Why Me? - March 12, 2006

Mark 8: 31-38, Genesis 17: 1-7, 15-16

I had the privilege this past Monday to begin the Lenten Lectionary discussion series. I thoroughly enjoyed it. I think if you asked the folks who came, they would tell you that it was fairly painless for them, too. The beauty of the two passages for today is that they come ready-built with questions, and things to observe and ponder.

For example, what about Abram and Sarai? Specifically, what is it about those two biblical characters that causes God to recognize them above all else as fit to become the ancestors of a whole nation? Earlier in the book of Genesis, Abram has been as faithful to God as he knew how. He had left the land of Ur to travel to Canaan, and God has proclaimed to Abram that he would have descendents that numbered like the stars.

But Abram misunderstood God, and thought that the promise of descendants was something that Abram himself could achieve without God's help. So he took a concubine, named Hagar, and she bore a son to Abram. Although Abram took God's promises into his won hands, and tried to manipulate the situation to find his own way to be a father, God visited Abram once again.

This time, the promise was the same: "I will multiply you exceedingly, not only that-you will have a son with your wife Sarai." The God of second chances was willing to keep trying with old Abraham, until Abraham got it right. And it took Abraham 99 years to get it right.

I felt like a real work in progress this week. Some things I tried to accomplish just didn't go according to plan. Thursday afternoon I was looking around for the plan, trying to figure out how I could do the things I needed to do more or less on my own, like Abram had, I walked out to the mailbox, and brought in a handful of mail. After I had tossed the junk mail and set the bills aside, I opened an envelope with a Mississippi postmark, sat down in my chair, and started to read this:

"Dear Julie and Friends at Jerusalem,

We are back at Westminster Pres after a 2-week R and R in Florida. We needed to get away physically and mentally because 5 weeks of working here was draining. Volunteer groups continue to come in, work, and go, usually staying a week, perhaps two. The college students groups were followed by adult members of Presbyterian churches in Virginia, Missouri, Michigan, Tennessee, Alabama, and other states I have left out. We fit ourselves in wherever-if a group knows how to do roofing we either work with them to help supply them with materials or clean up.

A new era will begin in mid- March however. There is a secured commitment from Hosanna Industries from Pennsylvania, which has a $2.5 million fund to rebuild houses from the roof on down so that the homeowners can move back in. Hosanna has enough skilled electricians, plumbers, and carpenters that lead and train its own volunteers in teams. A Hosanna executive will be backing his RV in near us March 15 and will stay for a year. Phase One of their plan is to rehab 30 houses to the point that the family can move back in within two months.

Larry and I don't know what our roles will be when the whole operation gets going-we have built tents to house the Spring Break students and are planning to install bunk beds in the Youth Group Center-all of which are heated/air-conditioned and electrified. But our default activity has been helping out at Katrina's Kitchen, a relief center serving 1500 meals a day, offering donated clothes, food staples and job counseling. We show up and they plug us in where we are needed.

My purpose in writing is that people read the articles, understand the need for assistance and the rewards associated with the effort. We plan to be home by April 1st-we will leave with some reluctance. This has been and extraordinary experience in our church life.

Sincerely,
Larry and Marge Bartz

Did you know that we had our very own missionaries? I called Larry and Marge on the cell phone number that they included in their letter and told them how proud we are of them, and how much we missed them and how much we wanted to hear their stories of God's love when they returned. But Marge-and if you know Marge you won't be surprised by this-she just wanted to talk about what a blessing it is to be able to be there and to help.

I had occasion this week to see the move "Walk the Line." I rented the movie, after hearing all the Oscar hype thinking that it was a love story between Johnny Cash and June Carter Cash, because the tiny little snippets I saw on television and at the Oscars lead me to believe this. But if you rent it yourself, be warned: there is a love story in the movie, in fact there are a couple, but the movie is really a story of redemption.

Johnny Cash grew up poor in a small house in rural Arkansas; there were several children, not quite enough money, and a father who was fighting off his own demons, namely alcohol. Like in many families, there was a good son-Jack, the kind of kid who obeyed his parents and read his Bible, and worked hard and had a goal in life-to be a preacher. There was also a son who nobody really expected much from: J.R. Now J.R. wasn't a bad kid, really, but he liked to sing from the hymnal with his mama. He was the kind of kid who daydreamed, and who, when he was working around the cotton fields or helping his brother in the saw mill, he was always trying to figure out a way to knock off early to go fishing. J. R. knows in his heart that Jack is his daddy's favorite; he is reminded of this every time his father catches him singing, or listening to the radio.

On the day that changes J.R.'s life he convinces his brother Jack to let him knock off early and go fishing, while Jack finishes up in the sawmill. In the next scene, his father Ray Cash is covered in blood and screaming at his younger son, "Where were you? Where were you?" as they speed off in a truck from the fishing hole. They go home to watch Jack die with the saw blade protruding from his abdomen.

J. R., now the oldest son, believes that what he has done has changed not just his life, but his entire family's life as well. The Good Son has died, and he believes it has been at the hands of the Worthless Son. This single, traumatic event convinces John Cash that his life is meaningless, and that he is unlovable.

Fast-forward to young adulthood: John Cash leaves home to fight in the Korean War, leaving behind his sweetheart Vivian. He's not a very good airman, preferring to sit off by himself plucking tunes on his guitar, singing, and writing music to being in the Air Force. Even after he comes home and marries Vivian, he cannot focus on what it takes to financially support his young family because he is too distracted by music, and haunted by his failures.

Even after he is discovered and has some success at being a musician on tour with the likes of Elvis and Jerry Lee Lewis, John Cash is haunted by the things in his life that disappointed others. He eventually gets sucked into a downward spiral that takes from him his wife, his daughters, his fancy house, and his bright shining career. Desperate, and at the bottom of his life, he reaches out to the one person in his life who will speak the truth to him in a way that he can understand it: June Carter. In what was for me the pivotal moment in the film, June says to him: "Whether you like it or not, John Cash, God has given you a gift. It's up to you to use it."

Whether we like it or not, whether we are expecting it or not, we have been set aside, marked with the sign of the cross, identified as those who will save their lives by losing them. Redemption is not about what we have, what we gain or what we lose so much as it is what we are willing to do for the gospel's sake. Johnny Cash's story is not a redemption story because he gave away all his money to the poor or started an orphanage. His life is a redemption story because he took what God gave him and did not deny it; did not sink forever into the mire of despair because he was not the Good Son, something he could never be in the first place.

We talked at some length on Monday night about what this passage in Mark means in the 21st century. A conclusion we came to that Becky articulated oh so clearly was this: use your life. As Christians, in all the ways that matter, our lives are not our own. By definition, a Christian is someone whose life belongs to Christ.

We have (using the collective 'we' that means all humanity) throughout history taken the phrase "take up your cross" and used it to justify all manner of abuse, prejudice, neglect, and denial of self-respect, with the reasoning, "Well, that's just her cross to bear." But God does not call us to live in fear, to deny our own lovable-ness in God's sight. We cannot live fully into the life that proclaims the gospel if we cannot first grasp that the gospel message is one of Divine Love, Divine Acceptance, and Divine Challenge.

In order to take up the cross of Christ, the symbol of victory over death, what are we willing to let go of? If we cannot carry both our own feelings of self-loathing and self-centeredness, and the symbol for salvation for the whole world, at the same time, which one are we going to let go of?

It is impossible for me to preach this text today and avoid talking about those for whom following Christ has the ultimate price. Some of you may have heard that Tom Fox, the American missionary with the Christian Peacemaker Teams was found dead, his hands and feet bound and his body wrapped in a blanket and dumped outside Baghdad. For most of us, we will not be asked to literally lay down our physical lives for the gospel. We will all be asked, however, to lay down our defenses, our biases, our self-recrimination, our disbelief that God would want anything from puny old us. This is as true for each of us as it is for Abraham, Sarah, Larry, Marge, John, June and Tom.

The day before his abduction, Tom Fox wrote an essay entitled "Why Are We Here?" The following is excerpted from that essay:

"If I understand the message of God, his response to that question is that we are to take part in the creation of the Peaceable Realm of God. Again, if I understand the message of God, how we take part in the creation of this realm is to love God with all our heart, our mind and our strength and to love our neighbors and enemies as we love God and ourselves. In its essential form, different aspects of love bring about the creation of the realm."

"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls."

"For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel will save it."

Thanks be to God!