Heroism

Scripture: The Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost (Lectionary 22), A.D. 2014 A

Sermon:

Grace, mercy and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  AMEN.

People sometimes ask Rachel and I how we “do it,” by which they mean balancing home, work, and romance in a household with two pastors, two parishes, three kids, two dogs, and no family within four hours driving. It’s easy, really.

First up, don’t sleep through the night. For years. Wash dishes, take out the trash, fold laundry, and pick up toys daily, to absolutely no avail. Mow the lawn two weeks after it needed mowing. Try not to count how many stains a new carpet can accrue. Stay a good six to eight months behind on any magazines. Buy books you’ll never read. Fail to stick to the most basic workout schedule. Wonder how the one-year-old has been one for at least five years while the seven-year-old was four just yesterday.

It’s not a glamorous lifestyle. In fact, it’s pretty laughable. But if you squint at it in just the right light you realize that the two of you have made heroic sacrifices for the ones you love. And that’s kind of fantastic. Family, I’ve come to believe, is the never-ending quest to let go of the things you love for the people you love.

You’ll remember from last week that Jesus had taken His disciples to the far north of the Holy Land, to the pagan shrine-city of Caesarea Philippi. Here he had revealed to them that He is, in fact, the prophesied Son of Man, the divine Christ come to set the world aright, and that even Rome itself shall come to believe in Him in time. But now He has to explain to the disciples exactly what it means that Jesus is the Christ. Like their forefathers stretching back hundreds of years, Jesus’ Apostles expect the Christ to be a great warrior—a conquering hero come to smash the seemingly unbeatable armies of Rome and to liberate God’s people Israel as in ancient days. Just as Moses broke Egypt, as Cyrus crushed Babylon, as the Maccabees drove out the Greeks, so now, they believed, would the Christ drive the legions of Rome before Him. It would be glory, God, and gold, boys, all the way to the sea.

But no, Jesus says; that’s not how it will work at all. And He tells them the greatest of mysteries: that He, Jesus Christ, Son of Man and Son of God, must go to Jerusalem where He will undergo great suffering and humiliation at the hands high society. He will be ridiculed, shamed, and publically murdered in the sight of all. But then, on the Third Day—He will rise again. And Peter says what the rest are doubtless thinking: “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to You!” We haven’t been waiting around all these centuries just to have the Messiah go quietly into that dark night. Humiliation? Torture? Murder? What kind of a Christ is this? Indeed, what sort of a God is this?

Keep in mind that in the verses right before this, Jesus had praised Peter as being inspired by the Holy Spirit, as the great Rock upon which He will build His Church. Now, roughly two minutes later, He says: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to Me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things!” (It’s even worse in Latin: Vade retro Satana! You can’t even say it without spitting.)

Jesus goes on to explain that in order to be His disciples, we must be willing to deny ourselves, take up our crosses, and lose our lives in order to save them. That all sounds pretty heroic to me, don’t you think? Downright herculean. It brings to mind the great stories of the Old Testament, with Moses calling down fire and ice, or Samson tearing up the city gates. I think of Peter walking on water or Nicholas flying through the air or Padre Pio speaking to the dead. These were great, heroic men who gave up everything for Christ: who in many cases took up their crosses, quite literally, and won for themselves the everlasting crown of martyrdom. Compared to them, I must think myself a pretty lousy Christian.

Are Christians all called to be heroes—to be great men of might and renown? Is that what Jesus is saying? Is that even possible? I mean, when everyone is famous, nobody is, right?

Things make more sense in the context of Jesus and Peter’s exchange. In the ancient world, reputation was everything. Pagan societies clearly understood public perception to be the real you; it didn’t matter what happened in private, let alone in your heart. What mattered was what people said you did, what they remembered. The Middle East, then as now, was an honor-shame society. And what could be more shameful than crucifixion? Even God’s people Israel, who understood that inner morality trumped reputation, still identified themselves primarily by external markers: by family, clan, and tribe.

Jesus is saying that we must stop defining ourselves by such things. Deny those trappings that make you “you” to the outside world, things largely societal and ethnic. They enslave you. In exchange, Jesus promises a new family, a new community of cross-bearers, who stand fearless in the face of humiliation and scorn. This community in Christ—this ecclesia, this Church—knows the Truth, and the Truth shall set them free.

Truly ours is a God Who cares not for ridicule or shame. He is the Creator of all, Who so loved the world that He came down in the flesh, in the mud and the blood, as a helpless Baby, as a powerless Child, as a wandering Rabbi. And He came not to judge us or rule over us but to laugh and work and heal and teach and suffer and weep and bleed and die alongside us—as one of us. And He loved us so much that even as we murdered Him in the most awful way we could think of, He still proclaimed to us His love and forgiveness from the Cross. That’s how much God loves you. All the way to the Cross. All the way to Hell and back.

We may not think that Jesus’ lesson for Peter and the disciples has much to say for us today: we who do not define ourselves by clan; we who do not even know our extended families. But we are still tempted to believe that our public self is the real self, that our reputation is our reality. Our society defines us by external things, by our clothes, our employment, our physical fitness, the politically correct nature of our opinions, by how much we have it together. It defines us by what we buy, how we look, where we seek our pleasure. It defines us by our popularity. But Jesus tells us, “That’s not who you are. It never really was.”

When we read the Bible and the history of the Church, I think we often get things backwards, especially when it comes to great saints or famous warriors. We look at Peter walking on water, at Paul raising the dead, at John the Baptist dying for truth, and we think, “God cares about people like them, not people like me.” And so we think that we, too, need to be great and famous and heroic. But that’s exactly wrong.

Yes, God does raise up great and inspiring men and women, in this and every generation. God works miracles and wonders through them. But God does not raise them up to shame us; He raises them up for us. We are what’s important to God: everyday people living everyday lives and engaging in everyday acts of kindness. Great heroes, great saints, their stories exist in order to inspire us, in order to guide us through the simple, humble things of hearth and home—because that’s what matters to God! Not greatness, but humility.

Fame has no point in and of itself. That’s why so many modern celebrities are so interminably miserable. No, fame matters only in that it helps rightly to guide normal people through normal lives. God doesn’t care if you’ve written a book or banked a million dollars or made a name for yourself in the tabloids. Have you raised a family? Have you dealt fairly with others? Have you loved God above all and your neighbor as yourself? That’s the good life, the heroic life, in God’s eyes. That’s what makes men great. To paraphrase Tolkien, our enemy would have us believe that it is only great power that can hold evil in check, but that is not what we have found. We have found it is the small everyday deeds of ordinary folk that keep the darkness at bay.

Taking up your cross doesn’t mean that we’re all called to die dramatically for our faith. For us it will probably mean enduring hardships with charity and hope. Denying ourselves probably won’t involve severing relationships with friends and family. But it may very well mean going without something we want in order to give our children whatever it is that they need. Every parent, every spouse, every good neighbor knows what it is to lose one’s life for others—and how that loss in turn does save us. Great heroism, you see, is not limited exclusively or even primarily to great saints and heroes. Real heroism, real sacrifice, real sanctity, happens every day, at work, at home, in the streets. That’s where Jesus is. And that’s where we become His disciples.

You are not your job. You are not your paycheck. You are not your slacks. These things do not define you. They are not who you are. They are not Whose you are. And the Truth shall set us free.

In Jesus’ Name. AMEN.