September 13 Proper 19
Chris said his problem with organ music was that it was always sad. Now, for some of us Episcopalians, insulting organ music is akin to insulting motherhood. Or gin. Poor form always and everywhere.
But, since Chris is an old friend, I managed to hold my tongue, and count to ten, which provided just enough space for my indignation to turn into pity. “Poor thing,” I thought.
That felt better. Until I realized that I kind of agreed with him. There is a little sadness present in everything played on an organ. I couldn’t tell you which stops or keys are the sad ones. But there is a little sadness there.
But that’s because there’s sadness present in all the best music. Even music at its most joyful.
What my friend stumbled onto was the simple fact that good art has a certain substance to it, we might say. And it seems that part of the stuff of good art is sadness, or the experience of the grimmer realities of life. We don’t trust the artist who seems to have been spared or to have ignored suffering.
It’s not just there in Bach and Schubert. It’s in John Coletrane and Hank Williams and Al Green. It’s in Itzhak Perlman’s fiddle and Muddy Waters’s guitar and in every Hammond B3 organ ever played. I don’t know how else to put it, but there is a little sadness, or the knowledge of sadness in all the best music.
Music without sadness is fit only for supermarkets and elevators. It’s flimsy and trivial and there are parts of our selves where it just won’t go.
One of the questions our gospel reading today asks is whether there are parts of our selves where grace wouldn’t quite go, if Jesus didn’t turn and go down that lonesome road to Jerusalem and suffering.
The gospel of Mark takes a grim turn in chapter eight. Up to this point in the book, Jesus has been traveling around, healing people, casting out demons, and telling a few parables along the way. It’s good work if you can find it. Everybody seemed happy about Jesus except the demons and some jealous religious leaders who didn’t like all the attention he’d been getting.
So it’s understandable that Peter didn’t want Jesus to spoil the good thing he had going. “What’s all this talk of suffering, rejection, and death? You’re the healer, Jesus. Yes, some of the parables you tell are a little bewildering, but on the whole you have a nice, happy ministry going. Why risk it?”
Then Jesus calls Peter Satan. And things get really weird. He says that there are selves to be denied, and crosses to be borne; that lost lives will be saved, and saved lives will be lost. Everything was so much simpler when Jesus was just telling stories and making sick people well.
But Jesus says he has to suffer, and he won’t be diverted. Not even by his friend Peter.
Christians have debated whether and why Jesus had to suffer for a long time. In the fourth century Gregory of Nazianzus said that what God has not assumed, God has not redeemed. He was talking about the central mystery of Christian faith: that God “assumed” or “took on” a human nature in Jesus of Nazareth.
Gregory was arguing that Jesus really was a human of flesh and blood and pain, not just a spiritual presence, protected from the grittier realities of life as a human body. Incarnation wasn’t about God peeking in on human existence. It was about God breathing in our air, walking on our earth, and feeling all the things walking, breathing humans feel.
If we were gods, we might like the idea of dabbling at being human. We’d want to pick and choose what we experienced, of course. Carol Lou Flowers would make sure she didn’t have to encounter any snakes. I’d arrange things so I never had to hear the music of Air Supply. You certainly have your own list of experiences to avoid if you were a god slumming with the humans for a while.
The fun part of our incarnation would be the miracles. Think of the good things we’d do. And think of how we’d be loved as we healed people and made them happy. But Christian tradition insists that there was more to the actual Incarnation of the living God than that. Jesus’ life was about more than restoring a few withered limbs and casting out demons.
For if healing people was all Jesus’ ministry was about, would he still be changing our lives today? We can forget that the people who Jesus made better didn’t stay better. The eyes of the blind that he opened eventually grew dim again and closed for good. The legs of the lame people who walked became feeble and frail again in their old age. If Lazarus came back to life one day, on another day years later Lazarus died again.
So Jesus tells Peter that the healings weren’t the whole story. It wasn’t enough for him to glide through this life as a hero, healing people without ever needing to be healed himself. And so the story turns at this moment in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus tells Peter that he’s going to die.
So in Gregory’s terms, maybe Jesus’ turn from just being a healer toward the experience of death itself was God’s assuming something in order to redeem it. God’s experiencing something, in order to transform it. Somehow it was crucial for Jesus to experience the extremes of human existence in order for his life to work the mystery of redemption in ours.
Now the people who put together the Revised Common Lectionary didn’t seem to consider or care that somebody would have to preach on this sobering passage on Fall Kick Off day. You were probably expecting a marching band and cheerleaders in the procession today, and here we are talking about suffering.
But maybe part of the lesson we can take from even a somber story like this one, is that our joy can be trusted, because Jesus didn’t avoid the harshest realities of life. The joy that accompanies our faith and life together can be trusted because our religion is grounded by Jesus’ decision to turn and walk towards the cross. When we sing or pray or teach or share a potluck meal together, we’re not in denial. Our faith encompasses it all. Because Jesus’ life encompassed it all.
And as we kick off another year of Christian formation, we’re reminded that we are formed in this faith to live well and to live with hope in all of life. Such is the formation that goes on as you lead a few children in Catechesis of the Good Shepherd, or mentor young people in RITE 13 or Journey to Adulthood. Such is the formation that goes on in all of us as we participate in this liturgy again and again, bringing the experiences of another week with us each time.
For our faith to be trusted, for our faith to matter to our lives, we have to believe that our faith encompasses all of our lives—our joys and our sorrows. We do sense that what God has not assumed, God has not redeemed. And since Jesus brought health and joy and wholeness to the lives he touched, but also lived this human experience all the way to the grave and beyond, we know that God has assumed it all. And that God has redeemed it all. Wherever our lives take us, Christ has been.
So we might simply say that if our Christian faith is music, it isn’t muzak. Faith isn’t a blind, shallow happiness that pretends we can live in this world free of suffering. Christian faith brings a sturdier kind of joy, a peace that passes understanding, perhaps, because there’s nothing in this life that Christ failed to assume, there is no experience in this life that Christ’s life was too good for. So there’s nowhere in our lives and our selves where God’s grace cannot reach. Amen.