Sermon for Sunday, April 9, 2006Not My Will But Yours: The Obedience Of Jesus4th in a series on If Anyone Wants To Come After Me……. byRev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz |
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Mark 14:26-42 26 When they had sung the hymn, they went out to the Mount of Olives. 27 And Jesus said to them, "You will all become deserters; for it is written, "I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep will be scattered.' 28 But after I am raised up, I will go before you to Galilee." 29 Peter said to him, "Even though all become deserters, I will not." 30 Jesus said to him, "Truly I tell you, this day, this very night, before the cock crows twice, you will deny me three times." 31 But he said vehemently, "Even though I must die with you, I will not deny you." And all of them said the same. 32 They went to a place called Gethsemane; and he said to his disciples, "Sit here while I pray." 33 He took with him Peter and James and John, and began to be distressed and agitated. 34 And he said to them, "I am deeply grieved, even to death; remain here, and keep awake." 35 And going a little farther, he threw himself on the ground and prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from him. 36 He said, "Abba, Father, for you all things are possible; remove this cup from me; yet, not what I want, but what you want." 37 He came and found them sleeping; and he said to Peter, "Simon, are you asleep? Could you not keep awake one hour? 38 Keep awake and pray that you may not come into the time of trial; the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak." 39 And again he went away and prayed, saying the same words. 40 And once more he came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were very heavy; and they did not know what to say to him. 41 He came a third time and said to them, "Are you still sleeping and taking your rest? Enough! The hour has come; the Son of Man is betrayed into the hands of sinners. 42 Get up, let us be going. See, my betrayer is at hand." This story of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane is one of the most important parts of the Bible to me. It shows us the humanity of Jesus, and most of us have forgotten his humanity. We have forgotten that he was like us - he got tired, angry, frustrated, discouraged, and in this passage he is asking God that if it is possible that he not go through with this painful end to his life and ministry. How can people read this and not understand that Jesus is fully human. Most of you will remember what happens after this passage about Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane: He is confronted by the Temple guards who have found him because Judas revealed where he was. He is arrested and, as he has predicted, all of his friends run for their lives. He is taken to the high priest’s house for a trumped up trial. While he is in the dungeon of the high priests house, waiting to be tried, Peter is skulking around outside in the courtyard - he has not completely left the vicinity. When a maid confronts Peter because of his Galilean accent and accuses him of being a friend of Jesus, Peter vehemently denies it-three times-and when the rooster crows, Peter breaks down and weeps in shame and disgrace. Jesus is tried before the council, accused of blasphemy, taken to Pilate on different charges-do you remember them? Treason, saying he was a king when there could only be one king and that was Caesar. That is the charge that Pilate judges him on and sentences him to death. He is mocked by the soldiers, stripped of his clothes, nailed to the cross beam of the cross at nine in the morning and he dies at three in the afternoon. There is so much bad theology surrounding the death of Jesus. One preacher said two years ago when the Mel Gibson film about Jesus came out that the only thing that is important about Jesus is that he died! Think about that. That person was mouthing the religious belief that to get right with God, a sacrifice had to be made, and that nothing else about Jesus-his teaching, his parables, his example of faithfulness and obedience and of putting God’s dreams first in our lives-none of that mattered! That is one of the major weaknesses of the Gibson film-that we do not see any of Jesus’ life and teaching and of his confrontation with superficial religion that as your bulletin cover says, was the very reason he had got himself into this difficult situation with the priests and the temple authorities. Jesus was and is a revolutionary who was undermining the established, organized religion of his time-and he still does that when we forget the purpose of religion. We have misunderstood his mission and the meaning of his death and have talked about that so crudely. We have pictured God as a judge and said that God’s sense of justice needed to be satisfied before God could forgive people-God was not able to forgive people until Jesus came? That does away with all of the stories in the Hebrew Bible, doesn’t it? Some people have said that the only thing that can satisfy God’s sense of justice is the death of an innocent person as a sacrifice and substitute and ransom, so the death of God’s son was the only thing that could appease this angry, vengeful, judgmental God. One writer, quoted by Dr James Howell a UM pastor in North Carolina characterized it this way: God wanted to condemn everybody but his vindictive sadism was satisfied by the crucifixion of his own son who was quite innocent and therefore a particularly attractive victim. Now God only condemns people who do not follow Christ or who have never heard of him. Now that is not what I believe or what most of you believe but that is only a slight caricature of what many people think is Christianity and it is distressing to me that some think it is the only way to understand Jesus’ death. Jesus died because he was a threat to the religious and political powers of his time; he was calling God’s people to true faith, deeper faith that was not just going through the motions and the rituals but putting God at the center of life and living by God’s ways. That will always be a threat to superficial religion and to any government that forgets that its purpose is to serve human needs as well as to provide order and safety and justice for all. We have some articles on the foyer table about the different ways to understand the meaning of Jesus death and some alternatives to the inadequacies of the substitutionary atonement concept and I encourage you to look those over before you write me a letter accusing me of not truly being Christian! And as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, the new book by Dom Crossan and Marcus Borg about this last week of the life of Jesus is a good resource for this beginning with page 100. For me it is Jesus’ obedience and his faithfulness that are so important, and that is what the garden of Gethsemane story tells me: he had a choice even on Thursday evening of staying with his mission and his calling or to just save his own neck and leave. He chose to be obedient and faithful. He was executed for that, and then God confirmed his faithful sonship and raised him from death-not by a resuscitated corpse but something much more mysterious. We will celebrate that next week. Let’s talk about the happenings of this week-Holy Week-and let me invite you again to join us for the special services on Thursday and Friday evening, for those times of darkness and of walking the lonesome valley with Jesus so your celebration of Easter can be complete. Don’t move from Palm Sunday to Easter Sunday without experiencing the darkness of Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Our lives do not permit that and neither should our schedules this week. In our lives we will usually have to go through a dark time before we get to the light and hope of Easter. What I want us to see from the story of Gethsemane is the humanity of Jesus and the obedience of Jesus. Jesus asks this same obedience and faithfulness from us as well. The book by Borg and Crossan says, Jesus does not ask for belief in him as much as obedience and faithfulness to God. Christ asks us to follow him, not to admire him or to tip our hat to him by coming to church a few times a year but to follow him and imitate him. We are called to have the mind of Christ in the words of Paul in his letter to the Philippian congregation he started: have the same mind in you, the same attitude that was in Christ Jesus. That is our mandate. (We will be studying Philippians in June and July and that is one of the most important sentences.) Jesus asks us to follow him, to put God and the ways of God at the center of our lives, to see people and events and challenges as Christ sees them. What does that mean? We are in the midst of an intense and passionate debate/controversy in our country right now over how to see and relate to immigrants from Mexico and Latin America, especially those who are in the country illegally. There have been high emotions on all sides of this and church leaders have been involved in some of the controversy. How can we honor our legal values and at the same time listen to the people here and make our borders secure and safe? I am still listening carefully. One thing I heard a week ago was from a conservative senator who said something very important. He was trying to look at the complicated issues with the same perspective that Paul asks us for, to have the mind of Christ, the attitude of Christ. The senator said that he was trying to keep in front of him the teaching that we are to be caring compassionate toward “the widow, the orphan and the stranger”. Where have we heard that teaching before? From the Bible, of course. It is the second most frequent verse in the Old Testament. The most frequent verse in the Old Testament is this: “Do not be afraid.” The second most frequent verse, appearing 43 times, is “Take care of the widow, the orphan, and the stranger.” Be obedient to this, our book says. We have not determined together yet what that will mean as a nation. That discussion is going on. But if those of us who are followers of Christ want to participate in this discussion, we must first bring the values of Christ, we must first decide to be obedient to Christ. Jesus calls us to faithfulness and obedience-not to just be consumers of religion, or admirers of his values, but to imitate him and to follow him. If we do that, then we will meet some sacrifice and some requirements. If your faith is not requiring something of you, if it is not costing something, it is not Christian faith. Christian faith always involves a cross. Christian faith means that we will be asked to so some things that are not convenient or comfortable or easy. That is what it means to be a follower of Christ. We will be called out of our comfort zones frequently, and if you have not done that, you need to look at the seriousness of your faith. Mahatma Gandhi pointed to this as well when he listed his seven most deadly sins. Do you remember his list?
It is very important that we gather each Sunday around a cross. The cross we chose for this space 18 months ago is very purposeful. It is not “pretty” in the usual sense. That is on purpose because the original cross was an instrument of terror and death. It was a horrific thing that God transformed after the resurrection into a sign of hope and new life. That is what the openings in this cross are about-to show that God’s light shines through even this horrible sign of sacrifice and death. But for Jesus the cross signified his faithfulness and obedience to his calling and his vocation. For us it needs to call us to faith that is not convenient or casual but deep and true and real. We have crosses to give to you this morning on this Palm Sunday. They are the ones we brought back from Jerusalem three weeks ago. Many of you already have one that you carry in your pocket or billfold or purse. We want to use them differently today. We have fixed them so they can be worn either inside clothing or outside. We want to invite you in a moment to come and kneel and take one as a sign that you are beginning a new step in your journey as a friend and follower of Christ. Let this be a sign that you are doing something new, something more, or some new direction in your journey. You might decide as you take up a cross that you are going to invite that friend to church that you have been thinking about. Or that you are going to join a growth group or Sunday school class. Or that you are going to respond to the need for teachers in our children and youth ministry and you are going to team teach a class. For some people this will be the time when they decide to make a public affirmation of their faith and join the church and do what 28 people did two weeks ago here and say that they are identifying with the teachings and the person of Jesus Christ and centering their lives around him. For others it may mean a new decision to take five minutes in their schedule and read a chapter of a gospel each day starting with the gospel of Mark we have been focusing on. For others it may mean that you are going to be here in worship every Sunday you are not ill or out of town. It could be something little or something big that you want to do. Whatever it is is OK. The church in Florida that we borrowed this idea from told us about one woman who began to wear her cross as a public identification of her Christian faith and how she got compliments on it from friends who asked even who the designer was; she said, Christian Dior. She told about how important it was for people to know that she is endeavoring to follow Christ in all she does. It was a new chance for her to talk with her friends and her lawyer colleagues about her faith. The pastor of that church also told about a man who is homeless and who was in the service that morning and took a cross and decided that day to turn his life around and turn away from his addictions and lead a healthier life. Our youth choir members deserve to take one of these as a group because in their tour this summer they will be doing some new things that may not be comfortable - they will not be giving their concerts in churches but in some needier places: a youth correctional institution, a homeless shelter and treatment center for people with addictions who are getting clean and turning their lives around, two very large nursing homes. Some of these places may be uncomfortable but they are settings that need to hear the good news that our youth will bring in their music. You can decide to do something seemingly small or big. You can decide what it is, but let it be something new and additional. It is OK if you are not ready to do this. We do not expect that everyone will come forward-perhaps only half or less. You may even as you stay in your seat, decide to take some new step in your prayer life or your worship life. The point is that to follow Christ and to take up a cross will require something of us, it will cost us something. To be Christian will not let us do business as usual or follow the ethics of greed and selfishness around us or let us stay in our comfort zones. Christ will take us out of our comfort zones and ask something new of us AND in that process will give us the fulfillment and satisfaction and abundant living that we have been searching for in all the wrong places. One more thing about taking a cross and wearing it. For some people the cross is just jewelry. It should always be more than that when we wear it. Mike Ratliff told us about one of youth who lost for a few days, the Jerusalem cross she had been given when she was confirmed and she was very upset until it showed up because, he said for her, her cross was not jewelry, it was a statement about who she is. That is what it should be-a statement about who we are and who we are following and who we are seeking to imitate and center our lives around. My old seminary classmate Spurgeon Dunnam said for Christians the cross should never just be a decoration but always a declaration. May it be so if you come forward on this Palm Sunday to take up a cross and take a new step of obedience or a new direction in your life of faith! |
