Readings for the Second Sunday in Lent (Year B)
This sermon was preached at Christ Episcopal Church in Eureka CA on February 28, 2021
On January 27th, 1956, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr sat at his kitchen table late at night, anxiously sipping coffee while feeling battered by waves of fear and apprehension. At age 27, he had just been selected as the president of the Montgomery Improvement Association after the international success of the 13-month-long Montgomery Bus Boycott, which was sparked by Rosa Parks and culminated with the US Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public buses is unconstitutional. As the new president of the Association, Martin Luther King Jr. was thrust into the spotlight and became the target of racists and white supremacist vitriol. He received multiple intimidations and a series of threatening phone calls, but one phone call was particularly nasty and unnerving. He said, “On the other end was an ugly voice. That voice said to me, in substance, [N-word] we are tired of you and your mess. And if you aren’t out of this town in three days, we’re going to blow your brains out and blow up your house.”
As he sipped his coffee, almost shaking, he thought of his little baby girl and his beautiful wife, who could be taken away from him at any moment. He reflected on the theology that he learned at seminary and realized that seminary had not adequately prepared him for what he had gotten into. I imagine he felt tempted to significantly scale back his political involvement and simply focus on being a pastor. Then again, a pastor of a black church generally does not enjoy the privilege of opting out of politics since the spiritual and social needs of congregants are so deeply intertwined. I imagine he felt tempted to re-evaluate his vocation entirely.
In a speech he gave in Chicago ten years later, he spoke of this crucial night of desperation. These are his words about that night: “Something said to me, you can’t call on Daddy now, he’s up in Atlanta a hundred and seventy-five miles away. You can’t even call on Mama now. You’ve got to call on that something…that your Daddy used to tell you about. That power that can make a way out of no way. I discovered then that religion had to become real to me and I had to know God for myself.” So he bowed his head over his cup of coffee and he prayed, asking God for help. He said that “it seemed at that moment that I could hear an inner voice saying to me, ‘Martin Luther, stand up for righteousness, stand up for justice, stand up for truth. And lo I will be with you, even until the end of the world.” And he said that Jesus promised him that night never to leave him, to never leave him alone.
During this particular season of Lent, we are invited to reflect on the words and witness of Martin Luther King Jr whose feast day in our church calendar falls on Easter Sunday this year: April 4th. We are invited to reflect on this particular time in his life when he likely felt tempted to seek a safer and more comfortable career. He certainly had the chops to make a living as a successful author or professor. If he had made that choice, he might still be with us today. He’d be a nonagenarian, like a few of the beloved members here at Christ Church. But what would the Civil Rights movement be without him? In order for Martin Luther King Jr. to be faithful to his particular call as a disciple of Christ, he knew he needed to deny himself the comfort and safety of opting out and he needed to take up his cross. And he knew that taking up one’s cross does not mean simply enduring some nagging nuisance like a stubborn hangnail. He knew that taking up one’s cross meant standing up for righteousness, justice, and truth, even if it meant dying for the sake of righteousness, justice, and truth. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer said, “When Christ calls someone, he bids them come and die.”
Last Sunday, we read about Christ’s temptation by Satan in the wilderness. As Dr. Rachel Wheeler pointed out, “few details of this episode exist in Mark’s Gospel”; however, in our Gospel reading today, Mark shows us what kind of temptation Satan had likely dangled before Jesus during his time in the wilderness and throughout his ministry.
Right after Peter had confessed that Jesus was the Messiah (the Christ), Jesus teaches Peter and the other disciples what that means and what that looks like. He says, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes [basically all of the important and powerful people] and [he must] be killed, [and] after three days rise again.” He said all this quite openly (8:31-32). Now the people had many expectations for the Messiah, but most of them assumed that the Messiah would liberate the Jewish people from the clutches of the Roman empire. So far, Jesus had not exactly been fulfilling the job description of the Messiah, but he was certainly attracting a significant following. In this same chapter in Mark, Jesus has already fed four thousand people and healed a blind man. Although the people were expecting a revolutionary warrior and king in their Messiah, they were certainly drawn to a Messiah who was offering them nourishment and healing (free food and health care!). Peter was probably expecting a different kind of Messiah as well, but he could work with this, especially if Jesus was willing to listen to his ideas about how to be successful and how to attract more people, how to “increase attendance.” But it seems clear that virtually no one believed that the true Messiah was going to be rejected and killed. That would be a false messiah. So Peter takes Jesus aside and explains to him that all this talk about rejection and death is not going to be good for his brand. His attendance numbers are going to plummet because who wants to follow a Messiah who is bound to fail and fail miserably? Peter rebukes Jesus not only because he wants this Jesus Movement to succeed, but also because he cares about Jesus and he doesn’t want to see him get hurt or humiliated. Peter likely suggests other options for Jesus, other ways for him to accomplish his goals. And that’s exactly what Satan was doing to Jesus in the wilderness, offering him safer, faster, and more comfortable ways to accomplish his goals.
Remember: in Matthew’s account of the temptation in the wilderness, Jesus is tempted by Satan to miraculously make bread, to escape death, and to become the king of the world. We know these were extremely tempting to Jesus because they were his goals, which he eventually did accomplish: He miraculously made bread (to feed thousands of people), he escaped death in his resurrection and then he commissioned his followers to make disciples of all the nations of the world. But Jesus accomplished all of these goals in God’s time and in God’s way, which is the Way of the Cross. So when Peter offers Jesus other options, Jesus says, “I’ve already been through this with you, Satan. Get behind me. Your way is not God’s way because God’s way is the Way of the Cross.” Jesus felt called to stand up for truth, justice, and righteousness and he knew that his faithfulness to that call would result in his rejection and death. Yet he also knew that God was with him and that God would remain with him even in the grave and eventually lead him and all of his faithful followers to new life. And Jesus invites us into that new life when he says, “Deny yourself and take up your 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 you to gain the whole world and yet forfeit your soul?”
Three days after Martin Luther King Jr. heard Christ’s call to stand up for truth, justice, and righteousness, his house was bombed while his wife and daughter were home. Fortunately, no one was injured; and although many of his followers were eager to exact revenge on the perpetrators, Martin Luther King Jr. continued to preach non-violence because he knew that God’s way was the Way of the Cross, which is not always the way of comfort and safety. Martin knew that the power of which his father spoke, that power that can make a way out of no way, just as it did for Abraham and Sarah, was the power of self-giving love that risks danger and even death for the sake of faithfulness to the ever-present and ever-loving God of life. Amen.
DANIEL DeFOREST LONDON 