Me & My Big Tongue Proverbs 1:20-33; Psalm 19; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38 Will Willimon tells a story about a young man who began a great career with one of his country s great corporations. He majored in business in college had a knack for it, they said. So noone was surprised when he was selected, right out of college, for the corporation s executive training program. That s where they train the bright young people to be the executive stars of tomorrow. After a few months of this training, the boss took him to a national convention related to his work in the company. [Like a scene from Mad Men] There he was to get a firsthand look at life at the top of the corporate ladder. Unfortunately, he got too good a look at life at the top. At the convention, he noticed the heavy drinking among many of the executives. He was told to get a woman from the supply of those who had been hired for entertainment of the executives at the convention. When he refused, he got a clear message that this was not what was expected of a young man like him on his way to the top. The boss called him in afterward to discuss the matter. The boss said he was willing to overlook his strange behaviour at the convention, if it wouldn t happen again. He told his boss that he would never engage in such behaviour. When asked by his boss, Why? he told him, Because I m a Christian. I just don t do that. Now, in saying I m a Christian, I can tell you that this young man was not some sort of exemplary church member. He attended church fairly regularly, but only on Sunday. He is no great student of the Bible. Certainly he is no holier than thou type of person. Yet in refusing to go along with the crowd, in standing up and saying No. I m a Christian, he began a journey down a narrow path that few wish to walk. He decided on a course of action that 1
thrust him into the forefront of Christian witness, whether he knew it or not. A few weeks later, he was fired. He looked for a comparable position with another company, but he didn t find anything immediately. It might be said that he had taken up his cross and followed Jesus. When Jesus was walking with the disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples who do people say that I am? And they answered him, John the Baptist; and others Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets. Then Jesus asked, But who do you say that I am? And Peter answered, You are the Messiah. When Peter said that he really didn t have a clue what it meant which is why he went on to rebuke Jesus. James warned us about the tongue, The tongue is a fire... and is itself set on fire by hell. Peter didn t know what he was saying but likely thought many times later, Me and my big tongue! Look at the trouble saying that Jesus was the Messiah got me into! But Jesus knew, as he walked down that narrow path that day, that there was no way for him to be faithful to the purposes of God and avoid his cross. He knew that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected... and be killed... (8:31). He had to be willing to walk that way. And surely today s text is meant to say to us that there is no way for us to be faithful to the purposes of Jesus and avoid our cross. He speaks to us so plainly: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me (8:34). He isn t talking about some subjective experience. The cross is something we decide to bear, something we take up, not some physical infirmity our aches and pains. Rather, the cross is that which we take up as part of being faithful to Jesus. Paul speaks a couple of times of his thorn in the flesh, some sort of unspecified physical infirmity which bedevilled Paul. But that was not Paul s cross. His cross was the humiliation and pain he suffered because of his faithfulness to Jesus. 2
Alas for us the cross in the world today has become a golden ornament, a trinket worn as jewellery around our necks, not something heavy laid upon our backs. The first century knew the cross as gallows, the most cruel punishment the world has devised, a form of horrible torture used for only the worst of criminals. If we no longer sense the horror and revulsion of the cross, perhaps we also no longer sense its glory either. In today s text, Jesus not only says that he is going toward the cross but he invites us to go with him. He promises us that, where the crucified are, there he will be also. We are walking, you and I, toward the cross. But we are not walking the path of the cross alone. The call is to take up our cross and follow along with Jesus. With Jesus. He has walked down that road toward the cross and he walks down that road again and again, whenever the faithful bear their cross. Having borne it before us, he is able to bear it with us. Is today s text about the cross good news or bad? It sounds like bad news in a society in which pain and sacrifice are avoided and denied at all cost, in which any suffering is considered unfair and unnecessary, in which we are taught to go with the flow, and go along to get along, to not rock the boat and keep our heads down. The story is told that the Baptist prophet and writer Will Campbell was being shown a beautiful new church that had just been dedicated in a city which Campbell was visiting. Proudly, the pastor showed him through the magnificent sanctuary. Pointing to the large cross suspended over the altar, the pastor said, Can you believe it? That cross alone cost us over $10,000. Campbell muttered to himself, Amazing! There once was a time when they would give you one for free, just for being faithful. Maybe we have this cross business all wrong. Perhaps today s cross talk is potentially good news. In this way, this narrow, sometimes dark, threatening way is our true life. If we want to be with 3
Jesus, if we want to find life, abundant life, we shall have to walk down this way for there is no other way he walks. The good news is, if we are near the cross, we are near Jesus and he is with us. As Athol Gill has said, One of the profound paradoxes of Christianity is to be found in the fact that the one who was not able to carry his own cross (15:21) is the one who enables us to carry ours (Life on the Road). Jesus had to be helped by Simon of Cyrene to carry his cross; he now helps us to carry ours. The cross is not optional equipment for the journey of faith, but we do not have to bear it alone. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was born to a patrician north German family. He had always had everything given to him on a silver spoon a loving, affluent family, superior educational advantages, good looks, good sense. Yet Bonhoeffer, unlike most of his fellow German Christians, knew when it was time for him to lay aside all that and to take the narrow way of the cross. He eventually was hanged by the Nazis. Earlier he had written, The cross is laid on every Christian... When Christ calls a man he bids him come and die (The Cost of Discipleship). Bonhoeffer s life illustrates that Christians don t go out looking for a cross to bear. If we re faithful, the world will offer us one, sooner or later. As Christians are in the business of following Jesus; the world is in the business of crucifixion. Or, as the Jesuit activist Daniel Berrigan once said, If you want to follow Jesus, you had better look good on wood. Most of us would rather have a Messiah who is a Saviour who will fix everything, rule the world with love and compassion, make us constantly healthy, help us to live to a ripe old age of say 150 with all our faculties, physically capable of doing everything that we could do when we are thirty, but that is not the offer Jesus makes to us. The cross of Christ symbolizes an understanding of human suffering in which humans may participate in God s pain that is love s pain. The cross used as an instrument by an imperial power is 4
the ultimate response of this world to those who fulfill the will of the [Creator]. Christ fulfilled God s life-giving will to bring life in abundance (Jn 10:10), and for that Christ was sentenced to torture and death. To share life, to make justice come true, and to feed the hungry, to welcome the foreigner or the refugee, necessarily leads into conflicts with authorities of both church and state. It promotes breaks from friends and family, losses in career, wealth, and health, to name just the mild forms of the cross... Whenever we avoid the suffering with Christ, we will have to be the devil s martyrs (Thomas Muntzer). Love has its price. The willingness to suffer is the utmost expression of human freedom: In Christ we leave the technocratic illusion of a life free from suffering and join the option for justice, peace, and the integrity of creation. Dorothee Soelle, Suffering, in A New Handbook of Christian Theology Jesus is walking the way to his cross. We don t like that message. Peter, on behalf of us all, began to rebuke him. That is part of today s message. But the complementary part of the message may be even more difficult for us to hear. We, as Jesus disciples, are on the way to the cross. The cross is part of the way. Earlier, when Jesus called us to be part of his work, he sent us out on the way telling us to take nothing with us. Now he somewhat modifies his earlier instructions, telling us to take something with us, namely, to take a cross and follow after him. To carry the pain of the world, with God s help, and to transform it into the Kindom of God. May God give us the strength to walk the journey with Jesus. Thanks be to God. Amen. 5