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Second Sunday of Lent

Mark 8
31 And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.”
34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it. 36 For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? 37 For what can a man give in return for his soul? 38 For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”


It’s a good idea to try to help someone in distress, but you just might be walking into a school project.

I was reminded of this possibility last week while listening to Michael Enright’s piece on the Bystander Effect. Coined by sociologists, the Bystander Effect suggests that the likelihood that someone in need will get help is inversely related the to number of people aware of the need. Put another way, the more bystanders, the less likely that any one of them will help out.

And obviously sociologists have lots of time on their hands, because they have tested this phenomenon in a number of ways. The first example is from the UK, where actors were hired to act distressed in front of a London tube station.

The first apparent victim is a rough-looking man lying on the ground, clutching a beer can, and asking for help. No help comes. The second victim, a woman, is also on the ground crying out, and it takes a full five minutes for someone to come to her aid. Another man, casually dressed and without a beer can is also ignored. The final ‘victim’ is a man in a business suit, on the ground crying—help comes in just six seconds.

A similar experiment was conducted outside a football stadium, with the man in distress wearing a jersey for the local team (lots of help) and then wearing a jersey for an opposing team (no help at all). And you may recall the last time I preached on the Good Samaritan, where the theology students didn’t stop to help because they had just studied Jesus’ parable, but because they were in no particular hurry. So much for applied theology.

What can we conclude from these stories? Is someone in Toronto more likely to get help if they are wearing a Leafs sweater, or will they just receive pity? Or ridicule? The studies seem to indicate that people will help if they feel some connection with the victim, or imagine that the victim is the right sort of person. But if there are lots of other people in the vicinity, all bets are off.

34 And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel's will save it.

This passage is often included in the so-called ‘hard sayings’ of Jesus, passages that the ordinary believer will find extremely difficult to follow. Invitations to give all you have to the poor, to remove a wonton eye or wandering hand, or to make a choice between God and mammon—these are hard things to contemplate.

Jesus seems to be inviting his disciples to literally give up their lives for Jesus’ sake and the sake of the Gospel. And of course, more that a few will do this. St. Stephen will be the first, and many will follow, including St. Paul (beheaded) and St. Peter (crucified upside-down). There is nothing subtle about the invitation to pick up your cross and follow—neither then nor now.

Among the growing list of victims of ISIS are 21 Coptic Christians, murdered in Libya, and already recognized as martyrs by the Coptic and Roman Catholic churches. Just a month ago Bishop Romero was finally declared a martyr, some 35 years overdue and thanks to a pope seemingly less concerned about the old battles between left and right.

But for those of us who live in the relative security of Canada, where our religion is respected (or at least tolerated), how do we deny ourselves and pick up the cross? What can we glean from these seemingly hard sayings of Jesus to live according to some template or plan?

The answers, I would suggest, are hidden in plain view. The first iteration of self-denial is there in the words of the rebuke, when Jesus tells Peter to ‘set his mind on the things of God rather than the things of man.‘ Human concerns—avoiding trouble, not getting involved, assuming someone else will deal with it—have a way of clouding the mind to God’s desire. Loving our neighbour, treating others as we wish to be treated, tending to the most vulnerable members of society—these are the things of God.

The second iteration of self-denial is harder still. When Jesus says ‘what does it prophet a man to gain the whole world by lose his soul’ we always have the luxury of pointing to the one percent. With the eighty wealthiest people on planet Earth controlling as much wealth as the bottom 3.5 billion people, we seen to have eighty cautionary tales or eighty good reasons to let ourselves off the hook. But that’s entirely too easy, since we in the vast and seemingly downtrodden middle-class in Canada are fat cats compared to the global poor.

A third iteration of self-denial is learning to live without shame for being religious. In what is perhaps the hardest of the this group of hard sayings, Jesus says: “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

This one can’t be sugar-coated. Liberal Christians are notorious for trying to fit it, to appear just like their neighbours, and share with the non-religious a deep suspicion of outward signs of piety. We will tie ourselves in knots explaining that ‘it’s the right thing to do’ or ‘we’re just doing our part’ before we confess that Jesus’ sacrifice demands that we care for others. We are saved by grace, and our grateful response is to love and serve others.

And none of this is new. On Thursday, we will learn about the sorry state of the English church in the years before Wesley and his friends saved the Christian religion from itself. Churches were empty, religion was mocked, and any outward signs of devotion were dismissed as ‘madness.’ Here’s a sample:

In 1760, the Archbishop of York visited a parish where the priest was accused of being too evangelical. Afterward the Archbishop accosted the priest on the street and shouted “if you go on preaching such stuff you will drive all your parish mad! Were you to inculcate the morality of Socrates, it would do more good than canting about new birth.”

The church survived the so-called Age of Reason, and went back to ‘canting about new birth’ and the new life in Christ we now enjoy. But we’ve come full circle. The hostility of a Quebec judge toward a Canadian woman exercising her Charter right to express her piety in an outward way should be alarming to everyone, and not just the religious. Mocking religion and subverting religious freedom in favour of other freedoms, these are both signs that being religious will become increasingly difficult in the age of secularism and extremist terror.

Our best defense is continue to do what we do. Be as political as CRA rules allow. Care for the most vulnerable people in our community. Continue to do counter-cultural things like harm reduction and praying for others. Notice that I didn’t say work harder, because that too would be buying into a worldly value.

We are called to glorify God and walk with God each day. Giving thanks—for the opportunity to serve, for seeing Christ in others, and for sharing the Good News that transforms lives. Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 5:00 AM