| ||||
The temptation to confuse the ways of God with our ways, and our ways with the ways of God, is a perennial temptation. Like the EverReady Bunny, it just goes on and on. So there are in our day, as there have been throughout history, those who confuse the Good News of Jesus with a Gospel of power or prosperity, those who claim that following Jesus leads to worldly success, to happiness or contentment, to wealth or to power, and who would dare to lead people to Jesus with the false testimony of such a promise. Jesus' own disciples were not immune to this seduction. Even though in recent weeks in Mark's Gospel Jesus has told his disciples in no uncertain terms that he is heading to Jerusalem to be flogged and spit upon and mocked and put to death, James and John still think of following Jesus as a career, as a ladder to be climbed to fortune and fame, and they shamelessly ask Jesus for the top seats in his kingdom. And the other ten are much displeased with James and John for trying to elbow them out of the way. So once again, as he has done repeatedly along the road, Jesus tries to bring them all back to reality, back to what truly awaits those who follow him. "The high officials of the nations of this world exercise authority over their people, and lord it over them. Not so with you," Jesus tells them. "Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all. For the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." And Jesus tells his disciples that he can't guarantee anything along the road. He certainly can't guarantee any right- or left-hand seats in glory, because only the Father can grant that, and that, in fact, the only thing he is certain of is that God's promise is trustworthy. But as far as the rest of his own road in this life is concerned, he is walking a way of travail for the soul, a way of bruises and affliction, a way of sorrow and tears and death. "For the son of man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many." The word that Jesus gave his disciples on the road to Jerusalem must have cut them "more sharply than any two-edged sword. For the word that he brought - the Word that Jesus was and is - is "a living and active Word that pierces so deeply that it divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judging the thoughts and attitudes of the heart." And I can imagine how that word must have sent shivers down the spines of James and John that day. No wonder they were afraid to ask what he meant, as they considered what it must mean for their lives. Jesus sent shivers down another man's spine, too. And this man, this rich young man of Mark's Gospel, is the first of three other followers of Jesus I suggest we look at this morning. We don't know his name, although we met him last week. We do, however, know some things about him. We know that he was rich, very rich. Perhaps he was a business man, or a ship builder from Capernaum or Tyre or Caesarea Phillipi or one of the other cities Jesus had been traveling through, teaching and preaching and healing. We also know that he was a devout, God-fearing man, probably a churchgoer. He was a man who took seriously his obligations to his family and to the Temple and his community. Possibly this man had joined the crowds one day as Jesus and his disciples passed through his city. And like lots of people, like Jesus' inner circle of the Twelve, this man was hopeful. He was hopeful that even that very morning Jesus was leading God's people to God's promised kingdom. For Jesus did speak and act with an authority that was convincing, even compelling. So this man of means decided to follow along with Jesus for a while. But on the road, the days lengthened into weeks, and the weeks into months. And although Jesus continued to attract the man, he also puzzled him. Jesus' words had a bite to them, and as they traveled the man noticed that while there were often new faces in the crowds, others who had been following Jesus began to drop out and turn back. Perhaps they were as perplexed as he was about what appeared to be a lot of wandering around, a lot of crisscrossing back and forth across the country, and across the river and over the sea - until one day, the man realized that he was with Jesus all right, but now he was also very far south in the land of Judea, not far from Jerusalem, but far from home, very far from life as he had always known it. It must have been an exhausting trip. So we're not really surprised when on the day we're talking about, just last Sunday, the man approached Jesus in person and asked, "Good master, what must I do to inherit the kingdom of God?" All the days on the road, all the cold nights on the hard ground when there wasn't a bed to be had, all the apparently indefinite walking - all this was beginning to wear him down, and he was getting anxious about just where it was that Jesus was heading. And concerns about home - these, too, were beginning to trouble him. Was his business partner taking care of his affairs? Were his responsibilities at the synagogue being met by those he had left in charge? Had his servants repaired the roof on the house? How was his family? He still wanted to know more about this man Jesus, more about the kingdom of God and the new life Jesus was promising, but he was becoming impatient and he was anxious about home. So we're not surprised when we hear, as we did last week, that the man went up to Jesus and asked his question, "Good master, what must I do to inherit the kingdom of God?" But we are surprised, at least the man himself was surprised, by Jesus' answer. "Obey the commandments," said Jesus. And we are not surprised when the man says, "But Master, I've kept the commandments since I was a little boy!" But we are surprised, in fact, we are astonished and stunned, just as the Twelve themselves were astonished and stunned, at what happened next. For Jesus looked at the young man, Mark tells us, and he was filled with love for him, and he said, "Then there is only one thing you lack. Go sell what you have and give the money to the poor, and you will have riches in the kingdom of God." And we are not surprised at all that at this word from Jesus, "the man's face fell." Because we know, as this rich young man knew, that the Word of God is a living and active word, a word "that cuts more sharply than any two-edged sword, piercing so deeply that it divides soul and spirit, joints and marrow, judging our thoughts and attitudes of heart." Because we know, as Mark Twain knew, and as the rich young man of Mark's Gospel knew, and as the Twelve themselves knew, that it's not what we don't understand in the Bible that bothers us; it's what we understand all too well that bothers us. So the rich young man "went away with a heavy heart, for he was a man of great wealth." We do know the name of the second person whose story I offer for consideration this morning. Like the first person, he was a rich young man, a man of means and influence in his city and his country. And like the rich young man of Mark's Gospel, he met Jesus at an early age and began to follow Jesus along the road. This man was born exactly one hundred years ago, in Breslau, in Germany, in 1906. His family on his mother's side had some aristocratic blood, and for over four hundred years his family on both sides had given Germany a number of scholars and doctors and other professional people. And since this young man was quite bright - he was first attracted to music, then began to study theology - no one was surprised when he earned himself a position as lecturer in systematic theology at Berlin University when he was only twenty-four years old. Since, however, he was still too young to be ordained in the Lutheran Church in Germany, the young man spent his twenty-fourth year in study at Union Seminary in New York City, where he met one of the great theologians of the twentieth century, Reinhold Niebuhr, who said of Dietrich Bonhoeffer that he was "a brilliant and theologically sophisticated young man" who had every reason to look forward to a splendid academic career as a scholar. Upon returning to Germany the next year, in 1930, Bonhoeffer was ordained and accepted his appointment at the University of Berlin. But just three years later, in 1933, Dietrich came to know another man who asked him to follow him. Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany. And that changed Dietrich's life, because now Dietrich found himself in a squeeze. He found himself squeezed between Christ's call, to his Church and to Dietrich, to follow Jesus to Calvary outside Jerusalem and Hitler's call to all Germans to follow him and "make history without God" in Berlin. It was a painful squeeze, because Dietrich rightly understood that Hitler and National Socialism promised a tyranny of a few willful men, and that Christian faith and life are not possible without freedom. So even though he had plans for an academic life in Berlin, he gave them up, and as a pastor he joined the political opposition to Hitler, working relentlessly to strengthen the faith and resolve of the Church in Germany. He publicly denounced a political system "which corrupted and grossly misled a nation and made the 'Fuhrer' its idol and god." Predictably, he was expelled from his position at the university, he was prohibited from lecturing and teaching, and he was generally harassed and hounded by those in power in his own country, while he continued, as pastor of confessing churches and as the head of an underground seminary, to resist the fascism that mocked and threatened both the country of his birth and the Church of his faith. When, in 1939, war became certain, Dietrich's friends, both in Germany and America, feared for his life. They urged Dietrich to flee from Germany to safety. And he did. Once again he sailed to the United States, where he was offered refuge from Hitler and where attractive academic appointments were his for the asking. But no sooner had Dietrich set foot on American soil than he knew he could not stay. So he wrote to Niebuhr and explained. In language that reflected his own incarnational theology, he wrote, "I shall have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people." The Word of God is living and active. It is sharper than any two-edged sword. It pierced Dietrich so deeply that it "divided his soul and spirit, his joints and marrow, judging his thoughts and attitudes of heart," and led him back to Germany in the name of Christ. Bonhoeffer knew that, given his circumstances, given the life and the family and the people God had given him to serve, he must follow Jesus as Peter followed Jesus, right into the high priest's courtyard, right into the jurisdictions of real life, even, if necessary, right to the gallows. For under the circumstances it was only there, he knew, only there in power's courtyard with Peter, that he could find out who he was, just as it was in the high priest's courtyard that Peter found out who he was, because it is there in the courts of power and at the Cross, and later at the empty tomb, that we human beings come to know Jesus as Jesus is, just as it was there that Peter came to know Jesus as Jesus is. So Bonhoeffer repented. He repented of his decision to flee to safety in the United States. He turned around. He went back home, where he knew he would face the terrifying choice either of serving in the German army, which he could not in conscience do, or of being arrested and possibly executed. Bonhoeffer's was a decision driven by vocation rather than by career. The two calls are not the same. It was Christ and his Church, he knew - not the academy, and certainly not the Nazis - whose call was primary. And it was Christ who was calling him to return to Germany to do what he could in the time allowed him - to preach and teach as a witness to Christ, despite the fact that it was illegal for him to do so, in order to provide spine to the Church and to bolster the spiritual life of those opposed to Hitler. Dietrich knew, as he himself had written, that the grace of Christ, though free, is never cheap, and that "when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die." For the word Dietrich had heard from Jesus on the road to Jerusalem is that a Christian is called to face squarely and realistically his own particular circumstances and to act as a follower of Christ even if it means he must suffer and die, even if it means that, like Jesus himself, he must "give up his own life as a ransom." The time allowed him in Germany was five years. At first the Nazis did not press their insistence that Bonhoeffer serve in the army. But by 1943 Bonhoeffer's influence among the opposition was so strong that the Gestapo could no longer afford to ignore him, and in April of that year he was arrested. Then, for two more years, Bonhoeffer wrote and worked in one concentration camp after another and served as spiritual shepherd to other political prisoners, following a vocation of prison ministry that reaches back at least as far as St. Paul and the Acts of the Apostles. And, on April 9, 1945, when he was only thirty-nine years of age and in the concentration camp at Flossenburg, just a few days before its liberation by the Allies and at the specific order of Heinrich Himmler, the Nazis hanged Dietrich Bonhoeffer, disciple of Jesus, German patriot, a plague and affliction to Hitler, and now martyr of God's Church to the world and inheritor of the riches of the kingdom of heaven. The third person for consideration this morning is even more familiar than the other two. Like both the others, he is a person of means and influence in his city. Like the others he has plans for the future. This person, too, has met Jesus. And like the other two, he lives in a world that regularly calls him to choose between Jesus and other lords. Like the others, he knows that the way to eternal life is to follow Jesus on down the road, but his world, too - his business, his government, his church, his family and friends, his own plans - his world, too, is constantly offering him seductive alternatives. This third person, of course, is you. In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. |