SEPTEMBER 16, 2018

SEVENTEENTH sunday of pentecost

James 3:1-12 & Mark 8:27-38

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In 2012, Aaron Sorkin, the writer of the television show The West Wing, came out with a new show, The Newsroom. It covers a team of journalists trying to do the news in a responsible and thoughtful way - and the gimmick of the show is that each episode covers a real event from recent history - the Deepwater Horizon spill, the assassination of Bin Laden, the debt ceiling crisis. The thrill of the show is that it’s written with 20/20 hindsight, so all the characters get everything perfectly, satisfyingly right, every week. It can feel really indulgent, but that’s part of the fun.

Today’s Bible passages are tough ones. And the way we read them in our lectionary makes them tougher - we read them in small chunks, which keeps them immediate and close. We are invited to imagine ourselves right there with Jesus and his disciples; to hear the Old Testament prophets speaking directly to us, as the ancient Hebrews may have heard those words. Every week we get a small vignette of Divine reality, and we take the time together to step into it, to really sit with it.

I want to do something different today - I want to pull an Aaron Sorkin and indulge in some 20/20 hindsight. Because as 21st century Christians, we are blessed to have the larger context, the whole arc of the story. We know, unlike the Biblical figures in these moments, how the whole thing ends. Because if we just stuck with what we have today - admonition and scolding, regret and shame - we’d be missing the entire purpose of the Cross; the truth of what Christ means to us today, as players in the same eternal story.

Many of you know that I am currently a therapeutic foster parent, which means I work with young people in my home who are dealing with trauma, fear, and shame. So today’s verses really resonated with me - stories about hurtful language, about shame and confusion, about people trying to be in healthy community despite all their baggage - that’s the life I’m living 24/7. But I also live, 24/7, with the knowledge that there is always a bigger picture. That the struggle of the current moment is pointing forward, to newness and healing.

My foster son, just turned 14. He’s lived with me for the past year, and we’ve “taken up a lot of crosses” together. I asked him for permission to share this story, and he was generous enough to give it, provided I left his name out of it. For a long time, he struggled with violence against property - breaking things as an expression of anger or sadness. We had a rule that for every incident, he would lose his screen privileges for 3 days.

One afternoon, he got frustrated with something and began to bang and slam the furniture. I pointed out that his behavior had just triggered a consequence. But my intention completely backfired, and instead of incentivizing him to stop, my scolding only escalated him. He became very upset, and went into his bedroom, where he did some seriously impressive damage.

I realized my mistake. His behavior was an expression of his painful feelings, and by scolding him, I had only made things worse. Ashamed of his behavior, he felt powerless and angry, and the situation spiraled. Shame is one of the most destructive things we can feel, and it makes it impossible for us to be our best selves or behave in a way we’re proud of.

I think about Peter in this Gospel reading today. His best friend, his leader, his teacher, his Messiah - turns to him, and in front of everyone, calls him “Satan.” Imagine the shame, the defensive rage, the humiliation, the confusion. The human incarnation of God - the walking face of goodness, of love, of light, of holiness - just looked at you and called you evil. Unclean. Enemy. 

How do you come back from that?

I know how we come back from shame at my house. I waited for a calm in the storm, then knocked on my kiddo’s door with a peanut butter chocolate smoothie - his favorite.

Some of the parents in here might be wondering why I “rewarded” such behavior with a treat. One reason is that getting some food into people usually calms them down, especially drinking through a straw, which forces us to regulate our breathing. If the goal is to stop the behavior, a smoothie is just practical.

But there’s a deeper reason. I knew that his actions did not come from malicious intent. He did not walk into his room, think “I think I’ll trash the apartment,” and proceed to act accordingly. He felt angry, scared, and out of control. Ashamed. And the antidote to shame is love. For me to show him that he is worth infinitely more to me than my rental deposit. That he is more to me than his worst behavior. That the shame driving his behaviors is not the truth of who he is. 

As he sipped his smoothie, he calmed down enough to go from “enraged” to “distraught.” He told me how upset he was with himself, and he believed that the damage was irreparable. I tried to reassure him that, while it would take work and money, it could be fixed. I opened my laptop and searched YouTube for videos on repairing holes in drywall. 

Thank God - and I believe this was a Holy Spirit moment - the first video I opened happened to be a cheerful contractor who started off by saying that the #1 most common type of damage he is called to repair is holes punched in walls by people who got too angry. He looked at me with a relieved grin on his face. Other people feel this. Other people do this. I’m not alone. I’m not irredeemable. I’m okay. 

Today’s readings have some pretty tough stuff in them. What my generation might refer to as “call-outs.” In James, we’re asked to be accountable for what we say, in a pretty rough way: we’re told that if we say rude, nasty, hateful things, it means that even the loving things we say are tainted - that our bad behavior defines us as much as our good behavior. In the Gospel, we’re told if we don’t align ourselves with the work of the Kingdom, and instead join in with the “sinful” world, God will be “ashamed” of us. 

But that’s not the whole story. We know that this Jesus who is ready to remind us of the risks of bad behavior, and the threat of shame, is the same Jesus who died to cover all our shame, who rose from the grave to ensure that nothing we ever do could separate us from the love of God. The same Jesus who died while calling us out of our shame into a new life, out of sin into a transformative love, the same Jesus who rose from the grave as testament that nothing we ever do could. He couldn’t do this without discussing, without recognizing, the pain and the darkness and the mistakes - but he never left the conversation there.

Yes, we are asked today to face the darkness in us. There always a time and place to be accountable, to repent. To own up to the ways we fall short of God’s Kingdom. We are currently in the ten Days of Atonement, a period of time in the Jewish calendar where we are asked to reflect on where, in the past year, we’ve strayed from God, done things we’re not proud of, and how we want to repent and change. Even after the smoothie and the YouTube, my kiddo served his screen-free time, and worked on a weekend to repair the damage. I don’t want to be someone who hand-waves a difficult Bible passage away with rhetorical flourishes and excuses. But I also don’t want to stay stuck in a single moment, when our God, and our tradition, purposefully gifted us with a larger history that redeems those moments.

When we read this gospel passage, we have the benefit of two thousand years of hindsight. We know that as low as Peter feels in this moment, it’s not the end of his story. Jesus does not write him off as “Satan” and give up. Peter is not remembered as the “adversary” of Christ. I read this passage as someone who’s visited St. Peter’s Basilica in the Vatican, seen his name in letters ten feet high. Peter: the rock of the church. When we set today’s Gospel against the backdrop of Apostolic history, we can see this great cathedral as a potent reminder that Christ can redeem anything. That we can’t break anything so badly that it’s beyond grace. That our deepest shame is covered by Jesus’s love. 

Just like the holes in my kiddo’s bedroom, now plastered over and good as new. A sacred space - perhaps, more sacred to me than the massive Basilica I visited a few years ago - where shame was present and real. Where it was met with love and grace. Where redemption and healing triumphed. Reminders, everywhere, that no spring is so fouled, no life so lost, no scolding so harsh, no shame so dark, that it can’t be made new through the work of the Cross.