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A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From August 28, 2005 Imagine with me: You've just had a delicious evening meal, one of your favorites. The dishes are done and now you've settled in to watch a bit of television. You're surrounded by the things that make your house a home: pictures of family dotting the walls, an afghan draped across the back of the couch, books on the shelf across the room. Life seems perfect tonight and you're grateful. So there you are, happily watching your TV show and - wouldn't you know it--just as it gets interesting, it's time for a commercial break. First up is an ad for Keebler cookies; one of the elves has fallen in a vat of chocolate and needs rescuing . Next comes a commercial for one of those hybrid cars that look like a dream now that gas prices have skyrocketed. Both of these commercials you've seen ten times if you've seen them once, so you only half watch. The third one is new, though, so your attention clicks back in again. It's one of those no-frills ads with a thirty-something fellow in jeans and a T-shirt sitting on a stool against a plain backdrop. "If any of you want to become my followers," the man says straight into the camera, "then deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow me." He more than has your attention now! "For those who want to save their life will lose it," the man in the commercial continues. "Those who lose their life for my sake will find it," he says as the camera slowly pans over to focus on a rough-hewn cross set against the backdrop. The man steps into the frame and hoists the crossbeam onto his shoulder. "Deny yourselves and take up your cross and follow me." The screen fades to black and a moment later a toll-free number appears. "Operators are standing by," a kindly voice informs. You imagine just that--a dozen operators standing, shifting their weight from foot to foot, waiting for quiet phones to come alive. The way of Jesus is no easy way. It's the way of willing self-sacrifice. It's the way of rejection and risk. The way of surrender and suffering. No recruitment commercial in the world, not an honest one anyway, could ever make this way seem trendy or even very desirable. The way of Jesus is not for the faint of heart. Not if it's taken seriously, anyway. Televangelist Pat Robertson got himself in a whole heap of trouble this week for suggesting that an appropriate action would be to assassinate the democratically-elected president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez. Robertson's reasoning was this: better cut potential trouble off at the pass before terrorism hits our shores again. Trouble is, Muslim terrorists have not crept into Venezuela and President Chavez has done nothing to indicate he's a threat. Not unless you count Chavez' refusal to cater to American interests at the expense of his own people, then he's a threat. Brother Robertson has Jesus' message backwards. Nowhere does Jesus say that his disciples are to look to the horizon and decide who out there must be sacrificed. If a sacrifice is in order, it's ours, not someone else's, to make. And when it comes to crosses - those human instruments created by Rome to silence rebels--Jesus tells us to take them up, not make them up and inscribe them with other people's names. "Those who want to save their life will lose it. Those who lose their life for my sake will find it." In the days of the early church, this message was understood quite literally. To be a Christian then was very much a matter of life and death. I remember reading the diary of Perpetua, a second century martyr who was still nursing her son when she was arrested and jailed for her faith. When Perpetua's father came to her in prison begging her to denounce her faith for the sake of her baby boy, Perpetua did the opposite. She clung to the memory of her crucified Lord, spoke to her torturers of her unshakable faith in Christ, and then gave up her mortal life for eternal life with her Savior. With the exception of missionaries who risk their lives to take the gospel into countries where Christianity is forbidden, Jesus' message in our time largely goes beyond the realm of the literal to take on a meaning that is non-literal. But no less difficult. What Jesus asks is that we be willing to sacrifice the known for the unknown. To give up what we cling to so that we might be given something greater. To lose the life we have to find the God-life that awaits us. What lies at the heart of the gospel makes for a hard sell. Because it asks of us what we least want to hear: that we be willing to give up the lives we have in order to participate in the lives God intends. To do this kind of giving up is to invite suffering. Because nearly every kind of letting go, every sort of sacrifice, every type of surrender brings with it a certain measure of suffering. Watch an afternoon's worth of television and you'll know that ours is not a culture inclined to embrace suffering. Just the opposite, we want to avert it. So, if you suffer the embarrassment of dingy teeth, use Crest White Strips. If you suffer the indignity of sweaty underarms, raise your hand for Sure. If you suffer from allergies, reach for Alavert. If you suffer a malodorous house, then rely on Febreze. Except for those with a masochistic bent, it is human nature to move away from suffering not toward it. Even the prospect of suffering we are quick to avoid if we can. Jesus never taught suffering as a value in itself. Let me repeat that. Jesus never taught suffering as a value in itself. or Jesus, suffering was not a demand but a consequence. A consequence of following in the way of God's perfect love, of following in the way that leads from life as we know it to a greater life within this life, the God-life we were born to know here and now. Recently I received an email from a woman I met in Utah. To call what she is currently experiencing suffering is to use a word too small. This woman is in a private hell, one so fraught with suffering that she is contemplating suicide. Were I to point her to Jesus' words today, were I to quote his line "lose your life to save it," this mother from Utah might, in her pain, find the very justification she needs to follow through on her desire to die. Remember that Jesus reached out to the suffering. Recall that he comforted the suffering. That he brought hope and healing to those who suffered. This mother is exactly the kind of person Jesus would rush to and hold. He could cradle her in his arms and wipe the tears from her eyes. He would sit with her in silence and give her his pure love. He would listen when she was ready to speak and he would not turn away from one ounce of her pain. And slowly, if she was willing, he would lead her from a life not worth living to a life very much worth living. Jesus would help this woman lose one life so that she could find a new, life-giving life. He would transform her suffering. Jesus would reach up and take her down off the cross she is hanging from. He would see to her resurrection. This is what my Jesus would do, anyway. While he walked among us, Jesus was deeply concerned about suffering. Concerned not just about the suffering of particular people but about the source of that suffering. Whenever the source of a person's suffering went beyond a person's own circumstances, when that suffering was the result of injustice or a world out of balance, then Jesus - with his heart full of God--chose to speak out, to call for the kinds of changes that would reduce and eliminate suffering. Jesus aligned himself with the suffering. Which is why he was willing to suffer to the extent he did. Being in solidarity with those who suffer, calling for justice, calling for change, these can easily place a person at risk because doing so often threatens the powers that be. Think of our own Martin Luther King, Jr., or South Africa's Nelson Mandela. Think of the Chinese students in Tianimen Square or Mahatma Gandhi in India. Such risk-takers are willing to live with the prospect of the cross not because they want to die or because God ordains it. They walk the way of the cross because to stand for anything less than the truth would be a suffering greater than death. Aside from the embarrassment and regret I feel as a Christian over Pat Robertson's grotesque comment earlier this week, I think what troubled me most was how very contrary it is to the sacrificial life Jesus calls us to. Rather than calling us to unite our will with God's, no matter the cost, which is what Jesus is after when he asks us to deny ourselves, Robertson says no cost paid by another is too high when it comes to preserving the lives we are privileged to have. In his life, Jesus identified with life's losers, not its winners. He aligned himself with the powerless, not the powerful. He reached out to the far edges of society instead of trying to worm his way into society's inner circles. Jesus made his home among those who suffer, not those who inflict or tolerate suffering. Were he here today, I have to believe that Jesus would be quick to tell us what Robertson hasn't: how there is immense poverty in Venezuela and just a handful of families who control most of the wealth in that nation. Were he here today, Jesus would call us together and do the delicate work of teaching us how our national leadership has already expressed a desire to destabilize Venezuela's democracy. And surely he would help us see how our lives are linked to the suffering in poor nations all over the globe, not just Venezuela. What is the life that is really worth living, Jesus asks us today. As we contemplate our answer, he asks us to remember that there is no choice that doesn't come with some cost. Clearly the way of the cross comes with a price. But then so does holding fast to lives we've grown accustomed to. "What will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?" Jesus asks as we mull over our choices. Indeed, what is gained - and what is lost--when to live our lives we must deny or ignore or resist the suffering of others? For Jesus, the price of this kind of denial was one he was unwilling to pay. Amen. © Rev.
Karen Winkel |
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