is vast and mind-blowing but the unity is no less dense and profound...a world where the power of love rules, rather than the love of power. This season of Lent gives us opportunities to take stock, to see what we can do without–which, I have a feeling is far more than we think–, opportunities to get real and honest, to go to places in ourselves, at least, that may scare us. But even though the song says Jesus had to walk that lonesome valley by himself and we must walk it by ourselves, I don’t really believe that. We do not walk into those hard and scary places by ourselves. God has been-- and is in-- all those places and, more often than not, provides us with companions to go with us. New life is possible. A new world is possible and is on her way. Can you hear her breathing?

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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"Re-think Life"-- Mark 8:31-38 -- March 1, 2015

 

We know that "gospel" means "good news." It’s also the name of a kind of literature that is not a biography or a piece of journalism, but rather the telling of a story that conveys "good news." Matthew, Mark, Luke and John are the four gospels that are in our Bible, but we also know that there were many "gospels" in the ancient world that did not make it into our Bible–the gospel of Thomas, for example, the gospel of Judas, the gospel of Mary, the gospel of the Good Shepherd, to name just a few.

This passage from Mark’s gospel which David just read for us is the heart of Mark’s gospel, so important that we hear echoes of it at least two more times. "The Son of Humanity 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." Wow! That’s the good news?! Spare me the bad news, right? Jesus doesn’t–spare them, that is. He goes on to say, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

How can this be good news? Suffering, rejection, death on a cross–sounds like everything I would want to avoid, and, if I’m honest, do try to avoid. The disciples have endured a lot of bad press over the centuries for being dense, for not getting it, for wimping out at the end, but let’s be honest–would we do any differently? Death as a central part of the path to glory is something of a deal-breaker, isn’t it? For us it is, but we know that for many people in the world even today, death as a martyr–or witness–is exactly the way to glory.

The disciples believed, as one commentator writes, that the "secret to life was strength and power, rather than vulnerability and love." (David Lose, inthemeantime, 2/23/15) We do to, don’t we? So they–and most people I know–saw Jesus’ miracles as signs of his strength and power, rather than manifestations of love. But when you think about any miracle that Jesus is said to have performed–the many healings, raising a mother’s only son from the dead, casting out demons, even walking across the water to be with the disciples–are they not at root manifestations of love first, rather than displays of power, for power’s sake?

Our culture reinforces the notion that the "secret" or the essence of life is power and strength, rather than vulnerability and love. Advertisements convince us that we are inadequate, not powerful or strong enough, without buying a certain product or service. Of course, "power and strength" are described in terms of wealth, or a certain definition of beauty, or body type, or sex appeal, or success in the workplace, but what all of these are going for is power and strength. We are told in many and varied ways that the way to happiness is to have or buy or be this thing and, oddly, to sacrifice our health and our relationships to get this "thing"–this amount of money or success or celebrity. We might want to notice what that way of life is sometimes called–"the rat race." I’m miserable now, but someday it’s all going to be worth it. Alas, we know that all too often, that someday never arrives, and if it does, it’s never as glorious as we had imagined. There’s always more that we think would make us happy. "For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?" Jesus asked. "Indeed, what can they give in return for their life?"

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me."

If you saw the movie "Selma" or watched last Sunday’s Academy Awards and heard John Legend and Common sing their song, "Glory," you know the kind of glory they’re singing about. In the background is the march across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, from Selma to Montgomery, full of confrontation and suffering and sacrifice, even death; but we also know, don’t we? that we experience "glory–and, for that matter [as one writer puts it] power and strength and security–in those moments when we surrender our claim to power and strength and security and glory in order to serve others." [Lose, ibid.] The middle and high school class here experience that in their monthly service at the Kitchen Cupboard–it’s dirty and sometimes tedious work, but as they talk about the people who come to the Kitchen Cupboard each week, who find a clean and orderly place prepared for them as they seek to feed themselves and their families– over and over it is this service that the students say is the most meaningful part of their time together.

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." "Each and every time we make ourselves vulnerable to the needs of those around us," as one pastor says, "each time we give ourselves in love to another, each time we get out of our own way and seek not what we want but what the world needs, we come alive, we are uplifted, we experience the glory of God made manifest." [Lose] Have you not experienced that? Do you not know that to be true in your experience as a parent or a partner, when you have responded to the need of another, when you’ve done some random act of kindness or senseless beauty? I hope so. This really is good news.

And this doesn’t mean becoming a doormat to anyone who would walk over you. You do matter; who you are matters. The self Jesus calls us to deny or lose is "our inauthentic, self-interested, narrow, and defensive self," as Bruce Epperly puts it. [Adventurous Lectionary, 3/1/15] We are not to deny our genuine needs or to see ourselves as unworthy of love, respect, and dignity. These are not instructions for the battered wife to simply submit to her abusive husband or for the oppressed to accept their lot in life. "Our compassion," Epperly says, "may lead to greater pain as we identify with the pain of others and sacrifice what once were ‘necessities’ for the greater good of the whole. But the abundant life that emerges is more than we can ask or imagine." (Ibid.)

This passage at the heart of Mark’s gospel is, as David Lose puts it, "the Gospel’s theory of everything–the more we give, the more we receive; the more we seek to be a friend, the more friends we discover; and the more we love, the more we are loved." [Lose, op cit.] Or, as the late Leonard Nimoy, known to many as Mr. Spock, said, "The miracle is this: the more we share, the more we have." Death becomes part of a life of giving and receiving, of mutual accountability and interdependency. The self we give up is the isolated, self-serving, unassailable individual. Intimacy, support, vulnerability, love, and community are the nature of the life we take on. We cannot be our true Selves apart from relationship and community. That is our very nature, created, as we are, in God’s image, which is also essentially relationship and community–that’s what the Trinity is about.

The cross is the location and symbol of God’s commitment to be in intimate relationship with us, in our life and in our death. Take up your cross–take up relationship with God. That relationship is as intimate as the cells of your body, and as we are invited to take and eat the bread, take and eat the wine of this meal, we are invited into an unbreakable relationship with God, a relationship that even death cannot break. This is gospel. This is good news. In life, in death, in life beyond death, God is with us. We are not alone. Thanks be to God!

Rev. Mary H. Lee-Clark

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