How many of you have hit at least one big pothole this winter? They’re everywhere! I think there’s a huge magnet in each one which attracts the metal in my car and sucks it right in. In the last few years I’ve ruined 4 tire rims. Now one of those I drove over a curb and I take full responsibility for that; but the other 3 I blame totally on the City of Toronto and the Province of Nova Scotia.
Actually, as the winter has progressed I’ve become better at avoiding those potholes. A month ago I’m driving to Chicago. I’m zipping along the 401, the 402, I-69, I-94; avoiding the craters in all those roads. I get to Chicago, I’ve driven all the way from Toronto, haven’t hit a single pothole, I’m less than 5 miles from my parents’ home and WAMMO! Now I’ve ruined 5 tire rims.
I’ve been driving for nearly 40 years. I’ve been paying close attention to roads for another 10 years before that. I’ve never seen North American roads in worse shape than they are now! Indeed, our whole infrastructure is falling apart. Water mains are breaking, bridges are collapsing, buses are breaking down; and now, some would argue, the economic infrastructure is breaking down as well. It feels like our whole society has hit one big pothole!
Two essential problems here:
1. For at least 15 years we’ve been caught up in this crazy notion that the private sector always knows best, that government is somehow inherently bad, and therefore taxes must be kept as low as possible, diverting as much revenue as possible away from government and into the private sector. Governments haven’t had the cash to maintain the infrastructure.
2. During the same period, too many people with too much money have thought that somehow the good times would go on forever. Housing prices would always go up, stock prices would continue to rise, we can make increasingly risky investments now because the growing economy will always protect us against massive losses.
Guess what? Good times don’t go on forever. Sometimes the private sector makes big mistakes. And governments, with enough cash, do an excellent job of building and maintaining roads and public transit systems and other elements of infrastructure; and creating jobs in the process. Just think about the smooth surface of the 401 and the pristine condition of the TTC 30 years ago. That’s part of what attracted me to Canada!
You know what? Life is difficult. It doesn’t matter how low your taxes are, life is still difficult. It doesn’t matter how much cash you divert from the common good and put into your own pocket, life is still difficult. It doesn’t matter how many SUV’s and boats and homes you own because you’re a top executive whose made an exorbitant salary while laying off more and more employees and driving your company into the ground; life is still difficult.
But we’ve been living with this illusion that life can somehow be easy. If I can amass enough wealth, life can be easy. If I can be nice to everyone and avoid conflicts, life can be easy.
It doesn’t work that way. Life is hard. Life is so hard that Jesus said it’s like picking up a cross and dragging it down the road. Or it’s like bearing the cross beam of that execution stick on your back; mile after mile after mile. That’s what the victims of crucifixion did: they carried their own cross beam, perhaps with their hands already nailed to it. Suffering is part of life. Dying little deaths, especially to selfishness and greed, is part of the Christian journey.
And it’s interesting that in today’s gospel lesson it’s Peter – who tries to sooth the troubled waters, who says that everything is going to be okay, who wants things to be nice – it’s Peter whom Jesus criticizes. Jesus even calls him, “Satan” (see Mark 8:31-33). In other words, Jesus is saying, sometime things don’t turn out okay. There are times of suffering, there are difficulties on the road of life.
Now don’t get me wrong: Jesus wanted people to have life in its fullness – in its abundance (John 10:10) – but he knew that in order to experience that abundance, you have to endure suffering.
To be sure, there is much about life that is wonderful and enjoyable and so full of pleasure that words can’t describe it. But life is also about bearing burdens and sacrifice and doing without certain luxuries so that others might have the essentials of life. It’s about dying to yourself so that others might live. And that ain’t easy.
The Christian journey is at least as much about enduring the difficult times as it is about enjoying the good times. Indeed, that’s true not just of the Christian journey, but of the human journey. The term “life is difficult” was coined not by Jesus but by the late psychiatrist M. Scott Peck, before he became a Christian. But Dr. Peck pointed out that there’s a paradox here. Life is difficult, yes. But, when we accept the fact that life is difficult – when we stop avoiding the difficult decisions and the difficult tasks and choose instead to pass through them – life becomes less difficult. That’s the paradox. The more you try to avoid the difficulties, the harder they become. But when you accept the inevitability of tough times, and you’re willing to suffer through them, the way becomes a bit easier.
For example: When there are disagreements within your family, or within your church, what’s easier in the long run: to keep avoiding those disagreements while the bickering gets worse and worse, or to meet them head on and resolve them? If something is going to hurt anyway, get it over with. If you want to experience abundant life, you have to pick-up a cross.
Sometimes you just have to suck it up. That’s true if you’re a member of a conflict-ridden family, or consumer who wants to buy a house that you can’t afford, or a banker who wants to get richer, faster, through very risky investments. It might be better to confront those conflicts, to wait upon that new house, to accept a lower return on a safer investment; even if it will entail hard work and disappointment. A little pain now can save a lot of pain later. Pick up your cross if you want to experience abundant life.
But sometimes we do suffer a lot. Maybe it’s because of irresponsible actions that we’ve taken along the way, or maybe it has nothing to do with our own actions. But sometimes we do suffer. I’m talking about when you lose your house. Or you lose your job. Or you lose your health. Or you lose a loved one.
What do you do when you hit one of life’s potholes? What do you do when you feel trapped? What do you do when it hurts so bad that it feels like your life is over?
First of all, you cry a lot. And you get angry. And maybe you even shake your fist at God and you say, “Why me?” You know what? It’s okay to cry. It’s okay to get angry. It’s even okay to get angry at God. The Bible does. Psalm 22: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?” Even Jesus said that as he hung on the cross (Matthew 27:46). It’s okay to get angry at God. Because, no matter how angry you get, God is like a wise mother, who holds you in her embrace, and absorbs all of your anger and all of your sobs. So, first of all, you cry. That’s the healthiest way to endure the difficulties.
Secondly, you ask yourself: “What is the universe trying to teach me through this suffering?” Maybe you can learn how to help others through tough times. Maybe you can learn that accumulating individual wealth at the expense of the common good eventually hurts everyone. Maybe you can learn, as the Bible teaches us, that when one member suffers, all suffer together; when one member is honoured, all rejoice together (1 Corinthians 12:26). Whatever happens, we’re all in this together.
So you cry, and you try to learn something, and thirdly, you try to discern the presence of God in the midst of the mess. Because, you see, it doesn’t matter how bad things get, God is always there. The psalmist asks:
“Where can I go from your spirit, or where can I flee from your presence? If I ascend to heaven, you are there; if I make my bed in Sheol, you are there...If I say, ‘Surely the darkness shall cover me, and the light around me become night,’ even the darkness is not dark to you…for darkness is as light to you.”
You try to discern God’s presence. Because, you see, even in the midst of great difficultly, the touch of God’s presence – the experience of being held in God’s warm embrace – can bring the peace which passes understanding. It passes understanding because when you’ve lost your home or your loved one, reason says that you should be in agony. But somehow the presence of God can bring an inexplicable calm even in the midst the storm. There’s pain, to be sure; but there’s also peace.
Jesus said, “For what will it profit a man to gain the whole world and loose his life?” What will it profit a man to have a garage full of Hummers, and no roads to drive them on? What will it profit a woman who is so nice that everyone likes her, but so little backbone when it comes to conflict that she hates herself? We can become quite skillful at avoiding life’s difficulties, but sometimes we have to face them head on in order to get on with the task of living. Jesus is our model and guide: “who, for the sake of the joy that was set before him, endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God” (Hebrews 12:2). Those willing to endure the difficulties of life will experience the abundance of life. Amen.
Text: Mark 8:34
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
8 March 2009
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2 comments:
What do you mean when you say, "It’s about dying to yourself so that others might live"? That sounds less like love and more like trading one ego for another. As I understand it, we're not called to kill ourselves (metaphorically or otherwise) but to die to sin; and not so that others might live but so that we might live for God (Romans 6:11). When we live for God we live unselfishly, and in that generosity of spirit we live abundantly.
Dear Anonymous:
Good questions/observations. "Dying to self" is another way of saying, "Dying to sin." What I mean is: dying to one's egotistical self, one's self-centered self; the self who is tempted to indulge in greed, even at the expense of hurting or endangering the lives of others; like the irresponsible corporate executives at Enron who lost the life savings of many people, or the irresponsible bankers who invested in "derivatives" based on toxic mortgages and thus threatened the whole international banking system (and the jobs and homes and pensions and savings of many millions which are supported to some degree by that system), or the already comfortable upper middle class folk who've insisted on getting more and more tax cuts in recent decades, at the expense of the holders of public sector jobs (like road construction and transit operation) that are funded by tax receipts, and those on disability (perhaps injured on jobs were safety regulations were allowed to lapse because governments didn't have enough money to hire enough inspectors to make sure that regulations were enforced) whose benefits are so dreadfully inadequate. When we metaphorically die to this greed and self-centeredness which gives rise to considerable human suffering, and when we rise to a newness of life which is committed to the common good (creating jobs, building environmentally-friendly infrastructure, providing for those unable to work) we are "dying to self that others might live."
Paul knew little or nothing of the concept of the individual that we 21st century types have inherited from the 18th century Enlightenment. When he speaks of being dead to sin and alive to God in Romans 6:11, he is speaking at least as much about the community as he is about the individual. He is addressing the letter to the church (the community of faith) in Rome, not just to individual believers. We have to understand so much of what he says from this collective, community perspective. We die to sin (to self, to egotism, to selfishness), so that we can rise to newness of life in a community of faith which seeks the common good (see especially 1 Corinthians, chapters 12-14, where he's talking about how our gifts can be used for the good of the community; the famous love chapter is talking about the love - agape - which is incarnate in the Christian community). This is the understanding of dying to self and rising to new life that undergirds my entire March 8 sermon. Seems to me that this understanding of death and resurrection is a central biblical norm.
blessings,
be
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