MUMC Sermon-09/17/06

17 September 2006

The Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

The Least I Can Do

Mark 8:27-38

The Reverend Richard E. Allen, Jr.

On Wednesday of last week, I received an e-mail from a member of a church I served some years ago. I was glad, but a bit surprised, to see his name in my "inbox." Opening the email, however, I was disappointed. It was clear that I was merely one of seven "required" people to receive a "chain" e-mail.

Actually, it was clever, and pious. It showed a lovely golden cross, animated, swinging at the end of a simple chain. A visual pun, do you think? The chain letter promised that, if I were to send this on to 7 of my other friends, I would receive a material blessing. I would, in effect, "win." That’s all. Send it along, and be blessed. Delete, and pay the consequences. Simple. Easy. Direct. And, a waste of time.

And that's it, isn't it? I wonder how much time and energy is wasted on such diversions. My frustration with their form predates email. Chain letters, whether with stamps or electrons, seem indestructible. They are harmless in a way, an easy, painless, even inexpensive kind of lottery.

Perhaps these letters are especially enticing to our present age, enamored as we are for quick fixes, short wars, easy answers, one-line political campaigns, and simple solutions to all of life’s problems. Even the most complex problems, we long to believe, can be answered in no more than 60 minutes of well-edited video. Surely that must be so, given the popularity of Dr. Phil and others of his media colleagues.

The gospel of Jesus is neither simple nor easy. It’s demanding. It’s costly. It’s threatening. We wonder if our children should leave after the intermission, because this could scare one to death. Just having Jesus talk about it, says our lesson this morning, scared Peter out of his wits. He might have been a child of the 21^st century instead of the 1^st century. We surely have this in common with Peter. He wanted nothing to do with this story of death, and neither do we. Did you hear how Peter responded: he “took [Jesus] aside and began to rebuke him.” Peter is on our side in this, and Jesus is not being very cheerful.

But then it is Jesus’ turn. He rebukes Peter. And, just so that we’re all clear, this word, “rebuke” is a strong word. It’s the same word that describes what Jesus does with the demons he casts out of the ill. In effect, Jesus is telling Peter, “Look, this life I’ve chosen and invited you to share is neither cheery, nor easy. It will require a lot. It will take your whole life. Nothing less.”

Sometimes I’m tempted to market the church, to put the gospel on sale, and to suggest that a little commitment will be enough. “Don’t go overboard,” I would suggest, “Moderation is good.” Then I remember Allen. He was a faithful member of one of my first churches in South Carolina in the late 1970’s. It was a little whitewashed wooden building set way back from the road on the far edge of a soybean field. And one night Allen asked me, in total innocence, a question that has haunted me ever since. “Preacher,” he said. “What is the least I can do to be a Christian?”

As I’ve thought back on that question through the years, I’ve come to understand that Allen wasn’t so different from other people in other churches and in other places. He had a dark tan and deep lines on his face from years in the sun; he could drive a tractor or a combine as well as his old pick-up, but his question was more innocent than malicious. I don’t think he was looking for a quick fix or an easy way out. He just wanted to know: “What is this Christian life really about? Really. No fancy talk.” He might have cheered Peter when Peter rebuked Jesus, telling him to “lighten up.” But I think Allen would have understood Jesus, too. Allen had experienced life, too, and he watched his own three-pound premature grandchild struggle, successfully, to live through her first few weeks. He wondered, deeply, what this Christian life is all about.

I don’t remember what I told Allen, years ago. If I had the chance to do it over again, I might remind him of these words of Jesus, a simple phrase that is repeated more often than any other in the gospels: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For 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.” I might tell Allen that there is not, as far as I know, an easy way, or a quick way, to be faithful. It takes a lifetime of living, and, even then, our faith is finally a gift of God’s abundant grace.

Mark’s community might have remembered this passage especially, for Mark probably wrote his gospel for a community of believers who lived near Caesarea Philippi. It was a place where Romans executed convicted or suspected malcontents. They would have been called “terrorists.” Some of them were crucified, as an example to survivors not to struggle against the power of Rome. And Mark wrote in a time when Christians as well as Jews were coming under Roman notice, and Roman tyranny. Paul himself had been martyred in Rome. Others had been crucified, or would soon be. To this community, the cross was not a pendant, but a symbol of torture and control.

I’m grateful not to live in such a time as Mark’s. But I am aware that Christ still calls us to die. Not once, but many times. We’re called to die to our own selfish understanding of life. We’re called to die to any notions of faith as lottery, living instead a life of sacrifice for others. We are called to die to greed, for our world is home to many who struggle for the means to survive just one more day. We are called to die to our own selfishness, and live instead for a community that is larger than we might easily imagine. Every Christian is called to die, that she or he might live anew. Regularly, consistently, we are called to die, that Christ might live through us.

Dying is no less important for the whole church as well. In coming months, we will consider what it means to be a faithful church, as well as faithful members. We will, in our own way, consider the question, “What IS the least we can do to follow Christ, and be faithful?” for my own sense is that even the least we can do to be faithful is more than we are doing at present. I believe that, because I believe Christ wants us to grow, never to be stagnant, as we follow him.

Perhaps we will be called to give ourselves to more intentional leadership, empowering all our members to fulfill their God-given gifts on behalf of our ministry to the world. Perhaps we will be opening ourselves to new elements of worship, or to small groups. Perhaps we will be called to become a more intentionally loving community, caring for one another by guarding our tongues, as James suggests in the epistle lesson for today, and by investing time with each other more intentionally. Perhaps we will deepen our spiritual lives in any of a number of ways. Certainly we’ll not look at the easiest ways to be the church, but the most faithful ways.

Many of you know the story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, the young Lutheran pastor in Hitler’s Germany, who chose to return to Germany in 1939 rather than sitting out the turmoil from the safety he was offered on the faculty of Union Seminary in New York city. It was in 1937 that he wrote a book about following Jesus, called in its English Translation, The Cost of Discipleship. In his book, Bonhoeffer the preacher takes the church to task for preaching “cheap grace” rather than the “costly grace” of true Christian discipleship. Among other things, Bonhoeffer says: “Cheap grace is the preaching of forgiveness without requiring repentance, baptism without church discipline, communion without confession, absolution without personal confession. Cheap grace is grace without discipleship, grace without the cross, grace without Jesus Christ, living and incarnate. Costly grace is the gospel which must be SOUGHT again and again, the gift which must be ASKED for, the door at which a person must KNOCK. … It is costly because it costs us our life, and it is grace because it gives us the only true life.” (A Testament to Freedom, page 308.)

Bonhoeffer paid for his faith with his life, executed by a Nazi SS detachment just hours before allied forces liberated his prison camp in 1945. If he were here he might tell us that it was the least he could do.

Amen.