Sermon: So it goes

This sermon was preached at St. Lydia's on Sunday, March 28.  The text is Matthew 26:31-35.  Read it here.

 

Once upon a time, there was a princess named Briar Rose.  There was a prophesy about this princess, that one day, she would prick her finger on a spindle and die.  Wishing to avoid this fate, her father, the king, ordered all the spinning wheels in the castle to be burned…

 

Once upon a time, there was a King named Oedipus.  There was a prophesy that this King would kill his father and marry his mother.  Wishing to avoid this fate, he fled Corinth and followed the road to Thebes…

 

Once upon a time, there was a man named Peter, who promised he would never betray his teacher…

 

 

It’s funny how we always seem to end up the very place we were trying to avoid.

And it’s funny how we seem to always end up doing the very things we promised ourselves we wouldn’t.

 

Fighter pilots call it “target fixation,” this strange phenomenon when our brain becomes so focused on an object or obstacle that we wish to avoid, that we run right into it.  Peter says he’ll never deny Jesus, and then he does just that.  And his failure has echoed through history, implicating all of us.  We all abandon Jesus, whether we want to or not.

 

I used to read these lines of Christ as a reprimand: Truly I tell you, this very night, before the cock crows, you will deny me three times. You will all become deserters because of me this night.  But now I read them as a prophesy: Once upon a time, there was a man named Peter, who promised he would never deny his teacher.  But there was a prophesy: for it is written, I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.

 

Jesus is not giving a warning, not chastising or reprimanding.  He’s simply telling his followers how all of this is going to unfold.  There’s no question mark:

 

You will deny me. 

You will abandon me.

You will crucify me.

 

Just as sure as Briar Rose pricks her finger on that spindle, and Oedipus meets and kills his father on the road to Thebes.

 

So it goes.

 

Author Kurt Vonnegut survived the bombing of Dresden in 1945.  His work, Slaughterhouse Five, was closely related to the experience of being held as a prisoner of war in an underground slaughter house as the city crumbled around him.  After the bombing, he and the other prisoners were forced to collect bodies and deposit them in mass graves.

 

Vonnegut was asked repeatedly through the years if he thought the bombing of Dresden, in which thousands of civilian lives were lost, should have been bombed.  He responded that Dresden had been bombed.  The question was how one behaved after that.

 

So it goes:

 

You will deny me.
You will abandon me.

You will crucify me.

 

Often, Christians get in the habit of approaching sin in a “let’s do better next time” sort of way.  As if, if we learn from each mistake, profit from each shortcoming, we’ll eventually “get it right.”  We’ll eventually be good enough to please God.  As if we can earn some kind of cosmic “A” on our eternal report cards.

 

Wrong.

 

God has no interest in us being good.

God has an interest in dying and rising.

 

God has in interest in the mess of the grave and the brilliance of the resurrection.

God has an interest in the love misplaced that leads to pain, and then to new birth, new life.

God has an interest in the broken places that are bound up and healed.

 

This story we tell, of Jesus’ death and resurrection -- it’s not a story to make us feel bad that we weren’t good enough to keep Jesus from dying on the cross.  It’s a story to allow us to remember that dying and rising is the very fabric of our existence.

 

You will deny me.

You will abandon me.

You will crucify me.

 

This is the substance of your very life, the material and matter you are made of.  That your soul is an intermingling of both darkness and light, and thank God we have this story to tell, that allows us to gaze into the depth of ourselves and recognize the darkness that resides there with the knowledge that new life is born out of the chaos and the ashes.

 

So it goes.

 

Truly I tell you, Christ says, this very night, you will deny me.

 

This night, and every night, in a thousand different ways, we deny him, the cycle of life and death spinning in on itself again and again, the holy drama enacted over and over again.

 

The question is not how to avoid it, because we can’t.

The question is now to live in light of it, to respond to it, in all its fullness.

 

 

We share our sermons at St. Lydia’s.  Please share a story from your experience that’s emerged from this text.

Comments

[Betsy Voelker]

We always read the Passion in place of a sermon on Palm Sunday. I told Todd a few weeks ago that I don't like reading it in church, specifically because as a group, we read aloud "Crucify him! Crucify him!" and it makes me so sad. I like to think that I wouldn't have been one of the people saying that 2000 years ago, but chances are good that I would have been. Either way, Todd reminded me that that's the way things were supposed to go, that Jesus had to die in order to be resurrected. But oh man, am I thankful that Easter comes on the heels of Good Friday.

[Emily Scott]

I love all this rich theological discussion you and Todd are having at home, Betsy! What a cool thing that you guys can do that together.

Good Friday and Easter do create this balance that we need -- but you're right -- you can't have one with out the other. Such is the state of humanity...