Sermon for Sunday,  March 19, 2006

ARE WE ADMIRERS OR FOLLOWERS?

1^st in a series on If Anyone Wants To Come After Me…….

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture:   Mark 8:34-35

34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 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.

One of the highlights of this last week since we returned from Israel was being at the Wednesday Lenten concert and hearing Rick Bennett’s music.

Rick began his concert with the song “Give Me Jesus”, and I thought as I listened that so many people still misunderstand Jesus. So many church folk still cannot tell what he stands for and what the ethical results can be from being a follower of Jesus. And almost all church members have lost sight of the humanity of Jesus. There were two instances from the time in Israel that come to mind. One was as we stood in the very Garden Of Gethsemane where Jesus spent the last night of his earthly life in anguish, praying―do you remember what he prayed? If it is possible, father, let this cup of suffering pass from me; nevertheless, it is not what I want but what you need that must be done.

That place in Gethsemane―it still has one olive tree that is 1800 years―is one of my favorite places in the whole pilgrimage because it just reeks of the humanity of Jesus of Nazareth, the teacher and prophet and favored one of God who really did have a choice that night of following through with his vocation or falling away. This was not a superhuman, unfeeling super hero; this was in the words of the first ever Christian sermon recorded in the book of Acts by Peter:

Jesus was a man attested to us by God through whom God did wonders, signs, and deeds of power. A man whom, after he was executed like a criminal, was raised from death by God and whom God made Lord and Messiah. 

The Bible always has started with the humanity of Jesus before it talks about his divinity, but that is still very confusing for many as it has been since his death and resurrection. We heard from one lecturer in Israel that Jesus raised himself from death instead of that witness from Peter’s sermon that God raised Jesus from death.

One scholar used to say that Jesus is still a stranger in the midst of his own people and that many people still have a third grade Sunday School stereotype of gentle Jesus meek and mild instead of the fiery prophet who, in the gospel of John, not only drives the money changers out of the temple when he gets to Jerusalem but does so with a whip he makes himself and turns over their tables!! 

I want all of us to get to know Jesus better―especially those of us in this group who say that we are his friends and followers―so beginning last August we devoted 10 sermons to reading through the gospel of Mark chapter by chapter and we said that we would take up the last five chapters of Mark when we go to Lent, so that is what we are doing now.

Let me remind you of some things we saw together a few months ago: we saw Jesus invite people to turn in a new direction―to repent and trust in the good news he is bringing. We saw that he spent most of his ministry in a very small area around the north end of the Sea of Galilee and much of that time in the town of Capernaum where he had a home or stayed in the homes of two brothers, Peter and Andrew. He taught in the synagogue in Capernaum and much of his ministry was spent making people well and whole―in healing people. He very quickly ran into conflicts with the religious leaders who did not think he was properly pious or reverent because he did not observe all the rules and laws they emphasized and because he was always associating with the wrong kind of people―outcasts, sinners, impure, lepers and prostitutes. In fact, he thought and taught that those impure, sinful people were just as welcome as the most religious leaders―an idea that scandalized them and by chapter three of Mark had them plotting to kill this troublemaking Nazarene prophet named Jesus.

What else did we learn as we read each chapter of this earliest and shortest of all the four gospels? Jesus taught with authority, in contrast to the other rabbis. By the way, Rabbi was the term most often used to address Jesus, and rabbi means teacher as we reminded our SS teachers last Tuesday night in a recognition dinner for them. Jesus picked his disciples from common folk whom he met as he taught around the shores of the Sea of Galilee—fishermen and even a hated tax collector. He invited these twelve to do the same thing he invites us to do—not to worship him or to admire him or to show up in church once in a while and give him a tip of the hat—but to follow him, to imitate him, to be like him, to be his learners and students. And these good friends who had the privilege of spending three years learning from him—what kind of students were they?

They proved to be remarkable dense! He often displayed his disappointment with them and his discouragement at how long it was taking for them to understand the life of service and sacrifice that he stands for—fulfilling rewards as well in the here and now—but selflessness first. Even as he was taking them toward Jerusalem in the last weeks of his life, several of them were arguing on the way about which of them he liked best and who was going to have the most status when Jesus conquered the Romans and became an earthly king. He had to stop them and straighten them out and tell them that to be great, they had to learn to be servants and that he himself had come not to be served but to serve.

He promised, to those who would come after him, not status and glory, but he promised what he said in our reading from chapter 8: IF anyone wants to come after me—it is a daily choice—IF you want to come after me, you must forget yourself, take up a cross and follow me.  The cross is s symbol here of self giving and of self denial.

And then there is a promise: whoever does this will find life but whoever tries to hold on to life and focus only on themselves will be losers. This is the turning point in the gospel of Mark and is one way of summarizing Jesus message.

John Wooden is almost 90 years old now—one of the winningest coaches in basketball history. Tim Morris of our congregation sent me a copy of a sports column about Wooden this week. He lives in Encino California. He won 88 straight basketball games between January 1971 and January 1974.  Since then no one has even come close to that record. He won 10 NCAA championships at UCLA and no one has come close to that either.

He knows the whereabouts of 172 of the 180 players whom he coached. Many of them still call and check in on him and secretly hope to hear some of his simple life lessons:

“Discipline yourself and others won’t need to. Never lie, never cheat, never steal. Earn the right to be proud and confident. Never score without acknowledging a teammate. Treat your opponent with respect. One word of profanity and you’re through for the day.”

No UCLA basketball number was ever retired under his watch. He said, “What about the fellows who wore that number before? Didn’t they contribute to the team?”

He was square and hopelessly “old fashioned”. When All America center Bill Walton showed up with a full beard, he knew it was against Coach Wooden’s policy – “Facial hair takes too long to dry and you could catch cold leaving the gym.”

Walton said about his beard, “It is my right.” Coach Wooden asked Walton if he believed that strongly and Walton said he did. Coach said, “That’s good Bill. I admire people who have strong beliefs and stick by them. I really do. We’re going to miss you here Bill.” Walton shaved it off that day, and now, today, once a week, Walton calls coach Wooden once a week to tell his coach that he loves him.

There is a quote from this winningest coach at the top of your bulletin that echoes what we hear in the words of Jesus because part of John Wooden’s value system is that he is a disciple, a follower, of Jesus of Nazareth—he has tried to do what Jesus invites each of us to do—to learn from him, to imitate him, to follow him, and to make that our first priority in life.

“There is only one kind of a life that truly wins, and that is the one that places faith in the hands of the Savior. Until that is done, we are on an aimless course that runs in circles and goes nowhere. Material possessions, winning scores, and great reputations are meaningless in the eyes of the Lord because he knows what we really are, and that is all that matters.”

“If anyone wants to come after me, let them forget self, take up a cross and follow me, for it is when you lose yourself in me and in my good news, that is when you will find life.”

Right after Jesus says this in Mark’s gospel, chapter 8, he sets his face toward Jerusalem. He has had some success in his ministry in the Galilee but he knows now that he needs to confront the corruption and the empty religion he has seen around him and he must do that in Jerusalem, the center of that bureaucracy, and he knows the cost involved in that confrontation; it will cost him his life, but to be faithful to God and to his calling to bring people close to God he must do this. 

This is what we will read about in the next four weeks: when he gets to the village of Bethany right outside Jerusalem, his friends procure a colt and he rides on it from the top of the Mount of Olives into Jerusalem while people are spreading their cloaks on the road and waving palm branches and hailing him as one who comes in the name of the Lord. At the same time he is entering Jerusalem from the east, the Roman governor, Pontius Pilate is entering the city from the west in his much more impressive entourage complete with centurions and horses and soldiers coming to the city to keep the peace during the Passover festival when 300,000 pilgrims will crowd into the city and raise the possibility for a riot against Rome.

The next day, Jesus comes back into the city, into the Temple and drives out those who are selling animals and changing money because they are gouging the pilgrims and their profits are filling the coffers of the corrupt priests and others who are the puppets of Rome. And then every day, he comes to the temple from the cave he is staying in on the Mount of Olives and the crowds surround him and hang on every word. He has several confrontations with the spiritual leaders who try to trap him with questions, but he bests them mightily every time. They are busily plotting a way to arrest him when the crowds are not around so he can be executed.

One day he stops his teaching and praises a poor widow who drops two pennies into the treasury box. He tells the crowd that her generosity is an example because while all the others have given out of their leftovers to God, she has given sacrificially and her giving has cost her something, and he says, that is how our giving to God should be also—a sacrificial generosity that honors God first.

During this week a woman comes to Jesus and his friends while they are in the suburb of Bethany and brings a jar of perfumed ointment to anoint Jesus. His friends object to this extravagant gift saying it should have been sold and proceeds given to the poor. Jesus makes a criticism of them and us that we have misunderstood: he says if we want to do something for people who are poor, we will always have that opportunity because we will not have been committed enough to solve the justice issues and we will always have poor people with us. I believe he says it as an indictment of us and our lack of compassion and lack of real action for justice.

On Thursday night he and his friends celebrate the Passover meal in an upper room and he transforms the meal into something new for us to remember him and to be fed always by him in what we call now the Lord’s Supper. He and his friends go out to the Garden of Gethsemane on the Mount of Olives where he prays all night and they fall asleep on him. He is arrested by the temple guards and taken to the high priests house, thrown into a dungeon there for awhile, and then subjected to a farcical trial where he is accused of blasphemy. The priests take him to Pilate where they accuse him of treason and sedition because blasphemy is nothing Pilate is interested in. He is judged by Pilate and condemned to the most humiliating form of execution available to Rome—to be hanged on a cross and made a mockery of. He dies after only a few hours and his last words in the Gospel of Mark are from Psalm 22: My God, My God, why have you forsaken me. When he has breathed his last, it is a Roman soldier standing at the cross who says, “This man was truly the son of God.”

It appears that the powers of darkness and evil have won but God has a surprise in store.

We are in the third week of Lent and some people have come from churches that emphasize giving something up for Lent; I have not been very impressed with that—it leads to the kind of shallow controversy we saw in the papers last week about whether it is OK to eat corned beef and cabbage last Friday since it was, after all, St Patrick’s day and eating meat on Friday is questionable for some.

I have always liked better the idea of taking something up, adding some new spiritual discipline for Lent so that it is a time to deepen and strengthen our spiritual life.

If that idea of taking on some new discipline appeals to you as well, I ask you to be reading these last few chapters of Mark’s gospel during this season of Lent so that we may know this important part of the Christian story and be formed by it into the likeness of Christ whom we have said is our Lord and teacher and example and guide and mentor. Let us know him better so we may then follow him better. Amen.

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