St. Paul’s On-the-Hill Episcopal Church

The Rev. Stephen C. Holton, Rector

Lent 2; March 8, 2009

Mark 8:31-38

GIVING UP CREDIT & COMFORT

FOR LIFE & LOVING

Don’t you get tired, like me, of always trying to get comfortable? Don’t you get tired, like me, of always trying to get the credit we deserve for what we do?

It’s exhausting.

We spend much of our lives in pain – from unhealed grievances, old wounds, old hurts. We have all been hurt in ways large and small, throughout our lives.

So we spend our lives trying to heal those hurts, cover up those grievances, get beyond those grudges. We try to forgive and we cannot. We try to heal ourselves and we cannot.

We try to get credit for great things we have done, and we cannot. We try to get credit for great things we haven’t done yet, but have thought of, and we don’t. We try to get recognized, to stick out from the pack, and we don’t; and if we do – we soon realize that there is a much larger pack. Even if we stick out in our own little pack, even if we get recognition there; there is a much larger pack that has never heard of us and never will.

So we start trying harmful behaviors that will extend our delusions, or cover up those unhealable hurts.

We try to fill those holes in our souls with cream pies and delicious cakes. We try to heal those cuts to our hearts with an alcohol bath. Maybe drugs will help us forget, or not remember. Maybe abuse will make us feel important in a small circle.

Maybe abusing ourselves will get us ahead, a little bit; but not for long, only for so long as we can sustain it.

None of this lasts for long. The hurts don’t stay healed. The wounds don’t stay covered! They fester, and bleed again. We sink back into the pack because we can’t outrun it. Credit is false – in so many ways; and there’s not enough of it – in so many ways. The deficit in our souls takes up more and more of it and still is not satisfied.

What to do? How to outrun the coming catastrophe that threatens to engulf our psyches and swallow up every last little bit of our mental balance?

Stop. Stop trying to fill the hole. Stop trying to paper over the cracks in our psyches. Stop trying to get credit from those who have precious little to spare for themselves.

Turn to God.

If the wounds are not filled with so much cream pie, so much delicious cake, so much rich gravy – perhaps they can finally heal. If the psyche is not covered with so many layers of false credit, perhaps it can grow into the image of God in which it was created.

Then the healthy body and the healthy soul can go forth and love others – since it is less concerned with itself. It can love God and feel the warmth of God’s love, rather than being covered in the thin counterfeit of worldly credit and fame.

So I invite you to a holy Lent – where we try to put ourselves beyond the reach of worldly temptations for the worldly healing that never lasts.

I invite you not to take the cake, to try the pie, and only to wave at the gravy as you walk by.

When you stand alone in the kitchen late at night, going mano a mano with the dessert sitting there on the counter and it says: “hey buddy, you want a piece of me?” Don’t take the bait.

Go into another room, shut the door and sit down; and if you have to grip the arms of your chair to resist temptation – do so. You don’t need to be holy. You just need to hold out; and the longer you resist, the weaker the gravitational pull of the harmful substance or behavior becomes, the more you remember it doesn’t actually work; and the more you remember that God actually does work.

You put yourself in his orbit, you put yourself in his gravitational field, you feel his healing warmth.

Then these wounds, these cracks, these hurts get healed by Him, since you have put no barriers in His way and you have not run off for cheap, personal, dangerous medications that do not do the job anyway.

When we are wounded, we should go for a good physician, a heavenly one, who came to us to heal us and be with us and help us. Use Him.

“Get behind me Satan,” He said to Peter when the disciple asked Him to put worldly safety ahead of divine mission. Peter didn’t want Him to endanger Himself.

The people He loved, who loved Him, didn’t want Him to get hurt even if it meant ending His mission to which He’d dedicated himself. It’s perfectly normal to want comfort and safety.

Not Jesus.

“Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

The desire for comfort or credit are perfectly human, but we don’t need them; and the desire to get them can get in the way of our divine mission.

Jesus’ divine mission was to save others. Ours is too, to a lesser extent.

We only take up our cross. He took up His.

We do take up ours, though. It is a smaller mission, a smaller ministry, involving our own gifts; but it is still for the good of others. It is still to help others, love others, improve other lives at the expense of our own comfort and credit; but this is credit well spent – well spent on others – and redeemable by the love of God.

We are invited to follow Jesus – no turning back, no turning back, as the song says. As we follow, we can do so much good, following in His footsteps, learning from His handiwork, loving others as He does.

We will have to abandon our own previous footsteps, the ones that lead around and around in circles, the ones that pursue credit and comforts that don’t seem to work anyway.

In following Him, we stay close to Him. In loving others, the love bounces back to us. In staying close to Him, we stay in His orbit, tied by His gravitational pull, no longer so susceptible to the false rewards that promised so much and gave so little.

Now we are with Him; and with Him we can love others as He does, and so improve the world for all of us.