The truth is
that being a good follower is hard work.
Ask a dancer.
Have you ever seen those wonderful old movies—those movie musicals with all the
dancing? It is said that Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, only backwards
and in heels! The legendary couple made partner dancing look effortless, but
learning to dance, and dance well, takes effort, patience, humility, and grace.
An Episcopal
priest, The Rev. Kerra Becker-English,
tells the story of a dancer, a woman who danced ballet and modern jazz who
was getting married to a lovely fellow… who had never danced a step in his life!
They decided to take ballroom dance lessons, so they’d be ready for their first
dance at the wedding reception. She thought her fiancé would do all the work,
and that for her it would be a piece of cake.
Well,
ballroom is not ballet and following is harder than it looks. Just ask Ginger!
Becker-English
writes: “It takes practice to maintain balance through a double turn. It takes
instruction to learn all the elements of achieving correct hip action for a
Cha-Cha and then be able to do it without clutching on to a partner’s arm for
dear life. A good follower must be well balanced, because even the very best
dance partner cannot maintain balance for two. The best dance partner in the
world can’t make your steps for you.”
Following in
life, in dance, being a follower of Jesus requires attention, commitment and a
sense of one’s own self.
Today, we are
halfway through Mark’s Gospel and Jesus is talking about being a follower. The
disciples have come to a part of Palestine peopled mainly by Gentiles, people
outside the Covenant. In the Gospel, Jesus asks them what they’ve heard… what
are people saying, who do they think Jesus is. I suspect that many people they
met in their travels also asked them that question: who is this Jesus? Is he a
prophet, a teacher, or one of the Old Testament sages come back to life? So,
Jesus asks them who do they think they are following? Peter immediately pipes up
and says that he is following the Messiah!
Good answer,
Peter! Now, Jesus asks, what does that really mean?
If the
disciples thought that Jesus would just carry them into a kingdom where they
would have all the spiritual rewards with none of the work; well, they are in
for a surprise!
Because,
Jesus says, the Messiah will have to be rejected by his people and the
religious leaders, handed over to the authorities, executed, and then on the
third day rise from the dead. Jesus is headed to the cross, and his followers
will have to go there with him.
Peter cannot
believe his ears! He pulls
Jesus aside to tell him just how
wrong he is! "Get behind me, Satan," Jesus says back to the
guy who just a minute ago said he was the Messiah. “You are thinking in human
terms, but not thinking about the ways of God.”
Then Jesus
gathers everyone round and tells them what kind of Messiah they are following:
"If any want to become my followers," he tells them “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 the
sake of the gospel, will save it."
Fifty-two
years ago yesterday, this parish community decided to follow Jesus in a special
way. Along the way, you have learned time and again that following Jesus
requires a lot more than clicking a button. You have discovered that no
one can do the steps for you. You’ve learned how to go where he goes and do
what he does in the way that he does it.
Sometimes backwards. And, yes, I suppose, sometimes in heels. Who knew
that your birthday would, 32 years later, become a day of tragedy, grief, and
remembrance… the coincidence of these anniversaries is a reminder of the Gospel
ministry you bring to a hurting world.
Both as a
parish as well as Christians and citizens, we’ve had to learn to be careful
about whom to follow.
As we look
back this weekend on the terrible attacks on 9/11 twenty years ago, we don’t
have dig very deep to find two kinds of religious followers at work. One type
of follower were the nine men who decided to heed their leader’s message of
defiant grievance into destruction and death. And there is another kind of follower…
and there were many that day! … who died or put themselves on the line caring
for the suffering, the frightened, the deceased, and the first responders.
We know about
the nine… the ones who hijacked those four planes and died causing so much
death and suffering. But while nine men chose evil, many hundreds of others
when the chips were down chose to do the good.
Maybe this
weekend you’ve heard of Fr. Mychal Judge, a New York City fire chaplain who
ministered on 9/11 to the people who ran toward the danger to rescue those in
harm’s way, while at the same time he cared for the dead, the injured, and the
frightened. Judge was killed in the North Tower from debris from the collapsing
South Tower of the World Trade Center.
The weekend
we commemorate another follower of Jesus, Father Alexander Crummell, a priest
and a “saint” in our Church whose feast day was also yesterday. He became a
priest in 1844 even though the General Convention’s seminary, General Seminary
in New York, would not accept him as a student and even though the Episcopal
Church very nearly did not ordain him because of his race. He spent his entire
ministry battling the racism of his day and raising up black men and women to
serve the church and proclaim the gospel.
Or remember,
too, yet another follower of Jesus, Henry Thacker Burleigh, who is remembered
today on our church’s calendar. Burleigh was perhaps the foremost stage
baritone of his day. An Episcopal layman, he was almost turned away from his
church’s choir in New York City because he was black, but for the intercession
of the wealthiest Episcopalian in New York, J.P. Morgan. He sang at St.
George’s, recorded spirituals, and trained many other singers in vocal
technique for over half-a-century. He showed us that “in
Christ there is no east nor west, in Him no south or north but one great
fellowship of love throughout the whole wide earth.”
On this
octave of a world-changing tragedy, and our parish anniversary, it is good to
contemplate what it means to follow Jesus. We learn from the Gospel and the
examples before us today that following Jesus means that we act together, as Christ’s
adopted baptized people in community, to discover our gifts and give them back
to God and God’s people wherever they may be found. Following Jesus requires us
to be attentive to Christ who leads us, maintaining our balance and being ready
to go in new directions.
Following
Jesus is neither mindless nor passive but is the concrete way we choose to act
with Jesus every day in all our relationships.
And following
Jesus is costly because it requires something from us. Following Jesus requires
us to be challenged and to change.
I heard a
story about Archbishop Desmond Tutu when he was still Archbishop of Cape Town
South Africa. At the height of the anti-apartheid struggle there, when
Christians were suffering and dying for justice and redemption, Tutu used to
gather his staff around him every morning for prayer. And often as he was
closing, he would ask, "If being Christian became a crime, would there be
enough evidence to convict us?" The archbishop said this to his staff because
they were not simply leaders in an important social struggle for dignity and
freedom; they were followers of Jesus Christ insisting that God's reconciling
love transcends anything that tries to resist it. Being leaders was not enough:
people had to experience them following Jesus in their service and living if
their leadership was going to be taken seriously. True Christian leadership is
grounded in service and companionship.
Following Jesus is a partnership. It is Christ who leads; and we, as effective followers, are called to maintain our balance, observe what’s going on around us, and be ready to go where Jesus goes, even to the cross. Even to resurrection.
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