True or False?

 

A Sermon preached at the Family Service on Lent II, February 28, 2021 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16, Romans 4:13-25, Mark 8:31-38

Our quiz nights have been quite popular, most recently during our Shrove Tuesday celebration, so I have some simple quiz questions for you. You just have to say whether this statement is true or false:

• When Ronald Reagan said “tear down this wall” he was referring to the Great Wall of China? [No, Berlin Wall]
• Tutankhamun was one of the longest reigning kings of ancient Egypt? [No, died when only 19]
• A lion’s roar can be heard up to 8 km away? [Yes]
• Is Jesus the true Messiah? [Ha, trick question!]

Well Peter was not certain anymore. He was very confused. Just a short while ago he had been praised for giving the right answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do people say that I am?” His friends had avoided a direct answer: “Well you know Jesus. Some say you’re John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the other prophets.” But Peter had said loudly and clearly, “You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8:27-29)

But now the things Jesus says will happen to him do not fit Peter’s image of a messiah at all. How can one anointed and chosen by God suffer and die? And surely if Jesus is the one sent to save Israel its leaders will recognise him and follow him, and not reject him. Look Jesus, he says, you can’t say that. A true messiah will not be killed, that would be like losing. Well, as it turns out that Jesus is not a false messiah, Peter’s image of the messiah is false.

Peter is still thinking in terms of human power, of victory by means of wealth or violence, of a messiah as someone who leads to win for himself. These are the very things that Satan tried to tempt Jesus with when he was in the wilderness. It is therefore no wonder that Jesus turns on Peter with the words, Get behind me Satan! It is not that Peter is Satan, but that Jesus sees Satan tempting him again through Peter. Mind you, I am glad I was not in Peter’s position at that moment. I bet he hoped the ground would open and swallow him up.

And I understand Peter. His view of things was – and still is – the conventional view. How can you win by losing? How can you live by dying?  That seems impossible … in human terms yes, not in divine terms. As the angel Gabriel said to Mary: “For nothing will be impossible with God.” (Luke 1:37)

We heard about one of those impossible promises in the Old Testament reading. A 99-year-old man and his barren wife will have a son? He shall be the ancestor of a multitude of nations and she shall give rise to nations; kings of peoples shall come from her? (Genesis 17:4, 16). Our Old Testament reading this morning stopped at verse 16, so we did not hear that “Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and said to himself, “Can a child be born to a man who is a hundred years old? Can Sarah, who is ninety years old, bear a child?” (17:17) It seems that Abraham first found it difficult to believe, just like Peter. But then he did and through all those who share the faith of Abraham – not just the Jews but also those who, in Paul’s words, believe in the God who raised Jesus our Lord from the dead (Romans 4:25) – God’s promise was and is being fulfilled every day.

The problem is not that God or Jesus always speak in riddles, or that they hide the true meaning of discipleship. It is more that we don’t believe them when they do. Like Peter! Jesus is brutally honest: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Mark 8) The modern saying that comes from this passage, that we all have a cross to bear, meaning to have a responsibility or a difficult situation to tolerate, is far too weak in comparison to what this really means – it is a warning of the risk of execution if we follow Jesus, and not a guarantee of prosperity!

The sayings that follow may sound like riddles or paradoxes, but they are not. They are about the choice between short term or selfish goals on the one hand, or long term and selfless goals on the other, between serving God and serving ourselves, about values. God gives us a life to spend, not to keep. Rather like in the parable of the talents, the servant who are praised are the ones who spend the talents who live and abundant and generous life, not the one who hides them away to keep them safe from harm. As the theologian William Barclay says, it is possible to sacrifice honour for profit, principle for popularity, lasting for cheap things, and eternity for the moment.[1] That is what Jesus means by gaining the world while forfeiting their life. It is not the life we are supposed to live, the life for God and for one another.

It often sounds as if Jesus is turning the world upside down when he speaks of winning by losing, or being saved by dying (to self), or that the first will come last and the last, the despised, come first. But actually, Jesus is putting the world back the way it should be, the way it was intended, in our best interest, both as individuals and for all of humanity and, remembering last week's covenant with Noah - for all creation.

So yes, Jesus is the true Messiah who suffers with and for us, who dies for us, and who is raised for us to a new life that we share. If we put our minds to divine things, if we see things God’s way, as Jesus did, we will see this truth clearly and in faith trust in the only seeming impossible.

Amen.

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[1] The Gospel of Mark, William Barclay, 237-8

Making sense of 40 days

 

A Sermon preached on Lent I, February 21, 2021 at St. Augustine’s, Wiesbaden

Genesis 9:8-17, 1 Peter 3:18-22, Mark 1:9-15

Our Old Testament reading this morning comes from the very end, you might even say the happy end, of the story of Noah and the flood. Our gospel reading consists of three short episodes: of Jesus’ baptism (yet again!), about the temptation in the wilderness, and the beginning of his ministry of preaching and proclamation.

On the surface at least they would seem to have nothing to do with one another and very little in common: on the one hand we have Noah, his family and as we know a selection of animal pairs surviving a primeval flood on an ark – so surrounded by lots and lots of water. On the other hand, we have Jesus being sent, driven into the wilderness. And this will have been the Judaean desert between the Jordan and Jerusalem, which is very arid and dry – so no water at all.

And yet …..  “Water, water everywhere, nor any drop to drink” wrote Coleridge in the ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.’ The ocean can be a wilderness at times and if you have no fresh water you are in trouble. So that is one similarity. The time frame is another: in the story in Genesis rain fell on the earth forty days and forty nights and once it stopped raining, after forty days, Noah opened a window he had made in the ark and sent out a raven, and it kept flying back and forth until the water had dried up from the earth. (Genesis 7:12, 8:6) And as we heard Jesus was in the wilderness for forty days. The number 40 is used a lot in the Bible: Moses remained on Mount Sinai for 40 days and 40 nights. (Exodus 32) Elijah walked for 40 days and nights to Mount Horeb, the (other) mountain of God. (1 Kings 19:8) As a number it simply stands for a long time, but here it is also supposed to remind us of these other events and encounters.

Theologically we can make a couple of other connections. As the Epistle reminds us, the story of the Flood and baptism are often connected. The author of 1 Peter says that the flood prefigures baptism. Baptism is a symbolic drowning, we go down into water and come up into a new life. But there are differences. The Ark saved only those who were in it, while baptism stands for universal salvation. One interpretation of the rather obscure section in this reading, about Christ going to make “a proclamation to the spirits in prison, who in former times did not obey, when God waited patiently in the days of Noah,” (1 Peter 3:19-20) could be that Christ returned to the spirits of those who had died during the flood to offer them the salvation they had refused.  

The second connection between the Flood story and Jesus’ 40 days in the wilderness, is in what happens when it’s over. Noah and his family and every living creature with them not only survive the flood. They leave the ark for a renewed world. It has been washed and cleaned. They receive a renewed promise, a new covenant on the other side of their wilderness experience. God promises that there will never be another flood to destroy the earth. The sign of this everlasting covenant between God and every living creature is a rainbow, for when we see a rainbow, we know that the rainstorm is over.

When Jesus returns from his forty days in the wilderness, it is time for him to begin his mission to renew the world. “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent and believe in the good news,” he says throughout Galilee (Mark 1:15) At the end of his mission, in Jerusalem, there will be another new covenant “for the remission of sins.” Its sign is not a rainbow, but bread and wine – the food and drink of everlasting life, the food and drink he had to do without while preparing for this mission. The covenant with Noah was about protecting humanity from destruction as a result of God’s wrath. I do not subscribe to those “punitive” atonement theologies that see the covenant that Jesus established with his blood as also being about protection from God’s wrath and punishment.

The protection Jesus offers us is not from God, God is - as Jesus repeatedly preaches and shows - love. It is protection against the consequences of our sinful nature such as war, exploitation, inequality, and discrimination.  Jesus came to protect us from ourselves. The temptations that he resists – that Mark does not bother to describe, unlike Matthew and Luke – are temptations to put himself first. But his mission is to put us first and to teach us to do likewise: “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends,” be tells his followers. (John 15:13)

How can we connect with these 40 days? Like all the feasts and seasons of the Church year they are a living lesson, reminding us of God’s saving acts. The 40 days are later followed by the three holy days – Maundy Thursday, Good Friday and the Easter morning - when the world was made new and death was conquered, not by power and force, but by love. That is something for us to hold onto especially in this 49^th week in Coronatide. Jesus’ victory cannot be taken away.

Jesus needed the wilderness experience to prepare for his ministry and for its culmination in Jerusalem. It was no accident that the same Spirit that descended on him like a dove at this baptism is what now “immediately drove him out into the wilderness.” (Mark 1:12) Jesus needed this period of time to focus. Jesus needed this period of time to connect with his Father. His will, faith and vision were tried and tested and strengthened. We need wilderness experiences and times alone with God, our Father, as well.

As I said a moment ago, the time of 40 days is supposed to remind us of Moses’ time with God on Mt. Sinai receiving God’s teaching: God’s easy to follow and even easier to ignore instructions on how to get on with one another and how to live with and for God. The 40 days are also supposed to remind us of Elijah’s journey to see God and pick up his new instructions. Our will, faith and vision are tested every day in the world. We can use this special time to see where they need strengthening and renewing and how. Do you need fresh teaching and inspiration in a book or course? Do you need to spend time with others in structured reflection? Will giving something up help you focus, and help the world a little too? Do you need time alone with God? Whatever you need, take it. But be realistic. It does not all have to happen in one single Lent. At the services on Ash Wednesday, I read a poem by the 17th century Anglican theologian and poet George Herbert. He too advises realism. It is often when we try to do too much, that we end up doing nothing at all. This is the verse in question:

It's true, we cannot reach Christ's fortieth day;

Yet to go part of that religious way,

Is better than to rest:

We cannot reach our Saviour's purity;

Yet are bid, Be holy ev'n as he.

In both let's do our best.

Christ has already been through the wilderness before us. Christ has already saved us – he is “mighty to save” in the words of the collect for today. Our observances in Lent, in these 40 days, are not to earn our salvation. They are to help us to know and understand it better so that we accept that gift fully and live accordingly. In the words of today’s Psalm (25:3-4): “Show me your ways, O Lord, and teach me your paths. Lead me in your truth and teach me, for you are the God of my salvation.”

Amen.