1 Inside Out Psalm 103:1-18 Mark 8:27-38 Rev. Heather Leslie Hammer Lynnewood United Methodist Church September 13, 2015 How many emotions appear in this story with Jesus and Peter! If we go back just a few verses in chapter 8, to verse 11, we see the start of the tension building first between Jesus and the Pharisees. The Jewish leaders in Galilee were arguing with Jesus. They wanted to test Jesus by asking for a sign from heaven. Jesus became impatient with them, so what did he do? He got back in his boat (Mark 8:11-13). Then while crossing to the other side of the lake, the disciples became fearful because they realized they had forgotten to bring bread along. Jesus got disgusted with them for being worried about not having enough bread. He said, Don t you have eyes? Why can t you see? Don t you have ears? Why can t you hear? Don t you remember? When I broke five loaves of bread for those five thousand people, how many baskets full of leftovers did you gather? (verses 18-19). Jesus sounds pretty annoyed. Then there is a short passage where Jesus has compassion for a blind man in Bethsaida and cures him. It provides a break from the negative emotions. And in the passage we heard read today--i call it the Get behind me, Satan! passage--, we see all kinds of emotions. Jesus is walking along toward another town to the northeast of the Sea of Galilee, and he asks, Who do you say that I am? and Peter answers with joy in his heart, You are the Christ! (which means Messiah, the anointed one who has come to save the people). But Jesus orders him not to tell anyone, which I m sure disappoints Peter. Then Jesus tells his disciples that soon he will die, and Peter scolds Jesus for saying that. And then Jesus really gets emotional. He lashes back at Peter: Get behind me, Satan! I can imagine Peter would have felt crushed by Jesus reprimand. Peter so wanted to please Jesus. And he certainly didn t want to hear Jesus talk about dying. I can imagine that by the end of this conversation Peter was feeling sad and rejected. And to the crowd Jesus then said, All who want to come after me must say no to themselves, take up their cross, and follow me. All who want to save their lives will lose them (verses 34-35). It s not a very joyful thought, to deny all sense of self, to accept the burden of the cross, and to follow Jesus even to death.
2 I think the people listening must have felt crestfallen and confused. Jesus called the world sinful and unfaithful (verse 38). And Jesus last word is even a warning that he will be ashamed of the people if they cannot lose their lives because of the good news (verse 38). After this stern scolding, I wonder if the people would have walked away sorrowfully. Because, as much as they admired Jesus, how could they give up their very lives? This is a story of strong emotions that we all have on the inside, and sometimes these emotions come out, and they must. How many of you saw the film, Inside Out, this summer? It s a Disney Pixar movie suitable for the whole family with an adult message. The hero is an 11-year-old girl named Riley, whose family moves from their home in Minnesota to San Francisco. Riley has all kinds of feelings about her family s move and, naturally, also because she is a young person approaching adolescence. The film depicts these emotions as animated characters: Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear, and Sadness. These 5 emotions are in Riley s head, tugging on her. She feels joy when she recalls fond memories like playing on her hockey team in Minnesota. She feels anger at her parents for making her move to San Francisco. She feels disgust at the idea of broccoli pizza. She feels fear on the first day in a new school. And throughout the story, inside her head, she feels a great deal of sadness. In this movie we get to see what a young person is thinking and feeling from the inside out. Ultimately, we see that these feelings are all human and necessary, and that if we express them we will be better able to deal with them. Psychologists are chiming in with their evaluation of this movie. They love it. They say they will use the film in their therapy sessions with children because the characters, Joy, Anger, Disgust, Fear, and Sadness, have been so well defined for children in the film. Kids will be able to talk about their feelings by using this movie as an example. And the film shows a family system at work. Riley s parents are so busy trying to keep Riley happy, that they don t listen to her sadness. Sadness is really the hero of this story because the other emotions finally get it, that Riley won t be able to experience joy in her new setting in San Francisco, until she expresses her sadness about losing her former home and past life (http://www.chron.com/news/health/article/psychologists-see-fodder-in-inside-out-6453387.php). So psychologists also see the value of this film to help parents recognize that sadness is okay, in fact it s reasonable and necessary to feel sad. Riley s dad kept trying to make Riley be tough, be strong, when really she just needed somebody to hear her sadness (http://www.newsweek.com/what-do-child-psychiatrists-think-pixars-wondrous-inside-out-347114).
3 As parents, we need to be able to listen to all the conflicting emotions our children have. And the same can be said for any relationship. We need to be willing to hear negative feelings. I m sure many of you have read books or taken classes on communication. Listening skills are so important; I think they deserve reviewing every once in a while. Here are 3 scenarios that illustrate what not to do. They come from a book called How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids will Talk (Adele Faber and Elaine Mazlish). So first, the dad is watching TV and his son says to him, Eric punched me, so Daddy, do you hear me? The dad doesn t respond, so the boy goes on, So I hit him back. Then he hit me again. Are you listening? Dad says, I m listening to every word, while still glued to the TV set. No, you re not! says the boy. I can listen and watch the game at the same time. Go on The boy says, Oh, forget it. Now if you replay this scene, and the dad stops watching the game and turns his swivel chair around to face his son and listen, the dad doesn t have to say a word; he just listens to his son tell what happened, and solve his own problem with his own suggestion, Maybe I ll play with Eric and then he won t punch me. Just by giving undivided attention, the parent was able to give his child an opportunity to communicate his feelings. That s all he needed. A second scenario is between a child and a teacher. The child complains, Somebody stole my pencil. And the teacher responds with, Are you sure you didn t lose it? I didn t. It was on my desk when I went out to recess. Well, what do you expect if you leave your things lying around? The teacher goes on, You ve had things taken before. I always tell you to keep your things put away. The trouble with you is you never listen. By now the child is mad, and says. Oh, leave me alone. And the teacher says, Watch your tongue. On the replay, the teacher just listens and says, Oh? Hmmm And by the end, the student says, I m going to keep my pencil in my desk from now on. (It s the child s own idea.) And the teacher says, I see.
4 All the teacher had to do was let the student talk out the frustration, and solve the problem pretty much independently, except for some acknowledging of the student s feelings with a word or two. A third scenario goes like this: A young girl goes to her mom and says, My turtle is dead. He was alive yesterday. The mom says, Now, don t get so upset, honey. The girl starts to cry, and the mother says, Don t cry. It s only a turtle. The child wails. The mother gets angry and says, Stop that now. I ll buy you another turtle! The child is on the ground sobbing, I don t want another turtle! The mother says, Now you re being unreasonable. On the replay, the mother listens and puts words to what she hears her daughter saying: When the girl says she found the turtle dead, the mother says, Oh, what a shock. Then the girl says, He was my friend. And the mother says, To lose a friend really hurts. The child goes on expressing her loss: I taught him tricks. And the mother says, You two had fun together, didn t you? The daughter goes on grieving, I fed him every day. And the mom says, You really cared about that turtle. These little scenes remind us 1) to give undivided attention to the person we care about, 2) to show that we are listening by little words of encouragement not by blaming, and 3) to give a name to the feelings we hear and acknowledge that feelings are okay, even sad ones. Jesus did not withhold feelings. He was sometimes angry, sometimes frustrated and impatient, sometimes sad, and sometimes joyful. Perhaps we don t know true joy unless we have experienced some sadness. I can imagine a smile on Jesus face when he said, Let the little children come to me (Matthew 19:14), and Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow (Matthew 6:28). He asked a lot of questions, caring about how others felt. He gave his friends a chance to deal with his impending death because he knew they had feelings about that. In this passage that we read today from the eighth chapter in Mark, we see some negative emotions. They have to come out too. We can t hold negative feelings only on the inside. We need to let them out. This is one of the ways Jesus taught us by example to grow emotionally and in relationship with God and our fellow companions on the journey.
Jesus calls himself in the Common English Bible the Human One. This human Jesus we can relate to well. 5