Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 13, 2009
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Sermon for September 13, 2009

Pastor Sara Kay Olson-Smith

Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Texts: Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 116:1-9; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38

Grace to you and peace, from God our Creator and from Christ Jesus whose cross carries us.

Jesus said to the crowd, along with his disciples, “If you want to follow me, deny yourselves, take up your cross and follow me. If you want to save your life, you’ll lose it. If you lose it – for my sake and for the sake of the gospel – you'll save it.”

These words call us to difficult discipleship, to live in the reality of costly grace and the high expectations that God has for us in our lives of following Jesus. These words name the difficult and faithful decision and journey that we, here at St. Peter’s, have been living through these past months. In June, the congregation made the hard decision to end our ministry in this place. After months for reflection and prayer, conversation and analysis of the many options, it was decided that the best option, given all the realities that we faced, would be to end this ministry here. This was a decision not faced lightly or happily, but it was, I believe, faced faithfully and courageously.

This community, in making this decision, heard these words of Jesus and dared to follow. For 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. It would have been easy, dear friends, to have done whatever it took to work for the survival of this congregation, this building, this fellowship of believers. It would have been easy to deny the faithful ministry, outreach and service that has defined this congregation for over a century, to just close up and care for ourselves. It would have been easy to have cut back completely and just hung out until we just sort faded until oblivion. But instead, this community took the daring and faithful path to follow the cross, losing for the sake of Jesus, and for the gospel.

You, faithfully, chose to complete the ministry of this place when you could still look after one another and care for each other, when you still had the energy and just enough people working on committees and with one another to make faithful decisions and carry them out. You chose to complete this ministry in a way that makes each of us part of a new future. You chose to complete this ministry when you still had assets that could be used to further God’s kingdom, to give away so much that will be used for God’s mission in the world, faithfully continuing the heritage of this place . You chose to complete this ministry in a way that proclaims the good news of Jesus that we know our community and our church needs to hear – that through death and loss comes life, and that loss and death does not stop God from working, nor does it keep God’s people from being faithful.

I say this because this has been your witness to me in these past months, in your courageous journey through this process. But it has not been easy, and it will not be easy in these coming weeks. Peter, our namesake, knew the cost of loss and death and feared it, rebuking Jesus when he dared to mention it. This is not an easy journey. There is a lot we are losing. And we all know that loss and grief are not easy companions.

There is a lot which we are losing. The most obvious of course, is this building, which holds so much for us. These walls, furnishings, textiles, windows and floors tell stories. They hold our memories, history and identity. It is hard to trust that those stories and those memories will continue even beyond this building. This building, and this community hold for us the memories and connection to our own stories and to our loved ones – our family and friends who once enlivened this place and the ministry here. We are losing this community, too, at least in the shape it is in now, the people who are our church family, who we have lived with and argued with, ate and laughed with, served and loved with. We will be losing this place which is familiar and comfortable and home. There is a lot which will be lost.

As we face this loss, each of us will deal with it differently. Some will just sort of disappear, to face the struggle on their own or in refusal to face it, or to try to hold on to the things they wish to save. Others will be angry, others denying, others trying to do what we can to change it. Others will face it with a distant rationality and others with emotional depth. All of us will get a little bit strange in these coming weeks, a bit touchy or extra passionate, short or sensitive or cranky. This is just what it means to grieve and live in the midst of loss.

As we live together in these coming weeks, as we work together making hard decisions, decisions which are hard enough but complicated by their emotional impact and all of our grief combined, the words we hear from James will help us. James calls us to be careful with our tongue, with our speech, to have it bridled and ruddered and not unleashed like a forest fire. As we live and work together in these coming weeks, it is my prayer that we listen with intention and be particularly careful how we speak, that we may bless instead of curse those around us who are made in God’s likeness, that we might care for one another and hold one another with tender respect.

As we live together, in love and in faithfulness, in all of our messiness, we follow Jesus, knowing that Jesus is our hope who will not fail us. We are losing a lot, but we are not losing Jesus. We are not losing the impact this place had on the thousands of people who have been touched by it. We are not losing the love which we have known here. We are not losing Jesus, but we, through this faithful journey, are experiencing Jesus and his life through death. We are proclaiming Jesus who was raised from the dead, carrying all things, even hard and seemingly shameful loss, into new life.

Christ brings life out of death, not by our avoiding the hard stuff, the loss and the grief, but by our looking at those tough realities, by naming the struggle and the hope, by facing the loss and the future, by embracing and holding and following the cross which will bring us to newness of life. Jesus said, “Deny yourself. Take up your cross and follow me. Take up the cross, raise it up, lift high the cross.”

He doesn’t say, deny yourself and be weighed down so heavily that the cross will prohibit all movement and paralyze you because it is so heavy and terrible and awful and the worst thing ever. No, Jesus says, “Take it up, lift it up,” or perhaps, “Resurrect your cross.” With Easter eyes, we can read this text and see resurrection smack in the middle of Jesus’ arresting call to discipleship. “Resurrect your cross.” In other words, lift up your cross in the hope of resurrection. Raise up your cross, trusting in the promise of Easter! This is no dour, gloomy invitation Jesus extends, walking a way of self-centered suffering. Instead, take it up, this cross which is our duty and our delight. Jesus invites us to trust that he suffered on a cross to suffer with us, even in the midst of all our loss. Jesus invites us to trust that his cross broke the power our crosses have over us, to trust that his cross leads us beyond our crosses to the life of the Crucified and Resurrected One.

In the end, dear people, as we move together through these coming weeks, in sorrow and in hope, we move through it carrying our crosses, lifting them up because they will bring us through these hard times into a new future. Our hope and trust and life is not that we are so strong and faithful in our cross carrying, but rather our hope is that Jesus took up his cross and that God raised up Jesus. It is in this hope that we receive the strength to lift what is to heavy for us to bear, to face whatever loss which seems to be so great, to keep moving when we are so weary, to do this hard work and bear with one another our burdens in listening ear and careful speech.

As it has been for decades in this place and will be for us in the coming weeks, we can lift high our cross, only because of Christ. What is hard and painful does not disappear, but it loses its power to smother the light. We lift high our cross, or perhaps it lifts us, carries us through this hard work and these hard decision. We are raised by the cross, knowing that loss will be, somehow, sometime, turned to gain and that death is not death but new life. Ends are not ends by will be new beginnings. This is our hope, this is our trust, this is the future we can count on. But for now, as we weep and struggle, laugh and remember, and listen to and love one another, we know that in this sorrow, Jesus is with us, and the cross will carry us through.

If you haven’t noticed, one of our stained glass windows is just a little bit broken. Something broke in from the outside, probably during one of those big storms we had over the summer. (And don't worry, we are working to get it repaired). This cross of ours has a crack in it, a little shatter of light breaking though the brown of the crossbeam. For us, in this place, where we see in these hard days only the endings and sorrow of Good Friday and the cross, that little shattered hole reminds us that the cross is not the end, but that light breaks through. The cross is not the end of the story; Easter is! Through the powerful life and love of Jesus, made known on the cross and in his resurrection, we carry the cross, lift it high, because it leads us through the loss and darkness with hope and promise. Christ makes our loss gain. Christ makes our endings beginnings. Christ makes our death life. Christ is our hope. Because of him, we lift high our cross in hope, or perhaps we should say, the cross of Christ lifts us up, the cross of Christ has taken us up, the cross of Christ carries us, carries us through all we face, into a new future.

Thanks be to God.
Amen