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Safety on the Sidelines
You are a stumbling-block to me, Peter. Get away from me! And all of this because Peter wants to save Jesus from death. That’s a strange way to talk to a friend, isn’t it?
To help keep in perspective what Jesus was saying, listen to the following incident. Here is a reflection from a “soccer dad”.
Standing on the sidelines at a children’s soccer game, I marveled at one little boy. Maybe he wasn’t the most skillful soccer player, but he was without doubt the most energetic. He seemed to throw his body after the ball, determined to be in on every play. He was everywhere. The coach seemed to have assigned him some position, but he disregarded it, preferring instead to be wherever and whenever the ball was.
What made it all the more remarkable were the physical characteristics of this little boy. One leg seemed to be shorter than the other, his foot turned in slightly. His leg and foot had obviously been malformed from birth. And yet, there he was, hobbling up and down the field after the ball.
Maybe more amazing, there stood his two proud parents on the field, urging him on.
“That a boy; dive for it,” they would shout.
One of the other parents standing there, about halfway through the soccer game, turned to the little boy’s parents and said, “Your son is really a wonder. I admire him so much.”
But what I was thinking, though I didn’t say it at the time, was, “You parents are really amazing. I admire you so much.”
If you have ever been a parent, I think you will know of what I speak. Here was a little boy with a misshapen foot from birth. If I had been his parent, I think I would have thought twice about urging him to get involved in soccer. I think I would have wanted to keep him at home and urge him to take up the piano. I would not have stood on those sidelines and urged him to expose his disability for everybody to see, to risk life and limb charging up and down that field. I don’t know, but I expect that sometimes other children must have teased him about his foot. Children often do that. Why urge a child to risk that? I think I would have pleaded for a more sedate, more secluded activity.
I would have been wrong. … One of the greatest challenges in being a parent is to get over the tendency to protect your child. … There is no way to shield your child from all of life’s hurt. A growing child has got to venture forth, to learn to fall down, then get up again.1
It is temptingly easy to want to protect those we love and care about from life’s difficulties and hurts. We all know at least someone who was never allowed to grow up because of over-protective parents. And the result is never, ever a good one. The person never matures in to much of anything, never fulfills any real potential in life.
I think that’s why the apostles were upset, even scandalized, at Jesus’ promise that suffering and death lay ahead for him. They didn’t want him to die, much less to suffer and die. Yet all three of our scripture readings today testify to the necessity for suffering, even death, if we are to be followers of Jesus. Read those lessons when you get home, read them later in the week, and see if I’m not right about that fact.
Most of us like the status quo. We don’t really want things to change very much. Whether we like to admit it or not, we like a Jesus who is viewed as a great moral teacher, a miracle worker, a healer, as someone who could see into the soul of the individual and tell them what was needed in their life.
But when it comes to the suffering-and-death-part, well, most of us are a bit uncomfortable. And for that reason I believe every church should have a crucifix, a real, genuine crucifix with Jesus on the cross at Calvary, out in plain sight for everyone to see every Sunday. Too often we sanitize – or ignore – the price Jesus paid for our salvation with empty crosses decorated with lovely patterns of lilies or wordy inscriptions. But no Jesus on the cross … unless you come into my office and go into my rectory. I’m afraid there’s no avoiding the cost of discipleship, even when I want to do so. For the sake of my own soul, I need to keep before me the cost of discipleship.
Not only was the crucifixion an unpleasant thing to think about, barbaric, inhuman, and cruel beyond imagination, for Jesus, it has implications for us as well. Jesus said to his apostles – and he says to us by extension across the centuries – “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their live will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life in return? Or what will they give in return for their life?”
To attain our salvation, Jesus had to pay the price on the cross for us. It didn’t matter that his followers didn’t want him to do it and probably actively tried to keep him from doing it, at least until they saw that their objections were useless.
This is what makes Christianity such a challenge in our society, so ultimately unpopular if holy scripture is read carefully. If you are going to follow Jesus, you, too, must offer your life for the world around you. And not just for those who love you, think well of you, can repay you for your kindness, and will remember you in their prayers. That’s much more of a challenge for must us than we’d like to admit.
Most of us are not going to have to die physically for our faith. We live in a society which pretends to be Christian, at times, but which really barely tolerates what Jesus taught and did. Rather than persecuting followers of Jesus, more often than not they are ignored or dismissed as irrelevant. If you think about it, that’s also a form of death – when we are invisible to the world and its values. If you don’t believe that’s true, why aren’t our churches full on Sunday? Many of us remember the days when you had to get to church early to get a seat.
Jesus’ closest followers were catching a glimpse of what Jesus expects them to do: to follow him in his sacrifice for the sins of the world. And I’m willing to bet that they were powerfully uncomfortable with what Jesus was telling them they had to do. And so Peter, speaking for the rest of the group, was in opposition to what Jesus told them was coming.
Not only did they not want Jesus to suffer and die, they didn’t want to suffer and die, either. All of which is a perfectly natural human reaction, I suppose. But there’s one small problem with some of our natural reactions: if left to our own devices, all too often we will not do what God wants us to do in life. Being safe and protected and comfortable not only stunts our growth, but it also stunts our faith.
Of past couple of years I have been watching with fascination as two congregations explore the possibility of merging and becoming a new congregation with a new identity and a new ministry. It has not been an easy road in some ways. There were fears and anxieties in seeing the old identities change and also in the fact that the new congregation will have to act differently from the way the two existing ones have been acting if this new venture is to be successful and faithful to the gospel.
What has fascinated me the most about all of this is exactly what Jesus was saying to his closest followers: I’m going to ask you to give up a lot: your old identity, your old ways of doing things, and some of your old values if you’re going to be my followers in the world. You’re going to have to become something – and someone – different from what the world values in order to help change the world in my Name.
As the process moved along, several of those who were initially pushing for this merger seem to have begun to understand what is required of them – and, at one point, a few tried to undermine the next phase of the venture. They now realize that it can’t be business as usual and that they may not be the ones in charge in the new congregation. That’s when following Jesus gets to be a bit scary: when we are asked to venture in faith and to put aside some of the familiar things and ways which have become such a part of our lives.
Those parents with the little boy and his deformed foot could have kept him “safe” and kept him engaged in activities, though worthwhile, that would really never help shape him into the person he was meant to be. After all, they were exposing their boy to failure and ridicule and possible disappointment. But they knew something about human life which tells us that it’s never at its best until it’s tested. We never really become what Jesus calls us to be by always taking the safe, secure, unchallenged route in life.
The disciples were trying to do that with Jesus – to protect him, of course, but also, by extension, to protect themselves as well. But Jesus tells them that way, the always safe way, leads only to death. True life comes when we pick up our crosses and follow him in faith.
The Ven. Theodore W.Bean, Jr.
Provost
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1 Pulpit Resource, Vol. 33, No. 3, p. 38.
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