First
Presbyterian Church of
Mark 8 and Hebrews 4
“A Matter of Opinion”
The Rev. Dr. Fred G. Garry
I think Jesus overreacted. It may run counter to the whole Jesus as
unerring, but I think that misinterprets his humanity. For to err is . . . human. Yes, Jesus was without sin; but he called his
friend Satan in front of everybody. Not
a shining moment. He asked for people’s
opinions; he asked the disciples for their opinions; and then when Peter offers
an opinion he doesn’t like [wham], “get behind me Satan.” I think Jesus overreacted.
Now
when Peter really does blow it later on in the gospel saying, I don’t know the
man three times Jesus doesn’t rough him up or denigrate him, but gives him a
moment of dignity to start again. I
think we miss a lot of the gospel by assuming a kind of completion in Jesus- a
kind of being done from the start- that just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense
when you read the stories.
For
instance, this last March our
So
when Peter says, hey, maybe you don’t have to suffer, and Jesus says, “Get
behind me Satan,” I read it through the lens of the evening prayer, “let this
cup pass from me.” One way to read that
prayer is to say, “is there a way to bring salvation
without the cross?” It might just be me,
but in my opinion, that is exactly what Peter says at Caesarea Philippi. I can’t prove it; it’s an opinion. Yet, it is starting to get closer and closer
to a belief.
In
the same way, again, it is just my opinion, but I think when Dietrich Bonhoeffer wrote a book about this passage he was way too
serious. I think he didn’t look through
the lens of the garden prayer; he got all German and duty bound and
sacrificial. This is what I think. I do.
Bonhoeffer wrote a very forceful and challenging book
called The Cost of Discipleship. It opens with an angry indictment against
what he calls cheap grace. The book is
all about taking this story of Caesarea Philippi seriously. It’s a serious book for serious
Christians. I can remember reading it
college and being shaken by how righteous it was. Thirty years later it doesn’t shake me. Maybe I am now part of the problem, maybe
I’ve been corrupted by too many committee meetings and made too many excuses
for being less than a prophet; maybe.
But,
maybe, and this is just what I think: had Bonhoeffer
lived through his imprisonment and not died at the hands of the Nazis; had he
lived through this and married his fiancé; had he raised a family and lived in
the midst of congregation for thirty years; had he done this, had he lived this
he would have rewritten The Cost of
Discipleship. He was thirty-nine
when he died, yet, in so many ways there was so much life he hadn’t lived. It’s just my opinion, but I am not quite sure
Bonhoeffer really knew the life he was giving away in
his book. Can I prove it? No.
But I’ve started to believe it more and more.
Maybe
I’m wrong. Maybe had Bonhoeffer lived he would have redoubled his seriousness
and become even more passionate about being a prophetic voice. Sometimes life can elude us. We get so serious and so right. I get this way; I get all righteous. I think that is why I love the poetry of
Emily Dickinson. She was right without
being uptight.
When
she lost her parents she wrote a poem whose first line is "Going to heaven!"
The last stanza reads, "I glad I don’t believe it. For it would stop my
breath, and I’d like to look a little more at such a curious earth. Going to heaven. I glad they did believe it whom
I’ve never found since the mighty autumn afternoon I left them in the
ground."
It’s
the line “to look a little longer at such a curious earth” that lingers with
me. Its poetry so this is just my
opinion, but I think she is describing the feeling of how different life looks
like after you lose a loved one. It is
painful and hard, but it also creates a whole new world to see. Part of grief is not
wanting to look, feeling guilty about taking a peek, and then the
healing begins, and you are looking at a whole new world. This might be part of a survivor’s guilt or
may just be my fertile imagination. It’s
only my opinion, but, I am growing to trust it, to believe.
Now
here is a big one: what if Jesus, on the night of his arrest, praying in the
Garden was reliving Caesarea Philippi?
What if in his reliving he was wondering could he give up his life each
day, each season, for a generation or so, and see the full measure of life and
not do it the day after tomorrow? What
if Jesus discovered (ah, were getting risky here) what if Jesus discovered that
redemption takes a long time to live into?
Now, forgiveness can happen in a moment, just as sin can be the blink of
an eye. Yet, redemption takes time. It takes time to see what were the sins
forgiven and the mercy shown.
It’s
a feeling really, a kind of deep seeded idea or notion that is too big for
words, but I get this feeling that I’ve only begun to understand what God is
doing in me, let alone the world. I used
to think that being a good Christian was taking your faith seriously. I held this opinion and made it pretty
impressive ideal (also known as an idol); I strove to live up to this until I
came to see it as foolishness. And
moreover, that redemption had more to do with being open to joy than being
right; it had more to do with dancing than marching.
I
would be wrong to say this is an opinion.
I believe this. I also believe
that when Jesus says, if anyone would save his life he must lose it is a much
bigger deal if you love life. And I
can’t help but believe it’s not really that big a deal, it’s not really costly
if you have yet to find a taste for joy.
I
think this is what the Gospel of John was trying to say when Jesus speaks to
his disciples just before his time in the Garden. He says I’ve come to make your joy
complete. This is what the Hebrews says
late in the letter: it was for joy that he endured the cross. I don’t see that in Caesarea Philippi. I see a very serious exchange, a dressing
down, a call to give up life and a determination on his part to lead the way. In the garden, praying through the night, I
see something else. Again, it could just
be me, but, it doesn’t feel that way.
There’s a line in a Bob Dylan song that goes, this is what salvation
must be like after awhile. Is that what
Jesus was rethinking in the Garden, reliving Caesarea Philippi, was he
wondering what salvation must be like after awhile? Did he want to know this, feel this? Maybe.
Our
first reading today, the selection from Hebrews where the writer is introducing
Jesus as both priest and judge, someone who is both truth and mercy, is the great
image of hope where someone is loving and yet doesn’t turns a blind eye to
justice. This is a very powerful
notion. This is the ideal of the ancient
Hebrews; this was the image of the angels that hovered above the law on the Ark
of the Covenant. Yet, the writer of
Hebrews takes this ancient image and makes a truly provocative introduction, he
says, this is a judge who has felt what we feel; known what we know; been
tested as we are tested. To this I
concur; I believe. Yet,
with a twist.
You
see it’s my opinion that the greatest tests are not the big moments of life;
they aren’t lived out like the early temptation of Jesus in the desert. Had Jesus been given a good meal I truly
don’t think those early temptations would have been really tough, because not
eating food for forty days can change your perception when someone offers you
bread. No, I might be wrong here, but
it’s my opinion that the biggest temptation was the last, the garden prayer, a
prayer that doesn’t make a whole lot of sense without Caesarea Philippi. Again, my opinion, but I think the temptation
was to experience salvation, not be it for others.
I
think near the end of his life he started to truly see and know the joy of
salvation. And this is not because he
wasn’t worthy; it’s just a pure issue of time; it takes time to understand what
it really means to be loved, to be known and remembered. It just takes a long time to begin to see the
magnitude of mercy, the patience of God.
And it takes even longer to begin to enjoy that as life.
I’ve
come to believe this is what the writer of Hebrews means when he says, he knows
our weaknesses, he has known our life.
This is what made Jesus distraught in the garden. I don’t think it was fear of death; I believe
it was love of life. I don’t believe he
wanted God to remove the suffering; I believe he wanted to see what mercy looks
like after awhile; to see his friends stumble their way through grace. That takes time.
I
am coming to believe more and more that the sacrifice of the cross wasn’t that
he would die; it was that his life was given so I could see the full measure of
joy. I am just coming to see what it
means to sacrifice and it’s not easy.
The difficulty though cannot be seen in severity; it is measured in
tender mercies and long trials that find graceful endings. For the cross is followed by the empty tomb
and angels saying, “he’s gone ahead of you.”
We
should pray each day that God would show us the full measure of grace. We should ask God to give us eyes to see the
joy Jesus saw before him when he endured the cross. Don’t take up a cross until you do. Pray that we will know what God is really
doing redeeming the world. Pray that we
come to know what salvation is like after a while. Amen.