Lent 2B 2006 Mark 8:31-38

In Yann Martel’s wonderful novel Life of Pi, twelve-year-old Pi decides to explore a number of different religions in his native India. He has a rather remarkable reflection on a conversation he had with a Roman Catholic priest, Father Martin, about the crucifixion. Pi thinks to himself:

“That a god should put up with adversity, I could understand. The gods of Hinduism face their fair share of thieves, bullies, kidnappers and usurpers …. . But humiliation? Death? I couldn’t imagine Lord Krishna consenting to be stripped naked, whipped, mocked, dragged through the streets and, to top it off, crucified -- and at the hands of mere humans, to boot. I’d never heard of a Hindu god dying…. But divinity should not be blighted by death. It’s wrong. The world soul cannot die, even in one contained part of it. It was wrong of this Christian God to let his Son die. …For if the Son is to die, it cannot be fake…. The death of the Son must be real. Father Martin assured me that it was. But once a dead God, always a dead God, even resurrected. The Son must have the taste of death forever in His mouth. The Trinity must be tainted by it…. The horror must be real. Why would God wish that upon Himself? Why not leave death to the mortals? Why make dirty what is beautiful, spoil what is perfect? Love. That was Father Martin’s answer.”

And in the end Pi said: “I couldn’t get Jesus out of my head. Still can’t. I spent three solid days thinking about Him. The more He bothered me, the less I could forget Him. And the more I learned about Him, the less I wanted to leave Him.” (1)

Jesus uses the image of the cross to teach about discipleship. Jesus reminds us that “those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.” If we’re serious, really serious about being Jesus’ disciples, then we will lose our lives. Jesus doesn’t seem to be saying here that those who want to save their life might lose it, might have to give up something rather--crucial. He’s saying lose it! He’s saying that if we’re serious, life will be different. We won’t fit into the world in the same way.

We look around and see people we consider to be very good people, very godly people, looking very normal. They work and play and pray and move about in society quite normally. They seem to fit. For the most part, we do the same. We work and play and pray and move about in society quite normally. We seem to fit. But that’s not what Jesus meant by losing one’s life for the sake of the Good News.
Three stories: David Jardine was born into deep poverty in 1843. As a teenager in Rochester, New York, he served out a prison sentence. But despite all of this, he was became an Episcopal priest. He founded a thriving parish. He founded Saint Luke’s Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri. He founded an order of teaching nuns and a parochial school. At the time of his death he was in the process of trying to establish an Episcopal College. Throughout his discipleship he gave all he earned to the health and care of others. And as a reminder of his own sinful nature, he wore a chain around his waist.

But it wasn’t all a delightful sunny success story. His spirituality was centered on making the Eucharist, the Holy Communion, central to the worship life of his flock – which led to rejection by most parishioners, friends, and colleagues.

And most of his peers thought that he should never have been ordained – he was not a “gentleman of genteel birth”. When he died, he was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Second story: In the early part of the 20th Century there was in Germany a young seminary student. Not only was he a brilliant theology student, he was a superbly accomplished organist. He was also a young man of rather privileged and highly educated background . His big rock, his dream, his goal, was to fill the chair of New Testament and Philosophy at one of the great universities of Europe.

There was a search for the historical Jesus underway as this young man was completing his doctoral studies. As he finished he published a book which analyzed what scholars had been saying about the real Jesus over the centuries.

To his surprise he discovered that every generation looked at Jesus through the lenses of their own lives and experience, which was usually very different from one generation to the next. But it culminated in an AHA! moment for this young man on his own discipleship journey.

Within a year of publishing this book this young man found himself on a new journey, studying medicine and surgery at the University of Strasbourg. He went to Africa in 1913 as a medical missionary and set up a hospital; there he cared for some 2000 patients during his first year.

His name was Albert Schweitzer. And the final paragraph of his book said this about Jesus:
“He comes to us as one unknown without a name, as of ld by the lakeside he came to those men who knew him not. He speaks to us the same word, ‘Follow me,’ and sets us to the tasks which he has to fulfill in our time. He commands us and to those who obey, whether they be wise or simple, he will reveal himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in his fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who he is.”

One last story from Sister Mary Rose who founded Covenant House, a shelter for homeless boys and girls: She wrote this:

“On the street one day I saw a small girl cold and shivering in a thin dress with little hope of decent meal or a bed to sleep in.

“I became angry and said to God: Why did you permit this? Why don’t you do something about it?
For a while God said nothing. But that night he replied quite suddenly: I certainly did something about it. I made you.”

AMEN

1. From a sermon by the Rev. Suzanne Metz for Lent 2B, Selected Sermons

Wicomico Parish Church
PO Box 70
Wicomico Church, Virginia 22579