Proper 17A
The Very Reverend Harry H. Pritchett, Jr.
The Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta , GA
August 28, 2005
Recently a friend of mine who lives in a small Alabama town told me about a billboard that he passed every day on his way to work. Displayed there in giant living color was a picture of what he called this disgustingly handsome male preacher, smiling that pious, preacher smile, clutching his bible in his hand. Beneath the preacher’s glowing face was listed a different human malady each week, like “confused?”, or “ lonely?”, or a week later, “depressed?” or “anxious?”. Then below, readers of the billboard were urged to call the church telephone number. Every week a different malady….. every week the promise that Jesus would fix it.
My Alabama friend said that he believed the real message on the billboard seem to suggest something about the purpose of Christian ministry. The covert message implies that the church exists to fix us up – to take care of us, to pump us up, to make us more comfortable, and to make us happy.
Well…today’s gospel places us in a head-on collision with that billboard and with that way of thinking. Jesus in effect is describing what kind of Messiah he is… a suffering servant, who will fail in the eyes of the governmental and ecclesiastical authorities and will be put to death by them! Of course any public relations person with any skill or sense would have thrown their hands up in frustration at Jesus’ statement. A Karl Rove-type would have spun it to death .And Peter as Jesus’ right hand man tries to do the same thing. “God forbid it, Lord. That must never happen to you” Peter says in rebuke. And then Jesus, as my grandmother would have said, gives him the devil!
“Get behind me Satan!” Jesus says almost with anger. Then he goes on to describe what the life of one of his disciples will look like. This kind of commitment, he implies, calls for everything you’ve got – you will identify with all the sorrows of all people everywhere. You will not be able to escape “the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.” Following me will not protect you from suffering; in fact it may be more likely. You must pick up your cross. That is to say, there will be no business as usual, so take me seriously or not at all!!!! Whew!!! These are hard words! This is not your run of the mill, polite, evangelical exhortation. It is nothing to publish on a billboard and expect many takers—except for a few neurotic masochists. Furthermore, as clear as this reads in the gospel, it is not an easy thing to understand for me. Nor for that matter an easy thing to preach. I would have never chosen this gospel for my very first sermon at the Cathedral! It is so hard because fundamentally, I want my discipleship to be on my own terms, where I am in control, ultimately, and really not on the terms of Jesus. I want my Messiah to be the kind of savior I decide for myself—just like Peter did. In a consumer culture such as ours, I want to get something more attractive in return for my commitment… not a cross.
I live in a world where transactions are a way of life. You know, you do this for me and then I’ll do that for you – where there are no free lunches—where I demand my personal rights and what I’m owed—where we’re supposed to get what we earn or pay for. In this kind of world, the invitation to give my whole life away with only the vague promise of gaining my soul, whatever that is, sounds like a questionable proposition. The promise of true life, where every possession and every supposition gets trumped by trust in God’s loving grace, sounds like a shaky deal to me.
The great 20th century martyr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, helps me to comprehend this passage a little better by his distinction between cheap grace and costly grace. Cheap grace, he says, is the grace we bestow upon ourselves. Cheap grace allows me to keep my own assumptions about what seems to save my life. It is acceptance without commitment—forgiveness without change—peace without justice—integrity without rejection—love without sacrifice. In short it is sweet Jesus without the cross. With cheap grace we do not have to wrestle with hard decisions involving the people we love the most. Or certainly not with hard decisions involving people whom we try to forget—such as devastated Afghan and Iraqis whose villages are destroyed. Or African folk almost on the verge of extinction by the demon HIV disease, or public school children chewed up in an incompetent system here in our midst. You see, cheap grace without discipleship, I believe, IS the most demonic enemy that Christianity has. It is a devil—an enormous stumbling block to integral discipleship. Cheap grace is vicious because it enables us to feel righteous and justified without seeing any personal cost and no cross. We accept Christ and Christ’s church on our own terms and more often than not, are offended when we are called to accept Christ on Christ’s terms. So then….shattering these illusions of discipleship and ministry are the rather stern words of Jesus in today’s gospel, “You devil! You stumbling block. Get out of my way!!!”
These are hard words and the question is why should anyone accept Christ’s invitation? Why should I, why should you? The truth for me is that I don’t really believe that it is possible to sell this kind of absolute commitment in a popular way. Peter was right. It just does not “package” very well. Not do I really believe it is possible to obey this absolute commitment—to pick up one’s cross and follow. But I do believe it is possible somehow to discover the courage to involve yourself in the risk of discipleship—not just because you should, but because you long to.
It’s because discipleship primarily is a relational matter—not a set of rules or codified values or theological presuppositions as some in the current church seem to believe. Maybe—just maybe—what Jesus is talking about in this passage is that sort of crazy “absolutizing” and wild abandonment that the lover has—the lover who says,” I’ll do anything for you, my beloved—I’ll leave anything or anybody including my own life for you., because I love you better than life.” Once I heard Diana Ross sing at an event in the New York Cathedral, “Ain’t no mountain high enough—ain’t no river wide enough—ain’t no valley low enough—to keep me from getting to you, babe.” And of course that is the language of love and not a reasonable statement—it’s the absolutizing metaphor of lovers. And what occurred to me, at that moment was, surely, Jesus enfleshed that lover’s passion with his whole life! So in a way, we are all invited to fall in love—which we can’t make ourselves do. But at least we can involve ourselves in the risk of letting go of ourselves so we might be able to fall.
When that kind of experience comes to me, it is always gift and never out of marshalling all of my own energies, but when I’ve given up on my own energies. It’s because of the emptiness of my grasping for acceptance and meaning and worth with my own resources, it’s because I long for more. It’s when I grow tired of being busy and nice, and not being giving and known. That is when sometimes what Paul Tillich called “the grace of courage” may strike me, and I am enlivened to give myself over to the vision of Jesus.
Sometimes, that moment of disgust for myself—my own weakness—my own cynicism masquerading as post-modern irony and wise sophistication—my own lack of direction and composure—at that moment, sometimes, a wave of grace rolls over me and I choose—no, that’s not true. I am chosen to give my life away in love because I long for MORE—I see that by God’s costly grace, I AM more—that there IS more—and at that moment, God becomes the lover and I am the beloved.
It is a great mystery, and that courage that we need will not come necessarily by our subscribing to certain beliefs, or necessarily by our applying certain principles to our lives, or regretfully, even by studying theology. But only in the midst of struggle when we hear the call of one who says, “Follow me to the Cross”—the cost may be everything, but the promise is none other than full and real live with integrity, and a strange—a very strange kind of JOY!
Comments? Contact Dean Pritchett at: HPritchett@stphilipscathedral.org