“Strong to the Finish”
Homily for URC Vespers Service August 28, 2011
Revised Common Lectionary Readings for Sunday, August 28, 2011, the Twenty-Second Sunday in Ordinary Time (Year A)
1Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God. 2There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed. 3Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.” 4When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.” 5Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.” 6He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings, 8and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites. 9The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them. 10So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.&dquo; 11But Moses said to God, “Who am I that I should go to Pharaoh, and bring the Israelites out of Egypt?” 12He said, “I will be with you; and this shall be the sign for you that it is I who sent you: when you have brought the people out of Egypt, you shall worship God on this mountain.”
13But Moses said to God, “If I come to the Israelites and say to them, ‘The God of your ancestors has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” 14God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” He said further, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’” 15God also said to Moses, “Thus you shall say to the Israelites, ‘The LORD, the God of your ancestors, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, has sent me to you’:
This is my name forever,
and this my title for all generations.”
Gospel Matthew 16:21-28
21From that time on, Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised. 22And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.” 23But he turned and said to Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
24Then Jesus told his disciples, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 25For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. 26For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?
27“For the Son of Man is to come with his angels in the glory of his Father, and then he will repay everyone for what has been done. 28Truly I tell you, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his kingdom.”
Sermon Text
Which of these choices is the more frightening: Memorizing the Westminster Catechism or having a colonoscopy? Okay, those two are pretty much a tie. Let’s think about this choice instead: Dying on a cross, despised and humiliated, or watching Popeye the Sailor Man cartoons?
Oddly enough, today’s scriptures have something to do with all of these. They all have to do with human beings staring into the face of fear.
First, I want to invite you to consider Popeye. I’d rather talk about him than a colonoscopy, anyway.
I wonder how many people remember the cartoon character, Popeye the Sailor Man. You know who I mean: the middle-age, squinty-eyed fellow with the outsized forearms who never appeared anywhere without his corncob pipe in his mouth. He was first created by Elzie Crisler Segar, and first appeared in the daily King Features comic strip Thimble Theatre on January 17, 1929. I thought of Popeye recently while wasting time on Facebook, as a couple of old high school friends brought him up in conversation. In between trying to reproduce his unique speech patterns, like his funny little laugh “gak, gak, gak, gak, gak “someone brought up “I yam what I yam and that’s all that I yam”. Someone else observed that God actually said it first; in fact, in today’s Old Testament lesson we hear God give that expression to Moses from the burning bush.
Seems there was some confusion over the origins of the phrase, “I am who I am.”
It was God, not Popeye,noticing the suffering of his people that generated this encounter with Moses, and as God presented Moses with the means of deliverance from their painful enslavement, Moses imagines a choice equally or even more terrifying than continuing in slavery. Moses is terrified by the thought of going before Pharaoh and demanding their release, but he might be even more terrified by the thought of going before the Hebrew people and recounting his audience with God. What kind of bona fides can Moses possibly offer to Pharaoh, what kind of references can he give his kin people, on whose authority will he risk uprooting every Jew in Egypt and destroying the existing economic system of slavery?
God says to risk it in the name of the great I AM. “I AM WHO I AM.”
God gives his name to Moses and says to double down, go all in, put his chips in the pot. Look Pharaoh straight in the eye and hold his cards.
Do you wonder if this made Moses feel any better? Or would you imagine maybe he felt like Popeye in the cartoon strip, limp and floppy as the huge, overpowering Bluto came bearing down on him, going as soft as cooked macaroni as the bigger man grabbed him by the neck and swung him about.
But talk about fear. Coincidentally, this week I’ve been praying for a young woman who was once in my youth group back in Utah, and has now completed college and seminary, who I am proud to say sat for her ordination exams this week. It recalled to my mind the fear of failure and abject humiliation that results when one’s memory lapses or when words fail. How paralyzing it can be to invest so much effort, time, resources, and love into a course of education, and the big day of one’s examination comes. You’ve crammed, you’ve ingested countless cups of coffee, you’ve barely slept.
Who are you to walk into the room, to preposterously announce you are ready to live for God and serve God with your very life? What kind of bona fides can a student offer? On whose authority can she claim to become a spiritual leader in front of examiners twice or three times her own age?
God says to be confident in the name of the great I AM. “I AM WHO I AM.”
God gives his understanding to the pastor-to-be and says to step forward, sign up, and breathe deep. Look the examiners straight in the eyes and say, “Here I am. I’m the presumptuous kid who has been called to become a spiritual leader, in the name of God.”
Do you wonder if this makes a student feel less terror? Or might she still feel like Popeye on the deck of his tiny boat as the Sea Hag blows up a hurricane that threatens to swamp it.
But this fear doesn’t come close to the fear that we each must confront as we consider our Gospel reading for today. In the two examples we’ve thought about so far-Moses and the seminarian-we can easily imagine God’s compassion for us as we stare into the face of fear. However, in the story of Jesus approaching Jerusalem we get a glimpse of God in Jesus facing the same terrifying specter we all fear: our own death. What does God do when God suffers?
In this reading from Matthew we see Jesus give his strongest-ever rebuke to his disciples, using unequivocal language addressed to Peter, Jesus’ friend, who had just gotten a gold star on his report card a few verses earlier for declaring Jesus the Messiah. What was in Peter’s mind that made him consider trying to lead Jesus out of his appointed path so soon? What justified his arguing with the Messiah? What was he thinking to bring down the harshest chastisement ever in any of the Gospels?
I don’t believe he was thinking; I believe he was feeling. He was feeling gut-wrenching, liver-burning, nauseating, paralyzing terror. Personalized fear that translates something like this:
“Jesus is going to die. Jesus, the best person I know, is going to be executed in unbearable agony. It will be humiliating. Being good-being better than any other human has ever been-isn’t enough to save him!
And it gets worse! Jesus is the Messiah! If it can happen to him it can happen to ME.”
It can happen to me, too. And it can happen to you as well.
What Peter could not know and what we can consider with the benefit of looking back on those faraway events, was that God was already at work to turn hurt flesh into a life that lasts forever. The temptation to back away from this work undoubtedly was attractive to Jesus’ humanity. But his divinity clearly responds as he addresses the tempter, not Peter, when he says, “Get away from me Satan!” The transformation of the earthly life into the eternal abundant life is God telling us clearly:
“I AM WHO I AM. In my name, it won’t destroy you to pick up your cross. This is who I AM. I am your God for all time. I don’t end, and you won’t be destroyed either.”
Now, when we try to respond to that, are we as confident as Popeye sucking up his can of spinach? Unfortunately, probably not. We are more likely to still think of death as a dark and scary place. Well, it still is scary. But losing our lives to the great I AM also offers us the light we need to find those lives. Now we probably know what our crosses are and what we need to pick up and deal with. Barbara Brown Taylor puts it like this:
“(but) fear is timeless, and my guess is that each of us has something of which we are deathly afraid. Maybe it is the fear of admitting an addiction that is eating away at your life. Or maybe it is the fear of tackling a memory that still has the power to suck the breath right out of you. Maybe it is the fear of standing up for something you believe in, or telling the truth about who you are to people who are going to damn you for it. Maybe it is the fear of discovering you have an illness that no medicine can cure, or that your child does, or your friend.
Whatever it is that scares you to death, so that you start offering to do anything, anything at all, if it will just go away-that is your cross, and if you leave it lying there it will kill you.”
Let me suggest to you that the muck in the deepest corners of our lives is the stuff Jesus wants to help us get rid of when he encourages us to make his way of life ours. It is in this way that we are the superhero Popeye: strong to the finish!
And what part do the Westminster Catechism and colonoscopies have to play in all of this? Well, you may know that the first question of the Westminster Catechism and probably the only one I can ever remember without looking it up, is: “What is the chief and highest end of man?” and the answer is,
“Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and to fully enjoy God forever.” To fully NOT have the life sucked out of us!
It is this light that shines out beyond the darkness of our fears. It is this promise that Jesus makes as he rebukes Peter on the way to Jerusalem. We are invited to intentionally immerse ourselves in life with and surrounded by God. Our baptism speaks to it! Then we are freed to likewise become intentionally immersed within the joyous state God invites us into. Enjoy! Immerse! Commune! Enjoying God is living a life whose abundance knows no limits.
Who would’ve imagined the choice to pick up our cross would lead to so much fun.
May you be strong to the finish, and enjoy every moment! Oh, and if you’re still wondering about colonoscopies, let’s just say there is such a thing as oversharing.
Amen.
(Please Note: You can comment or quote, but please give credit. Rev. Taylor’s comments are found in her book, Teaching Sermons on Suffering, God in Pain, Copyright 1998.Everyone likes to share, but no one likes a plagiarist. Thanks.)
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