Sermon

Mark 8:31-38

Are We Ashamed of Jesus?

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Mark 8:31-38

Are We Ashamed of Jesus?

The Rev. Dr. James D. Kegel

I do not like wearing my clerical collar much anymore—the dog collar, the turned around collar, on a black shirt. Unless they have a funeral service or many hospital visits, most of my colleagues do not wear one either. Recently my secretary and I were invited to the Newman Center, the Roman Catholic campus ministry for lunch. One of the priests was wearing his clerical collar but the other wore an Oregon sweatshirt. When I asked why he was not wearing his Roman collar, he said that he had outgrown all his shirts. Well, I understand that. Sometimes I wear my clergy shirt and collar and I get stares. Once at a local supermarket, and mind you this is Eugene, Oregon, one of the five least churched cities in the nation in either the first or second least-churched state in the union, I was insulted by another patron.  Once wearing it in Portland, walking hand-in-hand with my wife, a man derided me saying I must be an abuser of boys. Being clergy in clerical dress must mean to them that at best I am odd and at worst, I am despicable.  It is not only clergy but believers who must seem odd. Not long ago, I was praying before eating in a restaurant and the waiter came up and asked why I was staring at my plate. When I told him I was praying, he was taken aback. My wife went back to work one Ash Wednesday with an ash cross on her forehead and someone asked if she had been abused.  Another made the comment, “Oh, you’re one of those!”

Now I have been a pastor for more than thirty-five years, more like forth with seminary and internship. I wore the collar every day when I worked in Florida. So did the Catholics and Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and other Lutherans. It was a quick identifier that we were church out in the community. When I was in seminary in Minnesota, if we students wore our clerical collars to the local McDonalds, we got a free hamburger. I suppose it reinforced the idea that it was a family-friendly place. When I served in Chicago, people would open doors for me—I even got out of a speeding ticket. The traffic cop just said to me, “Slow it down, father.” I suppose there is a part of me that longs for the time when religion was privileged, when pretty much everyone had a church or synagogue—the country was Christian with a few Jews. Today the fastest growing segment of our population, when asked about religion, puts down, ” No preference;” “No religion;” or “Spiritual but not religious.”  In the 1950s and 1960s, it was “Protestant, Catholic of Jew.” Now it seems to be, “None of the above.”

And so I do not wear my clerical collar. I do not like being identified as one who is negative, scolding, a hypocrite, a predator or charlatan. Ministers give sermons about putting God first in our lives, living our faith in daily life—yet even ministers are wary of being identified as clergy in public. We want to fit in, we want to be liked, to be acceptable if not popular. In a congregation I served, a consultant has been working with the members to redefine mission. It is surprising that evangelism and outreach do not appear to be a priority; it is more important to those people to be inclusive, tolerant, accepting of other faith traditions and doing works of care in the community. A community garden is very important to them; telling others of Jesus Christ does not seem to be.

 

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In our Gospel lesson, Jesus talks about taking up a cross to follow him. This was not metaphorical language in Jesus’ day, but literal. Jesus would carry a cross through the streets of Jerusalem to the hill of Calvary. He would suffer and die as a criminal. Jesus’ disciples would take up real crosses and be crucified as well. We may speak of our crosses to bear, illness and aging, unemployment, family problems but they are metaphors. An insult at the grocery store is not the same as dying on Calvary. Yet there are Christians who are being persecuted now. Time magazine just ran an article on the difficulties faced by Christians in the Middle East some of whom are facing exorbitant taxation, conversion to Islam or even death for their faith. At one time Christians numbered one quarter of the population and now it is only 5% and it is conceivable that the Christians may soon be gone from the homelands of the faith. A recent National Geographic article on the apostles it documents how churches have been burned and there is widespread persecution. Even in the best of times, there was a “glass ceiling” for Christians in the Middle East. Men, women and children are following their Savior to suffering and death and I don’t want to wear a dog color in case someone makes a snide comment about me. Am I ashamed of my Savior?

I was doodling the other day at our pastors’ text study. I was sitting next to a youth and family director, Lois, who grew up in Iran, the daughter of a missionary to the Muslims. She is a steadfast believer. I do not know what prompted me to draw a picture of two books and label them, “B-I-B-L-E.” Then I drew two stick figures which I labeled “me.” In one of the drawings, I put the Bible over me and in the other the Bible under me.  Then I whispered to Lois that I much preferred putting myself over the Bible and picking and choosing the text that appealed to me. It must have been a subliminal suggestion that the pastor who was talking at the time was picking and choosing those passages and ideas that suited the pastor. We all want to do that—a letter to the editor in the Smithsonian magazine talked about cutting out of the Bible the parts that one does not and keeping the parts one does. I suppose it was a Thomas Jefferson sort of idea to expurgate the unappealing. Of course we cannot do that. We cannot Scripture-pick only the easy passages. We also have hard texts like today’s Gospel which call us to take up a cross and follow a crucified Lord.
“For whoever will be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man also will be ashamed of him, when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels” (Mark 8:38 WEB), Jesus said. Much of this verse is found only in Mark’s Gospel. Jesus says his generation is sinful and adulterous. He says if we are ashamed of him, then he will be ashamed of us. Judgment Day will come with the Son of Man appears with the holy angels to save and condemn. How are we judged? Whether or not we are ashamed of Jesus.

Kyle Pasewark taught in the religion department at Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota, when I knew him. He had received his PhD from Yale and is not practicing law in New York City. One of his books is Theology of Power and another The Emphatic Christian Center: Reforming American Political Practice. Pasewark became a Christian as an adult and was baptized at twenty-one. He had grown up in an upper-middle-class, well-educated, reasonably sophisticated, secular household. He was taught that people were basically good—and he said that he worked very hard as a young man to do everything right—excelling in school, hardworking, morally upright. But he said he did not feel good inside. He knew that his heart was hard and it was all a sham. Pasewark said what attracted him to Christianity was its doctrine of original sin. Christians recognized that people are not all that good but inside there is a core of hardness, selfishness, waywardness and sin. But the Christian Church also offered, through faith in Christ and baptism in his name, a way out—forgiveness of that sin and the promise of new life. Pasewark said, “People are not looking to be entertained but challenged. People are looking to confess Christ as their Lord, Christ who reached out to the poor, the lonely, the rejected, women, foreigners, outcasts, sinners—all human beings, even to suffering and death on a cross.”

The Menninger Foundation undertook a study that suggested the average American was looking for three things: one, a sense of community, belonging. In the Christian Church we belong to Christ and are brothers and sisters who belong to each other. Two, people are looking for substance, something definitive to hold on to, to believe. The earliest confession of faith was simply, “Jesus is Lord.” That is not so simple because it says Jesus bears the title given by Jews to Almighty God, “Adonai,” Lord. It means that because Jesus is Lord, it is not Caesar or self. Christians are Jesus’ people first and foremost even if it leads to the cross. Third, people are looking for guidance in life. I am not so sure Christianity is offering what it once did in the sense of how to live one’s life to the fullest, how to have a happy marriage and family, productive work life, how to deal with life’s stresses, how to cope with illness and loss. But we have a whole Bible and a thousands-of-years long tradition that can guide us. We are not alone in the universe and we do not have to figure everything out for ourselves. People are looking for community, something to believe in and some guidance for daily living. This may be an adulterous and sinful generation and every generation is that. We fall short of God’s intention. We live for ourselves and not others. We put ourselves above the Bible and pick that parts that please us. But we have Jesus calling us to come and follow, warning us what it means to take up a cross. We see Jesus dying on a cross for us and offering us to come find meaning and purpose, hope and life. We follow him to suffering and death and then to life and everlasting life.

I hope I am not ashamed of the Gospel—even if others do not always approve of me. I hope I am not ashamed of Jesus. I hope he is not ashamed of me. Amen.

Scripture quotations are from the World English Bible.

Copyright 2014, James D. Kegel.  Used by permission