Pentecost 16B Mark 8: a hospital, care home, or mental health facility. I took my eleven week training in the Selkirk

Transcription

1 1 Pentecost 16B Mark 8: When in seminary, students are required to take pastoral care training for eleven weeks in a hospital, care home, or mental health facility. I took my eleven week training in the Selkirk Mental Health Center. And while there, one of the things I had to do was to take part in an exercise where I tried to get a sense of what it s like to live with hearing other voices. People who live with schizophrenia often hear voices or noises and it very much disrupts their lives. I had to put on head phones which I couldn t take off for three hours..and for those three hours I heard voices. What I heard for those three hours was a voice telling me how I was not good enough to do anything right. And so with these head phones on my head and these voices in my ears I had to perform a list of tasks. And let me tell you, doing these simple, everyday tasks became very, very difficult. For example, one of the items on the list asked me to go to my car, start it, turn it off and return to the office. It took me two attempts to find the right parking lot, and when I found my car I realized that I had forgot my keys in the office. Today we heard Jesus, after giving the first of his passion predictions, say the familiar words to the crowds standing by, if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. Being a follower is not something we encourage in North America. No high school or university speaker has ever congratulated the graduates on becoming the "followers of tomorrow." Nobody makes biographical history films about great world followers. Nobody gives awards to recognize the contributions of community followers. Nobody highlights on their resumes where they exercised strong "followership" in their work. Nobody's heart swells with pride when a fellow parent comes up to them and says, "you know, your kid is a real follower." In fact, when "following" comes up at all, it's usually negative. Don't be a follower, be a leader. Don't follow the crowd. Being a follower is weak

2 2 and passive. It is for people who can't think or act for themselves. Being a follower is for losers. Although, there is one place where people are encouraged to become followers..and that place is twitter. Twitter is all about following. Twitter, of course, is an online social networking service, and you connect with other people by choosing to "follow" them; that's the language it uses. If you're following someone, you receive everything they say through Twitter, so choosing who to follow requires some real thought. Is this person interesting or funny or insightful or are they just going to tell you what breakfast cereal they had this morning? Whose thoughts and activities do you really want to keep up with? If there had been Twitter in the first century, Jesus probably would have been pretty popular and his twitter account would have had record numbers of followers. Lots of people wanted to follow him to see what he was doing and hear what he had to say. By the time the story we heard in our reading happens, Jesus has made quite a name for himself. He's been exciting the countryside on a streak of healings and exorcisms and other miracles; he's been saying a lot of things that are sometimes funny, sometimes provocative, and often insightful, and the crowds follow everything he says and does. And, one of the many important things he says is, if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. But following Jesus is not an easy thing to do is it? It is far more difficult than hitting the follow button on a twitter account. So much in our culture is designed to make us think that the only thing that matters, and the only thing that will bring us peace, security, and happiness, is looking out for ourselves by gratifying our immediate desires, whatever they may be. This is especially true in the world of advertising, where so much time, energy, creativity and money is

3 3 poured into ads that seek to make us feel inadequate in order to induce us to buy something that promises to make us feel better about ourselves. But here s the thing..those commercials are a lie. What they do, is distract us. We all know this feeling of being distracted. It s like trying to concentrate on a good book, maybe even the Bible, when someone has the television blaring. It s like trying to study for an exam when one of your parents is plunking away on a banjo..purely hypothetical of course. Yes, very distracting indeed. But not one of these purchases will actually make us feel complete, or more human, or more adequate, or more accepted or loved. They just won t. The only thing that does that is connection to others and the community those connections bring. But these very common voices of the world seek to distract us from following Jesus message. They seek to be louder and more frequent than any other voice so that we will eventually give in and believe the lie. And a part of that lie is that we can take up that cross and say, look at me. I am saved..i have accepted Jesus into my heart as my personal Lord and Savior..it s all about me. They pick up the cross for their own glory and those people say, look at me. Some churches pick up that cross and say, look at us. They have fallen for the lie that says, focus on yourselves..buy things for yourselves so you matter in this world..pick up that cross for yourselves so you will be glorified. What Jesus is actually saying here is that only in those moments when we surrender our claims to power and strength and security and glory for ourselves in order to serve others will we experience true life. We know this. You and I, we all know this. Because each and every time we make ourselves vulnerable to the needs of those around us, 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.

4 4 That s what Jesus means when he invites his disciples..then and now..to take up their cross and follow him because only those who are willing to lose their life out of love will save it. Here I should be clear. I m not taking about a kind of theology where we are to ignore our genuine human needs altogether or see ourselves as not deserving of love, dignity, and respect. And so there is no justification here for enduring abusive relationships or tolerating injustice. Rather, I m talking about giving of ourselves in love..which is of course quite different than having others take from us. And that giving in love almost always includes sacrifice, denying ourselves and our immediate gratification so as to meet another s needs. Again, we know this is true. We do it perhaps most naturally as parents, sacrificing all kinds of things in the hope of providing for our children. But we also do it as children, friends, partners, family members, neighbors and more. And each time we do so..each time we call into question a momentary want of our own in order to satisfy a genuine need of someone else, we experience a kind of glory. We know this. And connecting to others in order to nurture community requires sacrifice. There s just no getting around it. And the awesome thing is that when we stop worrying about gratifying our wants and instead look to the needs around us, and others begin to do the same, we find more than we d ever imagined..more life, more joy, more happiness, more acceptance, because we find a whole community looking out for us instead of only ourselves, just as we are looking out for the community of persons around us. This is the Lord s message for us today..that 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. We know this, I am sure. But we sometimes forget. Actually the voices of the world want us to not believe it. And so Jesus comes and doesn t just say these words, he also lives them, giving himself out of love for all people and creating a reservoir of life, love, and

5 5 glory that far surpasses anything the world can offer. Coming to church raises the volume of his voice in our ears and in our hearts so that we can better live for his glory and not our own. We look at that big, illuminated cross every time we come to church and think of it as Jesus cross. True, it has meaning for us in that he died upon that cross, but that cross is also ours. We too died to our own glory and being controlled by the ways of this world when we were baptized. And it my sincere hope and prayer that you will all experience the joys that come from following Jesus..that you will all discover the blessings waiting for you..that your words and deeds will always say, look at him and look at his glory..and may you all feel that cross upon your foreheads as you walk out that door. Thanks be to God. Amen.