March 4, 2012

Clay Nelson

Lent 2     Mark 8:27-38

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Some weeks, sermons just write themselves and some weeks, as I struggle to find the right words, I wonder if this will be the Sunday I come empty-handed into the pulpit. This week it was the latter.

Today’s Gospel reading is one I find particularly difficult. Being told we must take up our cross seems to lead to the contradictory notion that suffering is good. To be happy I must be miserable. And then there is that equally paradoxical idea that we must lose our life to gain it. 

A paradox is a logical statement that leads to a contradiction or to a situation that defies logic and reason. To me trying to resolve them can be mind numbing, but theologian and philosopher Søren Kierkegaard defended them: “one must not think ill of the paradox, for the paradox is the passion of thought, and the thinker without the paradox is like the lover without passion: a mediocre fellow.” He described the ultimate paradox as being “to want to discover something that thought itself cannot think.” [i]

In the view of the early church Jesus was a walking paradox. He is described as both master and servant, shepherd and lamb, and king of kings and lord of lords yet born in a stable. Later the church extrapolated these ideas from the Gospels declaring him paradoxically both human and divine in the creeds. My logical mind wants to make sense of these contradictions by showing one or the other of the paired statements to be false, but I remain frustrated. They are faith statements, so they remain beyond reason and logic. Apparently, Kierkegaard is right. I can’t think my way out this. But as he also says I must give it a go for it is my passion.

My biggest handicap in thinking about Jesus and his paradoxical teachings is that my mind and worldview have been shaped by western civilisation. I read the Gospels through that lens. But Cynthia Bourgeault in her book The Wisdom Jesus argues that he was an eastern mystic. He is a walking “one hand clapping.” If she is right I see myself as independent, separate and unique. Jesus would have seen himself as one with the cosmos. I believe life is service to whatever I find most important, such as God, country, money, career; family. Jesus would have viewed life as a journey towards eternal realities that are beyond the realities that surround us. He called it the Kingdom of Heaven. I have a linear view of the universe where everything has its beginning and end. Jesus would have had a circular view of the universe, specifically that all events in cosmic history repeat themselves in an endless cycle. (My western mind can’t even begin to understand what that one means.) Continuing, I am outer-world dependent. Jesus would have been inner-world dependent. I am dedicated to goals such as happiness, success; salvation. Jesus would have been dedicated to self-liberation from his false or illusory self. He sought his true or authentic self, in other words: enlightenment.

If Bourgeault is correct I need to seek to understand Jesus’ message of suffering through his eastern eyes. It might be helpful then to have an understanding how a Buddhist views suffering. Buddhism views suffering as the consequence of having expectations. Essentially, whether we have an eastern or a western mind set we have a tendency to be attached to certain results. We desire and crave certain things. Desire is natural. It is our motivator to do. There is no being without doing. But desire deteriorates into craving when our expectations are not met. Craving leads to suffering.

Since Jesus was as human as we are, he struggled with this as much as we do. He knew that our false self thinks survival is all that matters. The false self thinks that all life revolves around it. The false self is an omelet of raw ego mixed up with many distortions, false goals, pride, fear, desperation, and a greedy exploitation of all things and the people that are around us. From family, school, community and church come influences, which can conspire with our ego to twist and shape us in ways that will readily appeal to our ever-ready selfishness. This false self is insatiable. It is promised many rewards by the world and it seeks as many as it can get. It has an amazing capacity to believe in them even though they never deliver the happiness they promise.

When Peter tried to challenge Jesus’ prediction that he would suffer and die, Jesus rebuked him for appealing to his false self. Peter expected Jesus to overthrow the Romans. That was what he and the Jewish people expected of a Messiah. Jesus knew that going along with that expectation would derail him and them from our true task: to find our authentic selves. Being like us, he had to have been tempted by Peter’s easier course. His anger suggests how painful the struggle had been for him. His outburst reveals the pain he felt about suffering and dying for others. To be what Peter and the crowds who followed him expected would have spared him but left him empty. He would have forsaken his authentic self and the serenity it offered. He would have lost awareness of the flickering light of the divine within him.

Jesus wasn’t a psycho. He didn’t think suffering and dying were desirable. He just knew it came with the territory. The false world represented by religious and political powers would not stand by quietly as he challenged them with a new way of being. He knew they believed in pre-emptive action against all possible threats. Roman crosses were a regular sight, testimony to their overlords’ cruelty. It would not have been difficult for him to foresee his fate. What would have been difficult was to not turn around and return to his safe haven in Capernaum. What would have been difficult was to meet their violence with non-violence, to absorb their cruelty with forgiveness; to return love for hate. He could only do it by being his authentic self.

He accepted his fate as his only real choice. He hoped his disciples would see it as their only real choice as well. To take up our cross is the path to enlightenment. Should we find our way to that place, he knew suffering and death would lose their meaning. We would no longer linger in the past or live in anticipation or fear of the future. We would become fully alive in the moment.

There is a legend told of St Francis, that he called out to a barren almond tree in midwinter, “Speak to me of God.” And the tree burst into bloom. It became alive. Jesus hoped we would come to understand that there is only one way of becoming alive: by coming aware of and true to the divine presence within us. In our aliveness we are released from the cross we must drag around with us. We become a paradox. May we all blossom.

[i] Kierkegaard, Søren. Philosophical Fragments, 1844. P.37