Hilton Head Island, SC – March 22, 2020
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 8:22-26; Mark 8:27-38
A Sermon by John M. Miller
NOTE:
This is the sermon I would have preached tomorrow if we had been able to have a Chapel service. Before you read the sermon, I suggest you read the scripture passage upon which it is based: Mark 8:22-38. You will better understand the sermon if you read the two episodes from Mark.
Now for some thoughts on COVID-19: This virus has affected every person in the USA, and nearly everyone throughout the world. I confess that I am tired of reading or seeing ONLY coronavirus news, but that is what the media have decided we all need to hear. But surely there are OTHER things happening in the world that are significant.
In terms of the theme of this sermon, there seem to be too many people focused entirely on themselves with no concern for their neighbors or anyone else. The hoarding of food and other things, especially toilet paper (WHY toilet paper, of all things?) illustrates their self-absorption in the midst of a an enormous worldwide crisis. It is sinful to put one’s self above everyone else, ESPECIALLY in a time such as this. We need to be saved from ourselves, and the life of Jesus, but particularly his death, illustrates that God has already saved all of us. Now, as the theologian Paul Tillich said, we need to accept our acceptance, despite being unacceptable.
I am very eager to hear the “All Clear” signal given, whenever it is given and whoever gives it. But I am most eager to hear it because it will mean the world can get back to corporate, as compared to individual, worship. Nobody living in the USA has ever been prevented from going to church until now. For me it is very disorienting. Well, as has been said many times over many situations, this too shall pass.
--John Miller
Text – And he called to him the multitude with his disciples, and said to them, “If any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.” – Mark 8:34 (RSV)
VIA DOLOROSA: THE TEMPTATION OF SELF
Our first reading for today is one of those cryptic short passages in the Gospel of Mark which describes a healing miracle of Jesus. It says Jesus and the disciples were in Bethsaida, which was a village on the north side of the Sea of Galilee. Some people brought a blind man to Jesus and asked him to touch the man. It says Jesus led the man outside the village. It does not say it directly, but we may assume that it was just the two of them who left the town; nobody else came with them.
Then comes what seems to me like a very bizarre minor detail in this story. It says Jesus – quote – “spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him.” As the Norwegians would say, “Uff Da!” And as the Jews would say, at least those who know Yiddish, “Oy Veh!” I simply don’t know what to make of this particular method of overcoming blindness. There are a few other similar incidents in which Jesus used his own saliva to cure mutes or other blind people. If this all feels slightly off-putting to you, or even a tad strange, you aren’t alone. But I simply am going to move on and leave you to your own queasiness, addressing this matter not one word further.
After Jesus did what he did, whatever it was he did, he asked the man, “Do you see anything?” The man said, “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” As much as we might recoil at the earlier detail, we can conclude this part of the story sounds very authentic. If someone had been blind his whole life, and had been told what a tree was and what a person was, and if suddenly he was given vision, people might look like walking trees. When the whole world is black, what, really, is a mobile man or an immobile tree? If you were blind, you could feel a person, as well as a tree, and you would know they were different. But in what way different? Until you actually saw them, you might imagine the one somewhat like the other. “I see men, but they look like trees, walking.” Exactly. A more plausible statement in any of the Gospels there never was.
Jesus deduced from what he said that the man was not yet seeing clearly, so it says he laid his hands on his eyes, and looked intently at the man. And then, it says, the man saw everything clearly. This too seems authentic. There are people who have power by means of “the laying on of hands.” Don’t ask me how it works, but I am convinced it works. I have no doubt that Jesus had that power. Time and again in the Gospels Jesus touched someone, and healing occurred. Some of you probably doubt that, but I believe it occurred then and it still occurs now. Miracles happen; they really do. How or why I don’t know, but they do.
Here, however, is the key verse in this episode. “And (Jesus) sent him away to his home, saying, ‘Do not even enter the village’” (Mark 8:26).
Why in the world would Jesus say that to the person to whom he had just given vision, after he had been blind for presumably his entire life? Why shouldn’t the poor fellow be allowed tell his joyous news to everyone he knew? And anyway, how could such news ever be kept quiet? Who possibly could stay silent after such a marvelous thing had been done for him?
But that’s just it, Christian people. As I said last week, Jesus did not want to become known primarily as a possessor of charismatic gifts, including the gift of healing. He could heal people of various infirmities, and he did heal them, but Jesus did everything he could to prevent people from thinking of him mainly as a healer, or only as a healer. From Jesus’ standpoint, he had other, far more important assignments to perform on behalf of God than merely to enable the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, or the blind to see.
Anybody who has a widespread positive public reputation for any unusual talent or skill has an inescapable burden to bear. It is the burden of self. When so many people fawn over somebody, the somebody who is fawned over may be seduced into fawning over himself. Like little Jack Horner, who stuck in his thumb, and pulled out a plumb, he could conclude, “What a good boy am I!”
However, any charismatic gift, every charismatic gift, is ultimately a gift from God. And no one was more gifted in charismatic abilities than Jesus. But Jesus, also more than anyone else, knew that self can be a huge distraction if one intends to devote his life or her life to the service of God. The temptation of self is a temptation for anyone, but especially for someone of great talent and ability.
Albert Schweitzer was one of the greatest and most gifted men of the past century and a half. He was born in Alsace, that small sliver of land between France and Germany which for centuries has gone back and forth in ownership between the two countries. His father and maternal grandfather were both ministers, and both of his grandfathers were excellent organists. Schweitzer attended the University of Strasbourg and received a Ph.d. in philosophy in 1899. He was ordained as a minister and served in a parish church. He also taught theology at the University of Strasbourg. In 1906 he wrote The Quest for the Historical Jesus, a book which had a profound influence on New Testament studies ever since.
From age nine through his mid-eighties, Albert Schweitzer was a renowned concert organist. He wrote a biography of Bach. He received a medical degree from Strasbourg in 1905. In 1913 he established a hospital in Lambarene in French Equatorial Africa, where he spent most of the rest of his life. He had a reverence for all forms of life, including snakes and insects, which made him even more famous and infamous, depending on the thinking of whoever was assessing him. In 1952 he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. With the $33,000 prize money (compare that to the million-plus awards of the present, and is compound interest amazing, or what?), he established a leprosarium in Lambarene. He died and was buried there in 1965.
Nobody had more reason to be full of himself than Albert Schweitzer. He was exceptionally gifted as a preacher, speaker, philosopher, theologian, doctor, and organist. Early in his life he was a colossus of Europe, and he could have remained there the rest of his years, receiving cascades of accolades from an adoring public. Instead he chose to leave everything familiar to him and go to Africa to build a mission hospital for assisting poverty-stricken people, thousands of whom would have died early and agonized deaths were it not for him.
Contrast the life of that remarkable human being to the lives of many people today, especially in light of the coronavirus pandemic. When people become fearful, they become unusually devoted to the self and self-protection. We see or read about hoarders who have emptied the grocery stores of things they think they will need if they have to remain in their homes for a long siege. When everyone is urged to pull together, they are pulling apart from everyone else. “Me, myself, and I” --- that is their mantra in the present circumstances.
For Jesus, the self was an unavoidable and inevitable distraction. We can’t completely ignore ourselves, because it takes our “self” to try to ignore our “self.” But we do need to mute the self, to suppress its natural tendency to try to swallow us up, “us” being our spirit, our inner and immaterial (not material) self.
The second scripture reading is the famous incident which occurred at a place identified as Caesarea Philippi. In Mark’s Gospel, it immediately follows the story of Jesus giving sight to the blind man. When they were off by themselves, Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do men say that I am?” They told him some of the things they had heard, that he represented a second Elijah or another of the prophets or John the Baptist come back from the dead after he had been killed by the king. “But who do you say I am?” Peter, never one carefully to ponder things before he spoke, blurted out, “You are the Christ, the Messiah!” Then, as in so many previous instances, Jesus strictly charged them not to tell that to anybody.
As has occurred previously in this series of Via Dolorosa sermons, we must ask why. Why would he say that yet again, especially in this instance? Nobody before in any of the Synoptic Gospels had perceived Jesus as the Messiah. If Jesus is the Messiah, which most Christians believe he is, why not proclaim it to everyone? Isn’t that what the Gospel is, the Good News of Jesus Christ?
It is! But again, we must remember that for Jesus, the Good News was the good news of God, not of Jesus himself. Jesus’ constant focus was on God, not on himself. The early Church’s focus was on Jesus. And that is the supreme irony of Christianity.
After Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus told the twelve that he would suffer many things, and be rejected by the Jewish religious leaders, and be killed, and after three days he would rise again. Peter rebuked Jesus for saying that. Jesus shouted at Peter, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not on the side of God, but of men.”
In seminary we were told that the Gospel of Mark is the account of Jesus’ life as told directly to Mark by the disciple Peter. Thus, said our professors, it is the closest thing to an eyewitness account that we have, since none of the other three Gospels was written either by an eyewitness or as the account of any particular eyewitness.
In the incident at Caesarea Philippi, we can almost hear Peter himself telling us what happened, because it is so self-revealing. Peter was the first to recognize Jesus as the Messiah, even if he didn’t really know how or why. Peter insisted it was wrong for Jesus to say he would suffer and die, without knowing why he thought that. And when Jesus retorted in anger, “Get behind me, Satan!”, it was to Peter to whom he said it. There are two inferred details in Mark’s telling of this story which make it sound completely authentic. “And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him.” In our mind’s eye, we can see Peter and Jesus, off to one side, each looking intently at the other. Then, “But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter, and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan!’” If this scene were made into a movie, it would be Jesus and Peter at one side of the frame, and then Jesus would turn around to the other eleven disciples, and Jesus would exclaim, pointing back toward Peter, “Get behind me, Satan!” Only the man toward whom Jesus pointed would recall that episode with such excruciating clarity! And it was he, Peter, who told it to Mark, who recorded it verbatim in his Gospel as Peter told it to him.
Immediately after that, it says that Jesus spoke to the multitude along with the disciples, and Jesus said to everybody, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.”
For many years, for decades really, I did not believe Jesus ever said the part about taking up a cross to follow him. How could he say that when he had not yet been crucified? Why would he say it when he hadn’t yet been crucified?
Only in the last few years have I become convinced that Jesus truly did say that, and that almost certainly he said it as part of the Caesarea Philippi episode. Jesus knew he was going to be executed on a cross! He had to know it! How could he do what he did and say what he said and not end up crucified? Such unorthodoxy always results in death, either literally or figuratively.
There are only two little snippets of narrative here that I am sure Jesus did not say. He didn’t say that after he was crucified and was in a tomb for three days he would be raised from the dead. He couldn’t say that, because he couldn’t know that. Peter believed that, Mark believed it, Matthew and Luke and John believed it, but they believed it after the fact, after Easter. Jesus didn’t know it or believe it because it hadn’t yet happened. Further, I am convinced Jesus never said, “Whoever loses his life for my sake will save it.” “For the Gospel’s sake” yes; “for my sake” no; Jesus never would have said that. At least I hope he wouldn’t.
Anybody who has listened to my sermons for any length of time should long since have realized that I am an historical Gospel revisionist. And if you haven’t figured that out, I want to make it clear to you now. You lovely people are willing to listen to this, Sunday after Sunday, even if you might not agree with it. The unwavering focus of Jesus was on God, not on Jesus. When he told the twelve and however many others were there to hear it (a “multitude” is probably a gross exaggeration) “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me,” Jesus had philosophically committed himself to the Via Dolorosa, the Way of Sorrows. He knew what would be the end result of what he was preaching and teaching.
But listen Christian women and men, because this is very important: Only figuratively shall any of us be crucified for adhering to the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Literally it happens to almost no one, thank God. But if we deny self, as Jesus denied himself, we shall pay a price, a huge price. We will do whatever we want and say whatever we want and get whatever we want far less than our self would naturally desire, and we will give away self and self-rewards and self-satisfaction and self-aggrandizement much more than is our natural inclination.
Our self can kill our self. It can destroy it. It can become addicted to itself, it can gorge itself to death with too much of everything, it can obliterate itself by constantly feeding itself. The way to save the self is to focus less on it than is our normal tendency and to focus more on God and His kingdom than is our tendency. This is what Jesus was telling us. This is what, for three years and in so many ways and parables and examples, he was telling us. Choose the Via Dolorosa. Choose hardship and pain and difficulty, not ease and pleasure and self-absorption.
Do you want to find yourself? Give yourself up. Do you want to save yourself? Lose yourself. Do you want to discover yourself? Look outside yourself. The temptation of self is a temptation we face every hour of every day. But if we cast ourselves aside, God will give us our selves back. It’s the only way it will happen. It is the marvelous mathematics of the Gospel.