Scriptures: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Psalm 22: 23-31;
Romans 4:13-25, Mark 8:27-38
This week marked the passing into eternal life of perhaps
the most prominent figure in American Christianity, Billy Graham. Blessed with blond hair and striking good
looks, a memorable preaching voice, and a talent for using cutting-edge technology
to create what would become a media empire, Graham was America’s evangelical
golden boy, one to whom presidents and ordinary people alike looked for
guidance. From his first Billy Graham
crusade in 1947 over the course of his life, Graham is estimated to have spoken
in person to more than 200 million people.
Graham met with presidents from Truman to Obama…..though reportedly
Truman wasn’t impressed with Graham, calling him a counterfeit who was
interested only in headlines….and yes, Graham was quite the self-promoter…he
didn’t get to pray with presidents by being a shrinking violet. In the
1950’s, he was somewhat ahead of his time on civil rights, integrating his
crusades, and was reported to have once bailed the Rev Martin Luther King out
of jail – though as King expressed more radical views, Graham backed away, at
one point saying in response to King’s famous “I Have A Dream” speech that nobody
should expect to see black children and white children in Alabama joining hands
this side of heaven. Happily, it hasn’t
taken quite that long. Since the civil
rights era, over the years, Graham resolved more than once to stay away from
political issues, and more than once broke that resolution, and his political
interventions sometimes seemed jarringly out of character from the gracious,
moderate, apolitical image Graham cultivated.
He cultivated and maintained access over the decades to presidents and
others in power, and he lived quite comfortably, with his net worth estimated
at $25 million – not quite as wealthy as modern day televangelists such as
Benny Hinn and Joel Osteen, but Graham hardly had to worry about where his next
meal was coming from. Conservative commentator
George Will wrote a surprisingly harsh anti-eulogy of sorts titled “Billy
Graham Was No Prophet”.[1] The most George Will said in favor of
Graham’s preaching was that it “gave comfort to many and probably improved
some.” Probably. But Billy Graham never
claimed to be a prophet. First, last, and always, Billy Graham was a preacher, a
sometimes flawed but relentlessly driven messenger for the Lord, sharing a
simple, personal faith, preaching that accepting Jesus as one’s personal Lord
and Savior was the key to overcoming life’s problems. And
now he’s gone on to be with God, leaving a legacy to which few could hold a
candle. At our Wednesday night Lenten
service, Roe Derr, pastor over at Bridesburg Methodist, shared that she had
been saved at one of Graham’s crusades. So
Graham’s legacy extends to Bridesburg as well.
We can keep Graham’s legacy in mind as we read Jesus’ words
in this morning’s Gospel reading. This
morning’s reading gives us a glimpse of Jesus at a crucial moment in his
ministry. Jesus had traveled around
Galilee and the surrounding region, preaching, teaching, healing, casting out
demons. And so in today’s reading, Jesus
begins by doing a sort of poll or focus group, perhaps to learn about how the
crowds are interpreting his message and ministry. He asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” And the disciples respond by telling Jesus
that people think he’s Elijah come back to life, or John the Baptist come back
to life, or one of the other prophets returned from the dead.
Then he asks: “OK,
who do you say that I am?” And Peter
responded, “You are the Messiah.” And,
we’re told, Jesus sternly ordered them, “Don’t breathe a word of this to
anyone.”
This seems a little counter-intuitive. Why wouldn’t Jesus want the disciples to
spread the message? Think what someone
with the energy of a Billy Graham could have done to draw even bigger crowds to
Jesus? With a good publicist and some
advance people, Jesus could have toured as far as Rome and packed the Coliseum
with crowds of adoring fans. Why wouldn’t
Jesus want all that?
The word “Messiah” was a loaded term, a term loaded with
associations and expectations. The word
literally means “Anointed One.” In the
popular theology of the day, it was thought that God would anoint a national
hero like King David to unify the Jewish people, throw off Roman power, and
lead the Jewish people to independence. Think of our own national heroes like George
Washington and Benjamin Franklin and the other founders organizing the
colonists and leading them to independence against Britain….the Jews expected a
Messiah somewhat along those lines, as a God-anointed national hero leading the
Jews to independence. “Messiah” was a
term loaded with political expectations.
But political power was one of Satan’s temptations that Jesus resisted
in the wilderness. And Jesus certainly
didn’t need Peter or anyone else running amok blabbing that Jesus was going to
lead a rebellion against Rome…which is at least part of why Jesus asked the
disciples to keep the conversation to themselves. Jesus didn’t want the disciples spreading the
word about Jesus until they fully understood who Jesus was and what he was
about. Before letting them talk, Jesus
wanted them to know who and what they’d be talking about.
So Jesus began to tell the disciples that he would be
rejected and killed…..and would rise again on the third day. Peter reacted against Jesus’ words – why
would Jesus’ leadership be rejected, and how could he lead the Jews to
independence if he were dead. And Jesus
rebuked Peter harshly, saying “Get behind me, Satan. You’re focusing not on divine things but on
human things.” Ouch. Peter had really put his foot in it.
So then Jesus called the crowds over and told them, along
with the disciples, that the road he walked did not lead to earthly glory. Instead, at the end of the road was a cross,
not only for Jesus, but also for anyone who dared to follow him. “If any want to become my followers, let them
deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will
lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake and the sake of the gospel
will find it. For what will it profit to gain the whole world and lose one’s
life….indeed, what can anyone give you in return for your life?”
So, we have a paradox:
Jesus told his disciples that he was going to die, no avoiding it He also told his disciples and the crowds
that they’d be risking their own deaths in order to follow him. And at the same time, he said that to be with
Jesus was the safest place they could be.
What are we supposed to do with all that?
We can say that Jesus is practicing what we might call truth
in advertising. If we’re planning a
vacation, we might look at travel guides or online sites that paint glowing
pictures of the destinations we might consider. Lots of beautiful beaches, and any talk
about unsafe drinking water or rudimentary bathroom facilities is way down in
the fine print somewhere. But Jesus is
telling them exactly what road he’s on and where it leads – and where it
doesn’t lead. It doesn’t lead to cheers
from adoring crowds – there’s a bit of that on Palm Sunday, but the crowds turn
nasty by week’s end. Indeed, Jesus’
tells his disciples that his mission will crash and burn, at least in earthly
terms. But, says Jesus, that’s exactly
the point of why he came, to die, that he would rise again.
Jesus asked his disciples, and invited the crowds to follow
him. He actually didn’t ask them to
worship him……could you imagine the response Jesus would have gotten if he had
walked along the Sea of Galilee and called out to Simon and Andrew, James and
John “Worship me.” They’d have told
Jesus to go pound sand. But instead, he
gave them the invitation, “Follow me.”
Follow me…..live as I live, walk where I walk, do as I do……lay down your
life as I lay down mine.
Worshiping Jesus is easy peasy, at least where we live…..though
in many countries, even doing that much is difficult. But here in the United States, no government
agency is closing churches. Following
Jesus, though, is a whole ‘nother thing.
When Jesus spoke to the crowd, he didn’t invite them just to be members
of his fan club – that what Peter would have wanted, to organize a fan club for
Jesus, but it’s not what Jesus wanted….Jesus wanted followers. And what’s the difference between a fan and a
follower? If we’re fans of a rock band,
we might have pictures of them on our wall, we have recordings of all their
music that we play, we’ll check to see if they’re touring near us, and if the
fan club organizers sends a monthly newsletter, we’ll wait by the mailbox to
get it. But if we’re followers, groupies
if you will, we’ll be willing to uproot our lives to literally follow the band
around, just as people at one time devoted their lives to following the
Grateful Dead on their tours…..there was a whole distinct lifestyle associated
with being a Deadhead. Jesus didn’t want
a fan club. He wanted followers, willing
to walk away from their lives to live as Jesus lived and do what Jesus did.
When Jesus asks his disciples to deny themselves, we may get
a lot of creepy images in our heads – wearing a hair shirt or flagellating
ourselves, as monks used to do….but that’s not what Jesus is talking
about. Instead, he’s telling his
followers – again, not a fan club, but followers – that they would have to lay
aside their agendas and follow his agenda.
What does this look like?
Imagine that you learned that you had a fatal disease, with only a month
to live. But, miraculously, you still
had some degree of strength and stamina, so that you could get out of bed and
walk around a bit, or at least communicate in some way. What would you do with that month? You’d
probably spend some time putting your affairs in order for your family. But beyond that, would you try to go to your
day job or maybe work from home, putting in extra hours so you get a good
performance evaluation and a raise? Would
things like performance evaluations and raises even matter at that point? Or would you be connecting with friends,
reconciling with enemies, reaching out to those less fortunate, maybe giving
away some of your wealth, trying to do as much good for as many people as you
possibly could with the limited time remaining to you? I suspect probably the latter; at least I
hope so. Jesus is basically inviting us
to live like that all the time, to live as if tomorrow were our last
day…..because, some day, it will be.
From a spiritual standpoint, there are lots of folks who
breathe and walk around, but are dead inside, with no sense of purpose or
meaning beyond meeting their own needs and indulging their own wants and having
their own way and getting through the day.
From a spiritual standpoint, to live like that is to be walking
dead. To live only for our own desires
isn’t all that different from a junkie jonesing for their next fix or an alkie
jonesing for their next drink….we might dress better or smell better, but we’re
driven in the same way…. we want what we want, and nothing is going to get in our
way. Such people are spiritually dead
because they’re not growing – not stretching their minds, not learning, not
connecting with other people or with nature, just existing. They’re stuck in a rut, and eventually
they’ll exchange that rut for a grave. They’ll
die without ever having truly lived, in the sense that Jesus invited his
followers to live. It’s in this sense
that Jesus says that those who would save their lives will lose it, while only
those willing to lose their lives will ever truly find them, will ever truly
have lived before they died.
Think of Abram and Sarai in our Old Testament reading, and
again in Romans. They were elderly, with
all the aches and pains that come with age.
But just at a time in their lives when they probably would have wanted to
look back on their lives, to rest and nurse their aches and pains, God called
them to travel to a new country and start a family. They could have told God, “No, we’re old and
set in our ways, and we don’t get out much anymore. Find someone else, someone younger, someone more
adventurous. Let us be.” I’m sure they could have lived uneventfully
with the time remaining to them…..but then, the whole story of Israel would
never have happened. Paul speaks of the
faith it took for Abram and Sarai to believe God – a faith demonstrated by
their actions, as James reminds us in his letter – “and God counted it as
righteousness.”
Billy Graham followed the call of Jesus, not just to one
unknown country, but to many. He
traveled the world, even going to communist countries behind the Iron Curtain,
to use a phrase from the Cold War, at a time when that entailed real danger. He took risks, at least earlier in his
life…..like many, he played it safer as he grew older, and came to enjoy his
creature comforts. And, again, while
Graham was as flawed as any of us, he had an incredible impact, and leaves a
legacy that will live on long after his body is returned to the earth.
I don’t
aspire to be Billy Graham, and likely neither do you. But we can all carry the message of Jesus, in
our words and in our actions. And there
may be danger , may be times folks don’t want to hear what you have to
say,. Carry the message anyway. Some
will try to block our path, will oppose us as we try to do the work to which
God has called us. Follow Jesus
anyway. Let your light – that is, the
light of the good news of Jesus Christ – so shine in our lives that others may
see our good works, and give glory to God in heaven. Amen.
[1] https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/billy-graham-was-no-prophet-thats-why-america-loved-him/2018/02/21/398ce31a-1722-11e8-92c9-376b4fe57ff7_story.html?utm_term=.2693d179bafa
