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Sept. 13, 2009

Psalm 19; Mark 8: 27-38

The name Oscar Romero may be familiar to some of you. He was a Catholic bishop in El Salvador during the 1970s, a decade when the political tensions in that Central American nation ran very high. 

I’d like to tell you a bit of his story this morning because I think it illustrates well some of the tensions that exist in the story of Jesus and Peter and the other followers of Jesus that we heard in this morning’s selection from the Gospel according to Mark.

Here’s the tension – first Jesus’ closest followers identify him as the Messiah, the anointed one from God.  It’s the kind of statement that puts Jesus on a pedestal. 

Then Jesus tells his closest followers as well as a wider group of admirers not to put him on a pedestal, but to be willing to take big time risks if they want to take him and his message seriously. 

Oscar Romero was a pretty traditional religious person through most of his life.  It’s not that he did not reach out to people in need – he helped found an Alcoholics Anonymous chapter in El Salvador, for instance, trying to help people on the road to recovery.  

But he was mostly focused on the worship side of the equation – helping build a new cathedral, being a forceful conservative voice among the religious leaders of El Salvador in the 1960s and early 1970s.  

Writer Joan Chittister describes him as “a real company man,” who was “the ultimate defender of the status quo, a lover of law and order, a spiritual leader, not a social activist.” 

He was a religious leader in a country that at the time had the worst income inequality in all of Latin America. The 14 families that own and rule El Salvador received 50 percent of the national income.

He was a scholar of spirituality, a fan of the very conservative and secretive Catholic group known as Opus Dei, an opponent of many of the reforms sweeping the Catholic church in that era, including those reforms that were getting some segments of the church more involved in advocating on behalf of the poor.

So when he became archbishop of San Salvador in 1977, both the church hierarchy and the Salvadoran government knew that they had a friend in an important place. He would make sure the worship side of the church stayed strong and would quash those who might want to take risks to change the status quo.

He had, of course, quietly protested the murder of some of the activist priests in El Salvador by government-backed death squads.   But he saw his primary job as protecting the institutional church, not protecting the people trapped in poverty.

But then another priest was killed, a good friend of Romero, someone Romero knew was not a Marxist or a revolutionary, just someone he considered to be Christian to the core of his being and who showed it by his connection with the poor. 

Romero realized that the words Jesus spoke in today’s Gospel applied to him: “If any want to be my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  

Another less literal translation makes the point even more sharply: “Whoever will follow me must be utterly reckless and ready for execution in joining me.”

Romero began to organize various forms of non-violent civil disobedience through church channels.  

He started to encourage priests to help organize the poor to protect their rights. 

He went to city dumps to help find the bodies of missing people. 

He organized study days, went on radio to read the names of those murdered and to criticize the government. 

He refused to attend government events, making a statement of protest by his absence. 

And he began being very visible at the funeral services for one murdered church worker after another.

On March 24, 1980, Romero was saying Mass in a small chapel at a hospital. As he was holding up the bread for communion, he was shot through the heart and his blood spilled over the altar. The assassins were part of the right-wing death squads that terrorized El Salvador.

Romero knew well the words of Jesus to his followers: “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.”

Now the story of Oscar Romero is in many ways far away from our lives here at Memorial this morning. We are almost 30 years removed from his assassination. El Salvador is a small country 2,000 miles away.  Yet it seems to me his story puts into very sharp relief the challenge that Jesus posed to his earliest followers – and to us.

Let’s go back to the story from Mark for a moment. It starts with Jesus and his closest followers heading to Caesarea Phillipi – an outpost town north of the Sea of Galilee, in the area now known as the Golan Heights. It was built by Philip, the son of King Herod the Great, right around the time that Jesus was a child.  It was named after the Roman emperor, Caesar, and it served as Philip’s administrative headquarters.

Note the setting, then. 

Jesus is on the way – a term early Christians used to refer to their movement – the way.  

He is moving toward the headquarters of the occupying power. 

He asks his followers what they have been hearing about him.  They cite some of the current rumors. 

And then he asks what they think.

“You are the Messiah,” says Peter.

We tend the give the word “Messiah” grand meanings. Think of that great piece of music by Handel.  Think of how it has been construed to mean that Jesus is the savior long awaited by the Jewish people. But in this context, it may have had a more modest meaning.

When I talk with Jewish friends about the meaning of messiah in their tradition, it generally goes in two directions. More liberal Jews talk not about a single person but about the messianic age – that time when all will be right with the world. More conservative Jews talk about a person with certain attributes – of the line of David, a follower of Jewish law, a great military leader, not someone divine but someone anointed by God who will come in the end days of the world.

In the time of Jesus, one of the great hopes of the Jewish people was that someone would appear to free them from the occupation of the Romans.  Some thought that person might be the messiah, others that he might just be a great military leader. Who knew for sure?

So what was Peter thinking when they neared King Philip’s headquarters and he said, “You are the Messiah”? We don’t know for sure. 

What we do know is that Jesus didn’t linger on the glory of the title. He went right to the fact that someone like him who was offering another vision of how the world ought to be would face suffering, would be rejected by the religious establishment, would unnerve the political order and would be killed. But he also said that death would not be the end. 

When he told his disciples they, too, should be ready to suffer and die if they really want to be his followers, he also let them know that their deaths would not be the end either.

For us, is that a promise filled with foreboding or with hope? 

Does it make us look for an easy way out or give us the courage to take on the injustices we see in our own sphere of influence because we believe that God is there will us?

Do we believe that even if we take some heat from family or friends or co-workers, our job is to stand with those facing injustice, to throw spokes into the wheels of violence, to work in defense of the creation that reflects God’s glory?

Most of us here are unlikely to be in a position like Oscar Romero. For one thing, none of us are likely to be named archbishops. But each of knows those places in our lives where we struggle with how much of a risk to take for something we believe in.

Maybe it’s a racist joke at a family gathering. Maybe it’s someone making fun of a disabled person. Maybe it’s a political battle over how much help society should give to those on the margins. Maybe it’s the great debate now emerging about how to balance protecting the U.S. against terrorism with the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan.

You know the places in your lives where these tensions exist. When we come here on Sundays to gather in worship, we are doing something important. We are renewing our connection to God, restoring our spirits. But a recurring theme in Jesus’ teaching, indeed throughout the whole Bible, is that worship alone is not enough.

If you want to be my followers, Jesus said, you are going to face time when you have to take on the tough stuff. Taking up your cross is not a matter of accepting suffering. Suffering is just part of the human condition, after all. Taking up your cross means choosing to take some risks for the sake of Jesus’ message.

That’s our challenge today and every day.  

Our instinct is to protect ourselves. Our calling is to make this world more like the kind of place God intended it to be, to be part of the movement toward the messianic era 

when all things will be made new, 

when the thirsty will get water as a gift as it flows down the river of life, 

when the leaves of the tree of life will provide healing for the nations, 

when death will be no more and mourning and crying and pain will be things of the past, 

and when God’s light will overcome all darkness. 

Peter said the Jesus is the Messiah. Jesus said, don’t worship me, follow me. It’s time to get on with the journey.