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2 Lent, Year
B
Genesis 22:1-14
The Easy Way Out Every now and again I go to the movies. I don’t have to go to the movies very often to keep up, because script writers recycle some of the same lines from one movie to another. One line that has kept popping up in the last few years is “You’re the devil.” I have heard this line in comedies, dramas, and even recently in a streamer for an animated film for small children. Lest the script writers think they came up with this line on their own, I would respectfully point out that Jesus came up with this line about two thousand years ago. It appears in our Gospel text for today. When Jesus told his followers that the cross was looming large on the horizon, Peter had the unmitigated gall to reprimand Jesus. Jesus says to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.” Jesus said this to someone who had, shortly before this incident, recognized Jesus to be the very Savior sent from God. In trying to get Jesus to take the easy way out, Peter had pushed Jesus’ hot buttons. I believe this reminded Jesus of his experiences in the wilderness just after his baptism. In the desert Jesus was tempted by Satan to take the quick path – to take over the world by trickery and showmanship. Jesus resisted these temptations and kept his integrity as the only Son of God. Jesus refused to cheapen his experience of being the Beloved of God who is the Savior of the World. Jesus was intent on defeating death and taking away its sting from the human race. Because of human weakness to resist temptation, sin had entered the world. The result was death for all. Jesus came to reverse that trend. He came that we might have a full, honest, abundant life. As the only One who is fully human as well as fully divine, Jesus reversed the effect that sin has on the human race. Because Jesus resisted temptation and refused to take the easy way out, we can go and do likewise. In our daily lives, we are tempted to take shortcuts to achieve our life goals. If we reach our goals that way, we are likely to find that we missed the joy that was the journey. Educators are concerned over the high rate of cheating that goes on in our nation’s institutions of higher learning. It’s so easy for students to download big chunks of text from the internet and claim that they wrote it for their paper. It’s easy for them to justify such behavior because maybe they had three papers due on the same day and were really pressed for time. Or take for example the heiress who paid a California student to go to class for her. The school has since yanked her degree from her warm hands. It would seem that such a lapse of ethical behavior would require much more energy than actually going through the classes and taking a chance on the grade. Sadly, she missed the joy of the journey – the twists and turns of college life – the camaraderie of having gone through the experience with other students, and the satisfaction of graduation. The second part of our Gospel is even more challenging than the first. It’s one thing to think that Jesus is going to have to go to the cross, but when Jesus says that his followers will have to take up their crosses, we shrink back. If Jesus was trying to get disciples, he surely had an interesting approach to the project. How many people are going to follow someone who is going to the cross — someone who says that his followers must also take up their crosses and follow him? When Jesus made this statement, it surely thinned out the crowd. The people who heard Jesus speak probably understood what it meant to be crucified. They knew that if you were crucified, you were only facing one direction. Life as you knew it would be behind you. If there was one thing the Roman government knew well how to do, it was to kill people on crosses. They just had not counted on Jesus rising from the dead. Jesus knew that he was going to turn the tables on death. He would reverse the curse. He refused to take the cheap and easy way out as Peter insisted that he do. Maybe the cross is an easier concept for us – we who live this side of the glorious resurrection of our Lord. We are Easter People. We can rationalize what it means to carry our cross. We can meet here on Wednesday evenings during Lent and walk the Stations of the Cross inside this safe, well-lit building. We can ponder events in our lives and compare them to the cross. We can think about how that the Christian life is in the form of a cross. With prayer we reach up to God, and with love and labor we reach out to our fellow human beings. We can think beyond the cross to Jesus’ resurrection and to our own resurrection to eternal life. As Christians we can go against cultural trends that cause us to neglect our souls. Christians are, by our very nature, countercultural. We know that we can’t take our worldly possessions with us into the next life. We know that our souls are hungry for God. It’s tough to keep this focus in our present world. Life is definitely a smorgasbord. We have capabilities at our disposal that our parents and grandparents could not have imagined. Now the world is changing so fast that the next generation will be light years ahead of us. It’s tempting to try to hang on to all this stuff – to never turn off the Blackberry. Jesus solemnly warns us not to neglect our spiritual side in the midst of all this prosperity. These things are fashionable and fleeting. Our relationship with God is timeless and eternal. We need to take time to develop that relationship. When we come to this altar for communion, our souls receive the nurture and feeding that only God can give. In some mysterious way, we identify with Jesus, take up our cross and follow him. One of the Saints who understood this principle of taking up our cross was Francis of Assisi. He understood he was not to lose his soul to the pursuit of instant gratification. He experimented with how this would work for him. Francis was born to privilege, but one day in Rome he exchanged places (and clothes) with a beggar. You probably know his familiar story. After some fits and starts, he began to see life from a whole different perspective. As he began to live out Christianity as it applied to him, others gathered around him. Soon he found himself in charge of a religious order called the Franciscans. Francis told them that they should preach the Gospel every day, and use words if necessary. That was eight hundred years ago. Today, Franciscans in Jerusalem are in charge of leading pilgrims through the Stations of the Cross on Fridays. They start at Pontius Pilate’s house and wind up at the empty tomb. I would like us to read together a prayer attributed to St. Francis. You will find it on Page 833 of the Book of Common Prayer. I believe it conveys a deep understanding of our Gospel passage for today.
On the grounds of Honey Creek
The Rev. Linda McCloud, Pastor |
