September 13, 2009
(Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 19)

(From The Lectionary Page)

Losing One’s Life to Save It

Photo of The Rev. Joe Behen by The Rev. Joe Behen, Clergy Assistant

Have you ever found yourself in a situation in which how you look at things, your perspective, keeps you from the truth?  Rabbi Edwin Friedman tells the story of a boy named Billy who spent several years drawing pictures of injured, bloody, often dismembered people.  His frightened parents took him to see a psychiatrist who was also alarmed.  The boy didn’t seem overly sad, and there was no visible sign of underlying anger.  It could safely be assumed, however, that the goal was to find the secret, perhaps subconscious anger behind this disturbing artwork.  The boy responded to the doctor’s questions with relative disinterest until he was asked why he might be angry at his parents.  “Angry?’ said Billy.  ‘Why should I be angry?  My parents are so nice to me.  The only thing that would make me angry,’ said Billy, ‘is if they would not let me be what I want to be when I grow up.’  ‘And what is that?’ asked the doctor anxiously.  ‘A doctor!’ said Billy.[1]

In today’s Gospel, Peter has his mind set on seeing things from his own perspective.  He imagines himself to be taking perhaps a healthier or more practical look at things on Jesus’ behalf – offering Jesus a new view, one that might change Jesus’ mind.  Jesus’ words do not fit into Peter’s understanding, and the outcome of Jesus’ perspective seems to Peter like nothing but trouble.  So Peter tries to dismiss Jesus’ view and to redirect him to some safer options.

For Jesus to save his earthly life, his actions must be re-oriented somewhat toward that goal.  In other words, he would have had to tone down his message.  He would have to say things in a way that is less likely to offend those in power. You can almost imagine the argument for such an agenda.  Between the lines you can hear Peter telling Jesus, “If you die, then all we’ve been working for will come to nothing.  You know, if you go easier on the Pharisees then you can minister to people into a ripe old age.  After all, it’s the cause we’re working for, right?”  It’s a compelling argument.  We all use reasoning like it every day of our lives.  But we have to know that this argument is designed to give us increased control of things.  It re-directs our actions toward an outcome more of our own choosing, and less of God’s choosing.

In response to Peter, Jesus effectively informs the disciples that he is offering them God’s perspective, if they will only choose to listen.  “You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”   In telling his followers that the visible product of his ministry would be his own death and resurrection, he is teaching them that his work and all that goes with it, will accomplish something that God sees, but that they do not.  Today’s gospel is about God’s perspective, what God finds important in life.

“Those who are ashamed of me, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed.”  This comment of Jesus, like much else in this passage, refers to the shameful end that awaits Jesus.  But his message to his followers is this: it looks to the world like a disgraceful defeat.  But it looks like victory to God, quite simply because it is truth lived out in all it’s fullness.  It is who God is, lived out in the world.  God’s values, we learn, turn common human values on end. 

Following Jesus creates in us a kind of flip-flopping of what we find important.  And it is all about identity.  Who we are means everything.  If we know ourselves first and foremost to people who love God and love others, to whatever end, then our actions more closely serve God’s purpose, not our own.  We begin to see the world more closely as God sees it.  Following produces seeing.

Likewise, the seemingly useless things we do to honor God mean more than we can know.  We can easily convince ourselves that when an action does not produce measureable results, it doesn’t matter much.  I wonder if that’s the line of argument that enables us so often, to postpone our time of prayer for another day.  By its very nature, prayer is not primarily about achieving results.  It is about awareness of God, and of one’s self in God’s presence.  Making this awareness our pattern of life is the beginning of discipleship.  It enables us to see all of life as being rich with God’s presence. 

What Jesus teaches today is something that we will spend a life-time learning.  In the apocryphal book called, The Acts of Peter, Peter’s own death is recounted in such a way to make this very point yet again.  In this story, Peter’s companions are with him in Rome when a persecution against Christians begins.  His companions tell him to flee, because God will be able to do so much more through him if he lives.  On the road safely outside of Rome, Peter sees Jesus traveling in the direction of Rome.  Alarmed, he asks, “Where are you going?”  Jesus responds that he is going to be crucified yet again.  The text goes on to say that Peter then “came to himself,” and returned to Rome where his was then martyred.  Peter quite literally denied himself.  He denied the opportunity to blend his own purpose with God’s.  And the end of that decision made everything look very different.

Denying one’s self might mean for us stepping outside of our own perspective, a view from which self-survival and self-comfort are the goals.  Look rather to care for others and for God’s creation as God cares for them.  Doing this is never easy, but in doing so we catch brief, faint glimpses of God’s perspective, and by making it our habit, we are changed.

A few months ago I saw a brief newspaper article about a cab driver in the Philippines who earns about $5 a day, turning in $17,000 dollars in cash, that had accidentally been left in his cab.  It was a small, very brief aside in that day’s paper.  When reporters learned that Iluminado Boc struggled to make ends meet, they asked him why he didn’t keep the cash.  His response was simply, “Because it is not mine.”[2]  I actually find it more interesting to think about what preceded this day in Mr. Boc’s life.    What does he believe, and what is important to him?  I want to know about a life that produced a person who sees life in such a way that keeping this cash for himself was not in line with life’s goals?  More importantly, why was this not part of the story?  Apart from Mr. Boc’s life with its struggles and values, it just sounds strange, so that is how it is reported.  Is it perhaps because it is so easy to de-value all the little, ordinary things that produce an extraordinary life?[3]  Someone said last week of Walter Cronkite that he wasn’t interested in headlines, but he said that when he found good stories and told told them well, headlines sometimes happened. 

Of the story of Billy and his misread interests, Rabi Freidman concluded that “What we see outside of us is always connected to what is happening inside of us.”  I believe that this might say something about Mr Boc as well.  “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”  And like Peter in Rome, we to have to learn this over and over again.  You might even say that it not learned at all, but rather it is lived – lived until it is simply who we are, and how we see.

[1] Friedman, Edwin H.  Friedman’s Fables (New York: The Guilford Press, 1990) p. 39 - 46
[2] The conversation on the following news site after the short article was so misguided that I realized how easily we can mis-read almost anything:    http://information-hub.ofw-connect.com/OFW_Articles/Iluminado_Boc_honest_driver ; accessed on 8 Sept, 2009
[3] http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=63407 ; accessed on 8 September 2009