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Church of Our
Saviour
191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094
Tel: 201-863-1449
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Mark A. Lewis,
Vicar
MLewis@secaucus.org
Dorothy Fowlkes
Pastoral Associate
This page revised 27
Aug 00
http://www.secaucus.org/
oursaviour
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Courage to
be a Christian
Reflections on the
lessons for the 11th Sunday after Pentecost
By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar
Joshua 24:1-2a,14-25 / Ephesians
5:21-33
Psalm 16 / John
6:60-69
It's an important aspect of preaching to be open and honest and to push the limits of self-exposure. It's one of the ways that the gospel message can be made real (and perhaps memorable) to others. You can't pull punches, or make things up. That shows up like a red flag. It's gotta be real or it's worse than useless. I think actors and other performers would agree with me.
It's pretty easy to lay my soul and my feelings bare sometimes. But I was surprised yesterday when I had to search and search for examples of times when I had done something difficult. REALLY difficult. Done it in spite of fear and doubt. And done it without knowing what the outcome would be.
Some examples I came up with sounded trivial. Looking back, it was just my blindness that was causing the initial fear. Other tales sounded like I was blowing my own horn. That's no fun. Others made me look so bad in the telling that I just didn't feel like letting you all know how really wimpy I can be sometimes.
So, I settled on the safe thing. I'll go back to childhood. Some of you know I come from an odd mix of a spiritual background. On one side: Southern Baptist fundamentalists. Socialist humanist liberals on the other. And by the time my parents' generation came along: No one had any use for religion at all. Some because of laziness. Some because they agreed with Karl Marx that religion is the opiate of the masses.
Out of that fruit salad of spiritual attitudes -- at about age 13 -- and for reasons I can't ultimately explain even to myself, I felt I needed to take a step. I began attending services at the Episcopal Church. The only step that was perfectly unacceptable to absolutely every member of my family. To the Baptists: I was caving in and becoming an idolatrous Pope-worshipping Catholic bowing down to statues. To the liberals: I was signing up with God's frozen people, the Republican Party at prayer. To the lazy ones: I was suddenly waking them up early on Sunday morning as I banged around getting ready for church. To the Marxists -- and finally to all of them -- I was an idiot child raised to know better who was willingly making a stupid choice. And no one hesitated to let me know exactly how they felt. But I thought I was doing the necessary thing. And it was my rite of passage, the first time I defied the opinions of others and took my life in a direction of my own choosing.
You can all tell the same story about your own life. I'm sure. Today's readings tell it. Joshua and John remind us that the life of faith -- maybe just life itself -- often asks us to make tough choices and often demands courage we wonder if we can muster.
The story from John's gospel tells it best. Some of Jesus' followers are cutting bait. They're turning back. Maybe you hadn't thought about these people before. Until I read the passage again and again I didn't realize that it contains a picture of the disciples that threw in the towel, people whose names we'll never know. But we do know that the farther they traveled with Jesus the more they learned how demanding a life that was turning out to be. How much they would have to give up and how much more they'd need to take on. And they said. "no thank you."
Then Jesus turns to Peter and asks if he wants to leave with the others. It would have been easy for Peter to go. The opportunity was offered. The timing couldn't have been better. He was a spokesman for a whole group of disciples. His team would have probably left along with him. Making it all that much easier. At this point, remember, Jesus was not the stained glass figure he is today. He was a travelling preacher who attracted enemies as easily as he drew followers. Who knew where it would end? Why not get out while the getting was good?
Sunday School lesson for the day: the English translation muddies things up, but in Hebrew "Jesus" and "Joshua" are exactly the same name. And in today's reading they call the same question: "Choose you this day whom you will serve." Peter's answer took more courage than I can possibly imagine. Really! I can't! Because only the person standing in those shoes at that particular moment -- knowing however much or little he knew at the time -- only that person can know exactly how uncertainty and courage are clashing in that instance.
We seldom talk about how much courage it takes to be a Christian -- or at least how much it takes to try to be a fairly good Christian. Probably because we don't much like to talk about just how much being a Christian asks of a person. It takes a lot of courage to face yourself honestly and change attitudes; change deeply held prejudices when faith asks that of us. It takes courage to forgive someone who has wronged us, or to ask to be forgiven ourselves. It takes courage to take a stand on grounds of principle when you have to do it alone. It takes courage to get involved: In people's lives. In social concerns.
But Peter's answer to Jesus reminds us of a couple of things that might help. "Do you want out of this?" Jesus asks. "No," Peter says, "as tough as this is going to be, there's really no alternative for anyone who's seen the difference between life and death."
-- Mark Lewis
Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org.
Links to additional "Reflections on Lessons" may be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page.
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