Sermon - Bringing Up the Rear

Mark 8:31-38

Bringing Up the Rear

James Sledge                                                                     Lent 2  - March 4, 2012

Satan shows up in our gospel reading this morning.  And Satan has been in the news of late thanks to the Republican presidential campaign, specifically a speech given by Rick Santorum.  I’m not entirely sure how the speech became an issue.  It was given by Santorum back in 2008 at Ave Maria University, a conservative Catholic college, but once it started getting airplay on the internet, it was all over the news.

In it, Santorum pushes the rather odd notion that the United States has been about the only thing Satan worried about or attacked for the last 200 years or so.  And apparently the most fertile territory Satan has found for his work has been college campuses and the Mainline Protestant Church.  (Santorum isn’t really being anti-Protestant here.  He simply said that America was founded as a mostly Protestant country and so that’s what Satan went after.)

Now to my mind, if you want to argue for a personal “Father of lies” who is out creating horror and mischief in the world, things like the Holocaust, apartheid in South Africa, genocide in Rwanda, or the shelling of civilians in Syria should surely make any short list well ahead of OSU or Ohio Wesleyan.  So I imagine that my and Rick Santorum’s understanding of Satan are a bit different.

The Bible may not be all that much help clearing up these differences.  Satan appears in a number of different guises in the Bible.  In some of them he isn’t a bad guy at all but a kind of prosecuting attorney for God.  Sometimes he’s credited with things that don’t seem to be his fault. 

For example, lots of people talk about Satan tempting Adam and Eve in the Garden, but look up the story and you’ll find no mention of Satan at all.

By Jesus’ day, most Jews had come to see Satan as a bad guy, an opponent of God in some way.  And so it was common to speak of Satan as the cause of illness or misery.  But an actual being named Satan shows up rarely in the gospels.  In Mark’s gospel it happens just twice.  Satan’s first appearance is at Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness, and it is quite brief. (Jesus) was in the wilderness forty days, tempted by Satan; and he was with the wild beasts; and the angels waited on him.  That’s it.  Our reading today contains the only words in Mark that Jesus actually speaks to Satan, and of course these words are directed at Peter.

I think Jesus’ words to Peter may be much more helpful to us than fanciful ideas about Satan invading college campuses.  According the Jesus, the Satan problem is much more personal and immediate. 
And it happens, at least according to Jesus, because we set our minds on human things rather than the things of God.  And this problem seems to be related to where we stand with respect to Jesus, in front or behind.

That becomes even clearer when Jesus talks about what it takes to become his follower.  It gets lost in translation,  but the word “behind” shows up twice in quick succession; first in the command to Peter/Satan to “Get behind,” and then when Jesus talks about self-denial.  Translated literally, Jesus says, “If any want to follow behind me, let them deny themselves, take up their cross, and follow me.”

There’s scene at the end of the movie National Lampoon’s Animal House where the crazy frat boys from Delta House disrupt the 1962 Homecoming Parade at Faber College.  Delta house is an odd collection of misfits and ne’er do wells who are despised and persecuted by both the college dean and members of the prestigious Omega House.  But the Deltas get their revenge at that parade.

One part of their ridiculous plan involves someone grabbing the baton from marching band drum major, knocking him off to the side, and then taking his place.  This replacement drum major then directs the band off course into a dead end alley where the band piles up against a wall, continuing to march in place.  They are still there, squashed up against that wall, marching away, when we last see them.

The gag works because we know that marching bands are supposed to have a kind of military precision and discipline.  For marching bands to do their thing well, they have to go where their director says go.  Imagine a marching band where the trumpet player says, “I’d really like to do something different today.  Drum major, will you follow me?”

Ridiculous! but that is exactly what Peter does when he tries to straighten Jesus out about the cross.  He wants Jesus to follow him.  And who among us doesn’t?

Most of us don’t take it to the extremes of, say, a Joel Osteen.  We don’t really expect God to get us a great paying job, a beautiful spouse, and a parking space right next to the mall entrance.  But to varying degrees, most of us expect Jesus/God to orbit around the little universe that has me as its center. 

I think this focus on ourselves is exactly what Jesus means by “a human point of view.”  And in our culture, we’ve gotten so focused on the individual, on being catered to as consumers, that the tendency we see in Peter has only gotten stronger.  We want Jesus and religion to meet our needs, not tell us what to do.  What’s this cross business?  What do you mean “self-denial?”  That’s not what I’m looking for.

Most everyone has heard the joke about how men won’t stop to ask directions, even when they are hopelessly lost.  I once had a friend who proudly claimed this tendency, saying, “I may be lost, but I’m making good time.”  But what is it about us that would rather stay lost than have someone tell us how to get there, tell us what to do?

If you want to worry about  Satan, I would worry a lot less about grand, cosmic plans to corrupt and indoctrinate young people on college campuses, and worry a lot more about this basic problem, one we share with Peter.  We’re not really sure we want Jesus giving us directions.  And on this one, I think the women tend to join the men.

I think that most people who are drawn to Jesus, to the Church, to some sort of faith or spirituality, are looking for something.  They sense there is something missing in the lives.  Something is not quite right.  In a way, they are lost.  Maybe very lost or just a little lost, but lost nonetheless.  We come here looking for direction, but when Jesus says, “Follow me,” our old human habits kick in.  We get in front and say, “Whoa, Jesus, not that way; this way.”

“Get behind me, Satan!”  Let me show you the way, says Jesus.  Get behind me and follow.  I really know where I’m going.