14 Pentecost

 

September 3, 2023

  

Matthew 16.21-28

 

+ Last week, I preached about my strange relationship with the Church—capital C.

 

I discussed my journey with deconstruction, my issues with the Church as a whole, but ultimately that I really do love the Church.

 

That sermon caused a lot of discussion.

 

Several people who read it on my blog reached out to me to either say “Amen,” or to say it made them a bit uncomfortable.

 

But of course I stand by it all.

 

And this week as I thought about it, I would add that it seems that one of the reasons people lose heart in the Church is that they have a notion of what the Church should be.

 

I think there are a lot of people who think the Church is this sweet, nice place where everyone gets along.

 

As I said last week in my sermon, the Church is not always that place at all.

 

In fact, the Church, as I said last week, is a human-run organization run by fallible human beings.

 

I don’t just mean Bishops and Priests.

 

I know it’s fun for some laity to be anti-clerical.

 

I know there are people who think: we don’t really need priests and deacons and bishops.

 

That’s true.

 

There’s a place for those people.

 

It’s called Congregational Church. 

 

But, yes, we can legitimately blame the clergy for this and that.

 

But. . .

 

Lay leaders have also done much to undermine and hurt the Church as well.

 

If you don’t believe me, read a very interesting book called When Sheep Attack and then get back to me.

 

Many people who come into the Church for the first time think that being a Christian means being happy, and joyful all the time with nothing bad happening in our lives.

 

There are people who cannot understand why bad things happen to Christians.

 

Shouldn’t God be protecting us in some special way?

 

In fact, I had an argument with a friend of mine a few years ago about this very same subject.

 

This friend—a committed Christian— told me that they he truly believed that it was God’s will that we be happy.

 

“It is?” I said. “Really?”

 

He had a Bible sitting there. I took it and I pushed it toward him.

 

“Alright. Find that for me!”

 

He couldn’t.

 

You know why he couldn’t?

 

Because it aint there. Anywhere.

 

I hate to break this news to you this morning:

 

But it is not God’s will that you or I or anyone be happy in this life.

 

Yes, we should strive for happiness and contentment in our lives.

 

Yes, we should do our best to live fulfilling and meaningful lives.

 

But we are not promised rose gardens in this life (as the old Country song goes).

 

If you want proof that life as a Christian often means living with hardship and pain and suffering, then you need look no farther than the martyrs of the church.

 

At our Wednesday night Mass, we invariably encounter a martyr or two.

 

And their stories are often horrendous and frightening.

 

But martyrs are an essential part of the Church, of our faith.

 

After all, in the early Church, the martyrs were the rock stars of their age.

 

They were loved.

 

They were emulated.

 

They were, in some cases, often disturbingly, imitated.

 

To be murdered as martyr at that time was a great honor.

 

Even now martyrs are considered great heroes.

We, of course, honor and emulate such martyred leaders of the Chruch as Martin Luther King or the great Lutheran theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer or the Anglican Archbishop of Uganda, Janani Luwum

 

But this discussion of martyrs does cause us to ask some questions of our selves.

 

The big question is: if worse came to worst, would we be willing to die as a martyr?

 

Would we be able to take to heart the words of today’s Gospel, when Jesus says,

 

“those who lose their life for my sake will gain it.”

 

Now, for those of us who were raised in the Roman Catholic faith, some of us heard about the differences between “blood martyrdom” and something called “dry martyrdom.”

 

A “wet” or “blood” martyr is someone like Martin Luther King or even our own St. Stephen—someone who died violently.

 

A dry martyr is one has suffered indignity and cruelty for the sake of their faith but has not died violently in the process.

 

For example, next Saturday, on September 9, we will commemorate the feast of Sister Constance and her companions.

 

They were a group of Episcopal nuns, members of the Community of St. Mary, who died while caring for the sick during a Yellow Fever outbreak in Memphis Tennessee in September, 1878.

 

They are known as the “Martyrs of Memphis,” even though they were not murdered for the faith.

 

Instead, they stayed in Memphis to care for the sick and dying, knowing full well that they too would probably contract that very contagious disease and die themselves.

 

They stayed because they felt it was what God would have expected from them.

 

And they in fact did contract Yellow Fever. And they died.

 

But before they did, they cared for people who had no one else to care for them.

 

And for a brief moment, they made a difference in the lives of those people who were suffering.

 

Suffering like a martyr then doesn’t just mean dying like a martyr either.

 

There are many people who are living with persecution and other forms of abuse for their faith.

 

Or people who suffer for simply standing up and speaking out for what is right, even if it means they will be persecuted for such a view.

 

And it is a perfectly valid form of martyrdom (martyr of course means “witness”)

 

The point of all this martyr talk is that we need to be reminded that as wonderful as it is being Christian, as spiritually fulfilling as it is to follow Jesus and to have a deeply amazing personal relationship with the God of Jesus, nowhere in scripture or anywhere else are we promised that everything is going to be without struggle.

 

We all must bear crosses in our lives, as Jesus says in today’s Gospel.

 

“If any want to become my followers, let them take up their cross and follow me.”

 

We all still have our own burdens to bear as followers of Jesus

 

And those burdens are, of course, our crosses.

 

While e might understanding losing our lives as martyrs might be easier for us to grasp, picking up our cross might seem like a vague idea for us.

 

Bearing our crosses means essentially that, as wonderful as it is being a Christian, life for us isn’t always a rose garden.

 

Being a Christian means, bearing our cross and following Jesus, means facing bravely the ugly things that life sometimes throws at us.

 

Facing bravely!

 

I don’t think I have to tell anyone here what those ugly things in life are sometimes.

 

Each of us has had to deal with our own personal forms of the world’s ugliness.

 

Most of us here this morning have carried our share of crosses in this life.

 

Most of us have shouldered the difficult and ugly things of this life—whether it be illness, death, loss, despair, disappointment, anxiety, betrayal, violence, persecution, frustration—you name it.

 

The fact is: these things are going to happen to us whether we are Christians or not.

 

It’s simply our lot as human beings that life is going to be difficult at times.

 

It is a simple fact of life that we are going to have feasts in this life, as well as famines.

 

There will be gloriously wonderful days and horribly, nightmarish days.

 

 But, we, as Christians, are being told this morning by Jesus that we cannot deal with those things like everyone else does.

 

When the bad things of this life happen, our first reaction is often to run away from them.

 

Our instinct is fight or flight—and more likely it’s usually flight.

 

Our first reaction is to numb our emotions, to curl up into a defensive ball and protect ourselves and our emotions.

 

But Jesus is telling us that, as Christians, what we must do in those moments is to embrace those things—to embrace the crosses of this life—to shoulder them and to continue on in our following of Jesus.

 

By facing our crosses, by bearing them, by taking them and following Jesus, we was able to realize that what wins out in the end is God and God’s love, not the cross we are bearing.

 

What triumphs in the end is not any of the ugly things this life throws at us.

 

Rather, what triumphs is the integrity and the strength we gain from being a Christian.

 

What triumphs is Jesus’ promise that a life unending awaits us.

 

What we judge to be the way we think it should be is sometimes judged differently by God.

 

We don’t see this world from the same perspective God does.

 

And as a result, we are often disappointed.

 

Yes, our burdens are just another form of martyrdom—another albeit a bloodless form of witnessing.

 

And, like a martyr, in the midst of our toil, in the midst of shouldering our burden and plodding along after Jesus, we are able to say, “Blessed be the name of God!”

 

That is what it means to be a martyr.

 

That is what it means to deny one’s self, to take up one’s cross and to follow Jesus.

 

 That is what it means to find one’s life, even when everyone else in the world thinks you’ve lost your life.

 

It means in the midst of sadness, suffering, loneliness and pain, to be able to say, “Blessed be the Name of God!”

 

So, let us take up whatever cross we’re bearing and let us carry it with strength and purpose.

 

 Let us take our cross up and follow Jesus.

 

Let us say, as we do so, “Blessed be the Name of God!”

 

And, in doing so, we will gain for ourselves the glory of God that Jesus promises to those who do so.

 

Let us pray.

 

Holy God, blessed is your name! we thank you for giving us the strength and purpose to take up our cross and follow your Son, Jesus, along a path that, although uncertain and frightening at times, leads always to you. In Jesus’s Name we pray. Amen.