Sermon: His Cross, our Cross and Affirming Life

Sermon. 13 September 2015. St Michael and All Angels, Little Ilford.

Trinity 15 (Year B)

Mark 8.27-38

Well, here I go, prepare yourself: Happy New Year!

You may not know this, but this evening (at 7.05 pm, London time) the Jewish New Year begins. So happy 5776 Anno Mundi. That's 5776 from the traditional-mythical foundation of the world. New Year in Judaism, by the way, isn't a time for riotousness and partying, but for introspection, naming hopes but also making amends, building up to Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. Happy New Year!

I mention this not (I promise you) because Jewish-Christian relations is my special interest/passion/vocation (though it is), but rather because I've been drawn to reflect on that particularity as I've been living with today's gospel.

But first, a question: Is Christianity good?

Yes, an easy one, that; I wasn't really expecting a No. If we are here, we are likely to think that Christianity is or can be good.

But another question:

• Is Christianity good, as in 'good-for-you', like a medicine, or surgery, or Christmas sprouts?
• Or is Christianity good, as in pleasant, life-enhancing, something to relish, something fun?

Good for you, but often bitter – or good for you, good fun?

That's not such an easy question to answer [and indeed no answer is offered].

And here I am going to share with you, quite bluntly, how Jews and others often (really, very often) see Christianity (unless they've been exposed to quite a lot of Christian theology).

• They say: Christianity has a doctrine of original sin, that babies are born sinful. Judaism doesn't have that; one's soul is pure.
• They say: Christianity says that 'Christ died for our sins', apparently meaning that Gd requires a human sacrifice to forgive sin. Judaism not only doesn't have that, but actively resists it. The story of the sacrifice of Isaac is of course the story of Gd preventing the sacrifice of Isaac.
• They say: Christianity further demands that everyone else takes up their own cross. So more human sacrifice at least in symbolic form. (The cross is, remember, before it's a religious symbol or fashion accessory, and instrument for torturing to death.)
• They say: Christianity may thus be good in all kinds of ways, but is life-denying. It must be about somehow avoiding or leaving this world of earthly pleasures, for the sake of a spiritual realm (heaven/Gd). The fact that Christians have monks and nuns, who vow not to have sex and raise a family, is the final proof of this.

You see the argument? (I am not asking if you agree with it, just if you feel the force of it.) That Christianity must be good-for-you, as a bitter pill to make us better, not for this life, but for some other spiritual reality.

If you can't see it yet, let us look again at some of the things Jesus himself says in today's gospel:

'the Son of Man must undergo great suffering... and be killed...

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves 

and take up their cross and follow me...

those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.'

Why, brothers and sisters? Why this insistence on suffering, death, and even being killed?

Well, I am sorry. I've put to us one of the hardest questions people raise about Christianity - I'd say the hardest - and there is no way we can pull apart all of the issues involved. Christians, including the wisest and most holy, have often disagreed with each other over them. But I am going to use these apparently hard words from today's gospel as an invitation to give one account (partial and even personal though it be) of why Christianity can look from the outside like it is life-denying, life-hating - but isn't.

Let's begin with the easy claim – that Christian monks and nuns are all about denying the flesh/the body in the name of spirit. It wouldn't be hard to show, from the Rules of Life of monastic orders that this is wrong. That St Benedict, St Francis and so on thought that the religious life could help people connect better to their bodies (though that's not the best way to put it). That their vocation demonstrates that ourselves-as-our-bodies can be freed from cravings, compulsions and constant comforts. That the monastic life was about saying No to the usual ways we define ourselves (by partner, children, work, career, status), in order to say Yes to an adventure in prayer and being available to others – all in this life.

Then, almost as easy – the idea that original sin means we think babies are born sinners. In the plain meaning of these words, that is wrong. Christians know there's no way a baby is responsible for their actions, and therefore they have not sinned. No one is born an active sinner, or guilty. I'd say the doctrine of original sin is saying two things. First, our vocation in this life as human beings isn't just to muddle through (though muddling through is no bad thing). Our vocation is to be made fit for heaven, for eternity, for full intimacy with Gd. In other words, our vocation is to be holy.

Once we ask if we are holy, we realise the long journey we (most of us) have ahead of us. And so, second, to be up for that journey will require more of us than just trying harder, even than trying a lot, lot harder. Our thoughts, feelings, will and behaviour are in this or that way distorted, and we will need some divine help, divine healing. That need for healing is what Christians call (misleadingly perhaps) 'original sin'.

And so to the hard one: Why on earth do we teach that Christ died for our sins? It is easier to say what it cannot mean. It cannot mean that Gd the Son had to get himself killed to placate the rage of Gd the Father. A loving divine character negotiating with an angry divine character? That would mean – since these two clearly have different personalities – that there were (at least) two gods. And that all orthodox Christians have rejected throughout church history. Gd is one.

Second, it does not mean that Christ or Christians have to go looking for ways in which they can suffer. The point is the opposite - that the suffering is already there. It is about – it is only about, but it is fully about – not hiding away from the suffering that is there. That is why Jesus was a healer, even before he was a teacher. That is why we do indeed have the cross as our image. Remember the bronze serpent Moses held up in the wilderness to cure those bitten by serpents? They, already suffering, had to look at it directly. So it begins with the truth. It begins with truthfulness about the breadth and the depth of the suffering which we humans (and nature too, but typically we humans) inflict on one another.

So 'Christ died for our sins' in this way -

• to show us the depth of the mess we are in (we are all murderous, treacherous, indifferent to killing, fearful to act, in one way or another);
• the compassion we all deserve (we are all victims of others' coldheartedness in one way or another);
• the struggle we are all called to, to recognise, and take on, and so end the suffering of others, especially, frankly, those we like the least (those we like the most we will naturally help).

Many would say that this is just scratching the surface of the meaning of the cross. And indeed I too will add: the cross is very much more than a 'sermon illustration' telling us about the human condition, and how to live. It is the real-life, flesh-and-blood demonstration that Gd is with us in all of this. However murderous or treacherous or lost and threatened or struggling or fearful of the struggle we are, Gd is with us in this. It is in these things that we see Gd most clearly. More than in some religious sentiment or spiritual intimation - if these are detached from the grime and the crime of the cross and all human mistreatment of humans and all creatures.

And the good news is that the Christian saints have shown us that to be willing to see Gd most clearly in the grime and crime of the cross and human mistreatment does not lead to despair, apathy or fatalism, but to strength, renewal, and re-engagement with the world. So (while we mustn't be triumphalist about it), this was the energy which meant that Christians set up schools and hospitals in the distant past, hospices in the recent past, and (please Gd) refuge for refugees in the present.

And, any way, we all know (whether we are Jews, Christians or anything else) that a life spent desperately searching for our own happiness and pleasure doesn't work. So we all know that to find ourselves we have somehow to lose ourselves. Christian faith may be about the life which makes that most evident. It may be that to lose ourselves in Christ and his Body, the Church, for the sake of that which he loves, the World, is an adventure like no other. So - more than 'good-for-you' like Christmas sprouts. Something to relish.

Happy New Year. Amen.