Preached at Christ & Saint Stephen's Church on Sunday, March 8th. The lectionary readings this sermon is based on can be found here.
Methodists are not known for their sense of humor. That said, I’d like to share with you a Methodist joke. So, here goes:
Little Jimmy and his mother are walking home from church, when Jimmy’s mother asks him what he did in Church School that day. Little Jimmy says, “We sang a song about a bear.” His mother is a bit puzzled. She asks Jimmy, “A song about a bear. Are you sure? Wasn’t your song about Jesus?” “No,” Jimmy says resolutely, “it was a song about a bear. And he was cross-eyed!” “Oh, Jimmy!” his mother replied. “I’m sure you got it mixed up. I don’t think you were singing songs about bears with crossed eyes in 
Those of you who aren’t as familiar with early 20th century Protestant hymnody might not recognize the line from Fanny Crosby’s hymn “Keep Thou My Way” which contains the lines, “Kept by Thy tender care, gladly the cross I’ll bear; Hear Thou and grant my prayer, hide my life in Thine.”
Well, that’s your bit of fun for the day, from now on it’s pretty serious stuff, I’m afraid. There’s nothing else to laugh about in today’s gospel. Our gospel is first and foremost about the cross. And it’s clear from our reading from Mark today that Jesus understands what lies ahead for him – and what lies ahead for those who will follow in his footsteps.
Jesus was just one of many who would find their way to the cross. Many Christians would join Christ in being executed by the Roman authorities, very many of them by crucifixion. And as with Christ, and as with most persecutions, these executions would not quash the early Christian movement. Far from it. The willingness to die for their faith on the part of the early Christian martyrs greatly impressed their pagan neighbors. Writing just before the year 200, the early Church historian Tertullian claimed that the blood of the martyrs was the seed of the church. These early Christians had conquered the all too human fear of death because their leader had conquered death itself on their behalf. They looked beyond the cultural horror at being put to death on a cross. They were among the first to go shamelessly to their graves, confident in the resurrection of the life to come.
And make no mistake about it. The cross was a shameful death. Execution by crucifixion was most often used on insubordinate or rebellious slaves. Crucifixion was usually preceded by scourging. And the condemned would then carry the cross or at least the transverse bar of the cross through the streets to the place of execution.
Then, stripped naked, the condemned would be first tied and then nailed to the cross, left to die from exposure or dehydration. You can well imagine how shameful this form of execution was for the Jews with their prohibitions against nakedness, and against contamination by blood, and with their burial practices that required the interment of the corpse within hours of death. In fact, it was among the Jewish populations that the practice developed of breaking the legs of the crucified to help facilitate death -- so that burial could take place more readily. Those Romans, such benevolent oppressors, they tried to be sensitive to local customs in their executions.
The cross itself was seen as such a loaded symbol, so shameful, that it took nearly 200 years for it be introduced into Christian sacred art as a symbol of the faith. We see some of the shame associated with the cross in Peter in today’s gospel reading. Jesus, for the first time in Mark, begins to teach the disciples that he must be rejected, suffer and die. Upon hearing this, Peter takes Jesus aside to rebuke him. You can just see it can’t you? The tug on the elbow, the heated whispers, “What’s gotten into you? What are you saying? Our whole movement is gaining steam, you can’t tell people that it’s going to end in such an ignominious way?”
Peter can’t see what lies on the other side of that shame. Peter can’t see that the shame that the Romans will heap onto Jesus will ultimately prove to be their shame. That Jesus, in rejecting the entire shame system, will transcend shame and death itself. But poor Peter, as we know, will take a long time to get to the point where he could see that.
Peter represents that part of all of us that is susceptible to shame. The psychologist John Bradshaw, author of “Healing The Shame That Binds You,” writes that shame is useful in that it reminds us that we are finite human beings. Bradshaw also delineates between two kinds of shame, the shame we feel because of what we do, and the shame that we feel because of who we are. It is this second kind of shame that Bradshaw calls "toxic shame."
Some of us know this toxic shame very well. And if we don’t, we know people who suffer from it. The victim of abuse who cannot ask for help. The co-worker who cannot brook the slightest criticism. The ruthless competitor who must win at all costs. The people pleaser who must have everyone’s approbation. The narcissist who in turn seeks to shame those around him to keep his own shame at bay.
Shame is not just a personal issue, but it is a cultural one as well. Honor killings give evidence of that. And perhaps you believe as I do that our nation’s involvement in
Peter’s shame is toxic shame. He has incarnated the shame foisted on him by the ignominy of trying to live as a faithful Jew in Roman occupied
Well, in a word, no. That’s not what the gospel of Jesus Christ says at all. In fact, it says quite the opposite. We are not promised a pass when it comes to the hardships of this world, but rather we are promised in our gospel today that they will most definitely come our way. We will struggle and we will suffer. And there’s no shame in that.
Sometimes we struggle because of forces beyond our control. The economic downturn is the most notable example at the moment. And at other times we struggle and things are hard because, well, they are supposed to be hard. It‘s hard to keep a marriage together and to make it grow and flourish -- it takes hard work. It takes hard work to earn a degree, to overcome alcoholism, to recover from surgery, to trust again when our trust has been broken.
And who would expect not to suffer when we lose those we love. We suffer when we mourn. We feel deep pain. We suffer when we lose our jobs, when our relationships – despite our hard work – break down. There’s nothing wrong with suffering in circumstances such as these. In fact, there’s something wrong when our losses don’t cause us to suffer. Then we are detached and disengaged, rather than attached and fully engaged in our lives and in our relationships.
But the impulse to conflate suffering with shame is strong in us just as it was strong in Peter. One of my seminary classmates is dealing with a family seeking to survive a suicide. The father in the family committed suicide after encountering great losses on Wall Street in recent months. He died, I believe, of shame. It is a very sad story.
It is the false self that is over-identified with our income and prestige, our culture, our nationality, our trophies, our place in the pecking order that we must deny for Jesus sake. For what good is even the whole ephemeral world, which is even now passing away? What good is the glory that may be afforded us in this world? What do we need it for when we are assured of the unconditional love of the God who created us and who died to save us? How much more glory can there be than the love of God?
And as Paul tells us, there is nothing that can mitigate the unconditional love of our God for us. No hardship or distress, no persecution or famine or nakedness or peril -- no death or life, no ruler, no present, no future, no power of this world, no height nor depth, nothing at all in this creation can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.
The once despisèd Jesus has freed us from sin and shame and very death itself. That truth is the divine thing that trumps every human thing that we may face.
The shame I spoke of this morning is a serious issue. If what I’ve said has struck a particular cord in you, treat it seriously. This is a case where the devil really should get his due. If you need help, get it. And if you need help getting help, come see Mother Liles or myself. We can help you get the help you need.
But the way of the cross is the way of hope and peace. And we can bear that cross most gladly, for in the cross of Christ is our hope of glory, and we shall never hope in vain. ~Amen.
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