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| Among the several paradoxes in today's readings is Christ's call: If you want to save your life, you must lose it. |
© Seth Olson 2021
February 21, 2021—The Second Sunday in Lent
A video of this sermon may be found here.
Holy God, let my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, let your people be cunning enough to know the same. Amen.
I love a good paradox. You know something that is a both/and! Observing something seemingly absurd or self-contradictory that when investigated proves to be well founded or true[1] usually makes me think or laugh. Think about those delightful figures of speech called oxymorons that slam together conflicting words.
Phrases like “jumbo shrimp” “deafening silence” “act naturally” “alone together” or “small crowd”. Our everyday speech overflows with contradictions—and they usually make us think or laugh. However, when we begin talking about religion, Faith, or our relationship with God, I believe, we want anything but a contradiction. Especially after this year of twists and turns, disharmony and isolation, disease and death, we yearn for our connection with God to be plain and simple. Can’t we just press the easy button?
The lessons for this day, the Second Sunday in Lent, are anything but straight-forward. Sorry! Especially in Genesis 17, Psalm 22, and Mark 8 paradoxes abound, but before we throw up our hands in exhaustion or tell God to just call us when the tomb is empty and victory is won, let us sit with the contradictions, the complications, and the enigmas present in these lessons.
For as we explore with our hearts, souls, minds, and strength, we may see that God does not shy away from the messiness of our lives, but instead, that messiness is precisely where God meets us. God continually steps into human frailty calling us into wholeness—even in the chaos that has been 2020 and 2021.
Last week Mary Bea pointed out the covenants that God makes with God’s Chosen People throughout the stories of the Hebrew Bible—Covenants of Life, Land, Law, and Lineage. We heard about God making the Covenant of Life with Noah seven days ago. Today, we hear about the Covenant of Land, or we would have heard it if our lesson did not cut out verses 8-14. Although the Covenant of Land is crucial to the People of Israel, God does not stop there with Abram. God steps into the messiness of the relationship between Abram and Sarai to make another covenant.
God had already given Abram a son, Ishmael, but Sarai was not Ishmael’s biological mother. Sarai’s servant Hagar was. Forming this strangely blended family created tensions in the relationships between Abram and Sarai and Hagar. Sarai could not stand for Hagar to be around, so she made her leave. With Hagar and Ishmael gone and getting advanced in years, Sarai’s hopes of being a mother were finished. God though was not finished. God entered the life of Abram again, but this time God’s promise was not simply to Abram.
God stepped into the chaos of Sarai’s life to make her a promise of childbirth—even though she was 90-years-old. If there ever were an oxymoronic phrase “nonagenarian pregnancy” might be it. And, as a mark of God not only stepping into the strangeness, but also bringing a blessing from it, God gave Abram and Sarai new names: Abraham and Sarah. They became the parents of many nations. What do we learn from the paradox of this story? God enters the complications and complexities of human lives to show us the truth, that God is ever walking with us, even when divine presence appears absurd or contradictory!
The paradoxes though are only getting started. You might remember our Psalm for today from such occasions as the Palm Sunday Passion Gospel, Good Friday liturgy, and the Last Words of Christ. Typically, what we hear from Psalm 22 is “My God, my God why have you forsaken me?” Such a soulful lament could never end in hopefulness, praise, or faithfulness… and yet, this Psalm does! It is not unique for its shape, many Psalms twist from lamentation to exaltation, but something special does resound from this psalm.
Psalm 22 expands the scope of God’s Reign. In it we discover that God’s Kingdom does not just encompass the People of Israel long ago, but all the nations to the ends of the earth, to those yet unborn, and for all generations forever. God reaches into human lives even when we are fearful or believe God has forsaken us, for God’s Reign is larger than any of our fears or doubts. What we discover from the paradoxes of this Psalm: God enters the complications and complexities of human lives to show us the truth, that God is ever walking with us throughout all Creation and forever, even when divine presence appears absurd or contradictory!
Speaking of contradictions—is there a more challenging paradox than, “For those who want to save their life will lose it.”? How can you have a life if you have given it away? This sounds like eating a cake and having it too. Without proper context we might assume that Jesus in today’s Gospel lesson is telling us to die for the cause. Maybe. But, as we expand our vision to see beyond this eye-catching phrase, we observe there is more to this paradox.
In the section right before today’s passage, Peter called Jesus the Messiah or the Christ. Peter was right—Jesus was (and is) the Messiah, the Christ, but Peter was wrong in what he meant by that statement. Peter thought Jesus would vanquish all the enemies of God’s People. Like some warrior king of old, Jesus would conquer Rome, and the disciples would preside sitting upon thrones in regal palaces. So, when Jesus taught that being the Christ meant undergoing great suffering, rejection, and death, Peter could not stand it. He interrupted Jesus and rebuked his teacher in private.
Seemingly, Jesus did not take kindly to Peter’s mistaken understanding of “Messiahship.” He not only rebuked Peter, calling him a stumbling block, which we translate as “Satan”, but he also corrected the erroneous teaching in front of not only the disciples, but the crowds too.
What was the teaching? To be a follower—not just on social media, but in real life (IRL)—one must deny oneself, take up one’s cross, and follow Jesus. To gain life in Christ is a paradoxical endeavor—not just long ago, but in our day too. Life in Christ calls us to lose our lives—not in the sense that we go looking for a fight or intentionally seeking suffering. We must lose our life in the way that Peter eventually did.
Thanks be to God for Peter’s paradoxical witness. This shaky one was astonishingly the rock on which Jesus built the Church. It took rebuking Jesus and being called Satan. It required denying Jesus three times before the cock crowed on Good Friday. It necessitated hiding away until the women found the tomb empty, but eventually Peter lost his life enough to take hold of new life. He finally let go of his dream of who Jesus was, so that he could take hold of God’s dream of who Peter was to be.
This is what we can do too! We can let go of what we imagine God is supposed to be doing for us in our world and we can listen for what God is dreaming our lives are to be. God enters the complications and complexities of human lives to show us the truth, that God is ever walking with us throughout all Creation and forever, and even when divine presence appears absurd or contradictory, we are called to live the life God dreams for us!
We see the truth of this in the lives of Abraham, Sarah, the Psalmist, and Peter. And, it is true for us too! God enters the brokenness, the messiness, and the sinfulness of our lives… God walks with us even when we are in complicated relationships with our family, friends, or neighbors… God is with us when we wonder “Why have you forsaken me?”… God calls us to let go of life, so we may take hold of God’s dream for us. We do not have to understand, nor can we even comprehend all the paradoxes of life.
And yet, in all those vexing both/and moments God is not only present, but also calling us to see the profound dream that God has for us individually and collectively.
This week, our Lenten Speaker is the Rev. Katie Nakamura Rengers, and in her beautiful, challenging presentation she wonders, how is the Spirit calling us to form the Church at this odd time in human history and Church history? For us to meet this moment of challenge, we may very well find ourselves holding onto new paradoxes—being a church without walls, taking the altar out into the world, and hearing the Spirit speaking in mundane or secular spaces. God is dreaming—are we listening?
God enters the complications and complexities of human lives to show us the truth, that God is ever walking with us throughout all Creation and forever, and even when divine presence appears absurd or contradictory, we are called to live the life God dreams for us not just here and on Sundays, but everywhere and everyday! Amen.
[1] “Paradox” from OxfordLanguages [accessed 2/24/2021. https://www.google.com/search?client=firefox-b-1-d&q=paradox].
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