Proper 19B

Proper 19B • 16 September 2012

preached at Saint Mark’s, Springfield VT

‘The tongue is a fire.’ How prescient these words seem.  We have witnessed this week how our country’s concept of freedom of speech has managed literally to turn the Middle East aflame with tragic loss in the process. What one man’s tongue (and film) has managed to wreak simply reinforces what the letter of James states: ‘No one can tame the tongue — a restless evil, full of deadly poison.’

Not that this little sermon can tame the tongue, but may it not turn the tongue into fire, evil or poison. But the gift of speech certainly can become a cross we bear if we do not use it properly.

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We have arrived at the midpoint of Mark’s story. The first half began by heralding a ‘Way’ and closed with a question addressed to the disciples and the reader: ‘Do you not yet understand?’ (8.21). The second half opens ‘on the Way,’ with yet another query: ‘Who do you say that I am?’ In this second half of the gospel, the ‘way of the cross’ will be explained by object lessons, both positive and negative, framed by two stories in which the blind receive sight — first in Bethsaida (8.22-26) and in Jericho (10.45-52).

The first half of the gospel ends on the depressing note that the disciples’ eyes, ears and heart have failed them. They have not understood what Jesus has been trying to teach them on the Way. It is no accident, then, that the second half of the gospel opens with the story of a blind man receiving his sight, which counters the disciples’ inability to see who Jesus is.

In short order, Jesus restores hearing and speech to a deaf-mute man, he restores sight to a blind man, he casts out a deaf and dumb spirit and he heals another blind man who follows him. These final four healings suggest that if Jesus can ‘make the deaf hear and the dumb speak’ and help the blind ‘see clearly’ then there is hope for the disciples. As an aside, for the preacher and listener, who may have wondered why week after week the lectionary recounts different healing stories, now the gospel writer’s agenda becomes clearer.

So when Jesus asks the blind man at Bethsaida, ‘Do you see anything?’ his question actually has prophetic echoes for the conversation that takes place in the portion of today’s gospel reading. ‘Sight’ emerges as a central metaphor for faith in Mark.

Moving from a physical level to a spiritual level, Mark now has Jesus asks his disciples who do they say that he is. He wants to know for whom do they see him. They answer with the appropriate people, but Peter takes things a step deeper when he uses the politically loaded term, ‘messiah.’ It sounds like a good answer — this word, ‘messiah,’ speaks clearly of the presence of God with the people in justice and peace.

However, at the time of Jesus, there were conflicting ideas about the messiah and what it would mean not only for the Jews but also for the Romans and unbelievers. Thus, Peter’s use of this term fails to clarify matters and Jesus tells him to be quiet.

Jesus then tells the disciples what this messiah must undergo. He has read and reflected on the prophets, especially Isaiah. Jesus sees himself as the beloved son and servant of God, which means, in the tradition of the prophets, he must also suffer because of his obedience to God’s word and will. The truth is named and brought to light; Jesus will die.

It is too much for Peter. And Peter’s reaction is too much for Jesus. Their exchange escalates into a shouting match of rebukes, ending with Jesus naming Peter as ‘satan.’ Perhaps it is because Jesus senses that Peter has remained loyal to the secular and traditional understanding of messiah, the one who prevails over the enemy through righteous force, rather than this new messiah who will overcome through humility.

But, at what a price! For this messiah will overcome the powers-that-be through crucifixion, a vicious, sadistic and humiliating torture, meted out for those whom the Roman empire wished to silence, those who had no family or friends to support them, or those whose family and friends understood that pubic support of the punished would end up in similar punishment for themselves.

We return implicitly to Jesus’ question to the blind man at Bethsaida, ‘Do you see anything?’ We do. We see the suffering Christ, the saviour whom we follow and the cross, a cross that we must take up ourselves. On a normal day, the idea of doing likewise holds scant appeal because it seems so costly.

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Taking up one’s cross is costly unto itself but made worse by all the cultural overlays added to it. Taking up one’s cross has come to mean assuming all sorts of inhuman and human-created problems that I can’t imagine a loving and creating God wanting us to take on.

The widower is furious at God for having made his wife, dying of cancer, suffer. He wants to punish God for making him carry this cross and so he turns away, in his anger, never again to talk with God. He cannot see that his wife’s death was not a case of God ‘letting him down’ or making him carry a special burden; his wife’s death as awful as it was, nonetheless, is part of what it means to be a finite creature.

The woman, whose husband beats her at night in his alcoholic-induced rage, when her friends point out to her that she needn’t live this way, shrugs her shoulders and mutters something about it being her ‘special cross to bear.’ She cannot see that the God who created her would not willingly cause her to suffer as proof of her faithfulness.

The child who lives in the streets, doing tricks, inhaling glue, figures that somewhere along the line he must have done something wrong and God is punishing him, that this current bleak life is his cross, whatever that means.

I reject those interpretations of what ‘taking up one’s cross’ means. I do believe that ‘taking up one’s cross’ can mean sacrifice, particularly in terms of acting in the interest of the common good and not one’s self interest. I believe that taking up one’s cross means faithfully living out as best as one can the promises made at baptism.

Or consider Micah’s call to ‘Do justice, love mercy and walk humbly with your God.’ Or ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind and you shall love your neighbour as yourself.’ To live out any of these exhortations involves plenty of denying oneself and taking up a cross.

Taking up one’s cross means using the gift of speech not to harm but to heal, to build peace, to speak of God. That evil tongue of which James wrote can speak good and actually be used for the common good. Still, taking up one’s cross means challenging someone who makes a racist or sexist comment or joke, or speaking truths that others may not want to hear. Bringing about God’s kingdom, in terms of complete relationships, can often be a cross.

The action of taking up one’s cross then becomes paradoxical because, ‘the hard wood of the cross is best for feeding the fire of love,” in the words of one ancient writer. The cross reminds us that all love is sacrificial: that is (in the original meaning of the word), it is what makes things holy.  Love makes holy everything it touches, even the cross.

As long as there are disciples of Jesus willing to take up the cross and follow, the evil of crucifixion will become the place of witness, of the reconciling love of God … where the tragedy, betrayal and foolishness represented by the cross become wisdom, and through God’s love become life and hope for us all.
Perhaps then we will see, truly see… and then speak of God’s love. (1)


END NOTE
(1)  The exegetical portion of the sermon borrows heavily from Ched Myers et al, “Say to this Mountain”: Mark’s Story of Discipleship (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 1996), 99-103.