Mar. 8, 2009 - Mark 8:31-38 - On Divine Things
A couple of Christmases ago, my mother gave me an embroidered tablecloth. My mother is known for her beautiful embroidery and I treasure the collection of embroidered pillowcases and table runners I have received from her over the years.
But this gift seemed all wrong. Instead of the neat, evenly placed stitches, the hand work on this one was ragged and uneven. The tag ends of the thread showed everywhere. As I lifted the tablecloth from the gift box, I wondered about my mother’s eyesight – had she perhaps suddenly developed Alzheimer’s or had her arthritis gotten so bad that she could no longer manage her hand movements? And then I realized that the tablecloth had been folded with the right sides facing – and only the wrong sides showing.
Once I lifted it from the box and opened it up, I saw that the workmanship was not sloppy, but meticulous. The stitches were not uneven but well spaced and drawn up – and nowhere was there a loose end or a knot to mar the beautiful design.
While I looked at the wrong side of the tablecloth, everything seemed disorganized and slipshod. It was only when I could see the whole picture, could view the right side of the fabric and see it as my mother had intended it that I could see how beautiful it really was.
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This morning’s gospel portion comes during the time in Jesus’ ministry when he was most popular. The deaf hear. The blind see. Demons are cast out. The sick are healed. Jesus walks on water and thousands are fed with just a few loaves and fish. Just as things seem to be going well, people begin to wonder who this Judean prophet is: has Elijah returned, or has John the Baptist been resurrected? At this minute, the spirit of God has given Peter the answer: Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah.
But now things begin to change. Just as it seems things seem to be going their way, while the disciples are dreaming of praise and glory, Jesus begins to talk about suffering, rejection and death. Just as success and great renown seem to be within their grasp, Jesus begins to tell them about dark days of pain and betrayal.
For the disciples, who watch the miracles and hear the teachings and see the excited crowds following Jesus, this talk of suffering and death sounds impossible. After all, they’re on a roll. Things are going so well. Certainly they will all be in
But Mark tells us that they have it all wrong. That while the disciples are anxious for the honor and accolade of the crowd, they are really only anxious for their own will – they have lofty visions their brand of messiah, dreams of their versions of a kingdom of God without Romans and without high taxes, and entertain their plans to bring it about by might and power.
Jesus now speaks of the kind of messiah he really is and about the kind of messiah he was sent to be. When he predicts his death for the first time, Peter, who was given such a wondrous knowledge of the identity of Jesus, falls flat on his face. He takes Jesus by the shoulders and shakes him and criticizes him. And so Jesus in turn rebukes Peter. Peter is called Satan – Accuser – and told to get behind Jesus – not to lead but to follow – because Peter is thinking about the things of the world instead the things of God.
This is the first time that Mark will tell of Jesus predicting his death. He will write about it three times in all and for each of those three times, it will be clear that the disciples do not understand. Twenty centuries later, and even with the truth of the resurrection, we don’t understand either.
But what does it mean to set our minds on things God? What exactly does God want from us? How can we follow more closely behind our Savior and our God?
Jesus tells us that if we want to follow him, we need to relinquish our obsession to be in charge of ourselves. We need to give up looking for our world, our country, our community, even our church and our family – to go our way and begin to look for a world that goes God’s way.
If only it were as easy to do as it is to say. Instead we become angry when things don’t go our way. We are anxious about the unknown and about the outcome of things we cannot control. And yet for all of that can we by all our worrying and scheming add one inch to our height, one hair to our heads or one minute to our lives? Can we for all our posturing, backbiting and finagling really change the eternal into a shape we find more pleasant or more advantageous to ourselves? Would eternity really be more perfect if we always got things our way?
And how many lives and relationships have we ruined because others fail to meet our expectations for them. And how much have we suffered because we have in turn failed to meet the expectations of others – expectations that in the end would have proved disastrous?
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The disciples left homes and families and jobs to follow Jesus. Perhaps we can forgive them for wanting to fulfill their dreams of glory. They have lived in the company of Jesus for three years. Perhaps we can forgive them for thinking that they have it all figured out. But as for all of us, we never left behind much of anything – we add faith to the rest of our lives and by comparison have sacrificed nothing. And yet we want still more. Instead of crosses, we want capital. Instead of personal surrender we want personal supremacy. Instead of living in God’s will, and trusting in God’s directions, we want to have our own will and give our own directions.
But try as we might, we cannot see the world as God sees it – any more than the disciples could. Try as we might, we share their blindness about the big picture of God’s work. Try as we might, we see the messy side of existence where like my mother’s embroidery everything looks jumbled and messy – we see strings hanging strings and the knots that seem to mar the work.
But we only see the back of God’s embroidery. When we reach heaven’s gate, we will see God as God really is and we will finally see the embroidery of our lives as God sees and has God has designed. And we will be amazed as the glorious workmanship and master plan that was at work in us all along.
Of course, we will only see that if we stop being full of ourselves – only if we deny our self-fullness – only if we set aside the prideful agendas we have set for ourselves – and only if we live according to God’s self and God’s agenda. Only when we confess that our limited knowledge and our limited perspective cannot fulfill God’s will in our lives and cannot conform to God’s will in the world, will we truly begin to understand how joyful life in God’s spirit can be.
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God does not call us to pious and moral nothingness. God does not call us to give up being the wonderful people we were created to be. God does not want to force us into slavish servitude to an eternal cause we cannot love or understand. Instead we are called to repent of going our own way and placing value on the wrong things.
The word ‘repent’ does not mean to feel sorry and keep going as we were. The word ‘repent’ means to turn back, to change direction, to go somewhere else. In this morning’s gospel portion from Mark, Jesus calls us to repent from self-fullness, to turn back from striving to be great in the world’s kingdom and instead striving to be great in God’s kingdom – to think of God’s wealth instead of ours, to think of the welfare of others instead of ourselves, to care about the lives of brothers and sisters everywhere instead of being wholly preoccupied with our ourselves.
We may not see everything clearly just now. We are, after all, only human, only finite and only imperfect. But God is on the heavenly throne and is fully in charge of the creation and directs it firmly and inevitably to a glorious day of the Lord when all of God’s creation will be redeemed. We can’t go our own way to make it better, but we can let go of our way and let God make us better.
We can set our compass toward heaven and set our minds on divine things, and learn to see God more clearly.
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The good news for us this day is that God is willing that all should live such lives – that our Lord does call us each of us into the Holy presence, that there is something more than the messy world we live in – and so let us, with God’s help resolve now so focus our thoughts on divine things.
Amen.
