Rev. Tom Sorenson, Pastor
October 26, 2003

Scripture:

Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.

In churches like ours it is very common for us to talk about the spiritual life as a journey. We talk about each person’s individual journey, and we try to meet each person wherever she or he may be on that journey. Our Mission Statement says as much. It says: "We respect the integrity of each person’s individual journey;" and "we work to support each other in our spiritual journeys." I know that I am on a spiritual journey. It has, over the course of several decades, brought me from a naïve and naively literalistic, childhood faith through agnosticism to what I hope is a more mature although still imperfect Christian faith. My journey has brought me to, among other things, a non-literalistic, inclusive understanding of that faith that sees the Gospel of Jesus primarily as a call to non-violent resistance to evil and as a message of God’s unconditional grace and love for all people, especially those whom society and its dominant religious voices condemn and scorn. I know that you are all on your own spiritual journeys. Some of you have shared some of your journey with me. I know that my spiritual journey is not over. It will not be over until I die, and I trust that your journeys will last until the end of your earthly lives as well.

A substantial chunk of the Gospel of Mark, from which this morning’s Gospel lesson came, is also about a journey, a journey both physical and spiritual. A whole piece of the Gospel is known to scholars as Mark’s journey narrative. It begins at Mark 8:22 with the story of Jesus curing a blind man at Bethsaida. Immediately afterwards, Jesus starts his journey to Jerusalem. Along the way, on three separate occasions, he tells of his coming suffering, death, and resurrection. We’ve heard a couple of those so-called "passion predictions" in our Gospel lessons over the past couple of months, and I preach on one of them in September. The journey narrative ends with the passage we just heart, the curing of another blind man, this time at Jericho. The placement of those two stories about healed blindness at the beginning and the end of the journey narrative is no coincidence. It is a literary clue telling us that what comes between them is all of a piece, and that that piece has something to do with overcoming blindness. Because the key feature of that piece is the three passion predictions, Mark is telling us that Jesus’ journey to death and resurrection in Jerusalem is all about opening our eyes to the fact Jesus’ way is indeed the way of death and resurrection.

The journey narrative ends with the verse that I put at the head of today’s bulletin: "Immediately he (Bartimeus) regained his sight and followed him (Jesus) on the way." That means, of course, that he followed Jesus to Jerusalem, where Jesus has just said three times he would suffer death and then rise again. And that is of course what happens next in Mark’s Gospel. So, when Bartimeus follows Jesus "on the way," he follows him on the way of death and resurrection, of dying to this life and rising to new, transformed, transfigured life. Mark means to tell us that that is our way too.

Now, you may be thinking-indeed I think you should be thinking-that telling people that the Christian way is the way of death, even if it is followed by resurrection, is not exactly the best way to fill up the pews in Christian churches, this one or any others. I mean, it’s not exactly the most cheery of messages: "Hey guys! Have I got a deal for you! Come to our church, and we’ll lead you to a horrific execution on a cross! Come on! It’ll be great!" And so, many (I would say most) Christian churches avoid this message of Mark’s Gospel by saying that the way of death and resurrection was Jesus’ way but not our way. It’s what he came to earth to do, they say, and because he did it we don’t have to. Well, I beg to differ. Mark’s message is precisely that the Christian way is the way of death and resurrection, and he meant that it is the way not just for Jesus but for everyone who would follow Jesus.

Big problem, huh? Well, not really. Like so many problems with the Christian message it only appears to be a problem. It should come as no surprise to those of you who have gotten to know me in my still brief time with you that I have a way to approach this message that makes it not a problem but a life giving word of God’s love for us all, that makes it indeed extremely good news. The teaching that Jesus’ way is the way of death and resurrection is a problem for us, a stumbling block to faith, you see, only if we take it literally. If being a Christian literally meant that we were all going to end up as corpses hanging on a tree, I doubt that very many of us would be Christians, resurrection or no resurrection. The good news in this message, however, like the good news in virtually every message of Scripture, comes alive and has real meaning for us precisely when we get over taking it literally and see it for the metaphor that it is. Jesus’ journey to the heart of darkness in Jerusalem, the center of the demonic powers of his world (in particular, the Roman Empire), his journey to death and then to resurrection is, you see, a metaphor for the psychological and spiritual journey that God calls each of us and all people to take. Mark’s story isn’t just about what happened historically to Jesus. As a metaphor it is about us and the journey we must take if we would follow Jesus on the way.

So what is this story telling us as metaphor? I believe that it is telling us this: The way of Jesus, the way of the Christian faith, is the way of dying to our old selves, to our old way of being in the world, and rising again into newness of life, into a new, transformed self, a new transformed way of being in the world. That’s what happened to Jesus, after all. His original way of being in the world as the historical person Jesus of Nazareth ended with his death. He died to that way of being, but he didn’t just die. He rose again, but he rose transformed. The risen Christ is not the continuation of the historical Jesus. He is recognizable as Jesus, but he is much, much more as well. He lives now not as a historical person but as a transformed and transforming presence in the lives of his disciples, in our lives. He is the same as before, but is also radically transformed. He made the journey from life to death to new, transformed life.

That’s the journey he calls us to take as well. The goal of that journey is not so much the loss of our selves as it is their transformation. Jesus calls us to die to our selfish selves and to rise again as selves that find fulfillment in self-giving. He calls us to die to selves that have adapted and conformed to the ways of the world-the ways of materialism, of domination of some people by others, the way of violence s the solution to our problems-and to rise again as selves committed not to the values and ways of the world but to God’s ways-the way of the spiritual life, the way of radical, inclusive justice and compassion for all people, the way of assertive, even aggressive, but always, always, nonviolent resistance to evil, a resistance that avoids the sinister and ever present trap of becoming ourselves the evil that we use violence to overcome. Jesus calls us to die to the selves that complacently enjoy the benefits of an unjust world political and economic order and to rise as selves willing to make sacrifices in order to bring justice and life to those whom that system oppresses and kills, sacrifices that our politicians of both parties are too short-sighted and cowardly to call on us to make.

Friends, the way of transformation truly is the way of Jesus Christ. Religion that merely confirms us in our present selves without calling us to Jesus’ way of transformation is no true religion. Christianity that tells us of God’s love for us without at the same time telling us of Christ’s call to radical transformation is a betrayal of the Christ it claims to follow. Christianity like that gives us only half of the Good News. The rest of the story is that the life of transformation to which Christ calls us is not just-or better, not even really-a life of sacrifice. Rather, it is giving up an old, limited and limiting way of life for something better. It is giving up the life of sin for a life in Christ that is a life of profound joy, of boundless hope, of true, profound contentment and peace for the soul. It is those things because it is the life to which God calls us. The Good News is that God will not abandon us in that life. Rather, once we undertake to follow Jesus on the way of transformation, God will be a living presence in our lives, more of a living presence that God may be now. God will then be our lives’ deepest reality. Our lives will be what God intends them to be. We shall truly be ourselves. That’s the way of Jesus. That’s the way of salvation. It’s a journey, not a place. It’s a process that lasts, if we let it, as long as we live. We respect the integrity of every person’s individual spiritual journey. We are all called, however, to this particular journey, the journey of transformation. I try, often unsuccessfully, to stay with Jesus on that way. I pray that you do too.