Proper 19 -- Isaiah 50: 4–9; Psalm
19; James
3: 1–12; Mark
8: 27–38
The following is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given
at St. John’s Church, in Huntingdon,
Pennsylvania on Sunday, September 13, 2015.
“MYTH?
- OR - MYTH!”
Let’s talk about myth this morning. And, because this word is used with more than
one meaning, it might be best for us to define the ways in which we will talk
about myth in this homily.
The word “myth” can be used to mean:
- Something that is untrue. An example would be: “The earth is flat.” We know that such a statement is manifestly
untrue.
- Something that may or may not be true, but which conveys a larger truth (we’ll call this Truth with a capital “T”), a Truth that can’t be known by strictly literal means alone. Sometimes, poetry expresses such a Truth. Sometimes, a fable or fairy tale can do the same….one example might be the story of the “Emperor’s New Clothes”.
An example of Truth with a capital “T” comes from my
youth: When we wanted to state an
obvious truth, and give in the ring of authority, we would say that the saying
or statement came from the fictitious book of Hezekiah in the Bible. (Of course, everyone knows that Hezekiah was
a king of Judah, one of the good kings, who ruled from 715 – 686 BC. He wasn’t a prophet at all, and there isn’t a
book in the Old Testament that bears his name.)
So, for example, we would say that Hezekiah 3: 16 reads:
“He
that sitteth on a tack shall surely rise.”
Now this statement conveys a Truth, a Truth with a
capital “T”, and that truth is that, if we encounter something that could hurt
or harm us, our instinctive move is to get away from that hurtful, harmful
thing. Our instincts, God-given, for self-preservation
are at work here.
In this homily, we’ll look at Jesus’ first prediction of
His coming suffering and death, as we read the account in our gospel text for
this morning. This particular passage,
in Mark’s account, portrays a critical turning point in the gospel narrative,
for Mark tells us that Jesus now said these things about His coming suffering
and death “quite openly”.[1]
Jesus’ description of His coming suffering and His death
on a cross follow deliberately upon Peter’s confession of Jesus as the Christ,
the Messiah, the Anointed One of God.[2]
The overall shape of today’s passage is one that begins
on a very high note: Peter has confirmed
Jesus’ true identity as God’s Messiah, the One that God’s people – many of them
at least – have been expecting.
But then the trajectory of Jesus’ discourse with his
disciples is decidedly downward: He
tells them that He will go to Jerusalem, be rejected by the ruling elite in
Jerusalem, and be killed.
The discourse then turns upward again, as He tells them
that He will rise again after three days.
Here we have Truth (with a capital “T”): Jesus enjoys the highest status that can be
imagined, for He is God’s Messiah. But the path this chosen
One must follow leads downward to suffering, and then to death. But then, the path turns upward again as
God’s power is revealed in Jesus’ rising from the dead.
The overall pattern is this: From the heights, Jesus descends to the
deepest depths, and ascends again into the heights.
St. Paul captures this trajectory very well as he writes
to the early Christians in Philippi:
“Let the same mind be in you that
was in Christ Jesus,
who, though he was in the form of
God,
did not regard equality with God
as something to be exploited,
but emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
being born in human likeness.
And being found in human form,
he humbled himself,
and became obedient unto death –
even death on a cross.
Therefore, God has highly exalted
him
and gave him the name
that is above every name,
so that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
in heaven and on earth and under the
earth,
and every tongue should confess
that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.”
(Philippians 2: 5 – 11)
Here we have this high beginning – lowest depths –
highest ending shape of Jesus’ path from the region of Caesarea Philippi to
Jerusalem where He is identified as God’s Messiah, to the cross and to the
grave, and then to the resurrection on Easter Sunday morning.
The Truth (with a capital “T) here is that the path that
Jesus followed, to the deepest depths of dying, is the way of life. A collect from our Prayer Book (1979 edition)
states this truth best:
“Almighty God, whose most dear Son
went not up to joy but first he suffered pain, and entered not into glory
before he was crucified: Mercifully
grant that we, walking in the way of the cross, may find it none other than the
way of life and peace; through the same Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.”
(A
Collect for Fridays from the Office of Morning Prayer, page 56, Book of Common
Prayer, 1979)
This path is the way that each of us must walk, if we are
to follow Christ. Notice how the Lord
applies the Truth (with a capital “T”) to our Christian walk as he says, “If
any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their
cross and follow me. For those who want
to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and
for the sake of the gospel, will save it….”
How do we walk this path?
Does the cross lie in our path, literally?
Fortunately, the answer is “No”, there is no literal
cross standing before us.[3]
So how do we “empty ourselves”, to borrow from St. Paul’s
wonderful description of the Lord’s journey in Philippians?
The answer has to do with our baptisms. In baptism, we
enter the waters, exposing ourselves to the danger of death. (The early Church’s baptismal practices are
helpful for us to see the importance of this Truth, for the early Church
baptized new converts in bodies of water, fully immersing the baptized three
times (in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit)….descending
into the water always carries with it the possibility that we could die.) Using St. Paul’ words, again, this time from
his Letter to the Romans, chapter, six, we read that, in baptism, we die a
death like Christ’s, and we are raised to a new life in a resurrection like
Christ’s.
We empty ourselves before God, knowing that we are
totally incapable of helping – or saving – ourselves. We empty ourselves in the waters of baptism,
claiming God’s power that raised Jesus to be a power that can also raise us
from our unholy state into a state of acceptance by God.
And this descent into the waters turns out to be the way
of life and peace, as the collect says so well.
But the path of Christian discipleship that we walk
involves an ongoing emptying of ourselves.
Whenever we are tempted to shut God out of an area of our lives, our
baptisms call us to open the closed doors to God, to surrender whatever we have
reserved for ourselves as an “off-limits” area to God’s omniscience and to
God’s power to forgive, to restore, and to raise to new and abundant life. Only then can we live as God would have us live,
as we are designed to be, in relationship with God.
Another Collect (for the Third Sunday in Lent) from the
Prayer Book describes our helplessness before God, and His power to lift us up:
“Almighty God, who seest that we
have no power of ourselves to help ourselves:
Keep us out outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls, that we
may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body, and from all
evil thoughts which may assault the soul; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who
liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and
ever. Amen.”
[1] Biblical scholars often portray the first
seven chapters and the beginning of chapter eight (up to verse 31) of Mark’s
gospel account as the “Messianic Secret”, for Mark tells us, time and again,
that Jesus did not want anyone to disclose His identity, or to tell about the
things they had seen Him do. But
beginning at Mark 8:32, the secret ends, and Jesus openly discloses the path
that lies ahead of Him.
[2] The titles “Messiah” and “Christ” both mean
the same thing. They are derived from
the Hebrew word and the Greek word for “anoint”, respectively.
[3] However, as blessed as we are in this
country to be able to practice our faith openly and without opposition, in
places such as the Middle East where ISIS’ atrocities are being unleashed, many
Christians have followed the Lord as martyrs for their faith.
