Posts Tagged ‘taking up our cross’

Joining the battle against evil (some thoughts)

September 10, 2021

Pentecost 16 – 2021
Mark 8:27-38
Marian Free

In the name of God who demands our complete commitment. Amen.

During the week I did some research for a short piece on William Tyndale. Tyndale lived in England in the 15-16th centuries in a time of great political and intellectual foment that was the Reformation. Few educated people could be unaware of the ideas that were coming out of Europe at that time -ideas that were considered seditious and dangerous because they threatened the authority of both church and state. At the same time scholars like Erasmus who had escaped the Ottoman invasion of Constantinople had brought with them to Europe and England copies of the Greek Bible. This made it possible to read the New Testament in its original language rather than in the Latin translation.

Educated at Oxford and Cambridge, Tyndale was by all accounts a person of great intellect. He was fluent in 8 languages including Greek and Hebrew. He became obsessed with translating the Bible into English from its original Greek and with making it available to the greatest as to the least so that everyone could read the Bible for themselves. When he read the Greek, Tyndale noticed that a number of errors had been made in the Latin translation – a translation that supported the theology of the the church and which served to keep the people in a state of fear for their immortal souls.

Tyndale’s enthusiasm for understanding the scriptures was to cost him his life, but every English translation since has relied heavily on his work. (In the King James’ Bible for example, more than 80% relies on Tyndale’s translation.

Translation is important. Only a small proportion of Christians are fluent in New Testament Greek and those who are not are entirely reliant on their work. The problem is that no matter how dispassionate the translator, translation always involves a certain amount of interpretation as the scholar tries to discern the intent of an author who is removed temporally, geographically, and culturally from their own time and place in history. Often there is no English word or phrase to exactly match the original and sometimes an interpretative decision has to be made by the translator. The situation is made worse by the fact that the original Greek was written in capital letters and without punctuation. This leaves it to the translator to decide where sentences begin and end and where commas, question marks and so on were intended.

Evidence of the difficulties faced by translators (and therefore by ourselves the readers) can be illustrated by today’s gospel. A reading of the Greek would suggest that this is the “Gospel’s most verbally abusive passage”. C. Clifton Black points out that three times Jesus or Peter tells the other to “shut up”. Unfortunately, perhaps to avoid offending our sensibilities, or to gloss over the obvious conflict, our translators have softened the language. Instead of “shut up”, the translators have used language like “sternly ordered”, and “rebuked”. Even then the force of the language is not entirely hidden. A reading of the gospel as a whole reveals that “rebuked” is the verb that is used to silence demons and to quell the gale. It is a word that is brought to bear when Jesus wants to assert his authority over the powers that oppose him.

What we have here then, is not a simple disagreement between Jesus and Peter. Nor is it merely a case of Peter’s misunderstanding. It is a battle between the forces of good and evil – Peter, as Jesus’ response indicates, representing Satan. Jesus, in this moment has to firmly and finally put down all opposition to his mission. He has to completely defy any attempts to make him (and his ministry) conform to any earthly expectations. He has to ensure that his disciples understand that to stand in his way, or to stand against him, is to do the work of Satan.

Both Jesus and Peter use confronting language for a confronting situation. For the first time, Peter is being forced to come to grips with who and what Jesus really is and what it means to follow him. Peter is being faced with the fact that Jesus’ mission will not end in triumph, but in apparent failure. It is not surprising that he reacts so strongly – Jesus’ negative thoughts must be dispelled! On the other hand, Jesus, who has already stood against the devil in the wilderness, knows his own strength and will not let even his closest friend dissuade him from his purpose.

Even in our translated versions of the gospel, this is a difficult passage. We do not expect such strong language from Jesus but perhaps now, more than ever, we need to hear Jesus’ rebuke of Peter. Society may be changing, but by and large the church still has a comfortable place within it. The cross has lost much of its offense. For many, following Jesus is as much about living “good lives” as it is about risking everything to confront the forces of evil that exist in the world – corruption, greed, selfishness etc. We are relatively content to go about our lives without facing the injustices that condemn others to poverty and despair. Today’s gospel challenges us to rethink what it means to follow Jesus.

Jesus’ rebuke of Peter is followed by his asking us his followers “to take up their cross and follow him”. Are we who claim to follow Jesus willing to risk our comfortable existence to do just that?

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You have been warned!

September 7, 2019

Pentecost 13 – 2019

Luke 14:25-35

Marian Free

In the name of God who ask nothing less than all we have to give. Amen.

Earlier this year a father and son went missing on Cradle Mountain. Grave fears were held for their safety as the weather had closed in and there had been a heavy snow fall. If you stay in a youth hostel anywhere in Tasmania you will be confronted by posters that warn you that the weather in that state is variable and can turn bleak without warning. It would be unwise, the warnings suggest, to set our on a walk unless you are adequately prepared. Even on a sunny, summer day there is no guarantee that it will not turn bitterly cold or even snow, or that visibility will not be seriously reduced. A wise tramper, even if only planning a day trip, will at the very least take a sleeping bag and more food and drink than needed. Better still, that hiker will also pack a tent so that if they are caught out, they will at least have shelter and warmth until the clouds lift or the snow stops falling. Fortunately the father and son duo were no novices. When they realised that conditions had changed they simply set up camp instead of taking the risk of trying to make it to the next shelter. They were found unscathed because they had been prepared for all eventualities.

Today’s gospel acts as a warning for those who set out believing that following Jesus is like a walk in the park. Like the posters in Tasmanian youth hostels, the gospel warns would-be disciples that the journey is not one to be undertaken lightly and should only be entered into if one understands the terrain and is prepared, not only for the journey, but for its possible end.

Jesus has ‘set his face towards Jerusalem’. The turn of phrase suggests a steely determination and an awareness of what awaits him there. The large crowds who follow him have no idea what lies ahead. They have presumably been attracted to Jesus by his healing miracles, his compassion or his teaching. Whatever their reason for following, Jesus needs to warn them that being a disciple is much more than basking in his reflected glory, taking comfort in his compassionate nature, reveling in his revolutionary teaching or rejoicing at his humiliation of the religious leaders.

From the moment that he ‘sets his face towards Jerusalem’, Jesus has made it absolutely clear to any who seek to follow him clear that becoming a disciple involves a radical re-orientation of their life. It is not something to be undertaken lightly because discipleship means giving up everything that matters – family, possessions and even life itself. Discipleship, Jesus insists, means putting God at the centre of their life and seeing everything else from that perspective.

This is not the first time that Luke’s Jesus has insisted that a follower give up their family, or at least make them second to him and it is not the first (and it will not be the last) time that he encourages the disciples to make life-changing decisions about their possessions. Not only must Jesus’ followers be prepared to relinquish everything that they hold dear, but, Jesus insists, that they should not even bother starting out on the journey if they are uncertain as to whether or not they can go the distance. There is no point in starting, he claims, if they are going to fall by the wayside or need rescuing simply because they have started out ill-prepared, unaware of the conditions or of the nature of the path that lies ahead. Once again, this is not a new theme for Jesus. When he first set out on this journey, Jesus demanded that “the dead bury the dead” and that one should not “turn back having their hand to the plough” and warned future disciples that he ‘had nowhere to lay his head.’

Indeed, throughout the gospel, Jesus tells his would-be followers that being a disciple is no guarantee that the path will be smooth or that they will be protected from hardship and grief. In fact, he suggests that the reality of discipleship may well be just the opposite. Being a disciple is as likely to lead to degradation and humiliation as it is to recognition, to apparent failure as it is to lead to success. Those who follow Jesus must be prepared to share Jesus’ fate. They must bear the consequences of following to the point of being willing to ‘take up their cross’ should that be their fate.

It is quite clear that the only way to truly follow Jesus is to relinquish our dependence on everything else – our identity, our self-interest, our need for self-preservation, our ambition, our pretense, our false conception of the world and our need for control. Most of us, I believe, make a faltering start on our journey. Despite Jesus’ demands and the warnings the gospels have preserved for us, few of us surrender everything all at once. Our lifetimes are a process of gradually letting go of all that stands between ourselves and God – possessions, friendships and family, achievements and so on.

We do know know the road ahead, but we cannot say that we haven’t been warned. Let it never be said that we did not know what we were getting into or what is required of us and let us hope that at the end we will not be found to be holding on to anything but will have given ourselves (heart, souls and body) entirely into the hands of God.

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No quick fix

February 13, 2016

                                                                       Lent 1 – 2016 – some thoughts                                                                                             Luke 4:1-15

                                                                                                                                                                  Marian Free

In the name of God who asks for all that we have so that God can give us all that we need. Amen.

Some time ago, I had surgery on my foot. As part of the healing process I was to keep off my foot for a fortnight and not drive for six weeks. It has to be said that even with lectures to prepare and movies to watch, two weeks stuck on a couch seemed like forever. Once the pain had diminished, it was tempting to move about to fill in the time in other ways, but in this instance I knew that a “quick” recovery meant doing what was required. So, bored and uncomfortable I stayed on the couch with my foot on a stool and moved about only when absolutely necessary.

It is tempting to cut corners, to avoid the hard yards that a good job requires. At first it might appear that it made no difference that we went back to work too soon, that we used an injured limb before the recommended time, that we didn’t properly prepare the timber before we painted, that we didn’t properly cream the butter and the sugar for our cake. In fact, there will be times that we don’t experience any ill consequences for our failure to do something properly. However, there will be times when the consequences of our failure to follow through are disastrous. A bad paint job will need redoing sooner rather than later, a cake that has not been properly stirred might be lumpy, but a limb that has not properly healed might cause us even worse problems later on, and a return to work when we have not fully recovered from an illness may mean that the infection returns – more virulent than before – and we lose even more time from work than had we been patient in the first place.

Here, at the beginning of his ministry, Jesus is offered a short cut, a way out of the difficult and painful course that lay before him. The tempter tells him that doesn’t have to be hungry. It would be easy enough for Jesus to turn stones into bread. As the Son of God Jesus he could simply enforce God’s rule, bend the wills of people to his own, there was no need to persuade and encourage. He didn’t have to endure the suffering and pain of the cross when he could simply call on the angels to save him.

Jesus has been driven into the wilderness to reflect on his call and on his role. The temptations are anything but theoretical. They reflect the very real choices that faced Jesus – to fully enter the human experience or to exert the power of his divinity, to impose his will or to draw people to his way of seeing things, to gain attention by being a miracle worker or by working beside people, to try to escape pain and suffering or to place his trust completely in God and believe that the cross would be worth it.

 

Forty days in the wilderness have taught Jesus that near enough would not be good enough and that easy solutions would not achieve the end goal. Jesus knew that people who were impressed by easy miracles would not stick around for the long haul, that loyalty that was forced would be no loyalty at all and that without the cross there would be no resurrection.

Jesus will be a very different sort of Christ from the one whom many expected. His leadership will be marked by service and his victory will look like defeat, but it will only be through his complete submission to God that Jesus will be able to restore the relationship between God and the people of God. So Jesus refuses to be drawn into the devil’s ruse, he resists temptation to take the easy way out and sets his mind to the task that is before him.

What is true for Jesus is true for us. Later in the gospel Jesus will ask the disciples: “Who do the crowds say that I am?” When Peter identifies him as the Christ, Jesus makes sure that the disciples know what this means telling them that he must suffer and be rejected and killed and that on the third day he will be raised. He goes on to say that those who follow him must set their minds to the same experience – figuratively if not literally. They must deny themselves and take up their cross daily. If they want to save their life, they must lose it.

Jesus’ life and death not only win our salvation, but they provide the model for our own spiritual lives. If we are to realise our full potential as children of God, we, like Jesus must be prepared to go the full distance, to put in the effort that is required, to give ourselves whole-heartedly and with conviction. In order to be formed into the image of Christ we must be prepared to stick with it,, to understand that short-term pain leads to long-term gain. We must try to see the big picture rather than getting caught up in the minutia of the every day. We must learn that near enough is simply not good enough.

Lent provides an opportunity for us to share Jesus’ wilderness experience, to ask ourselves once again, what it is that God wants of us. Lent allows us time and space to see how we are going, to ask ourselves whether we are content with the superficial or whether we are ready to explore the depths of our existence, to consider whether our focus is on the present or on eternity. Lent gives us space to ponder whether we trust God sufficiently to give ourselves completely to God or whether we are still holding something back, whether we understand that it is only by giving all that we have that we gain everything that we could ever want or need.

Lent forces us to ask whether we are just giving lip service to faith or whether we are really ready to allow God to be all in all.

How will you spend this Lent and will your practice equip you for the rest of your journey or will it simply fulfill the needs of the moment?

 

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