What's good about this news?

Christ Church, St. Joseph, La.

Do you think that I have come to bring peace to the earth? No, I tell you, but rather division! (Luke 12:49, NRSV)

Whoa, Jesus! Aren’t you the great peacemaker!

And what’s all this stuff about fathers against sons and daughters against mothers? Where are your “family values,” Jesus? Shouldn’t we stick with our families, regardless?

A few years ago I attended a workshop at Columbia Theological Seminary. One of our speakers that weekend was David Barnett who has written a book about the Gospel according to Mark. The title of the book is “What’s good about this news?” His point is that Mark’s Gospel has a kind of dark foreboding about it. It often seems that Mark is writing about bad news, not good news.

In other words, “Gospel” means “good news.” And we are fond of saying, “the good news of Jesus the Christ.” But if we read carefully what Jesus said—and did—throughout his earthly ministry, and don’t leave out the uncomfortable parts, and are completely honest with ourselves… we must acknowledge that the news he taught and acted… is often not so good… at least not by normal human standards.

Here’s the punch line of this sermon: The Gospel of Jesus the Christ is not an endorsement of nice, moral, upstanding middle class, family values.

In contrast, the Gospel of Jesus the Christ is the way of the cross. And the cross takes us, by necessity, through places we would rather not go.

The peace offered by Jesus the Christ through the cross is NOT the peace of “no conflict.” It’s not the peace of “aren’t we all one big happy family.” It’s not the peace of agreement on the hot-button issues of the day. It’s not the peace of military might! It’s not the peace of financial security.

Indeed, the peace offered by Jesus the Christ through the cross is pretty much the opposite of all those things. The peace of Jesus the Christ by way of the cross is the peace of having lost—or given up!—all of those things. It’s the peace... of having nothing left to lose.

I have heard preachers and teachers of the Christian faith say, “Jesus died so that we don’t have to.” Or, a variation, “Jesus died so that we can live.”

I completely disagree with the first. Consider the possibility that Jesus died to show us how! And that we too must die, not just once—the big kahuna at the end of physical life—but many times over throughout life.

The way of the cross is not just about physical death. It’s about how we live our lives. It’s about relaxing our death grip on our tidy middle class comforts and securities and following Jesus where he leads.

The second of those, “Jesus died so we can live,” indeed holds a kernel of truth… as long as we are clear about what it means to live in Christ. Too many Christians have fallen for the notion that “to live in Christ” means they are entitled to a comfortable, secure middle class lifestyle. That they have somehow “earned” it with their own cleverness, labor, morality and piety.

And along with that sense of having earned a lifestyle often comes a tendency to judge others. I earned my middle class lifestyle, therefore those who are poor must be less clever, less hard-working, less moral and pious than I. That’s a pretty common line of thinking.

Rather, to live in Christ is to let go of all that. It’s to recognize, as the Apostle Paul did, that all of that is rubbish.

The true “life in Christ” is knowing and accepting God’s unearned mercy, forgiveness and love for us just as we are. To live in Christ is to quit putting on airs, and to stand before God naked, vulnerable, stripped bare of pride and pretense. It’s to let go of being right, and being better than someone else. And it feels like dying.

To live in Christ is to recognize that we humans are all on equal footing in God’s eyes—equally sinners, equally loved.

You have heard me mention Fr. Richard Rohr, one of my favorite writers about the Christian faith. He recommends one humiliation a day. He says it takes on average one humiliation a day, one experience of being wrong, of discovering that you don’t have it all together, to keep a human being living in Christ.

At this point I want to be really clear that I am not against middle class lifestyles and values.  I love being middle class and I’ll fight to remain middle class!  Indeed, I am in the business of helping people into the middle class.

See, deacons in the Episcopal Church are expected to have a ministry in the world. Many choose ministries of mercy. They feed the hungry, give blankets and coats to the homeless, help deliver medical care to those who can’t afford it, visit the sick and dying, and so forth.

Those are good ministries and we need people to do them, both deacons and lay people. Deacons also should be the catalysts or agents who help lay people find their ministries in the world.

But a few deacons and lay people choose ministries of change. Mine is an organization called Northern & Central Louisiana Interfaith, and we don’t feed the poor. Rather, we ask questions like this: Why are there so many poor people? How can we help people who are poor move into the middle class and become self-sufficient? How do our systems need to change so that poverty levels in this country and state and community actually go down for a change? Where and how can we apply leverage to level the playing field?

And you know what? Those are controversial questions! Many people, many good Christians don’t want to discuss those questions. They don’t even want Interfaith, or anyone else, to ask those questions.

Many good people of all faiths are perfectly willing to do charity. They are quite okay with helping to feed the poor. But they are not much interested in change.

But the way of the cross is not just change, it’s transformation. Jesus became a peacemaker by first ripping the status quo to pieces. The Kingdom of God he preached and modeled is a reversal of everyday, dare I say middle class, human values and expectations.

Here’s the real punch line: The peace of the cross is the peace of letting go, of loosening our death grip on the people and things and ideologies that we think are what make life worthwhile. It's the peace of a thousand little deaths along the way, knowing that God is in the midst of it and with us every step of the way, and that ultimately, God-With-Us is quite enough. 

AMEN