The heavenly voice on the mountaintop says to Jesus' disciples,"Listen to him!" This clearly refers back to Jesus saying, deny yourself, take up the cross, lose your life, etc. But I'm not sure we can listen unless we are first sure of God's love for us.Luke 9:28-43a
Listening to Jesus
Some of you may be familiar with French writer and philosopher Albert Camus. Perhaps you read The Stranger in a high school or college literature. Camus was an agnostic and a pacifist, but became part of the French Underground during WWII after witnessing Nazi atrocities. Though agnostic, he was once asked to speak to a group of Christians. Speaking out of the horrors of World War II and the Holocaust he said this.
What the world expects of Christians is that Christians should speak out, loud and clear; and that they should voice their condemnation in such a way that never a doubt, never the slightest doubt, could arise in the heart of the simplest man. That they should get away from abstraction and confront the blood-stained face history has taken on today. The grouping we need is a grouping of men resolved to speak out clearly and to pay up personally… Perhaps we cannot prevent this world from being a world in which children are tortured. But we can reduce the number of tortured children. And if you don’t help us, who else in the world can help us?…
It may be, I am well aware, that Christianity will answer negatively. Oh, not by your mouths, I am convinced. But it may be, and this is even more probable, that Christianity will insist on maintaining a compromise or else on giving its condemnations the obscure form of the encyclical. Possibly it will lose all the virtue of revolt and indignation that belonged to it long ago. In that case Christians will live and Christianity will die.[1]
I stumbled across this quote in a book on Christian doctrine, in a chapter entitled “Are You a Christian? The Doctrine of Sanctification.” Shirley Guthrie, the Presbyterian theologian who wrote this book, says that Camus, an unbeliever, wants Christians to take seriously our own doctrine of sanctification. Sanctification is about how we, realizing that God has lovingly forgiven us and adopted us as children, begin to live as God’s children, letting the Holy Spirit work within us to transform us so that we act more and more like true children of God.
I think that Luke is talking about the very same thing when he gives his version of Jesus transfigured on the mountaintop. Luke writes his gospel some years after that of Mark and Matthew. Luke writes in a time when early Christians are just beginning to wrestle with the fact that Jesus’ anticipated quick return is going to take awhile. Luke writes at a time with the Church is becoming less and less Jewish, more and more Gentile. As the first generation of Jesus’ followers is beginning to die off, Luke uses Jesus on the mountaintop to help answer the question of what it means to be a Christian.
Although he gives a very similar account to that of the Transfiguration found in Matthew and Mark, there are interesting differences. Luke links this event to the sayings that precede it, where Jesus tells those who want to be his followers that they must deny self and take up the cross, that if they want to save their life they will lose it, but if they lose their life for Jesus’ sake they will save it. Only Luke tells us what Jesus talked about with Elijah and Moses; his impending “departure” at
In the middle of all this the heavenly voice tells Peter, James, John, and us, “Listen to him!” Listen to him telling us about the cost of being his disciples, the need to embrace the cross and be willing to lose our own lives for Jesus’ sake. Listen to him talking with Moses and Elijah about his own journey to the cross, how the cross is the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. And listen to how upset he is with his followers for their failure to bring healing and wholeness to those who are suffering.
The other day in a staff meeting, we were talking about what sort of things the staff needed to be doing to help foster the renewal and change that is necessary for a congregation to stay healthy and vital. In the midst of our conversations Mary Ann, our organist, suggested that we needed to model risk taking.
I thought about this later as I was preparing this sermon. I thought about risk taking and about Jesus’ call for us to deny self, take up our cross, and lose our lives. And it struck me how utterly safe, secure, conventional, and nearly risk free that my life is.
I’m not going to get rich, but I’ve got a nice paycheck coming in every month. I have pretty good health insurance and a right nice retirement plan. Being a pastor may not be the high status job it was fifty years ago, but it’s not too shabby.
But what of crosses, self denial, and risk? Where is that? Is Jesus upset with me, calling me part of a faithless and perverse generation for my failure to help heal the world’s pain and suffering? Is it because of pastors like me, and Christians like me, that American Christianity is waning? Have we become precisely what Albert Camus prophesied, where individuals who say they are Christians are doing just fine but Christianity, that community of disciples who listen to and follow Jesus, is dying?
Lately I’ve been using a little book entitled The Orthodox Heretic and Other Impossible Tales in my personal devotions. Let me share with you one of those tales.
Once there was an old and learned priest who worked tirelessly in the streets of a city nestled deep in the heart of an empire ruled by an elderly king. This priest was greatly respected by all the people and would constantly be approached by those who needed help in all manner of issues.
The king of this vast empire had a young son who grew up hating the church. He was disgusted by what he perceived to be its hypocrisy and deception. Because of this deep hatred the young prince would often oversee the imprisonment of church leaders and order the break-up of church gatherings. But his actions also betrayed a deep jealousy. Indeed he particularly disliked the fact that there was a priest who received the people’s respect, that he believed was rightly due to him.
Why should the people be so deceived by this old fool? thought the prince. He is like so many of his type: a coldhearted liar who sells the people lies in order to live.
The prince harbored a burning desire to put a stop to the priest’s work, but he did not want to garner the hatred of the people. So he carefully devised a plan that he believed would expose the hypocrisy of the priest to everyone in the empire once and for all.
He is a poor man, thought the prince. I will offer him a great sum of money in exchange for a public confession his hypocrisy and the hypocrisy of the church.
So late one evening, under the cover of darkness, the prince visited the priest and, upon entering his home, said, “I have the power to reach every person in this kingdom through the printed press. For 10,000 rupees would you write a letter to be dispersed throughout the kingdom, in telegrams and newspapers, informing the people that you are nothing but a liar and a hypocrite?”
The priest was indeed a poor man who had been born into poverty and had known nothing but need all his life. He thought carefully for a few minutes before finally responding.
“I will do as you ask, but only under three conditions.”
“What are your conditions?” replied the prince.
“First, if I do this you must leave me and my church alone.”
“Yes,” said the prince.
Second, you must release those brothers and sisters of mine who are innocent of any crime.”
“It will be done,” replied the prince. “And your third stipulation?”
“Well,” said the priest after a great deal of thought, “10,000 rupees is a great deal of money and I am a poor man. You will have to give me time to raise it.”[2]
I can’t imagine acting like this priest, willing to ruin my own reputation in order to help others, even to pay for ruining it. How could I ever be this Christ-like? And no amount of encouraging or haranguing would likely change that. And therein lies the problem with sermons like this that encourage people to answer Jesus’ call to be like him, to deny self and take up the cross.
It seems to me that listening to Jesus, doing as he says, is not so much a matter of effort or trying harder. It’s a faith matter, a trust matter. I’m simply not so confident of God’s love and care as Jesus is. I’m not sure I matter enough to God that God will always be there for me. And so I have to watch out for myself.
God, show me your love once more. Let us experience that love that would risk a cross for our sakes. Embrace us in your love, that we may share it with others, living as the children of God Jesus calls us to be.
No comments:
Post a Comment