Sept. 15, 2024
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38
If you were here with us last week you’ve likely noticed that there’s a continuation of some of the themes that we discussed.
One of them is the “mean Jesus” theme. Last week we had the Syrophoenician woman and that ugly comment about wasting grace on dogs, and this week we get poor Peter who reasonably objects to the idea that Jesus was going to suffer and die only to get slapped in the face with a pretty brutal insult: “Get behind me Satan.”
Last week we noted that Jesus was likely giving voice to the response that the disciples, along with other faithful observers of tradition, would have expected. In his demeaning treatment of this woman, he let them see and hear their own harshness, and in her response to him that “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from the table,” he let them discover that God is a God not of scarcity but of abundance. That with God there’s more than enough grace to go around.
We saw how there was plenty of critical material to support that interpretation. But, oddly, in all that I’ve read about the passage this week there’s not much to share about the whole “satan insult.” Nobody seems to be too concerned. My own thought about the moment is: who really knows what exactly Jesus said? Sometimes what we hear in scripture is Christ talking to people. Other times, what we hear is the gospel writing talking to his church through Christ’s words to people. In this case, I think it’s the latter. It’s Mark saying to his people that God’s ways and the world’s ways are very often very different. It’s Mark saying that God’s version of the Messiah is not the version that the world would create. It’s Mark’s way of saying how important it is that God’s people not confuse the two.
We also get that very confusing “Messianic secret” thing again: that motif where Jesus does something incredible or says something important and then says, “tell nobody about this.” We talked about how these instructions seem to fly in the face of what we’ve always been taught about sharing the faith and spreading the Good News. Last week I noted that in some places Jesus says, “Don’t tell anyone about this until the son of Man is raised from the dead,” and I suggested that if was Jesus saying, “Right now you only have part of the picture; there’s more to come. If you told people about me now you’d tell a very limited story.”
From that suggestion it didn’t seem like too big a jump to consider the implication that with God we never know the full story, there’s always more, there’s always mystery, there’s always transcendence, surprise and a kind of unknowing. So, the message for today is: Make sure you leave room in your faith. Make sure you are careful not to “know” so much that you close yourself to the More of God. Make sure you are careful not to say so much that you end up closing others too.
The letter of James made that point last week and it makes it all the louder again this week. “Not many of you should be teachers.” “Be careful about what you say.” “The tongue is a small fire that can set a whole forest ablaze.” Maybe it is coincidence or maybe, on the other hand, the lectionary writers are on the same page with me.
Anyway, this week Jesus says, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter says, “I say that you are the Messiah,” and by the way, that’s a pretty bold thing to say, given what he’s experienced up to this point. He’s seen miracles, and healings, and teachings with authority, but none of that had to mean to Peter that Jesus was God’s revolutionary come to liberate Israel and reorder the world according to God’s justice, which is likely how Peter understood the term.
Interestingly, Jesus doesn’t say that Peter is right. Instead, he says, “Don’t tell.” Then he says that he’s going to suffer, and be rejected, and be killed, and then rise again on the third day.”
Maybe Peter didn’t hear the “rise again” part. Or, maybe it didn’t compute, because who rises from the dead? But as we’ve noted, Peter objects and Jesus objects to the objection. What happens next though is that Jesus doubles down on the whole death thing. He expands it beyond his own life to the lives of anyone who would follow him. You too will have to take up your cross. You too, if you want to find life, will have to lose it.
I would really love to know what those words might mean to you. Do they just seem confusing? Or, do they resonate and speak to you somehow? If so, I would love to know how!
I think of Richard Rohr when I hear these words. Borrowing from Carl Jung, he suggests that there are two halves of life. The halves aren’t equal and it’s not even the case that we’ll ever even experience the second half. But, we can if we want.
The first half is the time we take to build up a sense of identity, importance, and security. It is, “what I would call the false self and Freud might call the ego self. Jung emphasizes the importance and value of a healthy ego structure. But inevitably you discover, often through failure or a significant loss, that your conscious self is not all of you, but only the acceptable you. You will find your real purpose and identity at a much deeper level than the positive image you present to the world.”[1]
The first half of life is usually associated with the drive for success and our set of accomplishments. It can be dominated by a kind of me-ism. But, it’s not necessarily bad; it’s just part of the journey. It’s building up enough of a self so that you can enter the second half of life by giving that self over to something greater than your autonomous, limited You.
I think of an interview of Tom Brady that I saw as part of a sermon in church somewhere. Brady was talking about the sense that something was missing, that despite achieving great success by pretty much every standard – tops in his field, lots of records, Superbowl championships, generational wealth, married to a supermodel, etc. – he wasn’t fulfilled; he didn’t have a sense of meaning; or the feeling that any of what he had worked so hard for was of enduring value.
Rohr would say that though this sounds sad, it is actually a good thing. He’s on the precipice of the second half of life. He’s ready now to enter, not so much the life of Self, but rather the life of Soul. He’s ready to let the one life die – the one in which he is the hero – in order to let the other life live – the one in which he doesn’t have to be the hero.
When Jesus says things like, “Take up your cross,” or “lose your life in order to find it,” this is what comes to mind. It’s a total cliché, but as far as cliché’s go it’s a pretty good one: “Let go and let God.” Let God, the life of God, the love of God, become you. Be the contingent, graced creation you are. Discover your Soul and let the Self now live in service to it. Awaken to the God within you without whom you couldn’t be you. Rohr writes, “This is both a transcendent God and also my deepest me at the same time. To discover one is to discover the other. This is why good theology and good psychology work together so well. You have touched upon the soul, the unshakable reality of my True Self, where “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30). The second half of life is about learning to recognize, honor, and love this voice and this indwelling Presence, which feels like your own voice too.”
The last thing I’ll add, which hasn’t been said but I think is implied, is that this life we’re invited to know is an expansive one. I mean, it’s not about discovering how sacred we are and living without a care. If it’s really happening, if we’re really entering the second half, we’re awakening to the secret that we all share the same truth. The second half changes everything because what we now see in ourselves, we see in everyone else too
[1] https://cac.org/daily-meditations/two-halves-life-2015-10-12/