1.
This morning we’ve read
from the very first verses of Mark’s gospel, the very beginning of Mark’s story
about Jesus. It’s obviously the story of
Jesus’ own baptism, his own ‘coming out’ if you will. And the voice from heaven that showers him in
love, grace and God’s delight.
This is where the Christian
story begins, ends and begins again: in love, grace and God’s delight. Not just for Jesus, but for every one of
us. So maybe you sit here this morning
at some kind of strange crossroads.
Maybe you sit here this morning at the end of something in your life, or
the beginning of some new disorienting chapter.
Maybe you can’t tell the endings from the beginnings anymore.
The Gospel says that you
are chosen just as Jesus is chosen. Whatever
the crossroads may be. The Gospel says
that you are beloved just as Jesus is beloved.
Wherever the crossroads may be. The
Gospel says that God wants to work through you just as God wants to work through
Jesus. A voice from heaven showers you
too in love. “We are little people,”
said Henri Nouwen years ago, “but if we believe that we are chosen, that we are
blessed, that we are broken—to be given, then we can trust that our life will
bear fruit. It will multiply.”
We are chosen, we are
blessed, we are broken. To be
given. And that’s where the Christian
story begins, ends and begins again.
Jesus coming up out of the water, the heavens torn apart in joy and
gladness, and a voice showering him and us and all creation in love.
2.
But I want to fast-forward now
to the middle of Mark’s story, to what some even call its ‘epicenter,’ a critical
exchange between Jesus and his disciples.
And, as I say, it happens at the very midpoint of Mark’s sixteen chapter
gospel. Chapter Eight.
You’ll remember that Jesus
begins to teach the disciples about suffering and love, and all the ways love
requires suffering and patience and humility.
And you’ll remember too that Peter speaks out for his friends and Peter
just can’t fathom what Jesus is saying.
They’ve been on this magical ride: healing the sick and feeding the
masses and challenging the powers that be.
And Peter’s happy to be on Jesus’ side, happy to be on the side of
righteousness at last, happy to be with one so thoroughly good and right and
chosen. So the story says that Peter
rebukes Jesus, that he takes Jesus aside and rebukes him for all his talk about
suffering and patience and humility.
It’s a key moment in Mark’s
gospel. Because, you see, there’s a
temptation, when we’re chosen, to believe we don’t have to hurt, we don’t have
to suffer, we don’t also have to be broken.
There’s a temptation, when we’re chosen, to believe we have answers no
one else will ever have, to believe that we get to say how the world works
now. And Peter falls, and falls kind of
hard, for that temptation. He’s happy at
last to call himself ‘saved’ and tell off the soldiers of empire and captains
of industry. He’s proud to imagine a
whole new world where the last are finally first and the first are forever
last. And he’s right there with Jesus calling
all the shots. Peter falls hard for that
temptation.
 |
| Mark 8 |
You see, as an idea, as a
reality, as a force in our lives, Satan has nothing to do with red-footed
creatures hiding in the shadows, lurking in the alleys, seizing the souls of
our worst enemies. The Devil has much
more to do with our own temptations, with our own susceptibility to pride and
hubris and a judgmental religiosity.
Jesus comes not to humiliate his foes, but to shine God’s light into the
world. He comes not to vanquish other
belief systems, but to invite communion and celebration and suffering love
among peoples. Peter rebukes him for
this talk of suffering love and brokenness, and humility as the way to the
heart of God. And Jesus wastes no time
in calling Peter out. He has to. “Get behind me, Satan!”
3.
With all that’s happened
this week in Paris, and with all that continues to happen around the world in
the name of religion, I think we have to
acknowledge (and even confess) that every tradition faces these same temptations. Christians have faced them for
centuries. Jews surely face them. Muslims are facing them now. We’re all tempted to believe that our answers
are the only answers, that our way is the best and one righteous way, that our
faith qualifies us to determine the fate of others. When Christians in Germany fell for Hitler’s
racial theology of purity and blame, they fell hard for the temptation. When others reject the role of women in
church leadership or the amazing gifts and beauty of the queer community in
Christian life, they too fall hard for the temptation. And when Muslim extremists orchestrate a
terrible attack and awful killing at a Paris news magazine office this week, as
they try to impose a narrow version of their truth on Europe, they too fall
hard for the temptation.
I’ve spent a good bit of
the past week working through my notes and pictures from last fall’s visit in
the Holy Land. And one little video
clip, one in particular, catches my attention again. Toward the end of our trip, our delegation
spent an hour with my good friend Ghassan Manasra. A Muslim leader. A Sufi sheikh. And as warm and bright a spirit as you’ll
ever meet.
Ghassan was talking that
afternoon about blame and bitter violence and how this divides races and faith
communities across the Holy Land. His
own fatigue, his own despair showed in his eyes, more than I’d seen in previous
visits. More than I’d seen just a few
months before, when I’d stayed in his home for a week. But I watched my friend reach deep that
afternoon, deep inside his soul, deep into his convictions, for something he
could share, something hopeful, with us.
And as tired as he was, he didn’t disappoint.
And what I’m going to share
with you now is as close to word-for-word as I can get. Because in light of this week’s violence in Paris,
in light of the tension that cries out for wisdom, Ghassan offers something
precious. Not just to Muslim believers,
but to all of us.
“In Islam,” he said in
November, “we have a very important oral tradition. If you know yourself, you will know your
God.”
“I heard this first from my
teacher, my sheikh,” he said. “So I
said, I will go. I will go to know
myself. And I went to know myself.” And at this point, Ghassan paused in his
teaching and smiled around our circle.
Into just about every one of our faces.
“But there’s no way to know yourself,” he smiled. “No way.
No way. It’s very, very far. You need to enter the journey and search very
hard and you need to discover and learn and even to swim in the vastness of
things sometimes. But there’s no easy
way to know yourself.”
“But,” he said and he
paused again with a huge smile. “But, if
you go to know the other, then you can know yourself. And when you know yourself you can know your
God. Then, you see, you are my way to
God.”
 |
| Sheikh Gassan Manasra |
On my little video, this
last part zips quickly by. So I rewind
and replay. And I rewind and replay
again. “If you go to know the other,”
Ghassan says again, “then you can know yourself. And when you know yourself (in this way) you
can know your God.” And then he finishes
with the point of the whole teaching, the wise Sufi’s words for Americans from
far away. “Then, you see, you are my way
to God.” Then, you see, you are my way
to God.
These are Ghassan’s words,
the words of a Muslim wise man, a Sufi sheikh.
But they might just as well be Moses’ words, or Ruth’s words, or Naomi’s
words, or Amos’ words, or Jesus’ words or Paul’s words or Martin Luther King’s
words.
If you go to the other, if
you take the other seriously, if you come to know the other as a brother, as a
sister, then and only then do you really and truly know yourself. And when you know yourself in that way, in
just that way, then you know God.
Because the Muslim sheikh is my way to God. And the Jewish mystic is my way to God. And the African American kid at Santa Cruz
High is my way to God. And the
transgender seminarian at Divinity School is my way to God. And you get it. We all get it, right? Ghassan is right. You are my way to God. And I am yours.
“But the problem today,”
Ghassan continued that afternoon in November, “the big part of Muslims in Iraq
and Syria, they don’t know this verse in the Koran.”
“And there is another verse
in the Koran,” he said. “It’s very
important. And we forget it so
easily. God said ‘If I want to make you
one nation, I can. But I want instead to
make you many nations, many tribes and clans.’ This is very important for me,” Ghassan
said. “God makes us many nations, many tribes, so that we can know and explore
and work hard understanding one another.
Because you are my way to God. I
can only know God if I know you and what makes us different and what makes us
similar and how to live with you. To
know, to explore: this is our religious duty.”
4.
I love this last part. I love all the things Ghassan said that day,
but I really do love this last part. “To
know, to explore: this is our religious duty.”
Because otherwise, we fall for the temptation, just as Peter does in
Mark’s story and just as we humans have done since the beginning of time. But if we explore one another’s traditions,
one another’s hungers, one another’s thinking and ways of being, then we come
to know God not in an abstract and strictly doctrinal way, but in the way God
wants most to be known. We come to know
God as we know and love and suffer with others.
And that’s really what this whole thing is all about. Religion.
Gospel. Faith. Life.
We come to know God as we know and love and suffer with others.
To this day most Roman
Catholic and Greek Orthodox liturgies include, and some Presbyterian and
Lutheran baptisms too, a vow that seems a little outdated to us. “We renounce Satan,” goes the Orthodox
version, “and all his evil works.”
Obviously that kind of
language and imagery has been manipulated and distorted hugely over the
years. And we’ve come in many ways to
identify Satan with the other guy, with the other tradition, with the things
that are wrong in everybody else’s way of being.
But I wonder now if the
point isn’t what Jesus’ point was with Peter and the disciples he truly
loved. Be vigilant, he says. Be vigilant for the pride that creeps in on
religious faith, on all religious faith.
Be vigilant for the judgmental spirit that judges some lives and some
traditions as more worthy, more human, more intelligent than others. And be vigilant, in our own traditions
especially, for the spirit that claims to speak for God without hesitation,
without awareness, without humility.
Our own story, the
Christian story, begins this morning in love, grace and God’s delight. It begins with a young man going out to the
wilderness and diving into a muddy river.
It begins with the heavens splitting in wonder and showering him with
love.
We choose that love every
day. We choose that love in resisting
pride and hubris and all the easy answers we come with as a matter of
course. We choose that love in meeting
others and listening closely to their stories and recognizing in them our way
to God. Because God makes us many
nations, many tribes, many clans. And
these indeed are our way, every one of them is our way to love.
Amen.
