17September2000sermon.htm

Sermon for Sunday September 17, 2000

Trinity Church, Princeton, NJ

Readings: James 2:1-5, 8-10, 14-18; Mark 8:27-38

In the realms of Victorian etiquette
there were three things
one should not talk about
at the dinner table.
Politics, sex, and religion.
They were personal matters,
things about which one made up one''s own mind
in private,
or discussed behind closed doors,
not topics to be bandied about
over the roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

Things have changed - I don''t think that''s a surprise
to anyone here this morning. Perhaps it''s the power of television;
or just a more open society,
but either way,
politics, sex and religion form a pretty solid core
of much of our conversation.
Bush and Cheney, Gore and Lieberman -
we watch the advertisements, follow the debates,
gossip about the scandals - or at least the hints of them -
unearthed by smear campaigns.
Of course, somehow, almost inevitably, politics spills over into sex,
not just probes into people''s private lives,
but legislating about domestic unions,
and hate crimes,
and marriage taxes.And religion,
whether it''s school prayers,
or the decisions of our own church''s
General Convention.

Yet it still comes
as an intrusion, perhaps even an offense
when someone dares question
what we believe.
Because there''s no question more likely to offend
than to doubt someone''s right
to claim that they are a Christian.

Which I think is why our two readings today,
from the gospel of Mark
and the letter of James,
verge on the offensive
if we really listen to them.
Because both of them ask,
in one way or another,
what is it
that makes us think
we can be called followers
of Jesus Christ.Jesus stood before his disciples
and asked them,
""Who do people say that I am?""
""Some say John the Baptist"", they answered, ""and others Elijah,
and still others, one of the prophets.""
""But who do you say I am?""
And it was Peter who answered,
impetuous, passionate, slightly confused Peter,
that one who in time
became the rock of the church,
Peter answered,
""You are the Messiah!""
The great statement of faith.

Except... Except when Jesus began to tell his disciples
what that would mean,
that he would suffer, and be rejected, and die
and even when he told them that in three days
he would rise again,
Peter wanted no part of it.
This was no Messiah, as far as he could see. I imagine
he was expecting
something altogether different: God acting in a blaze of glory
to save the people.
And instead, he got talk of rejection
and death, and a rebuke
from the one person in all the world
he wanted most to please.

To follow Jesus, it seemed,
meant that it was not enough
to get the right answers,
to follow Jesus
meant uncertainty
and risk
and perhaps even death.

And having rebuked Peter, Jesus called the crowd,
and said words which have become so familiar to us
that we have, I think,
lost the full force of what they once said.
""Any of you
who would become my followers,
you must take up your cross, and follow me.""

The crosses we see
are usually objects of art,
carved wood, sculpted brass,
silver pendants which hang around our necks.
For us
the cross is a symbol,
a part of our faith.
Taking up a cross
is as simple
as being prepared
to wear the outward signs
of our faith.

For my grandmother''s generation, and many before her,
it had a different meaning.
For them, a cross was a burden, a hardship,
a thorn in the flesh, to use the words of the apostle Paul.
Taking up that cross,
was seeing it as something to be bourne
without flinching
or complaining,
a test of faith.

But the cross of Jesus'' day
was a lot more sinister
than that.
The cross
was a tool of torture,
an instrument of execution.
Think guillotine,
noose,
electric chair...
To take up a cross,
means to be counted
among the outcast
and the dispossessed.

Put like that
it should come as no surprise
when James says in his letter, as we heard in our first reading,

""My brothers and sisters"" he writes,
""do you, with your acts of favoritism,
really believe
in our Lord Jesus Christ?""
""When you give
preferential seating
to the rich and the powerful,
do you really know what it means
to follow Christ?""

He might just as well have said,
""where is your cross?""
Because favoritism and bias is anathema
to a Christ who numbered himself
among the outcast
and the dispossessed.

I like to think
that this is not an issue for me.
As far as I know
I''m not particularly biased;
I guess I don''t have so much power
that I see it as a major issue.

And yet this week
I was forced to think a little more about it.

The Olympics have begun
in the city where I was born.
The televisions screens are filled
with images of streets and skylines
which I grew up with.
But they have also been filled
with the dark side
of my history,
the faces of Aborigines
sitting in the gutter
with paper bags
disguising bottles of cheap liquor,
or standing barefoot in the barren dust
outside a tin hut.
I see the news stories, and I want to cry out
that its not all like that,
that there are Aborigines who are respected,
and that I am, like many Australians, committed to reconciliation.
We have marched in protests,
and hundreds of thousands have signed their names in petitions of apology
to the aboriginal people.

But I know all too well
that the degradation of a people
laid the foundation
of my life as an Australian.
I am white,
and we have made the rules.

As a white Australian,
I lived on land
that was stolen
from its original inhabitants.
I went to good schools
because of the areas I lived in
and the resources of my parents;
I have had freedom of work, of good health care,
of a sense of my own identity and history.

Most of us here
have very similar experiences.
The United States and Australia
have a whole lot in common,
in our history,
our treatment of our native peoples,
the dynamics of race
and wealth
and culture.
So I''m guessing
that your experience
is not a whole lot different
from mine.

And if I understand the words of Jesus rightly,
then I am condemned. I am condemned
from my own mouth,
because as a person who has benefitted from bias and prejudice
I am a participant in it. I stand in the place
of the powerful, and even those things I''ve done in the name of justice,
have never really endangered my place.

And the call of Jesus
is to honest acknowledgement
of where I stand,
to confession
of my complicity,
to choose to step
from
the place of privilege and entitlement
into the place of need and discrimination.
I don''t think this means, necessarily,
giving up everything I have,
going off to live in a commune, or whatever,
but I think it does mean learning to see things in a new way.
Thinking about how the power we have
might be shared with others.
Thinking about not just bandaid solutions to social problems
but changing the whole way the system works.
Thinking about how we can bring about justice
not as great benefactors from above,
but working alongside those who are in need
being willing to hear their dreams and visions and priorities,
and not simply impose our own.

""Take up your cross,"" Jesus said,
""take up your cross, and follow me.
Join in this band
of outcasts
and the dispossessed.""

What makes me think
that I call myself
a follower of Christ?

The answer of course, if you play by Sunday School rules,
is Jesus.
Jesus the savior,
Jesus the forgiver.

Sunday by Sunday we proclaim it
in the Nicene Creed,
that statement of faith of the Christian Church:
""We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ
the only Son of God,""
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God...""

Some of us
say it firmly, confidently,
certain in the faith which is at our very core.
Others are more tentative,
not so certain, wondering
if we really do believe this line
or that.

But whether we say it certainly, or tentatively - and I sometimes think
that perhaps we should all falter
when we make these claims of faith,
because of the immensity
of what we are saying,
however we say it,
that is just one small part
of what it means
to be a follower
of Christ.

For if our readings today
are anything to go by
who we are, and what we believe, and what we do, and how we go about it,
are all tangled up together.

Which is perhaps not so surprising
when you consider
the God we follow
is no disembodied spirit
but incarnate in Jesus Christ,
some one who lived and died
in every way like us.

And so
following this God, following Jesus, the Christ
involves the whole of our being
the words we say
the things we do,
and the very place we stand -
stepping down
from our place of privilege
to join Jesus
in the ranks of the outcast
and the dispossessed.

Raewynne J. Whiteley
17 September 2000