Sunday
September 15
Faith and Struggle
By Marsh Chapel
Click here to hear the full service
Click here to watch the full service
Click here to hear just the sermon
Faith and Struggle
Mark 8: 27-38
Marsh Chapel
September 15, 2024
Robert Allan Hill
Frontispiece
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow.
Beloved, as our lessons from Holy Scripture recall for us today, faith means struggle, faith involves struggle, faith to be fully faithful engages with struggle. There are times and seasons when faith takes a hard life and makes it easier. And for that we are honestly grateful. But there are also times when faith takes an easier life and makes it harder, not for a joy in difficulty, but out of a genuine longing for something better. Here faith leads us into a struggle to hold onto our roots. Here faith leads us squarely into a struggle truly to face our condition. Here faith leads us into the struggle to retain, to hold onto our hopes and dreams.
Holding Onto Roots
Let us struggle in faith to hold onto our roots.
If ever there were an age that could hear, and appreciate, the teaching of James about the tongue as a fire, it is our own. You know, the preacher here does not need to bring exegesis to bear, or to give explanation for the wisdom proffered, or to bring examples, many or few. We know in our evenings of listening to the cable news. We hear in our mornings of commuting with the radio on. We read and learn and inwardly digest what speech can do for ill. We are coming to a point where even Proverbs 1 and James 3 are too tepid, too mild to describe our national condition. At some point we will need to repair to Amos, and to drink the hard cold medicine of his teaching. When we wreck the use of words without pause, we do come to a time when words no longer work. You have stripped the gears. You have shredded the fabric. You have cut the muscle. And no one can speak the truth and no can hear the truth any longer.
Behold the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand. And the Lord said to me, ‘Amos, what do you see?’ And I said, ‘A plumb line’. Then the Lord said, ‘Behold I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass by them; the high places of Isaac will be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid to waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword’. Amos 7: 7-8.
Remember our roots in right speech. Remember James saying, Be quick to listen, so to speak, slow to anger, for the anger of man does not work the righteousness of God.
And especially let us hold onto our roots in this crucial, perhaps the crucial passage in the Gospel of Mark, Mark 8. To renounce oneself, said John Chrysostom is ‘to treat oneself as if one were another person’ (Marcus, II, 624). Consider oneself as every day on the edge of death. Death makes us mortal. Facing death makes us human. We live at the intersection of present advent and future hope. What good is the greatest possession if there is no possessor to enjoy it? ‘Take up the cross’ is a reference to the beginning of the journey, and the next part, ‘follow me’ refers to the ongoing life of faith. Baptism, first, you could say, Communion, second, you could say. We like Peter of course have aversion to suffering, as did Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane. Jesus is more than a prophet. But he is not less than a prophet. Mark’s harsh portrayal of Peter as ‘Satan’ is too much for Luke, who omits it later, and that reaction was probably not unique, for we can understand it too. But our roots, our inheritance, especially here in Mark 8, remind us of the call to struggle, to struggle in faith to hold onto what has brought us here, to hold onto our roots
Facing Our Condition
Let us also struggle in faith to face our condition. Right across this country, and right now, and in a seriously difficult season of political, economic, cultural and religious division and discord, we will need to face and face up to what matters, counts and lasts. That means facing and naming mendacity, falsehood, in expression, in word. Again, we could add in a bit of Amos, in concert with Proverbs and James
‘Behold the days are coming’ says the Lord God, ‘when I will send a famine on the land; not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of the Lord. They shall wander from sea to sea, and from north to east, they shall run to and fro, to seek the word of the Lord, but they shall not find it.’ Amos 8: 11-12.
For us, as we watch a vast part of our national culture now careening toward decay, our memory seems to be failing us. Rhetoric and rancor that befit no civilized people we have somehow accepted, acceded to, accommodated. We forget Emma Lazarus and prefer demagoguery. We forget Lincoln and support nativism. We forget Jesus the crucified and cleave to the cry of triumphalism, out of fear and out of exhaustion and out of amnesia, both a cultural and a Christological amnesia. But along comes the gospel, If any one would come after me…
Peter Berger (Rumor of Angels) reminded us that the very sense we have of lasting, earthly injustice, of wrongs not and never made right, a real and palpable sentiment, is itself a rumor of something more. Which we cannot yet see, of course, and of which we do not yet know, of course. But maybe a heavenly breakfast will again be served, at which the table will seat the resurrection of the just.
In the local as well as the large, we in faith want to struggle to face our condition. In a time when many young adults, many students, are facing a combination of anxiety, loneliness, alienation and depression, we togther will want to face this part of our shared condition with regular presence and active listening. This very school year.
In presence. At meals, in gatherings, at sporting events, simply being present. One friend tries to attend the opening session of very sport, being personally present. Another brings her family along to times on campus for shared service. Yet another makes a habit of walking Commonwealth Avenue once a day. And you, with grace, have given your presence to this service of worship, and those present here. You share a prayer, a moment, an hour, perhaps a greeting, a handshake, a story. Facing the conditions of our local culture, right here, right now, presence really matters.
And in listening, active listening. My old friend, a Dean in the Agricultural College at Cornell used to say and repeat, ‘most people can solve their own problems if they have someone who will actively listen to them.’ That may be as simple as honestly reflecting what another has said. One says, ‘I am feeling uncertain about this’. Another responds, with active empathy, ‘I do sense that you are really feeling uncertain about this’. Especially those new to the college experience, from backgrounds where such study was less common, or as first generation college students, can really, fully benefit from such. Active listening opens possibilities of new dimensions and new directions. But first, we have to face our condition, not just in the large but in the local as well.
Jean Twenge, GENERATIONS, 461: The generations have gone from a cohort with resilient mental health even when they were the age group most at risk during the pandemic (Silents) to young people in the midst of a full-blown mental health crisis as they grapple with growing up in the smartphone era (GenZ).
Sherry Turkle, RECLAIMING CONVERSATION, 325: There is nothing wrong with texting or email or videoconferencing. And there is everything right with making them technically better, more intuitive, easier to use. But no matter how good they get, they have an intrinsic limitation: People require eye contact for emotional stability and social fluency. A lack of eye contact is associated with depression and isolation, and the development of antisocial traits such as exhibiting callousness…One thing is certain: the tool that is handy is not always the right tool. So an email is often the simplest solution to a business problem, even as it makes the problem worse….
Let us fully face our condition, both in the large and in the local.
Holding Onto Our Hopes
May we also by grace hold onto our hopes.
We have been the beneficiaries of others who by example have shown us how to live with hope, to hold onto our best selves, hopes and dreams. Decades ago a dear faithful woman gathered a dozen twenty something couples, including those who didn’t know each other form Adam’s house cat, for a meal. Half or more had little babies in tow. We sang and prayed a little, ate a little more, and laughed a whole lot more about the oddities of life, young adult life, parenthood, ministry and the loneliness lurking behind and above and underneath them all. She gave us ourselves, by giving us to each other. She gave us ourselves, by giving us to each other. We came alive. The next week the phone rang. She said, Hi how is the ministry, how is life, how is that beautiful little daughter, how are your folks wasn’t that a great brunch, is Jan there?
From that one gathering friendships formed, and kindnesses were exchanged—a lunch, some golf, car repair, shared worship, a study of the Psalms. The habits of hope, the habits of visitation, the habits of welcome, the habits of outreach, the habits of hospitality, the habits of Christian charity and love, all so dearly central to any genuine form of community, are not necessarily permanent gifts. They have to be struggled for. They have to be held onto, remembered. To be remembered they have to be modeled. To be modeled they have to be practiced. Think with thanks of one or more who showed you habits of hope. Such habits can and will lead us to a common hope. We have some shared, some common hopes, and we should hold onto them! Most reasonable people would agree. Together:
We await a common hope, a hope that our warming globe, caught in climate change, will be cooled by cooler heads and calmer hearts and careful minds.
We await a common hope, a hope that our dangerous world, armed to the teeth with nuclear proliferation, will find peace through deft leadership toward nuclear détente.
We await a common hope, a hope that our culture, awash in part in hooliganism, will find again the language and the song and the spirit of the better angels of our nature.
We await a common hope, a hope that our country, fractured by massive inequality between rich children and poor children, will rise up and make education, free education, available to all children, poor and rich.
We await a common hope, a hope that our schools, colleges and universities, will balance a love of learning with a sense of meaning, a pride in knowledge with a respect for goodness, a drive for discovery with a regard for recovery.
We await a common hope, a hope that our families, torn apart by abuse and distrust and anger and jealousy and unkindness, will sit at a long Thanksgiving table, this autumn, and share the turkey and pass the potatoes, and slice the pie, and, if grudgingly, show kindness and pity to one another.
We await a common hope, a hope that our decisions in life about our callings, how we are to use our time and spend our money, how we make a life not just a living, will be illumined by grace and generosity.
We await a common hope, a hope that our grandfathers and mothers, in their age and infirmity, will receive care and kindness that accords with the warning to honor father and mother that you own days be long upon the earth.
We await a common hope, finally a hope not of this world, but of this world as a field of formation for another, not just creation but new creation, not just life but eternal life, not just health but salvation, not just heart but soul, not just earth, but heaven.
Most of us would agree.
We listen again for the windchimes of hope, whispering and singing to us, beckoning us into and out from an unseen future. The chimes ring, ring out today in Proverbs and James and Mark.
Coda
Beloved, as our lessons from Holy Scripture recall for us today, we sound the gospel around the globe: faith means struggle, faith involves struggle, faith to be fully faithful engages with struggle. There are times and seasons when faith takes a hard life and makes it easier. And for that we are honestly grateful. But there are also times when faith takes an easier life and makes it harder, not for a joy in difficulty, but out of a genuine longing for something better. Here faith leads us into a struggle to hold onto our roots. Here faith leads us squarely into a struggle truly to face our condition. Here faith leads us into the struggle to retain, to hold onto our hopes and dreams.
If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow.
