Suffering
seems to be part of the deal when you sign on as a Christian. Anyone who thinks
otherwise hasn’t really read
scripture. Suffering is unavoidable, and anyone who preaches or teaches that
being a Christian is all beer and skittles misses the point. Being a Christian,
that is a disciple, a follower of Christ, involves suffering. Jesus’ life and
death and the lives of countless Christians bear witness to what happens when
you sign up.
In this morning’s
Gospel, Jesus is trying desperately to turn his rag-tag bunch of semi-interested
parties and hangers-on into disciples. Imagine that, real disciples who will
follow him. And Peter, caught up in fear, tries to deflect Jesus from
explaining what discipleship means.
When you become
a disciple and set your mind on “divine things” rather than human things, you’ll
find out what happens. The outcome is amply demonstrated both in what Jesus
says in this morning’s Gospel and what he proceeds to do with the rest of his
life. Jesus experiences suffering. He
is in the midst of it rather than looking at it from the sidelines. He suffers
out of obedience to God; obedience grounded in God. True obedience comes with a
price.
In his novel Lying Awake, Mark Salzman has his
protagonist thinking that with Christ we wonder again about the cost of Christianity
and whether or not we are prepared to pay the cost.
I think that is
what Peter is doing. He has finally realized the cost is the cross and he
wonders if he is capable of paying it with his life. In his reaction we see his
fear of suffering. Peter tries to get Jesus to avoid suffering. Fear of
suffering drives his conversation with Jesus. Fear is what makes Peter deny that
suffering in part of being a disciple of Jesus. And fear is what makes Peter
later deny Jesus three times.
Fear is a
powerful motivator to avoid suffering. It can lead us astray from divine things
and into human things that have nothing to do with what God would have us do.
Well then…if suffering
is inherent in being a disciple of Jesus, yet fear makes us avoid suffering, what
that does that say about us? Is it possible that in this place where people
make a decision to be disciples of Jesus, we can open the red door and say
good-bye to fear?
What would
happen if we counted the cost and said we were willing to pay it? What if we
admitted there are things to be afraid of, things to suffer from, but life with
Jesus is the choice of heavenly things. What if we chose the greater part:
being willing to lose our life of fear for the sake of Christ Jesus and the
Gospel?
It might be
appropriate, given the average age of this parish, to remind us all that God
called Sarah and Abraham when they thought their lives were over, when time had
run out. God called them when they were tired and retired; members of what Dr.
Massey calls the “check out generation.”
Surely Abraham and Sarah were fearful
their lives would end without offspring. That everything they had worked for
and suffered for would die with them. Surely they thought God had nothing left
for them to do or be.
Yet God did a
new thing with Abraham and Sarah. Centuries later St Paul was right when he
said in First Corinthians that the good news of the cross - of suffering, the
kind of suffering Sarah and Abraham endured - makes a mockery of our human
ideas of success.[1]
It is a mockery because even Jesus’ enemies became part of God’s work with
their fear, anger, and hostility.
Maybe the next thing
St. Alban’s grows into will involve taking up a cross. Not the cross of the
sigh and the martyred, “Oh that’s my cross to bear,” when we’re complaining
about our mother-in-law or our misbehaving child or the politics of a long-time
friend who seems suddenly to have turned into either an insufferable liberal or
an angry conservative. Instead, the cross we will bear is the cross of
suffering that brings joy on the day of resurrection; the cross of suffering
that is compassionate, kind, and helps those who suffer by standing with them
and helping them to bear their crosses.
The blessing in
the midst of any possible suffering is that Jesus calls us as his disciples.
Jesus is with us as we give up our lives to find our lives in Christ. And
whether we are nine or ninety, God will make disciples of us and use us for
those divine things God has in mind for us here. AMEN.
The
Rev Nicolette Papanek
©2018
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