Sermon
Christ
Church, St. Michael's Parish
14
Pentecost
Mark
8:27-38
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.”
Today marks the beginning of yet another
church year. We have returned to the 8AM and 10:15AM Sunday service schedule,
and the clergy have changed into “winter greens.” This coming week we will see
the beginning of several new church programs, and various committees will
initiate planning sessions for upcoming fall and winter events. Volunteer recruitment for ongoing ministries
will occur at today’s Ministry Fair, and Sunday school registration begins. And,
of course, we are anticipating the return of our wonderful choir and the many
parishioners who spent their summer months traveling or vacationing in summer
homes.
Today also marks,
just another day…not the beginning day… but just another day in world situations
that bear our immediate and undivided attention.
The Global Refugee Crisis
In the Balkans tens of thousands of migrants
and refugees are working their way north. In Syria about 12 million people have
been displaced since 2011. In Southeast Asia over 137,000 Bangladeshis and Rohingya, an ethnic minority
from Myanmar, have fled from poverty and persecution. In Eastern Europe 1.3 million people have been displaced within the Ukraine; 867,000 have
moved to Russia. Since 2013 brutal conflict in South Sudan has claimed thousands of innocent lives
and driven well over a million of people from their homes. And, here at home according
to U.S. Customs and Border Protection 68,541 unaccompanied children were
apprehended at the southwest border between October 1, 2013, and September 30,
2014. These children were fleeing from the violence of the drug cartels in Guatemala,
Honduras, and El Salvador—a region of Central America known as the “Northern
Triangle.”
Poverty
The number of
people living in extreme poverty globally remains unacceptably high. According
to the most recent estimates, in 2011, just over one billion people lived on
less than $1.25 a day.
Homelessness
In a survey conducted by the United
Nations in 2005 – an estimated 100 million people were homeless worldwide and as many as
1 billion people lacked adequate housing. In January 2014, there were 578,424 people experiencing homelessness
on any given night in the United States.
Hunger
The target set at the 1996 World Food Summit was to halve the number of
undernourished people by 2015. Since then, the number of hungry people in
developing regions has fallen by over 200 million, from 991 million to 790.7
million. Clearly, the 1996 the target will not be reached.
There are other big challenges, as well – The Global Economy, Gun
Violence, Racism, Prison Reform, The Israeli-Palestinian situation, and
more…many more.
Many, if not most of these world situations, are
present in one way or another right here – right on our front door. They are
right here in Maryland and they are right here on the Eastern Shore. Wherever
they occur, all of these world situations – all of them – have resulted in the
discrimination against, and disenfranchisement, oppression and all too
frequently death of millions of God’s children. People. People whose place of
birth may be different than ours; people whose skin color and language may be
different than ours – but, people who are all created in God’s image, all created
equal in God’s eyes and who are all loved without question by God – always and
forever, no matter what their life situation.
As we launch
into our fall and winter programs here at Christ Church, we say that we are
looking forward, setting forth as it were on a new and lively course of
activities and events designed to enhance opportunities for spiritual growth
and formation - activities and events that will bring us closer to God. With that goal as a given, my question, to all
of us, is this – in these newly energized plans have we left adequate time and
space to examine these many challenging world events through the eyes of Jesus.
In our various spiritual formation journeys do we hear today’s gospel words, ‘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,” ’ and do we consider
how these “follow me” words define the “now what” for those of us who are
moving forward in our spiritual journey – for those of us who are experiencing
a new and thrilling closeness to God.
What exactly is Jesus talking about when he
addresses his disciples today?
In today’s passage from Mark, Jesus, for the
first time discloses that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering…and be
killed. Jesus is rebuked by Peter who does not want to believe that the messiah
will be subject to such an ignominious fate. But Jesus reprimands Peter and
commands not only the disciples but the whole crowd to come and listen to his
teaching.
In
this, and subsequent passages, Jesus discloses more and more about his identity
and fate. He also describes, without mincing words, what it means to
participate with him when he says, “If any want
to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and
follow me.”
Jesus
instructs those who would call themselves his followers to journey with him. Not behind him, not following
in his shadow – but with him – alongside him – embracing him as the one to
follow. Following Jesus is not a wandering
voyage, each man on his own. Following Jesus is a “oneness” with Jesus. It is a
journey in solidarity that points in a particular direction, ending up at death
and re-birth.
Jesus’
instruction to deny oneself and to take up one’s cross reveals a thoroughly forward-looking
orientation— one that points ahead to the future and calls its hearers to assess
their lives, securities, and ambitions in accordance with their association
with Jesus and their participation in God’s kingdom. The forward moving orientation
described in Mark is absolute, summoning Jesus’ followers away from
inclinations to personal aggrandizement and away from loyalty to the world of
status, power, and achievement.
In
this gospel passage, self-denial and cross-bearing clearly appear as key
elements of a person’s identity if they are truly to be a follower of Jesus. The
cross that followers are to bear according to Mark is not Jesus’ cross. Mark’s language
makes clear that everyone is to take up his or her own cross, each declaring
the forfeiture of one’s life and turning one’s back on self-preservation.
Cross-bearers bravely embrace a way of life that threatens the existence of world
ideologies that perpetuate the oppression of human souls.
Tomorrow
evening at the event celebrating the inauguration of our membership in the
Bondeau Partnership you will meet some amazing people who have responded to the
incredible needs of Bondeau, a fragile Haitian community, by coming together in
a collaborative effort to build sustainable capacity in a desolate and
impoverished area that has frequently been called, not a Third World Country,
but a Fifth World Country.
Over
the past eight years, partnership members have donated time and treasure beyond
imagination to build programs that provide education, food, healthcare, clean
water, solar power, and an incredibly beautiful place to worship. The way has
never been without conflict, concern, and great hardship when in Haiti. The way
has been fraught with danger of all sorts. However, the way has been always focused
on the needs and concerns of the Bondeau residents, not the needs and concerns
of the partnership members. The Bondeau partners have each taken up their cross
as they embraced, and continue to embrace, Jesus as their model for compassion,
love, and justice. The goal is to be one among the people of Bondeau, as work
to build their community progresses.
I
believe that the Bondeau Partnership is an excellent model for how we might collaborate
in this diocese and throughout the church to address the many challenges that
face our world today. I believe that if we lay self aside and utilize our
refreshed sense of spirituality as fuel that sparks the courage needed to take
up our various crosses – if we embrace Christ - together we can and we will successfully
seek and find ways to bring justice, love and compassion to the world.
The
way is not easy. Sometimes the way appears defeating. Some days we will want to
give up. Indeed some will give up. But as one young woman involved in rescuing
Syrians in the Aegean Sea said last Sunday, “How can you not save someone who
is drowning. How can you turn away?”
And
remember, it is only we who falter. Jesus is always the same – the same
yesterday, as today, and as he will be tomorrow. And he is with us always, to
the end of time. AMEN
