I remember watching the Disney cartoon version of Washington
Irving’s Legend of Sleepy Hollow
And the scene when Ichabod, the hapless schoolteacher is
riding on the road out of town
And hears terrifying noises that make him imagine all sorts
of calamity and then he realizes it’s just the frogs, or the cattails, or some
other benign reality.
Fear has a way of twisting the way that we hear and see.
I think of the sounds I hear in the middle of the night when
I can’t sleep and am awake in that fourth watch anxiety.
Or the drive home on a dark night and something makes my
heart jump within me and as I get closer I realize it’s just a mailbox.
We have a self-protective instinct – that’s the reason we
fear. It’s part of our humanness; it’s built into our biology. And we need this; it is a very adaptive
instinct. We need fear to learn to keep away from fire and countless other
dangers. But it quite often malfunctions
–
Part of being human is being vulnerable. And another part of being human is dealing
with that vulnerability.
Peter was listening to Jesus talk about how the Son of Man
would be publicly humiliated, would suffer and die and rise again after three
days.
And something deep with in Peter got really defensive and
thought “no, no. This is ridiculous and
definitely not the kind of thing Jesus should be saying.” I imagine Peter not only thinking “this is
not what a Messiah is supposed to do.” But also on a more personal level,
feeling ashamed of Jesus for talking like that, for admitting weakness.
Perhaps Peter was thinking that he was becoming called weak by association with Jesus.
Perhaps Peter wanted Jesus to only show strength and to only
talk about progress and victory of the kingdom of God.
Whatever he was thinking, he reacts.
We read that “Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.”
Here in a nutshell we have the cultural dynamic of shame.
It is feeling primarily – but it leads us from that feeling
to action.
We feel ashamed and so we shame others.
But Jesus does not submit to Peter’s shaming.
He refuses Peter’s one-sided story of human reality.
He says that Peter’s mind is on human and not divine things.
And Jesus goes on to teach them in really difficult sayings,
profound truths about what it means to be human.
He says if we are to come after him, we must deny ourselves,
take up a cross, and follow him.
These words have been abused. And I’ve sometime found it difficult to read
them.
And not only because a part of me is very much like Peter
and wants to rebuke Jesus for suggesting such a ridiculous course of
action. But also because I have heard
these words used against very vulnerable and weak individuals by those who are
powerful.
I wish more people realized how healing verses can so easily
become destructive and harmful when wielded in unhealthy power dynamics.
We need to always take up the habit of “reading the Bible
again for the first time” because there are so many life-giving stories and
teachings that have been used for the opposite purposes.
And so we take up these difficult teachings again, and we
ask:
What is the self that must be denied? Is it the created,
beloved self that God longs to free and save?
Or is it. The hardened, closed up self that has responded to
the vulnerabilities of life by shame, fear and refusal?
I’m reminded of this quote from C. S. Lewis’s Four Loves:
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your
heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it
intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round
with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in
the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark,
motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become
unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
There is a self, trained and encouraged by socialization and
experience, which closes itself up and narrowly focuses on its own survival and
security and only broadens its gaze to others as means to that survival.
But Jesus offers another way.
“…Those who want to save their life will lose it, and those
who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For
what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life?”
When we as a community allow one another to be open and
honest about our lives and our experiences.
Something like what goes on in Joys and Concerns – and extended into
Coffee Hour and phone calls and visits. When
we share in our loves and our fears, we become vulnerable with one another –
and far from making us weak – it builds in us courage and honest perspective. In other words a more sustainable strength.
Courage is not the absence of fear, it’s the showing up, the
stepping out, trusting that the God who is the source of our life, and whose
very being is love will sustain us through all of life’s difficulties.
Courage is denying, saying no to that part of ourselves that
sees vulnerability and weakness is unequivocally bad and to be avoided. And courage is affirming the selves that God
created, and walking forth willing to venture our love and our concern for
others while remaining out of control.
Courage is founding ourselves in that which is beyond
ourselves, the God who knows every hair on our head even as God knows each and
every weathered and eroded particle of rock we call sand.
Courage is losing the closed up and confined heart, in order
to save the open, loving, and trusting heart – even though we know that it is love
that in turn makes loss a heart-wrenching experience.
We gain hope when we realize that there is life on the other
side of hardship.
Resurrection beyond crucifixion.
Courage sees that larger picture hope, and refuses the fear-logic
that would keep us locked up.
When we release our hold on our existence, and trust
ourselves to God and to the love of other vulnerable human beings, we find a
deeper joy and freedom, almost as if it is the life we were made to live.
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