Sermon Blog
|
Sermon Blog
|
Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood, Virginia
Proper 19, Year B September 12, 2021 In August of 2020, retired pastor from Oklahoma, Steve Epp, began walking through North Dakota as part of his seven-year, 4000-mile journey across every state in the union. Not your typical thru hiker, Epps carries a 35-pound cross with wheels on the back, hooked to a trailer with food, water, and clothing. I know about this because, as he passed through towns and cities, lots of local of news outlets reported his story. He tells folks that when he retired, he got depressed, and sought God’s guidance to do something new to spread the message of Jesus’ love. The vision he received was one of sacrifice and simple service: walk across the country, carry the cross, pray with and for people he meets along the way. Epps says “The main thing I’m trying to do is give hope. We’re living in a time where people just don’t have a lot of hope.” On his Facebook page, he says that many hurting people are not coming to church, so “I go out and find them.” It is as crazy and simple as that. When we scratch the surface, Brother Epps comes from an intense theological place. He has some fire and brimstone and turn or burn theology in his preaching. There is some Christian nationalism in there too. He saves that for when he is preaching to the converted, and only when he is invited to do so. That can be distracting, but let’s not dismiss the guy. Nobody is perfect. We all have our blind spots. The letter of James we read today acknowledges that and urges us to be careful what we say. And yet, God is using this guy to draw notice, attention, and connection to our God of love. He puts that first, and rightly so. Epps has prayed with and for thousands of people along the way. He has met soldiers, bankers, lawyers, addicts, and outlaws, all on an equal footing, right there by the side of the road. Today’s Gospel takes us on the road with Jesus and his disciples in Caesarea Philippi. It is a grand place where King Herod, a Jewish puppet of the Roman Empire has built an immense temple. Being a political conniver, he names the place for Caesar. Herod knows where his bread is buttered. Up to this point, Jesus has been an itinerant healer and preacher for the Kingdom of God, so when he rolls into this monument to the Kingdom of Empire, he stands at odds with what he sees. Jesus asks the disciples who folks say he is. Some say he is a reincarnated John the Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets. Good ole Peter, who jumps in and says he is the “Messiah.” When we hear that we might think Peter is right on the money, and he is, …sort of. The Jewish hope for a messiah had long been foretold and longed for, but the kind of messiah they imagine is a warrior and conqueror; one who will rally the troops, cast out the Romans and reestablish Israel as a mighty kingdom. When Jesus says that his messiahship is about confronting earthly power systems, and acknowledging suffering and death, they cannot get his hearts and minds around that. And there is a showdown. Peter says, say it is not so, and he gets the “get behind me, Satan rebuke. Here in the middle of Mark’s Gospel, we are at a crossroad. It is a place where Jesus clarifies the mission. What the disciples hear is defeat, shame, and death. After all, that is what the cross represents to them. Far from being an adorned symbol of hope, they see crosses as hangman’s gallows. Crosses are stand all over the place, warning everyone not to cross the those in charge. Their crosses stand as signs of real and violent domination. The part they miss is where Jesus says, yes, there will be rejection, suffering and death, and, and that is a big AND, after three days, he will rise again. All of Jesus’ talk about denying self, taking up their cross and following tells them that they are made for rising, not dying. Letting go of the world’s temporary and empty power creates a new reality, a kingdom not of empires and dominance, but a Kingdom of Love. Jesus goes there to show all of us that God does not leave us, run away, or give us ammunition to fight. Jesus goes there to change the rules, to transform this sign and symbol of death, into a sign of bigger, deeper, and forever life. He does not go in with fists clenched and swords drawn. He goes in with open hands and a generous heart. One of my mentors often says that the central symbol of our faith is not an easy chair, it is the cross. Suffering happens. Letting go of our self-centered, and self-motivated devices and desires is not easy. What Jesus shows is that as we do so, holiness happens, neighbors are loved, God gets God’s Word, edgewise, into the noise of earthly banter. Lord knows we are seeing a large measure of suffering in our world. We do not have an historical distance from Rome and its machinations. Empires are rising and falling all over the place. The poor are getting poorer and the proliferation of natural disasters makes things worse. Let’s face it, there are so many preventable outflows of human selfishness. The world’s noise is mostly about who to blame and who to fear. All of that is wielded as emotional leverage to secure some power or platform to dominate and control the spin, closing fists instead of opening hands. At Caesarea Philippi, Jesus calls the foul. Politicians and partisans may cloak their will to power with religious language, but life is not about them or us, our bravado, or rallies for adulation or affirmation. The Messiah is Almighty, but not as we might think of almighty. Bringing the Kingdom of Love to the world is not about right religion, it is about changing what we encourage and esteem to work in a completely different set of physics: an economy where losing is gaining, and falling brings about rising. We are built to rise. We miss that. We need Jesus to remind us. The cross carrying Pastor Epps is not the first to do something provocative. He will not be the last. He seems to be mixture of crazy and holy, just like the rest of us. We may not go to the literal extreme of taking up a 35-pound cross, but seeing one do so is an apt challenge for us to consider how and where we might carry the message of unconditional love, especially when doing so challenges us to be remade in Jesus’ Way of love. God can and will use us, sometimes in spite of ourselves. The good news is that we cannot, and will not, save ourselves. It is not about us. The true Messiah saves all at the cross. There, he invites us to take the white knuckled, clenched fist of fear or blame, and open it wide as generous in loving, serving, and caring for all of God’s people. Amen. Comments are closed.
|
AuthorThe Rev. John Thomas is Rector of Emmanuel Episcopal Church, Greenwood Archives
October 2024
Categories |
Telephone |
|