Sermon preached on February 25, 2018 – Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16 Romans 4:13-25 Mark 8:31-38
Psalm 22:22-30
Denying the Idol of Self for Justice
All week, as we’ve witnessed the response to last week’s shooting in Parkland, I’ve heard Cornel West’s famous words, “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” The students who survived are honoring their friends and teachers who were killed with love that calls for justice; love poured out for all, so that this story might not constantly repeat. Love – in the form of justice and safety. “Never Again,” “Not One More,” they implore in the name of those who have died.
Unlike us adults, the students who survived this tragedy haven’t been disillusioned by the repetition of violent events; or crushed into paralysis by the entrenched powers involved. They have righteous anger and grief on their side, they have fear and rage, they have the powerful combination of innocence and worldliness; the right to speak from their own experience coupled with media savvy, and the foresight to refute those who would usurp their voice, or attempt to diminish them or their message.
What the students want is action, change and safety. They want proof that they matter more to us than politics and money, more even than our guns, or the power of the gun lobby. Our children are begging us as a culture to wake up, and grow up, and come to our senses.
Yet in all truth, this is about more than gun control and the gun lobby, it’s about more than political agendas, (though there will be a great deal of time and energy spent trying to convince us otherwise); and it’s certainly about more than mental health and school security and all the technical micro-managing smoke screens some will use to get this to go away – until next time.
What these young people have stumbled upon is at the core of pretty much all that ails us as a society in the U.S. – our incredible sense of personal entitlement and self-absorption. Our greatest idol – our own self-importance over and above all else, and everyone else.
These teenagers are putting themselves on the line to implore the adults in our society to act for the greater good. To see past ME and MINE to US and OURS. To realize that we cannot continue in this way, it’s ripping the very fabric of our society to shreds. We have to set down operating out of complete self-interest and begin to serve the needs of the community and the society as a whole: those who are in need of our protection, our concern, our care. To start from, “How will this affect the most vulnerable?” Rather than, “How does this affect me?”
In their call to action, we hear Jesus’ radical call in our text this morning: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”
But what does it look like to put “deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me” into action? To move from self-interest into community action at such a time as this?
I think it’s helpful to keep in mind the role power plays in all of this. Both where it is located then and now. This text was spoken when we as a fledgling community, were a sect of Judaism, a reform movement among a small group of people enduring the oppression of the state. Which means the students who are crying out for justice are doing so from a similar location as this text, when it comes to power. But we as Christians are not in that place in respect to power anymore, which is why it’s important for politicians and those in power in this country to send “thoughts and prayers” at a time like this. It’s important for them to be seen as Christian. Of course, power has co-opted and manipulated the Gospel for as long as the two have been aligned. For the most part, that’s been the case since the early fourth century, when Emperor Constantine converted to Christianity in 312CE. The community that had been of followers of Jesus, who defined themselves in opposition to Rome, suddenly became those who were part and parcel of the Roman Empire’s authority structure. As Winnie Varghese writes in Church Meets World: “The teachings of the church were interpreted by those who had power, instead of those who were disenfranchised by the empire and for whom the New Testament had been written. It changed everything.”1
As the Episcopal Church, our roots as a denomination in this country are similarly complicated in that we have been associated with the power elite in the U.S. going back as far as George Washington; and we have an equally compelling heritage grounded in both the Evangelical and Anglo-Catholic wings, that has often prioritized justice for workers, immigrants and slaves. So that a small, vocal group within the church has constantly called the church to justice.2 “These histories are in tension, making ours a church of and for the powerful and the powerless.”3
Personally, I see incredible opportunity in this both/and combination; complicated though it may be. If we can become aware of our power and are willing wield it for justice.
First, we need to understand the nature of power. There are obvious forms of power – of the government, military, police, and courts. But there’s also the intangible power to control cultural assumptions – as in who is good or bad, who is capable and who is diminished, who is presumed innocent and who is presumed guilty.4 (Think – Black Lives Matter)
When we are talking about justice, the acknowledgment of power is not about feeling powerful over things. Rather, power in a social analysis is acknowledging how one is perceived in society, and the power or privilege that comes with that perceived identity. It’s a comment on the systems within which we function, rather than about individuals.5
Once again from Winnie Varghese, in Church Meets World: “Power is a societal force, like gravity is a physical force. It privileges some, whether they want it or not, and disadvantages others. Race, class, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, and physical ability are some of the categories within which a social power differential operates.”
”As individuals, we can align ourselves with powerful institutions in how we pursue our education, where we work, or where we worship. All that power comes into play when we talk about justice, faith, and reconciliation.”6
The question before us is how do we use our power? And can we use our power for justice? “Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public.” – Cornel West
I recognize that it’s one thing to be convinced intellectually. We might even feel a little stirring of motivation in there somewhere. Yet, our hearts may not be buying it; they are heavy with grief, and until something shifts, it can be almost impossible to get ourselves going.
That’s where these Parkland students are such a gift of inspiration to us. They have something we have lost – they have hope. Under their anguish and their rage – pounds the heartbeat of hope. Maybe they’re naïve to feel that way, but then again – they’re drawing on the wellspring of generations, as proven by the thread of hope that runs through today’s texts.
In Genesis 17, God says of Sarai: “I will bless her, and she shall give rise to nations.” “The poor shall eat and be satisfied,” the psalmist sings in Psalm 22. And powerfully in Romans 4, Paul writes of Abraham, “Hoping against hope, he believed.”7 As Jesus tells the disciples and the community gathered, we belong to a God who assures us that what is torn down will be raised up, and what is destroyed will live again.8 Over and over, generation to generation; God, source of all hope, keeps providing hope for us with extravagant stubbornness!
God provides this gift of grace-filled hope, but it needs us all the same. Like a child that needs our care, nurture and protection, hope needs us for its on-going survival in this world. Hope asks us to provide it legs in this world, to bear it into places of hopelessness.9 To bear it into schools and statehouses, homeless shelters and prisons, refugee camps and situations of domestic abuse, places of war and unrest; places of power and decision making, too. Anywhere that needs us to embody the hope that is within us as we follow Christ and work together for the healing of the world.
What we offer, as people of faith, is to take up the banner of hope with these students, and to follow Christ into all those places where we will work toward justice with all the power we have been given.
Never forgetting that justice is what love looks like in public. A blessing by Jan Richardson, called:
Rough Translations Hoping against hope, he believed. —Romans 4:18
Hope nonetheless. Hope despite. Hope regardless. Hope still.
Hope where we had ceased to hope. Hope amid what threatens hope. Hope with those who feed our hope. Hope beyond what we had hoped.
Hope that draws us past our limits.
Hope that defies expectations.
Hope that questions what we have known. Hope that makes a way where there is none.
Hope that takes us past our fear. Hope that calls us into life.
Hope that holds us beyond death. Hope that blesses those to come.10
- Winne Varghese, Church Meets World, Church of the Oppressed or the Empire, 15.
- Paraphrased from Winne Varghese, Church Meets World, Church of the Oppressed or the Empire, 15.
- Winne Varghese, Church Meets World, Church of the Oppressed or the Empire, 16.
- Winne Varghese, Church Meets World, What is Power? 22.
- Winne Varghese, Church Meets World, What is Power? 22.
- Winne Varghese, Church Meets World, What is Power? 22.
- Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayer Book, Lent 2: Secret Medicine, for February 25, 2018.
- Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayer Book, Lent 2: Secret Medicine, for February 25, 2018.
- Jan Richardson, The Painted Prayer Book, Lent 2: Secret Medicine, for February 25, 2018.
- Jan Richardson: “Rough Translations” from Circle of Grace: A Book of Blessings for the Seasons; Orlando, FL: Wanton Gospeller Press, 2015.