Surrender

February 25, 2024
Year B; Second Sunday in Lent
Genesis 17: 1-7; 15-16
Psalm 22: 22-30
Mark 8: 31-38
 
Mark 8:31-38
Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

Homily by Rev. Megan Limburg
Let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all our
hearts be acceptable in your sight,
O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
 
Our kitchen windows face east, towards our neighbor’s house, and a stand of tall trees beyond, a few pines but mostly maples and oaks and other hardwoods, all still bare branches, of course, despite reports of temps possibly in the 60s this week.

As anyone who has received a pre-dawn text from me knows, Tim and I are both early birds, morning people, and we get up ridiculously early, stumbling in the dark kitchen focused on coffee and tea. And, of course, our dog Mocha does his part to be sure we remain morning people!

As the hour moves from 5am to 6am and on to 6:30am, and one of us will pull the blinds on the kitchen windows and we see the first light in the east, and those hardwood branches etched across the early-light sky, and we have to stop in the midst of planning our days, and absorb the stark beauty of each leafless branch, vivid-black-dark against the pink-purple-shining white of the sky to the east.

And as much as I love the sight of those trees, they also often offer me a gift beyond their artistry, a gift of a memory, of a time when I could not imagine spring ever coming again.

Another sunrise, another window, this time my car windshield, many years ago in Richmond, looking at the bare trees at daybreak as I drove my so familiar, early morning commute to St. Christopher’s School.

It was late February in a year when I was ministering to 2 families at the same time, both families in the chaos of the first days after the unexpected death of a young parent.

Both were only in their 30s; young children grieving, surviving spouses devastated.

A big part of my ministry at St. Chris was grief counseling, but that February the deaths were only a few days apart and had come suddenly, so the losses permeated not the only the families, but the chaplain too, all of us heartbroken.
And as I drove and looked at the bare trees I realized I could no longer imagine spring coming ever, ever, coming again.

I was heartbroken, and in the wilderness.

As a southerner I have long played the joyous late February, early March game of when can I see the first buds on a tree? And as a southerner I have never had to wait very long.

If I moved to Maine and played this game, I might become desperate, still looking for buds into April and even May! But in Virginia the buds reliably come quickly, the fattening buds on the ornamental pears, that wondrous faint haze of red on the first maple.

But that dawn decades ago, through that car windshield, as I looked at the trees, I could not see buds on the trees, but even more, I could not imagine them ever appearing again.

Death and grief were present with my heartbroken self, and resurrection was absent, in my own wilderness.

Though we spoke of the wilderness last week, and Jesus’s temptation there, this week our reading echoes back to it.

Jesus is telling his friends the truth, the hardest truth, that he will, as our reading says “ undergo great suffering…” and that he will not be celebrated as the Messiah, but rather he will be arrested, attacked, and crucified.

And Peter, our friend and the reflection of our humanness, Peter pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him.

Peter reprimands Jesus, scolds him, argues with him for telling such a gloomy tale of the future, both, because Peter can only see a Messiah who is a king, and because he cares so much for Jesus.

Under Peter’s strong words are the fear he feels: don’t tell me of suffering, don’t speak of your death.
And so, in only one of two instances, Jesus rebukes one of his friends, speaking in the strongest terms to Peter:
“Get behind me, Satan!”

Satan, the tempter! Jesus speaks so strongly to Peter because he is tempting him as surely as the devil had in the wilderness.

And though Peter had pulled Jesus aside to rebuke him, in private, Jesus pulls Peter back into the group, and reprimands him in front of all the disciples.

And all Peter was trying to do was to remind Jesus that a King a Messiah was meant to be a powerful shining figure, that’s how the world will recognize you, not as a suffering defeated criminal on a cross.

Please don’t suffer, please don’t speak of your death.
Peter is in his own wilderness of embarrassment and hurt and confusion. Who is this Jesus, a heartbroken Peter wonders.

And so we turn again to the invitation that is this season of Lent. In this 2nd Sunday of Lent, the invitation offered on Ash Wednesday is still there, it is not too late to accept the invitation to observe a holy Lent.

And it is not too late to join me and join Peter in bringing our heartbroken selves to the cross, to share our despair, our confusion, our falling short.

Psalm 51 is a part of the Ash Wednesday service, a long psalm that ends with words about our heartbroken selves.
“The sacrifice of God is a troubled spirit; a broken and contrite heart…”

The writer Richard Floyd speaks of that broken heart:

“To see the dead places within and without us can break our hearts. But (Psalm 51) says that this very condition of heartbrokenness is a sacrifice acceptable to God. Because once we open our eyes to the ways, (that) the power of death has hold over us, and feel sorrow and remorse (which is what contrition means) God meets us there and can begin to ready us for the promise of new life.” (Still Speaking Daily Devotional, February 10, 2016)

I will never forget that heartbroken February when I could no longer imagine spring ever coming again.
It echoes back to me each year as I see the bare branches, even as the air warms.

And I can never forget too, that the only way I could see the hope again, feel life again, was in surrender, acknowledging my utter dependence on God.

And in that surrender to find again the buds, the promise of new life, in the first leaves finally, again, on the trees on the horizon, right outside my window.

Amen.