Proper 17, year A 8-31-08
©Holly Lyman Antolini
Lections: Jeremiah 15:15-21; Ps. 26; Romans 12:9-21; Matt. 16:21-28
Test us, o God, and try us, examine our hearts and minds, for your love is before our eyes. We walk faithfully with you. AMEN.
Poor Jeremiah, stuck in the city of Jerusalem between its first destruction by the Babylonians in 598 B.C.E. and its second, final devastation by them in 586 B.C.E., with the appalling dispersion of his people into exile pending. He's watching his beloved city and Temple fall to wrack and ruin. He has good reason to see God and God's promises as "a deceitful brook" as he calls, that looks as if it will provide water but then dries up and leaves him comfortless in a wasteland of hopelessness. His lament would resonate with many of us who have experienced disillusion and the destruction of dreams we held dear. He had "eaten of the words of God" and found them a "joy and delight of his heart," but now that things are not going the way he had THOUGHT God would want them, he finds his "pain unceasing," his "wound incurable, refusing to be healed." He keens his fierce, protesting lament to God.
And God answers him. But God's response is fascinating and startling to me as a pastor. God shows no sympathy for Jeremiah at all! God essentially says, "Quit whining and get back to your prophetic work!" "If you turn back - REPENT - I will take you back," God tells Jeremiah; "If you utter what is precious, and not what is worthless, you shall serve as my mouth...for I am with you to save you and deliver you."
Last week I talked about the mysterious process of discerning God's will. I talked about how discernment is rooted not in successful outcomes as if we had somehow magically aligned ourselves exactly with God's intention, but in the honesty of our self-offering. I talked about the "living sacrifice" we are asked to make daily: the sacra-ficere, the "making holy" of offering ourselves in the midst of good and bad, comfort and discomfort, success and failure. The PRACTICE of OFFERING OURSELVES BACK again and again in COVENANT to God, as the marriage service puts it, "for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health." And, knowing our capacity to land on the "poorer, sicker, and worse" side of the ledger even on what we thought were our best days, trusting the outcomes to God and God alone.
Let's go back to the basics for a minute before we probe further forward. Let's go all the way back to the point in Chapter Four of Matthew's Gospel, where, straight from his baptism in the Jordan and his 40 days' trial in the wilderness, Jesus launches into his ministry by picking up the prophetic proclamation of his predecessor John the Baptist WORD FOR WORD, telling us to "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." [Matthew 4:17]. Those were his basic marching orders to all who would follow him. That was the ROOT OF HIS GOSPEL, his GOOD NEWS. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near." All the rest, to misquote rabbi Hillel, is commentary.
This week, I want to invite us to think about A PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE. The presumption we so often make in the spiritual life is that "repentance" means we need to spruce ourselves up morally, clean up our act, and then we'll be acceptable and ready to be citizens of God's Realm. We'll be God's Right-handers, bringing good to the world.
What if we were to start from opposite end, instead? What if we were to try starting from the presumption that the "kingdom of heaven," as Matthew tended to call it, is not something we're going to EARN by the MORAL SWEAT OF OUR BROW? Rather, it IS ALREADY HERE, ALREADY "AT HAND," as first John the Baptist and then Jesus put it. All we have to do is TURN AROUND - "repent," "change our minds" - AND RECOGNIZE IT. "Repent, for the kingdom of heaven has come near."
Sounds SWEET in principle, doesn't it? But if anyone thinks this is a simple thing, this "turning back," this "change of heart," this REPENTANCE that recognizes the EVER-PRESENT REALITY OF GOD'S HOLY REALM, they need to take a minute and remember just how hard it is to acknowledge we have been wrong even about SIMPLE things, let alone the deep matters of our heart. Recognizing the presence of GOD'S REALM means giving up our conviction in OUR OWN PRESUPPOSITIONS. It means accepting a sometimes TERRIFYING PROVISIONALITY TO OUR OWN POINT OF VIEW.
Repentance, in the Greek of the New Testament, was metanoia, or as my seminary friend Judy Burns transliterated it, "meant to annoy yah!" "Meta," "after" or "behind" - conveying the sense of time or change - and "noeo," to "perceive" or "think," the result of perceiving or observing. So repentance, metanoia, is a perceiving afresh, a change of direction in mind and heart, a turning back to God.
Once we human beings have determined on a perception or a direction - once we've STRUCTURED OUR PERCEPTION OF REALITY according to certain tenets - we are amazingly tenacious about it. Even some of our WORST ideas - that we need alcohol or marijuana or cocaine to cope, for example; or that we're worthless and deserve to be beaten; or that nuclear war would solve problems - are horrendously difficult to let go of, despite all the evidence of their destructiveness. We pursue strategies of self-destructiveness with amazing persistence. We hang onto feuds. We cling to histories of conflict and resentment, passing them on to others. We let wounds of mistrust fester in us despite their debilitating pain. Repentance - changing our minds and hearts, even changing our minds to "hold fast to what is good," as Paul says - may be the single hardest thing God asks of us. No wonder Alcoholics Anonymous calls it "hitting BOTTOM" before we become willing to open ourselves to new hope and turn to new life!
The very "kingdom of heaven" itself is the promise on the other side, but to find ourselves truly WITHIN it requires crossing the Jordan of repentance. And repentance is a terribly discomfiting, destabilizing thing. It is a PLUNGING INTO DARK WATERS. Martin Luther said, "Repentance is a matter of daily baptism." [New Proclamation Year A 2008] By "baptism," he meant a daily DYING TO SELF. A daily DYING TO the HUBRIS of our own CONVICTIONS and PRESUPPOSITIONS. To CHANGE OUR MINDS, to CHANGE OUR HEARTS, to CHANGE DIRECTION, let me not mince words, CAN FEEL LIKE LOSING OUR LIVES THEMSELVES. That is "sacra-ficere" - sacrifice - indeed. But LOSING OUR LIVES TO FIND THEM is the PRACTICE we are called to, as FOLLOWERS OF JESUS CHRIST.
"Questions of faith are not like riddles or crossword puzzles: with things of this sort it may take one some time to find the solution, but once it's found, everything is clear and simple. It is completely different with faith. Here we have, not human truth which [people] can state and understand, but God's truth, which goes far beyond any statement or understanding of [ours]. The faith never becomes clear. The faith remains obscure. Not until we enter into glory will it be otherwise...Until then there will always be more difficulties coming up, more doubts coming up: There are bound to be. Doubt is the shadow cast by faith. One does not always notice it, but it is always there, though concealed. At any moment it may come into action. There is no mystery of the faith which is immune to doubt," writes Catholic theologian Hans Küng. [That the World May Believe, quoted in Synthesis August 31, 2008]
To turn back to God when, as Jeremiah lamented, God seems a dried-up brook: that is BAPTISM indeed. That is the deepest trust, PRACTICING HOPE when there seems no hope at all. In the depths of our own negativity, PRACTICING THE CONVICTION that God's Realm truly is present, and surrounds us, that the stream of promise, as God implies to Jeremiah, may be underground for the moment, but it's right under our feet.
Yet this is precisely what Jesus models in our Gospel today. Remember: Jesus has only just accepted Peter's proclamation of him as Messiah, the Christ. And no sooner does he claim this Messiah-hood, then immediately, in this week's passage, he begins the hardest work yet in his ministry: the work of "losing his life to save it" by going to Jerusalem and, as he tells them, "undergoing great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and being killed" before being raised up. With these words, he makes the FIRST of FOUR predictions of his impending Passion, his Suffering, inaugurating the third and final section of the Gospel, the section centered on Jesus' Crucifixion and Resurrection. Jesus is ENGAGING THE CONTINUING WORK OF BAPTISM.
And here is Peter, doing exactly the OPPOSITE OF JESUS. Only last week, Peter was proclaiming Jesus as Messiah and getting named the Rock on which the Church is founded. But this week, five verses later into the chapter, full of conviction about his own capacity for insight, he promptly denies Jesus' prediction. "God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you!" he cries. Or it might be translated, "May the merciful God spare you this fate!" It seems a very kindly sentiment, a lovely gesture of friendship. But Jesus turns and rebukes Peter - the verb "rebuke" is of the strongest negativity! - saying, "Get behind me, Satan! You are a STUMBLING BLOCK!" In a mere five verses, Peter has gone from being a FOUNDATION ROCK to being a skandalon, a STUMBLING STONE!
"You, Peter, think you've SOLVED THE CROSSWORD PUZZLE," Jesus seems to be saying. "You are TRYING TO HANG ONTO THE POWER. You're trying to SIDE-STEP THE SHADOW SIDE OF FAITH. You're trying to make the spiritual life a linear process, a bright-lit path straight to the goal of eternal life. BUT YOU CAN'T GET THERE FROM HERE. You have TURN and TURN and TURN AGAIN, cycling back through and through your own POWERLESSNESS. You have to ENDURE THE ANGUISH OF UNCERTAINTY, of DOUBT, EVEN on occasion, OF DESPAIR, and STILL TRUST. If you are UNWILLING TO GO INTO THE DARK, you will be UNWILLING TO LEARN, UNWILLING TO GROW, UNWILLING TO EVOLVE."
"Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me," Jesus says, as he embarks on the road to Jerusalem. "I know I MUST BE WILLING TO LOSE MY LIFE to find it. I MUST TAKE THE RISK. And SO MUST YOU."
So here is my question for us today: what does our PRACTICE OF REPENTANCE ask of US? What are WE CLINGING TO that we must - each of us individually, and all of us as the congregation - the Body of Christ - at St. James's, LET GO OF? What CONVICTIONS are we CHERISHING, FONDLY BELIEVING THEM TO BE ESSENTIAL, to be the ROCK we're FOUNDED ON, just as Peter fondly believed that he must PROTECT his MESSIAH from DANGER and RISK, but that are INSTEAD TURNING US INTO STUMBLING BLOCKS in the path of GOD'S PROMISES? Truly I tell you: GOD'S HEAVENLY REALM IS ALL AROUND US! So what familiar negativity is BLINDING US TO ITS PRESENCE AND IMPEDING OUR TRUST? WHAT BAPTISMAL RISK IS GOD ASKING US TO TAKE IN ORDER TO GROW IN THAT TRUST, as individuals and as a community? WHAT CROSS OF CHANGE, of REPENTANCE, are we CALLED TO TAKE UP in order to FOLLOW CHRIST? WHAT "LIFE" are we being asked to be WILLING TO LOSE in order to gain A NEW AND DEEPER LIFE?
AMEN.