Gloria Dei Lutheran Church

Mark 8:27-38

Weight Watchers meets in our building several times per week. One morning this week, I arrived when they were meeting in Room 100. I walked past the door carrying my lunch, a few pieces of leftover pizza from the night before, the dinner we thought we needed to prepare us to watch the debate. As I glimpsed the group in a circle, I unconsciously shifted my retro orange Tupperware container from the hand they could see to the one they couldn’t. As I climbed the steps, with a bit more energy, aware of my need to counteract the implications of cheese, I thought, “What was that about?” Did I think I needed to hide my lunch from the group? Would they count the points in those two pieces? Or see through me? In that movement from one hand to the other, a whole history of self, body, cultural messages about male bodies and older bodies, the sometimes religious moralism about healthy choices and exercise, ancient hurts probably traced back to third grade gym class, notions of identity and role, the pastor of a church who now has to walk past the parish nurse’s office does not have a healthy lunch; what a pitiful model for leadership. Shame. Shame.

Fortunately in this instance, my thinking brain-prefrontal cortex–took over, and I was laughing to myself by the time I got to the office. Even imagining I had a sermon illustration. It happens just like that, doesn’t it? A snippet of a conversation, an image on Facebook, a comment from a coworker, an innocent suggestion from a loved one, the sight of that one person that seems to have everything you wish you had, the rejection letter brings this surge of shame.

And wow, shame is a tough conversation partner. Demonic, some might way. Some of us can hardly hear anything over its judgments at times. Just about anything can make us feel, “I’m not worthy. I’m a loser. I’m lovable.” For those who live in that spot, the readings today have more trip wires than most week. The gospel, which means “good news,” caps it all with. “Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

It’s crushing to think that when we experience Jesus, whether that be when they comes in glory or shows up in a bible study or sermon, or at communion, or in this morning’s assembly, he will look deeply into our eyes and say, “I am ashamed of you.”

Who do people say that I am? If Jesus asked that today of some of his disciples, many would say, “A judge, an enforcer of the law who is usually more interested in sexual sins than anything else. Others might say it more gently, “Jesus loves you anyway.” Psychologists say that religion is often named as one of the primary sources of debilitating shame. It’s probably also true that our shame, usually from some childhood moment when an adult said, rather than correcting a behavior shamed our identity. “You should be ashamed of yourself” and we believe that so deeply that it distorts how we hear any language of sin, judgment, or the coming of Jesus in glory.

I remember the pastor in my confirmation class writing on the board that the Ten Commandments, the law, is supposed to S-O-S, show our sin. Did he know that many of us would hear that explanation of Luther’s distinction between law and gospel as, “It will show you who you really are.” Sin is your identity. If the mission of the church is used to shame, we need to say, “Get behind me, Satan.”

When Peter blurted out, “You are the messiah,” who knows what he meant by that. It certainly didn’t involve suffering, rejection, of dying. For Jesus, it was “the way,” a kind of being human that mattered. In his baptism, he heard that he was chosen, beloved, called to embody a vision of life that would heal so completely that a world of justice could be built. A world of sharing goodness, giving away what I used to think was “mine,” dying to the ego, taking a lower place, reaching for the outsider, befriending the loser, setting aside the “worldly things” that, frankly, most of us spend a lifetime trying to accrue. It was a way of being human that flashes with the divine. He obviously knew by this time that the worldly powers would silence him and it would probably hurt, but somehow he also knew that what had been started couldn’t be stopped. Peter would be part of it, for sure, but not until he experienced it within himself, until he lost and found, died to the things that held him back, and raised up more the self he was created to be.

This is truth of the Jesus story, our central mystery. Losing oneself is how we find ourselves, setting aside our ego, our need to prove ourselves, will give us a real self, going from first to last, giving away rather than piling up will heal not only ourselves but a broken and dying earth, taking the risk to approach suffering, our own or another’s, allowing it to speak its wisdom will redeem us and build a new creation, becoming human in all its painful and gorgeous beauty. Dying and rising.

Now… I was asked to include a few words about the Shared Ministry booklet that’s being passed out today. It contains all the ways that you can be involved at Gloria Dei. Running that request through today’s gospel metaphor, I ended up with Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s words, “When Christ calls [us], he bids [us] come and die.” For some reason, the team wasn’t thrilled with that invitation. “Get involved at Gloria Dei. It will be just like your own crucifixion.”

But, I kept thinking about it. What if becoming part of the mission of this church are some of the ways that we practice this central mystery of dying and rising, losing and finding, an experience of becoming something new.  Think about. You have to imagine that you have something that is needed; that without you this church is not fully alive or even itself. You are wanted, not just to fill a slot on a volunteer list, but because your presence here brings delight, and we’ll be thrive because you showed up. You matter. What you bring matters. If you don’t believe that, pretend that you do, come along, check a box on one of those forms, so that we can show you what you can’t believe on your own. You are beloved.

You can already hear the flip side. To engage in the mission will matter for someone else. It may start to move the stone when shame is so deep that it feels like tomb. Likely, it will give someone a moment of grace, or love, or a word, or a backpack of food, or piece of bread, or room with a roof that doesn’t leak after a flight from violence in a home country, or one big helping of tater-tot hotdish, or hope that no one is alone. It’s true. We all have to give up, or lose something, to show up or sign up–or horror of all horrors–be scheduled for something. But think of what just might be found. The promise is that you’ll find Easter. We were made to alive, to be light, to be a human in all its divine glory.

Last night, at a fundraising dinner, the head of Lutheran Social Services told us about being so excited to get presents as a kid, but also remembers that first time he was the one to give a gift, how much that meant. I thought, “There it is.” That’s the mystery. Of course, we receive, and we’re grateful and delighted, but somehow we become even more human when we also give. Of course, it always takes something from us to give, but in it, it’s the coming of Christ in all his glory.

We came home, and I don’t think either one of us could remember the first present we received, but we could remember the first gifts we made out some bits of construction paper, or a scrap of wood, or lump of clay. Darin’s was a bird house; mine was an ash tray made in kindergarten—all little things really, probably long gone, but in them, human life at full stretch, the gifts of God for the people of God.