2018-02-12
Brooke Strong
Scripture: Mark 9:2-9
One of the movie scenes I return to periodically throughout my life is one from Woody Allen’s 1979 movie Manhattan. At one point in the movie, Allen, who’s dating a woman named Tracy, muses about what it is that makes life worth living. “There are certain things that make it worthwhile,” he says. “For me, I would say, Groucho Marx, . . . and Willie Mays, the second movement of the Jupiter symphony, and Louis Armstrong, . . . Swedish movies, Sentimental Education by Flaubert, Marlon Brando, Frank Sinatra, those incredible apples and pears by Cezanne, the crabs at Sam Wo’s, Tracy’s face.”
Several of those I understand, several are things that mean more to Allen than to me. What captures me, though, is the idea of reflecting on the specifics that make your life and mine worth living. For me there’s the stunning view from Stowe Pinnacle in central Vermont, Van Morrison’s “Brown-Eyed Girl,” Federated Church singing a candlelit “Silent Night” on Christmas Eve. I think of Mary and our sons and daughter-in-law and now granddaughter Allie. I can’t imagine my life without these places and events and people. They make it worth living.
And then I think of what lies behind all of these, the source of these blessings. The school where I went to seminary now offers a course called “Life Worth Living.” It’s a course that looks at life through various largely religious prisms, including Confucianism, Judaism, Christianity, Islam, but also utilitarianism (which seeks the greatest good or happiness for the greatest number), and expressive individualism (which is the notion that our highest loyalties should be to ourselves)—all to see what light each of them sheds on what makes life worth living.
Miroslav Volf, the theologian who developed the course, says this sort of reflection is especially necessary in the United States. “Institutions like universities,” he says “are no longer addressing the meaning of life. Effectiveness and human performance are the emphasis. We’ve become experts at means but amateurs at ends” (https://divinity.yale.edu/news/life-worth-living-goes-global?
utm_source=YNemail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=ynalumni-monthly-02-08-18).
I suspect Jesus knew precisely what Miroslav Volf was talking about. “Effectiveness and human performance are the emphasis”—meaning that, in many quarters, we have reduced life’s significance to what we can accomplish; it’s all about us. “Experts at means but amateurs at ends”—meaning that we’re really good at the “what” and the “how,” but not so good at the “why.”
So Jesus has a major challenge in front of him. He has spent a lot of time with the disciples he’s invited to follow him. More than simply Facebook friends, they’re tied incredibly closely together. And what’s striking is how dense those disciples are. They just do not get Jesus. Peter, in fact, is pretty sure he knows what makes life worth living. When Jesus first gives hints that following him is going to be a slog, Peter is all in his face about it. When Jesus tells them he’s going to suffer and die, Peter scolds Jesus. He tells Jesus, essentially, to shut up about it. ‘Don’t be telling people life is all about suffering and dying. Nobody—nobody—is going to want to have anything to do with you. If you want followers, tell them about roses and butterflies and happiness. You can’t market a mopey way of life that entails pain and death. What a zero you’re being.’
Jesus, of course, knows that Peter is way off base, and tells him so. “Get behind me, Satan,” is the way Jesus puts it (Mark 8:33). ‘Don’t prettify life, Peter.’ “Don’t run from suffering,” he says in the Eugene Peterson translation called The Message; “embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to saving yourself, your true self. What good would it do to get everything you want and lose you, the real you?” (8:35-36).
So: big argument. Massive relationship-fail. To be honest, you can’t really see any way out of this. Jesus isn’t going to compromise, and Peter and the rest don’t see any real reason for tagging along any more.
Just six days later, though, what should happen but Jesus drags three of his closest friends, including the headstrong and misguided Peter, to the top of a mountain. Suddenly there it all comes clear. “Oh, now I get it,” we can hear them saying. Mystery guests show up—and not just any guests, either, but the long-dead and incredibly revered Elijah and Moses; the special effects shame any CGI we can imagine; and then there’s a voice from the clouds. If this isn’t enough to make them finally understand, nothing ever will be. It’s a tidal wave of persuasion. It’s as if Jesus says to them: this odd and, maybe at first glance, unappealing way of life is what makes life worth living. It’s what dazzles. It’s what matters most.
What makes life worth living, in other words, is this: are we in tune with the One who never lets us go; and are we radiant expressions of the living Christ in our homes and communities? The season of Epiphany concludes today. Epiphany is all about the manifestation of Christ: where do we see the brilliance of the Messiah? I suspect we see that brilliance most clearly when we’re in sync with God, and when, across all lines of suspicion and division, we love and trust each other.
Jesus knows that being in sync with God is paramount. The theologian Marcus Borg once wrote this: “The gospel of Jesus—the good news of Jesus’ own message—is that there is a way of being that moves beyond both secular and religious conventional wisdom. The path of transformation of which Jesus spoke leads from a life of requirements and measuring up (whether to culture or to God) to a life of relationship with God. It leads from a life of anxiety to a life of peace and trust. It leads from the bondage of self-preoccupation to the freedom of self-forgetfulness. It leads from life centered in culture to life centered in God” (Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, p. 88; quoted by Richard Rohr, daily meditation, Feb. 8, 2018).
To live a life centered in God means not measuring ourselves against the prevailing tides of the culture. It may mean lifting our eyes and hearts from the various screens that so often control our lives, and paying attention instead to those around us. It may mean forgoing the dogmatic self-righteousness that dominates contemporary discourse, and listening patiently and attentively instead to the voices of people different from us. It may mean noticing the wild fluctuations of a skittish stock market and then remembering that our worth and our joy have nothing at all to do with the size of our portfolio or the success or failure of the market.
Today after worship we will have our annual meeting. On such a day, we take stock of who we are as a church, and reflect on God’s place here at Federated. The first thing I would say in that regard is this: just as those early disciples get a glimpse of how amazing and wonderful life in Jesus’ world is, so my hope is that we too will continually open our eyes and hearts to the richness of God’s presence here at Federated.
As it happens, we live in a culture in which church is rapidly losing its place. We would be neglecting something crucial if we didn’t grieve the loss of what we once knew. Not to grieve is to stuff feelings that need to be expressed. Not to grieve is to miss out on a quintessential human task. We care about lots of things, and when they’re not what we hope they will be, it’s incumbent upon us to express our sorrow.
On the other hand, though, we dare not let a preoccupation with numbers squelch the richness and joy of our shared life. It can be tempting, in noticing the downturn in contemporary church culture, to take our grieving too far, and to wrap ourselves in a blanket of carping and negativism. Whenever we encounter that, in ourselves or others, we should say, “Numbers are not where God is. God is, though, right in the midst of the life we share, bringing light and energy and hope. That,” we might well say, “is where I will take my stand.” Here we know community and joy and a purpose in serving beyond ourselves. That’s how we might respond if sourness or cynicism erupts: God is here, and all shall be well. Institutional mathematics is not the heart of life. Love and warmth and justice are what matter most.
Remember what Miroslav Volf said about what makes life worth living: in popular culture, “effectiveness and human performance are the emphasis.” We have become “experts at means but amateurs at ends.” For us to really be the church, for us to know the brilliance and light of the transfiguration Jesus gives, our focus needs to stay on the heart of the matter. We are called to be devoted to ends, not means.
So the first part of focusing on ends has to do with trusting God in all things, and living lightly and joyfully in that knowledge. A second part of keeping ends at the forefront has to do with the way we live our lives together. And one crucial way of honoring those ends may be learning to be in community with people who are different from us. This is some of what makes Christian life challenging, and makes Peter push back against Jesus.
Ruth Mayer, in an op-ed piece in the Plain Dealer this week, told about her fervent political beliefs. She is worked up about the state of things in this country. Then, on a recent cross-country car trip, a piece of her car fell off. As she was trying to figure out what to do about it, a man with noticeably different political leanings—both could tell this by car decals and things that were said—came up to her and just started fixing the problem using some zip ties.
“Our encounter changed . . . me,” she said. As different as the two of us are, she said, “for a moment, we were just two people and the exchange was kindness (his) and gratitude (mine). As I drove home, I felt the full extent of [the ways in which the culture has] diminished my own desire to be kind. [I am] so outraged that I hold ill will toward others on a daily basis. [It] is ruining me.”
“[We used to hold porch parties, she said.] But this year, I realize, I have retreated from my porch. . . . Civility and decency [have been upended. So] the experience with the man at the side of the road felt humbling. It reminded me that we are all just people trying to get home safe. And that we need each other. It felt like a sign, that maybe if we treat one another with the kindness and gratitude that is [often] so absent . . ., putting our most loving selves forward, this moment can transform into something more bearable. . . . How,” she asks, “do we . . . embrace the world with more love?” (February 5, 2018, p. A8).
A deep faithfulness, and a focus on “ends,” and a life that’s really worth living makes it a point to form community with people very different from us. It holds fast to the strange and wondrous love that stretches us into new and sometimes unsettling territory. The Jesus who was transfigured on that mountaintop knew what the real “ends” of human life are, those ends that make for a life worth living. That Jesus stood against the prevailing tides and spent his time with people who were immersed in trouble or exclusion. He befriended tax collectors and prostitutes and sinners of many a stripe. He told a gripping story about a heroic man who, as it turns out, is a hated Samaritan. He embraced countless people who had been rejected.
If we’re to be in sync with Jesus, this is who we’re to be, as well. This is why, here at Federated—and to the dismay of some—we prominently feature symbols that recognize a commitment to people who in many settings are on the outs. Rainbow signs welcome LGBTQ people. A Pan-African flag conveys our appreciation of and commitment to people of color. The signs on several of our restrooms welcome people of “all genders.” Our passionate and faithful Social Justice Advocacy Ministry keeps in front of us a vision of a world in which equality and sanctity and shared freedom mark our every commitment. Radical hospitality is a mark of faithfulness. And it is a mark of what makes life worth living.
That extravagant welcome is one part of faithfulness to the odd and compelling Jesus. The other central part of that faithfulness is what we mentioned earlier, which is rootedness in God. This is why the primary flag now flying outside this church is a United Church of Christ flag, a flag with the cross of Christ both rooted in the world and regally wearing a crown. As important as justice and advocacy and service are, we are not just a social service agency. We are the people of God. We are people whose very identity and strength and purpose come from One who loves with a bottomless affection. We have wings that carry us, arms that hold us, a heart that adores us. On Friday evening, during the opening ceremony of the Olympics, one of the commentators quoted the Prussian statesman Otto von Bismarck. Bismarck is remembered in part for his pithy warning that “Laws are like sausages; it is better not to see them being made.” The commentator on Friday noted that Bismarck once said that, “[Deft diplomats] . . . must wait until [they] hear the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp the hem of His garment.”
I would say that deft followers of Christ, too, wait until they hear the steps of God sounding through events, then leap up and grasp at the hem of Her garment. We trust God to lead us, to sustain us, to make a way where there may seem to be no way. And as God sounds in the events of daily life—in meals delivered, in presence offered, in blankets knit, in strangers welcomed, in justice sought—we, too jump and catch at those coattails. God leads. And we follow, with vigor and passion and delight.
A few months ago, when Mary and I were expecting a grandchild, a friend said to me: “When you have grandchildren, you show your children the type of parent you wanted to be.” Let’s amend that: “When you live in a church, you show everyone the type of person you want to be.” Jesus holds out a shining vision for us, a vision rooted in the truest “ends” of human life. As we gather for an annual meeting this afternoon, may we live into that vision, a vision of God at the center and welcome at the heart, with all the joy and passion Jesus gives us to live. By the grace of God, it’s a vision totally worth living.