Sermon: Cathedral Eucharist - 1 March 2015

Preacher:

Andrew Watson

Date:

Sunday 1st March 2015

Venue:

Guildford Cathedral

Service:

The Cathedral Eucharist

Readings:

Mark 8: 31-end

Romans 4: 13-25

Listen:

Download Recording (MP3, 3.4M)

Taking up our Cross

‘A game of two halves’. It’s been voted one of the top ten footballing clichés, along with other well-worn phrases like ‘it’s a funny old game’ and ‘what this game needs is a goal’. ‘A game of two halves’ suggests that something has changed at the midway point: that the fortunes of the respective teams have somehow been reversed; that whatever was said in the dressing room at half-time, it’s almost as though we’re looking at a new match. 

And Mark’s Gospel is a game of two halves, with this morning’s gospel reading from the hill town of Caesarea Philippi marking both the team talk at half time and the start of the second 45 minutes.

At the beginning of the first half, Jesus was baptised, and heard a voice from heaven saying ‘You are my Son whom I love; with you I am well pleased’. At the start of the second half, Jesus asks who people think he is, and Peter responds, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God’.      

At the beginning of the first half, Jesus went into the desert to be tempted by the devil – tempted to choose the easy road, the path that bypassed the way of the cross. At the start of the second half, the temptation recurs, but this time on the lips of Peter, provoking that stinging response, ‘Get behind me Satan!’

At the beginning of the first half, Jesus called on Peter and the others to ‘follow me’, an invitation that led to the best time of their lives, as they witnessed the most amazing miracles and drank in the profoundest of teachings. At the start of the second half Jesus spells out that calling in darker tones: ‘Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me’.

At the beginning of the first half, one particular temptation stuck in Jesus’ mind: that dangerous, seductive dream of every tyrant, where the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world with the words ‘all this I will give you if you bow down and worship me’. At the start of the second half, Jesus asks ‘What good is it if you gain the whole world, yet forfeit your soul?’

And it’s no wonder, perhaps, that Peter, among others, was deeply uncomfortable with the way things were going. It’s no wonder that, as the recently appointed team captain, he felt that the manager needed taking in hand. Hadn’t the first half been so exciting? Weren’t the team beginning to play to their full potential? Wasn’t this all leading to promotion, sitting at Jesus’ right and left hand when he came in his glory? So why this negativity all of a sudden – this talk of the Son of Man suffering many things and being rejected and killed? It’s almost as though, in this game of two halves, Jesus was suddenly willing himself and his team to lose.

This wasn’t a game, either: for following Jesus meant going where he did, and now that was beginning to look distinctly dangerous. As Peter tried to take his master in hand, I’m sure he was genuinely concerned for Jesus’ own wellbeing, but there was plenty of self-interest there as well. To imagine oneself as the right-hand man of a King is one thing; to do so as the right hand man of a crucified criminal something entirely different. This may even have been the first point at which it began to dawn on Peter: that if Jesus really fell foul of the authorities, both religious and secular, he would fall foul of them too.

Peter’s reaction was understandable then - but taking Jesus in hand is never a very sensible thing to do. To quote words used of Aslan in the Narnia stories, Jesus is ‘not a tame lion’. To quote words that constituted the first Christian creed, ‘Jesus is Lord’. And it’s not that Jesus had some kind of death-wish. Nor is it that he’d simply seen what was coming and was now seeking to theologise it, to make a virtue out of necessity. It’s rather that at some point in his upbringing – maybe during those 40 days in the wilderness, maybe many years – Jesus had come to a conviction about the heart of his calling.

The disciples might soon be sitting around a table with dirty feet, not one of them willing to make the first move, to demean themselves among their peers; the disciples might soon be bickering about their place in the pecking order. But here was Jesus’ calling in a nutshell: ‘The Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve and to give his life as a ransom for many’.

Even the setting of this team talk was significant: that hill town of Caesarea Philippi. It probably wasn’t somewhere that Jesus had visited before. It certainly wasn’t somewhere that Jesus would visit again. But there were two things that everyone knew about Caesarea Philippi. One was the magnificent view from the town, a view that on a clear day led your eyes right down the Jordan valley and towards the city of Jerusalem. The other was a grandiose Temple, recently built and dedicated to that latest addition to the Roman pantheon, the Emperor himself. Jesus is Lord, not Caesar. But his would be a lordship with self-giving, with sacrifice right at its core, a lordship that would enter Jerusalem on a donkey and exit Jerusalem stumbling beneath the weight of an old rugged cross.

And if this team talk was uncomfortable for Peter, it is uncomfortable for us too. For we are those who have responded in our own generation to Jesus’ call ‘Follow me’, and these verses make us wonder whether we shouldn’t have read the small print a little more carefully before we chose to do so.

It is a wonderful thing to be a follower of Jesus Christ. It is a wonderful thing to know the love and joy, the peace and purpose he brings. The gift of the Holy Spirit; the worldwide community of the Church; the confidence with which we can approach our living – the hope with which we can approach our dying: these are blessings of the richest kind.

And yet God doesn’t spoil his children. The first-half call to ‘Follow me’ can never be detached from the second-half call to ‘Take up your Cross’. For some that calling is all too stark: meeting the Archbishop of the Diocese of Erbil last month, his stories of the death and displacement of countless thousands of Christians in Northern Iraq were heart-breaking, not least because that death and displacement is continuing even today. But how about for the rest of us? For myself, for example, what does taking up my cross mean as I draw my curtains each morning to be greeted by the lovely sight of the gardens at Willow Grange? 

The heart of the matter has to do with that long view from Caesarea Philippi, as stand with our backs to the pagan temple – a view down the Jordan valley and towards the city of Jerusalem. The Jordan valley reminds us of our baptism, our calling to live as children of God. Jerusalem reminds us of our destination, the holy city to which we are called to travel. And with that big view comes a big question: How is this pilgrim going to progress during those 5, 10, 20, 50, 80 years that remain to us here on Planet Earth?

Many Christian people never ask that question. Many lose sight of that wide perspective, that big vision, the long view. The very details of living - our modest triumphs, our little disappointments, our petty jealousies and feeble ambitions - have become so all consuming perhaps that anything bigger and bolder is quietly shelved.

It’s not that those who take up their cross are called to be masochists. It’s not that they’re called to court persecution or look for trouble. It’s not that their lives will always be hard - indeed joy will lie at the heart of them. It’s rather this: that their overriding concern will lie in pleasing God, in spiritual fruitfulness, in reaching out to the world God loves so much. And happiness may join that as a by-product, and so may health and success and material comfort, although none is guaranteed. But that long view, that sense that we’re here to make a difference, a positive, lasting difference to the world God loves so much – leads to lives characterised by a joyful, sacrificial generosity, and knocks every other ambition into a cocked hat. 

So back to that new Bishop, as he draws back his curtains each morning to be greeted by the lovely sight of the gardens at Willow Grange? How nice for him to travel around his new Diocese, so much more pleasant and leafy that his last one, and to open fetes and attend garden parties and do all the other things that bishops presumably get up to. And such an easy diocese too, with plenty of money and plenty of churchgoers, not like some places we could mention! What a very lucky chap he is!

And yes, I am, and I feel that sense of privilege deeply. But I also recognise that there’s a huge job to be done: that not everything in the Diocesan garden is rosy.

Here’s what concerns me most: that in terms of the churches of Guildford Diocese, I am still a fairly young man! Only about a third of our adult worshippers are younger than I am, while nearly two thirds are my age or older. And while I hugely appreciate the wisdom and faithfulness of older generations, and would never espouse an unthinking ageism – and while my vanity may be fed by surrounding myself with people older than I am – there’s a growing problem here, which only the most blinkered could ignore. Somehow we have not been good at passing the faith on to younger generations, which makes for a very bleak future if we don’t do something about it. A bleak future for the church as an institution, yes; but a bleak future, far more importantly, for whole generations of younger people growing up with no sense of the longer view, no understanding of life as a pilgrimage, no faith, no hope, no sense of destiny. And if, as is true, the large majority of voluntary work and charitable giving in this region is contributed by Christian people, the implications for society as a whole are not encouraging either. 

I don’t believe in that bleak future: but I do believe that along with opening fetes and attending garden parties, there is really serious work to be done as I, as we, respond together to the call of Jesus to take up our cross and follow him. The details of living – those modest triumphs and little disappointments, those petty jealousies and feeble ambitions – will become all consuming if we allow them to do so. But how important as followers of Jesus that we are consumed with a bigger vision, a vision that will capture the hearts and minds of generations yet to come. In the famous words of our Lord from the Sermon on the Mount: 

Do not worry, saying, “What shall we eat?” or “What shall we drink?” or “What shall we wear?” Seek first the Kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.