(click link to listen to sermon)
Today is kickoff Sunday at St. Paul’s.
Thanks to a collaborative effort between our parish staff and the
Christian Formation and the Parish Life Committees kickoff Sunday will be a
little sweeter this year with an Ice Cream Sundae party following the service
in Parker Hall—thus the name Sundae Sunday.
Make sure you get upstairs before Mary Katherine because I am sure she
will want to test each ice cream tub with her fingers.
A lot of other things are kicking off around the community. The new amphitheater saw its official kickoff
with the Riverwalk Park Arts and Music Festival put on by the Blackbelt BenefitGroup and the festival featured some really good blues and jazz bands. Mary Katherine kicked her shoes off and
danced in the jump house for approximately 4 hours.
Our schools kicked off a new academic year about a month ago. The One Selma: Coming Home United in Faith
group kicks off another initiative with Return to Worship Week in hopes that
God will unite his children in worship.
And then there is the most anticipated kickoff of all and that is the
kickoff of the college football season.
If you actually attend one of these games, one of the things you are
likely to see before kickoff is an inspirational video to get the fans fired up. At Bryant-Denny stadium, a part of that
inspirational video includes some words from the late Coach Bryant. The funny thing about the video is that you
really can’t understand what he is saying but that doesn’t stop 100,000 fans
yelling wildly at the sound of the Bear.
If you go back home and listen to the video in the quiet confines of
your own home you can barely discern his words through his thick accent and
mumble. And what Coach Bryant says is,
“I ain’t never been nothin’ but a winner.”
These are, of course, some of the most quoted words from Bear Bryant. In college football and in most of the
professional world, a winning kind of attitude is needed in order to be
successful.
Our culture has us living in the tireless pursuit of earning our keep
in this world. Our culture demands that
you must deserve everything you get. And
this is a lot easier for some than it is for others. I know you will be surprised to hear this,
but that kind of winning attitude is also found in the church. Peter, the Rock, the one upon whom Christ
built his church, has the same kind of attitude in today’s lesson.
When Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” He responds, “You are the Messiah.” Peter is right and Peter is wrong. Peter got the title right but his definition
is a little off. When Peter says
Messiah, he is really saying to Jesus, “you are the one who is going to free us
from Roman oppression.” Like your
ancestor King David, you will slay the enemy with the flick of the wrist. You are a winner and ain’t gonna be nothin’
but a winner.
Peter’s answer seems fairly reasonable because, the Messiah, after all,
was supposed to crush the rulers of this world.
However, Jesus quickly hushes Peter and says, “and tell nobody about me.” I want to take a timeout real quick. As Episcopalians, who often pride ourselves
on not taking the Bible so literally like some of our brothers and sisters, we
take this verse from scripture quite literally.
You know the verse that says, “And Jesus sternly told the disciples to
tell anyone about him.”
This isn’t a case of Jesus not giving us permission to not talk about
the good news of Christ in the world—this is not a get out of the work of
evangelism for free card. Rather, this
is a case of Jesus saying, “you don’t get it and because you don’t get it, it
is probably better if you keep your mouth shut until you do.” But on the other hand, there are some in this
world who should keep their mouth shut because they are sharing an incomplete
message of the gospel and ultimately crippling the church’s witness to the good
news.
To be fair the good news doesn’t sounds so good on the front end. The good news starts when Jesus says, “The
Son of Man must undergo great suffering, be rejected and killed, and rise again
after three days.” Imagine if Bear
Bryant said, “I ain’t your normal kind of winner. I win by giving the football to the other
team at my own goal line.” As at
football fan, you know how ridiculous this would be. And as an athletic director, you would never
hire this guy. So who in their right
mind would accept these words from Jesus?
Who would expect their Messiah to say, “the path to winning first
involves losing and not just losing a rivalry game but ultimately losing to the
death penalty of an entire program.” The
Messiah’s plan is basically to put an end to the world as we know it, an end to
a world that thrives off of winners and losers, off of who is deserving and who
is not.
Jesus’ kingdom is not from this world and Jesus’ kingdom thrives off of
different kind of principles. And that
is why Jesus says to Peter, “For you are setting your mind not on divine things
but on human things.” Jesus’ definition
of Messiah is quite different than Peter’s.
For Jesus, a Messiah puts the needs of others before himself, Messiah
even means putting the needs of outsiders (i.e. Gentiles) before the needs of
his own people—the Israelites and even his own family.
And because Jesus operates this way in a world that thrives off of power
and control, Jesus is subjected to suffering—even suffering at the hands of his
own people. As I said last week, the
kingdom of heaven is colliding with the kingdoms of this earth. But this is the beginning of the good
news. This collision of heaven and earth
is actually a sign that something new and more wonderful is poised to break
through. But still this new reality is
difficult to accept especially if we have never experienced life on the other
side of the collision.
Peter is just as confused as we are
about Jesus’ statement of suffering. He
hasn’t come to terms with the gravity of Jesus’ statement, at least not yet. The Gospel lesson does not tell us exactly what
Peter says when he rebukes Jesus, but we do know what Jesus says, “Get behind me
Satan!”
The scene might not be too unlike the time when the quarterback for
Alabama, AJ McCarron, threw an 80 yard touchdown pass only to be greeted by a
livid Coach Saban at the sideline who probably would have put him in a sleeper
hold only if it weren’t for a TV audience and 100,000 screaming fans.
Basically, Coach Saban called a running play only to see his
quarterback go off script and run a Hail Mary.
In the same way, Peter is hoping that Jesus calls for a Hail Mary only
to see Jesus call a running play into the teeth of a number one defense. Like Coach Saban, Jesus knows his team can
score a touchdown by throwing deep, but Jesus also knows there is much more
that goes into a game plan than simply heaving the ball into the end zone every
time. And for the record, I am not
comparing Nick Saban to Jesus—far from it in fact.
I can almost hear Jesus saying, I may not be the God that you want but
I am the God that you need. In order for
God’s plan to work, Jesus has to run into the heart of the defense. And as bad as the play calling might seem at
the time, Jesus will run this play again and again until finally he exposes the
opponent’s ultimate weakness, and that ultimate weakness is the opponent’s
thirst for ultimate power and total domination.
And just when the opponent thinks that they have the game in hand as
Jesus hangs on the cross, Jesus achieves victory on a play nobody could have
dreamed up. Jesus emerges from the
tomb. Jesus rises from the dead. Jesus reveals life where life was previously
deemed impossible—life beyond death and the cross. Keeping with the football analogy theme—it’s
kind of like that time the underdog Auburn returned a field goal attempt to
beat a championship bound Alabama team in the last second of the game. I hope everyone is happy now.
But just because we have the winning playbook in our hands that doesn’t
mean we should go selling it to any poor soul who will listen. Jesus goes one step further and says, “If any
want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their
cross.” Jesus says, if anyone wants to
start on my team, they must actually execute the plays as they are
written.
In order to tell the story of Jesus, we must understand how the story
of Jesus is playing out in our own lives.
And what this really means is spending some time reflecting on scripture
and with others to notice how the life, death, and resurrection of Christ is a
reality in our own lives. In a few
weeks, you will have an opportunity to clarify your story with others in a new
class called Sunday Conversations.
During October, the adult class will talk the walk with Christ and
reflect on the spiritual journey. And
this will be a good way to be affirmed in your identity as a disciple of Christ
and hopefully this experience will equip you to share the good news to those
who are hungry to hear a word of hope.
And y’all our world, our community is hungry for a word of hope, hungry
to live in a world that isn’t dominated by who has the most power and control
but rather a world that thrives because we give up our power and control,
because we risk making ourselves vulnerable even to the point of death. Ultimately, we are all hungry to live in a
world where are loved not because we deserve it or have earned it but because
we all have dignity because we are all made in the image of God—in the eyes of
God we are all the same—sinners in need of redemption.
And the good news is that this world of redemption is already available
in Christ. On the cross, God shows us
how far he is willing to go to get the message of love across by giving up his
only Son to death. And through the empty
tomb, God is showing us that life endures even after the world of power and
control has done its worst. Even though
we die, we are alive in Christ.
At the end of the day, it’s about saying, “I ain’t nothin’ but a
follower of Jesus.” When we follow Jesus
we not only put to death the tireless ways of this broken world, we also get to
go where Jesus goes. We get to minister
to the sick, the friendless, and the needy.
We get to be with all the lonely people in the world and share God’s
transforming love and say, “God loves you, no strings attached.”
Yes, we will follow Jesus into some pretty scary places, but ultimately
we will follow Jesus home to a place where the ultimate victory is won. May you have the grace to take up your cross
and follow Jesus into a kingdom that God kicked off a long, long time ago. May you have the grace to realize your position
in a story that can’t be written up in any playbook only experienced in the
wild and wonderful imagination of a God who is always out-kicking the
coverage. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment