Good News for those who flunk the test
Palm Sunday - March 16, 2008
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Please note: The following sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him. |
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Just last month I was working with three of our kids in preparation for service as acolytes. They were sort of paying attention...they're pre-teen boys after all... until I said, “Oh yes, there will be a test.” Then the anxiety oozed out all over the place. I could see them getting ready for all of the typical questions: Does spelling count? How long is it, etc., so I said, “This will not be a written test at all. The test is life: Can you do the things that are needed when you serve as an acolyte? Do you know how to use the vocabulary words, not just spell them? If I say 'Go to the chapel and move the processional torches to the narthex and light them,' can you do that? If I turn to you suddenly during Holy Communion and say 'To the sacristy, please, and fetch me two purificators.' Can you do that? When I need things such as these, I don't have time to explain; the acolyte or assisting ministers need to know where to go and what to do, so that the proclamation of the Gospel continues smoothly, and no one else needs to realize that we had a little problem to solve.” (In case you are wondering, their first little quiz turned out just fine.) The test is life; can you live up to the expectations?
The test of life came to a crisis moment that Thursday night for Peter. “Who do you say that I am?” Jesus had asked him back in the conversational class back in Caesarea Phillipi. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God,” Peter had blurted out, certainly not knowing all the implications of what he was saying. “You are the Christ,” he says, and in the next breath he and the other disciples are arguing about who gets first place in the new kingdom that Jesus is going to set up. “Get behind me, Satan,” Jesus roughly responds to Peter. “Get behind me, because you do not yet understand anything about what you have been saying. And that was just in the confines of conversation directly with Jesus. They couldn't get the values straight, they didn't understand their true position under the living God. They weren't ready for life yet, at all.
Oh, yes, they have some hints here and there. They have some flashes of insight, but the biggest things of all are still a mystery to them.
They don't have the luxury of a long apprenticeship; the test of life crowds hard upon them. Jesus tells them repeatedly about his impending death, and they struggle to comprehend what it means. But after supper on that Thursday night when they went out to the garden to pray, things began to happen very quickly. Their apprenticeship is over and the test of life is underway. And all their brave words turn to dry whispers as Jesus is arrested and marched from here to there, mistreated, abused, with no one to speak up for him. They all fall away, run away, hide in the shadows, and listen for what might happen next. Even Peter, brave Peter, brash Peter who blurted out the truth at Caearea Phillipi...he is undone by a simple serving girl: “Aren't you one of his followers?” she asks. “Yes, I'm sure of it. One cannot mistake that country bumpkin accent.” “No, I do not know the man,” Peter rebuffs her, with an oath. He wasn't being tortured by the Roman soldiers, merely pressed in conversation by a simple serving girl...and Peter flunks the test.
Oh, we can't be too hard on Peter, because his failure is very much like our own. Real, everyday life is the test for us as well. We have spoken and practiced here, inside this building, about how one speaks Gospel and about how one should treat another. Then we go out those doors, and the researchers who study these things say that they have a hard time distinguishing a difference in behavior between those who claim to be followers of Christ and those who scoff at him. Plainly said, we're flunking the test.
Whenever grocery shopping or a hundred other things are more important that gathering with the congregation in worship on a Sunday morning, such a person is bearing a false witness without saying a word. An F on that test.
Whenever the opportunity arises to protest the language of curses and vainly mis-using the name of God, and we keep quiet, we have flunked that test.
On those rare but important occasions when a conversation with a friend or neighbor turns to deep things, and in responding to a question we avoid saying that since we belong to Jesus, when we're trying to figure out a deep problem we listen to the directions that Jesus gives... we've flunked the test again.
When....oh, I don't need to go on, because we are painfully aware of the failures, when, as one of our prayers gently says, “we have failed to commend the faith that is in us”. And Peter wept bitterly.
That is where the story of this day, and our story, lead us...to tears, separation, and death.
But God is not done yet. Jesus' words will yet be shown to be truth in the light of Easter morning. Nor is God yet done with Peter: this one who got an F in his conversation with a serving girl, will be the one beckoned by the risen Lord Jesus at the seashore, and commissioned yet again: “Tend my sheep.”
Failure not only forgiven, but transformed. This is our hope, our prayer on this day.
We, the ones who wave palms gladly, are the ones who deny that we know anything about Jesus, but we are also the ones who have been called into the covenant of God's promise in Holy Baptism, forgiven, redirected, and with transformation of our life and being now begun. Our failures along the way do need to be acknowledged, but they are not the end of the story, but only detours. The song we sing next Sunday is really the song for every day since that first Passion and Resurrection day: This is the day that the Lord has made; let us be glad and rejoice in it.
Thank you, Lord Jesus --for forgiveness and transformation, --for covenant promise in Baptism, --for encouragement in Communion, --for showing us the way through death to life, by means of your passion and resurrection. --for Good News for those who flunk the test. What language shall I borrow To thank thee, dearest [Lord Jesus]? Amen. LBW#117.3
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