Sermon March 8, 2009

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Old Temptations Die Hard

Mark 8:31-38, Genesis 3:1-7

Rev. John Weicher

Swarthmore Presbyterian Church

March 8, 2009

For the past month, I’ve been reading the Gospel of Mark with our confirmation class. We started at the beginning, with John the Baptist doing his best Isaiah impersonation, crying out in the wilderness, because Mark, as you might remember, doesn’t say a thing about the Christmas story. And every week, we’ve had homework – read four chapters of the shortest and earliest gospel, then come ready to discuss them on Sunday morning. In fact, that’s become something of a joke in at least one confirmation family, because the 8th grader, the confirmand, has to read this whole chunk of the Bible every week, invariably on Saturday night. His older sister, meanwhile, was in my first confirmation class and that group never had any assignments, because someone was still figuring out how to teach confirmation. It’s a hard life, I tell him, while his sister laughs.

One of the wonderful things about reading a gospel start-to-finish is that we get a fuller sense of Jesus than if we had just picked stories here and there. In confirmation, we are getting to know the whole Jesus, or at least Mark’s portrait of him. And in class a couple of weeks ago, one of our 8th graders asked a question that I haven’t been able to shake. “Why does Jesus seem so angry?” she said. Why does he always talk as if he’s frustrated with his disciples, the crowds, with anyone and everyone? When he says “Get behind me, Satan,” where does that come from? This isn’t Jesus who they – who we – grew up with, the one who cares for all the little children and talks non-stop about love. So, what do we do with this angry, frustrated Jesus?

I didn’t have a good answer for the class. This is the Messiah we get, I said, because I know better than to try to explain the divine mind. That’s who Jesus is in Mark’s Gospel. But I don’t like not having answers about Jesus, especially when I’m teaching confirmation. Or when I’m preaching, because I’m not sure I have a much better answer for you. The best thing I can say is that we ought to listen to him, because he’s Jesus, even if he doesn’t seem to be in a good mood these days. “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Maybe he’s right. Maybe we do set our minds on human things. Maybe part of being God is being angry – wrathful, as we used to say – and frustrated at all the injustice, the disobedience and the small-mindedness that even the best around him, even the best among us can’t seem to rise above. Maybe we need to put aside the child-welcoming, love-talking portrait for a moment and take the man at his words. And to do that, maybe we need to revisit the story that Margaret just read to us about a woman, a man and a snake.

You see, it’s easy for us get caught up in this idea of Satan with a pitchfork, bright red skin and a penchant for warm places. Even if we don’t have that cartoonish picture in our heads, Satan has come to be the embodiment of evil, everything that is mean, vicious and against God. But that’s not what the snake is like with Eve and Adam, is it? Well, not totally. The serpent is subtle and insidious, but somehow not quite “evil.” Even though the creature is never called, “Satan,” the snake harkens back to the original Satan, the one that comes from the Hebrew word hasatan, which means adversary or tempter. You see, before Satan was evil, Satan was tempting. Satan was the physical form of Other Options and Disobedience in the face of a loving God who demands obedience and has our best interests at heart.

This Satan, Satan the tempter, sounds a lot like Peter. Both Peter and the serpent try to have their conversation in private, working one on one. Both Peter and the serpent seem to have a better idea than the God’s, an idea that might make a lot more sense. Knowing what’s right and wrong – that can’t be bad. Jesus not dying – that would fix everything, wouldn’t it? Both Peter and the serpent seem to forget that the God they know can get just as angry as the next deity, especially when the salvation of humankind is at stake, so it’s best not to cross the Holy One.

That’s what Peter is tempting Jesus with, after all – another option, a different plan from the one that includes suffering, being rejected and dying. Those are the divine things Jesus is talking about, because they intimately connected to, indeed necessary for, the salvation of humankind. Certainly there are many temptations in the world, and we all have our own particular favorites, whether it be too much food or too little rest, keeping too much money for ourselves or showing too little love to the people we don’t like. There may be as many temptations as there are God-given gifts to abuse and neglect. But Peter is falling prey to a much grander temptation, one with enough subtly, boldness and common sense to make the serpent proud. Jesus doesn’t have to suffer. He doesn’t have to be rejected. He certainly doesn’t have to die, even if he says he does. So he doesn’t have to worry about rising again from the dead. Surely God is powerful enough to prevent that from happening.

It’s the same grand temptation for us. We don’t want to suffer or die, so we have no interest in a God who suffers or dies. We don’t need that. We don’t need Lent. We don’t need the foreboding of Palm Sunday. We don’t need the betrayal and arrest of Maundy Thursday. We don’t need the torture, abandonment and capital punishment of Good Friday. So we won’t need the new life of Easter. We don’t need God to die for us or to rise for us. God loves us, so we’ll be okay.

That temptation still rings true, doesn’t it? Not just back then with Jesus’ first followers, but here, today, among his most recent ones. As good Reformed Presbyterians, we trust that God is in charge and has the power to do whatever needs to be done, so surely this doesn’t need to be done. It isn’t necessary for us to participate in this Lenten season, full of introspection, giving things up and all this purple. We’ll be fine with our normal routine of life and faith. Besides, we did a good job of journeying through Advent a few months ago. We’re getting along well enough these days, so what use is it that Jesus would be beaten up or sent to jail? That doesn’t help anyone. He doesn’t need to prove his point by getting himself killed. Surely we can learn from him some other way. In fact, it would be easier if he stayed alive so he could keep teaching, healing and ushering in the Kingdom of God. His death doesn’t even really make sense in the first place.

But the divine things never do make too much sense, do they? God’s ways are not our ways. So, it should be no surprise that intentional suffering doesn’t fit into a world that still takes advantage of the weak, that Jesus’ model of service meets with rejection in a nation where don’t trust each other, that redemptive death doesn’t seem right in a culture that avoids and ignores mortality at every opportunity. God’s grand plans might just be too big for us to wrap our faithful, educated heads around. And we could almost leave all God’s nonsense behind and concentrate on our human things, if deep down, we didn’t actually need the new life.

That’s what Peter missed when Jesus explaining what was to happen: the rising again. The salvation. The promise that death is not the end for him or for us. Maybe he thought he already had new life because he was a disciple or maybe he never realized he needed it. But he did need it. We all do. We all need the new life that comes with the resurrection, that comes with Easter morning. For if we are honest, we are all broken. We all suffer. We all meet with painful rejection. We all have people we love and parts of ourselves that die, and we need them to live again somehow. We all fall prey to temptation, and we all need to be delivered from evil. We all need Easter, as desperately as we need air. And Easter makes no sense – divine or human – without everything that comes before, without Lent, without Palm Sunday, without Maundy Thursday and Good Friday. Jesus has to die before he can rise. So we need a God who gets angry when we foolishly talk about Jesus living forever.

We all need a deterrent, something to lead us not into temptation. Lent is that deterrent, with all its introspection, giving stuff up and purple. It keeps us focused on the divine things. For if we want to become Jesus’ followers, and I daresay that we do, let us deny ourselves, take up our crosses and follow him. That’s the prescription for Lent – saying no to some things, saying yes to others and following Christ – take those three and call on Easter morning.

So what do we need to deny to ourselves? What do we need to say no to? Is it a faith that only calls on God when we’re desperate, a faith that fails to thank God for our gifts or share them with others, especially in this economy? Is it a schedule that fits God in last, only after everything else has been accommodated, and ignores our need for Sabbath rest? Is it some of those temptations with which we struggle? What do we need to say no to?

And what do we need to take up and take on? What do we need to say yes to? Is it faithfulness and humility in the face of a broken relationship? Is it a spiritual discipline like regular Christian education or daily prayer? Is it reading your favorite gospel all the way through? What do we need to say yes to?

And then how do we follow this angry, frustrated Messiah who we have? That’s easier. We leave this sanctuary and go out into the world, sharing that anger and frustration for all the ways that human things get in the way. We share God’s love for the world and all God’s children, in small ways and in big ways. And then we follow Jesus through Lent, on the parade route on Palm Sunday and into the garden on Maundy Thursday. We stay as close as we can during the trial and crucifixion on Good Friday. And we look for him, early in the morning, at the empty tomb, where we can still smell God’s new life in the air. Amen.