Lent 2B

Lent 2B March 1, 2015 Several years ago, when I was a brand new priest and a new mother, I became convinced that I was going to die. I’m not talking about the “remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return” kind of knowing I was going to die. I felt like I had a premonition that I was going to die. It was horrible. I was so sad; I wrestled and argued with God, upset that there was so much left of my young life that I would not get to live. I thought about all the things I would never get to see my daughter do; all the moments I would not get to spend with my husband. Then one night, I was driving in a horrible storm, and I thought, “This is it. This is when I’m going to die.” But obviously it didn’t happen. What I realized, after I reached my destination and was then driving home later after the storm had passed is this. I had been walking with an older woman, a parishioner named Madeline as she was actively dying. It was one of the first people who I truly cared about in a parish who I was accompanying through hospice and death. And Madeline was not at all happy about dying. She railed against it, insisting that her 70+ years on this earth were not enough, praying to God for more time. And I just couldn’t understand it. In my youth (and probably shallow spirituality), I couldn’t understand or empathize with her. But after I came through the period when I was convince that I was going to die, I understood Madeline, and I could empathize with her in a way that I couldn’t before. Mark tells us in today’s gospel about how Jesus began to teach his disciples that “the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Mark tells us that Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, and (an interesting detail Mark gives us that I’ve never noticed) Jesus turns back to look at his disciples while he rebukes Peter, telling him that he is setting his mind on human things instead of divine things. It’s understandable. Peter doesn’t want to hear about his friend’s suffering and death. He doesn’t want to contemplate that change in all of their lives that Jesus seems to be predicting. Peter hopes that if they don’t talk about it, maybe it won’t happen. And interestingly enough, by including that detail of how Jesus turns to look at all the disciples while he rebukes Peter, Mark seems to tell us that all of the disciples (and maybe even the crowd that Jesus gathers with him to expound on his teachings) is indicted in Jesus’s rebuke. So what do we do with this? How does this affect our faith and how we live our lives? We, like Jesus’s disciples and the crowd, are indicted in Jesus’s rebuke. But what does that mean? This week, I picked up the book by the Francisan monk and Roman Catholic priest Richard Rohr titled Immortal Diamond: The Search for our True Self. In this book, Rohr writes about how in the shorter ending to Mark’s gospel, the disciples learn of Jesus’s resurrection and they run away and fear. The end. He writes about how this is really true for all people. Resurrection does not sit easily with us. We cling to old forms, old ways of being. Rohr writes, “Whether human beings admit it or not, we are all in love with—even addicted to—the status quo and the past, even when it is killing us. Resurrection offers us a future—dare I say a permanent future—but one that is unknown and thus scary. Humans find it easier to gather their energy around death, pain and problems than around joy. I know I do. For some sad reason, it is joy that we hold lightly and victimhood that we grab onto.” In the book, Rohr writes primarily about the ways that we can let go of our false self, who we think that we are that is all bound up in ego, to uncover (like an immortal diamond) the essence of our true self, who we are in God. He offers three components of the process for how we do that. The 1st has to do with recognizing something about the nature of God. He writes,“The goodness of God fills all the gaps of the universe, without any discrimination or preference… Grace is not something God gives; grace is who God is.” It is God’s grace, God’s very nature to keep all things God has made in life and love alive forever. And it is God’s grace that bridges the gap between light and dark, between death and life. The 2nd is about what our Christian tradition means by death itself. “Death is not just a physical dying, but going to full depth, hitting the bottom, going the distance beyond where I am in control, fully beyond where I am now.” Death is encountered in failure, in vulnerability, in shame, in heartbreak. In fact, any time we love fully, we are opening ourselves to death. “If we are honest, we acknowledge that we are dying throughout our life, and that is what we learn if we are attentive: grace is found at the depths and in the death of everything.” The 3rd has to do with death and resurrection. “When you go into the full depths and death, sometimes even the depths of your sin, you come out the other side—and the word for that is resurrection.” This is what Jesus is trying to teach Peter and the disciples and the crowds and all of us this week. Our encounters with God are not always easy and pretty. Sometimes God calls to us out of the depths of our failures and failings, and it is in those moments that we follow Jesus in the way of the cross through death and into resurrection. In closing I want to share with you a poem I read this week. It’s from a 14th century Middle Easter mystic named Hafiz although the translation is a contemporary one. It’s a little startling in its language and some of the images it uses for God, but it speaks to how this experience of the way of the cross that Jesus calls us to often feels when we are walking that way. Tired of Speaking Sweetly from "The Gift: Poems by Hafiz," translated by Daniel Ladinsky Love wants to reach out and manhandle us, Break all our teacup talk of God. If you had the courage and Could give the Beloved His choice, some nights, He would just drag you around the room By your hair, Ripping from your grip all those toys in the world That bring you no joy. Love sometimes gets tired of speaking sweetly And wants to rip to shreds All your erroneous notions of truth That make you fight within yourself, dear one, And with others, Causing the world to weep On too many fine days. God wants to manhandle us, Lock us inside of a tiny room with Himself And practice His dropkick. The Beloved sometimes wants To do us a great favor: Hold us upside down And shake all the nonsense out. But when we hear He is in such a "playful drunken mood" Most everyone I know Quickly packs their bags and hightails it Out of town. Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self. Joessy-Bass: San Francisco, 2013, p xi Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self. Joessy-Bass: San Francisco, 2013, p xix Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self. Joessy-Bass: San Francisco, 2013, pp xx-xxi Rohr, Richard. Immortal Diamond: The Search for Our True Self. Joessy-Bass: San Francisco, 2013, p xxi http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-vivid-colors-of-real-life/7332