September 13, 2009 Ordinary Time

Mark 8:22-38

We had been warned, but we did it anyway: we rented a car in England. I’m a good driver, and I thought I had what I needed. A decent enough map. A clear destination. A companion on the journey—map reader and spotter. After the first two miles of driving on the left, I began to feel a little bit comfortable and was ready to get to business. I took the exit the guy at Enterprise had indicated, and that was when we rolled into the first roundabout, circled it, and
found ourselves inexplicably pointed BACK into the center of London.
We were leaving London, on our way south to Winchester Cathedral. I
checked the destinations indicated on the sign. Twickenham. M2267
CM3206. Honey, check the map, okay? I need
which of these little things connects with the M25. Honey? Which one
goes to Winchester? The next roundabout, she
suggested I just keep driving around it until we could figure it
out……irritably, we snapped back at each other. I was wondering
why at each roundabout an arm pointing in a different direction was
still mysteriously going toward Twickenham. Take
that one, Gili suggested. But
I don’t WANT to go to Twickenham!!! I said
between gritted teeth. Where is the M25? Or
the M3? Or any M thing at all with less than four numbers???

We finally
made it out of London, and on the right road, by grace and by golly.
But it was a full day later before we learned that, in roundabouts in
England, it wasn’t enough to know that you wanted, ultimately, to
go to Salisbury, say, or Bath. Because each roundabout sign only
showed the next two towns on each little radial arm’s route, it was
necessary not only to know your ultimate destination, but also the
markers along the way…or else, you would most certainly become
terribly lost.

This
morning’s sermon is first in a series exploring five spiritual
practices we call Spiritual Antibodies in our work with distressed communities and people recovering from
disaster. The “disease” these antibodies are intended to
inoculate against is Compassion Fatigue; that is, what happens to us
when the chronic stresses and circumstances of our life and work wear
us down and out to the point where we begin to act out in ways that
are harmful to ourselves and others. Last week, we considered the
story in the gospel of Mark in which Jesus, worn down by challenge
and opposition, exhausted from his work of healing and teaching, and
struggling with friends and followers who didn’t understand his
mission, acted out by calling a Gentile woman who came to him for
help a “dog.” Jesus was experiencing compassion fatigue, and he
was at less than his best.

It is
commonly believed that the way to treat stress, burn out or
compassion fatigue, is to change the circumstances that caused it.
If work is causing you stress, go on vacation. If your marriage is
in a hard place, get a divorce. If you aren’t happy, move
somewhere else, or get a new job. But as a friend once marvelously
and honestly told me, the problem with
changing your partner when you’re unhappy is that you still are
stuck with yourself. And unless I change, nothing changes.

The
Centers for Disease Control, the CDC in Atlanta, would applaud that
observation. When an outbreak of disease is diagnosed somewhere in
the world, it is impossible to physically remove every creature from
harm’s way. You can’t get rid of the virus, the germs, the agents
that cause outbreaks. It’s just not possible to treat disease that
way. Rather, you fight disease by building immunity and resilience
in the exposed population.

When we
say that we eradicated smallpox in this country, we did not mean that
we killed all the smallpox in the world, rather, we practiced a
program of universal inoculation, building antibodies and immunity to
smallpox across our population, until the disease could not gain a
foothold. The CDC defines disease not as the absence of toxicity, but
as a lack of effective antibodies. We don’t get sick because of the toxicity of our environment, but
because of the inability or weakness of our immune system.
Spiritually and emotionally speaking, it is the same. We are never
going to live in a world that is stress free, or danger-free. The
circumstances of life will always present challenges and insults to
us, sometimes more, sometimes less. We can’t change that, so we have to change ourselves. We have to
build up our spiritual immune system.

So it
follows that the first key is to know what a healthy system looks and
feels like, so that we can be aware when our spiritual health is at
risk. Jesus knew that; he knew what a Christly self looked like, and
so he was quick to correct his course when challenged. In last
week’s story, the challenge of the Syrophoenician woman helped him
realize he was symptomatic: a healthy Jesus would not have insulted
a person in need; and so, he corrected course, recovered himself, and
got back on track. How do we know what a healthy spiritual and emotional self looks like?

This is
the first spiritual antibody: intentionality. In order to be
spiritually and emotionally well, we need to know why we are here and
what are the principles that guide us through our life. When I was
driving aimlessly around in circles in London, growing ever more
frustrated, angry and stressed, I knew where I wanted to go
ultimately, but I had no clue how to get there. If I had known the
villages along the way, and how the system worked, I would have
understood not only the big picture, that I was going to Winchester.
. .but also, the way to get there without harming myself or others.
To be spiritually healthy, we need to know not just where we are
going, that is, our mission in life; but also, what values we choose
to practice that will get us there. So I am going to ask you to take
a few minutes now, while Laura plays and sings softly, and use the
piece of paper in your bulletin to think about and write what you
understand your life’s mission to be. It should be short, to the
point, easy to remember. And then, what are the core values or
principles that keep your life on track. Why
are you on this planet? What principles and values are important to
keep you on your life’s path?

The story
we read earlier this morning from the gospel of Mark speaks
eloquently about the importance of intentionality in our lives.
Jesus is nearing the end of his public ministry of teaching and
healing. All of his life’s work of bringing people into communion
with God and wholeness in their lives is driving him inexorably
toward a final confrontation with the powers in his world that could
not tolerate such health and freedom. In the deepest places of his
spirit, he knew that if he stayed on mission, he would be killed. But
no one in the prime of life and the fullness of service wants to die.
In this text, Jesus is preparing his disciples and himself to stay
centered in their purpose, in his life mission, no matter what. He
knows that this will be especially difficult for his followers, who
don’t fully understand what he has come to do; but also, hard for
him. He knows he must be carefully attentive to his purpose and the
temptation to stray from it, if he is to fulfill his mission.

The first
story, the story of the two-part healing of the blind man, helps us
understand this. When Jesus first touches the blind man he asks, can
you see anything? The man responds that I
can see people, but they look like trees, walking. The
man knows what he sees, and he knows that it is not quite right. His
desire is for full health and healing, and he knows that he is only
partway there. In response to this, Jesus touches him again, and his
sight is fully restored, he is whole.

Just after
this little story, Jesus asks his disciples, in effect, can
you see anything? And they respond, some
say you are Elijah, some, the prophet, some, John the Baptist. And
you? What do you say? Peter makes the connection, you are the
Christ, son of the living God. He gets it,
what Jesus’ mission is, what they have been doing, and why. Just
for that moment, they know the way—and so Jesus reveals to them the
hardest part of the path he has chosen: that it will lead to his
crucifixion and death. This is the first time in the gospel of Mark
where Jesus dares to say that aloud, that in order for him to fulfill
his mission, it is necessary for him to die.

But we
have been talking not just about our mission and our integrity in
that mission, but also about the ways the stresses and strains and
insults of life tempt us to breach that mission. We all have what we
might call “ditch behaviors,” things we do when our immunity is
low and we begin to get spiritually “sick.” We get irritable
with those we love. We feel put upon and martyred. We drink too much,
or eat or shop too much. We withdraw from friends and family. Jesus
did it in the story we studied last week. In this week’s story,
it is Peter who can’t maintain his mission when the fear of losing
Jesus overwhelms him. When Jesus says, I’m
going to die, Peter rebukes him and tells
him, no way. Whatever you have to do to avoid
this death, do it. He invites Jesus to
breach his integrity, to ditch his mission, so that he can avoid pain
and death and loss.

That is
why Jesus is so sharp and pointed in his response to Peter, or
rather, in his response to himself. Get
behind me, satan, for you are focusing on human things, not divine. Through the years, Peter has taken a bad rap for this little
incident, dismissed as evil because he is tempting Jesus away from
his chosen path. But the fact is, Peter is doing Jesus a favor here.
In the most ancient traditions of the Jewish people, Satan is not a devil with horns, the personification of evil. Rather, he
is the Adversary, a devil’s advocate who points out an alternative
path. Well, I know you believe the right way
is to maintain your commitment to love and serve even if they kill
you for it, but wouldn’t you rather live? Isn’t there another
way? The devil doesn’t make us do it; he
points up the alternatives, so that we can make choices that are less
than our highest and best. But the choice and the responsibility, all
along, are entirely our own.

Peter,
acting as the Adversary, only suggests to Jesus what Jesus himself is
tempted to do.

Of course
he would rather live than die. But he knows that to live, he would
have to betray his principles and his mission. And so he teaches his
disciples (and himself) whoever would save
himself must be willing to lose his life. And those who would keep
their life at any cost will lose their soul.

From this
point on, Jesus is able to maintain his mission, and bring his
disciples along with him into a hard and dangerous time, because he
knows what his ultimate goal is, and what temptations he is
vulnerable to that might lead him down an alternative path, missing
the mark. He knows what it is to see clearly, and what it looks like
to see less than clearly (that is, in the metaphor of his healing
story, to see people who look like trees). We can do the same, and
practice intentionality as we move through the challenges and joys of
life. If we know why we are here, and we know what principles are
core values to us, we will be able to recognize those circumstances
and symptoms that mean we are off the path . . . or beginning to lose
our way.

I’d like
to bring this home with a word from Viktor Frankl, the philosopher
and theologian who wrote Man’s Search for
Meaning. He lost his entire family in the
holocaust and barely survived the death camps, enduring dehumanizing
torture. His statement, That which is to give
light must endure burning, is one of my own
core principles. He said this: We who lived
in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the
huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They
may have been few in number, but the offer sufficient proof that
everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the
human freedoms—to choose one’s attitude in any given set of
circumstances, to choose one’s own way. When we are no longer able
to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.