Human Things and Divine Things
A sermon preached in Glebe Road United Church
Second Sunday of Creation Time
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 16, 2012
Mark 8: 27-38
This is a sermon about winners and losers, and Jesus’ very strange take on winners and losers. In
the first part of today’s scripture, Peter certainly looks like a winner. Jesus in his role as a great
teacher has just set a test for his disciples. He begins innocently enough by asking about the
local gossip: “Who do people say that I am?” The people probably won’t tell me directly who
they think that I am but maybe they have said something to you. What’s the buzz? And then
after the disciples have relaxed and had a bit of conversation with their teacher, Jesus springs the
trap: “Right, that’s all very well and good, but now, who do YOU say that I am?” That’s
another question, and this question calls for some commitment in the answer. Gossip is just idle
conversation, but when Jesus wants to know what you think, you might have to defend your
answer. The disciples, not surprisingly, fall silent. Only Peter has the courage to step forward,
and he says, “Why you are the Messiah”. In Mark’s gospel, there is no record of Jesus’ answer
to Peter, except to tell all the disciples not to say anything about it, but in Matthew’s version of
the same story, Jesus is reported to have responded: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For
flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 18 And I tell you, you are
Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
19 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be
bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Mat. 16: 17b-19)
Wow! Talk about hitting one out of the park! Go to the head of the class Peter! You have just
been made the head of the church on Earth and been given the keys of heaven. Peter has just
won the lottery. For the moment anyway.
Jesus continues to teach the disciples, telling them that the Messiah will soon suffer many things.
He will be rejected by the leaders of the community and killed by the Romans. Peter can hardly
believe his ears. Surely, this can’t be possible; maybe the teacher is giving us another test;
maybe he is expecting us to challenge him on this. And so Peter, ever the energetic leader,
jumps into the fray and actually begins to rebuke his Lord. But Jesus wasn’t kidding and this
was no test: “Peter, you are Satan. Get behind me. You are focussing on human things when
you should be thinking about divine things.” And Peter stumbles off confused and dazed. So
much for being at the head of the class!
So what’s going on here? Peter has assumed that the Messiah would be as described in the
scriptures. The Messiah was going to be a great warrior like King David was in his day - in fact
it was prophecized that the Messiah would be able to trace his ancestry back to David. The
Messiah would be God’s soldier and could not be defeated in battle. He would always be the
winner. Everyone who was on the Messiah’s team would be winners as well. But Jesus says
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that this is the human way of looking at the Messiah, and things would not turn out that way at
all.
One thing is certain; we humans always want to be on the winning side. Look at any newspaper.
In virtually every story there are winners and losers: politics, business, sports, not to mention
every single ad. We are inundated all the time with the subtle and not so subtle pressure to get
on the winning side of everything. It’s like the air we breathe. We don’t even think about it
anymore. It’s in our DNA.
In fact, the instinct to win actually IS in our DNA. Since the beginning of life on the planet,
species have been competing with one another for space, for food, and for mates. Nature has
been red in tooth and claw forever. For awhile the great dinosaurs were the winners in the battle
of life. The earth shook when they were around and every other animal looked for a place to
hide. Then something happened to kill them all in a very short time. Some scientists believe that
there was a rapid change in climate and these cold-blooded creatures could not survive the
change. Whatever it was, the warm-blooded mammals survived and quickly moved into the
ecological niches left by the departure of the dinosaurs, and then new battles for supremacy
among the mammals were joined. The ultimate winner of all those battles has been the human
being. We are not as strong or as fast as the great cats for example, but whatever we lack we
make up for with our big brains, which has created a civilisation that makes us the hands-down
winners of the lottery of life. Humanity controls the Earth, the sky and the seas. There is
nowhere on the surface of the Earth that we cannot go and almost nowhere in the deepest oceans
that we have not explored. The dark side of all this winning though, is that humans are now so
numerous and our civilisation so powerful that we are destroying the very Earth that sustains us
and many other forms of life that we are displacing. So we are winners, for the moment, but we
may lose it all if the ecosystems on which we rely can no longer support us. We may eventually
suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs.
This is not a popular view though, and the instinct to keep on winning continues to push us along
paths of increasing expansion and consumption that continue to marginalise the Earth and other
species. It seems that we always need more than we already have. How can we deny those
powerful instincts embedded deep within our DNA? How can we admit that the great game of
life is now over, and the lights in the stadium have been turned off and all the fans have gone
home. Oh, and by the way, we won! Big Time! The human being has been the absolute winner
of the game of life. We humans now have to understand that we must now urgently make peace
with the Earth and all our fellow creatures; we must limit our populations, the space we occupy
and the energy we consume and allow other creatures to live as well. And while we may accept
that reality on an intellectual plane, it is almost impossible to stop the game that has been in our
DNA forever. And so we continue to push for growth in all things.
Perhaps our scriptures might help us get over our competitive instincts. Jesus told Peter that his
problem was that he was focussing his mind on human things instead of divine things. What did
he mean by that? Well, listen to what Jesus said next to his disciples, and think about what it
might mean to us in our day of ecological crises:
"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their
cross and follow me. 35 For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who
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lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36 For what will it
profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give
in return for their life?” (Mark 8: 34b-37)
We human beings have already gained the whole world, and yet Jesus warns us that if we only
want to save our life then we will lose it despite the fact that we have total control over the Earth.
We can only save ourselves if “take up our cross and follow Jesus”. I cannot read that any other
way than that we are to sacrifice ourselves to the greater good of the gospel, which as I tried to
show last week, now applies not only to human beings but to all other creatures as well as the
rest of Creation. We are not very good at sacrificing ourselves because everything in our human
nature screams against doing such a thing. Our evolutionary heritage demands that we save
ourselves at all costs, that we control the territory around us against predators and against other
human competitors, and that we pass our genes along to the next generation as often as possible.
That’s just human nature. However, Jesus is calling us to outgrow these instincts by denying
ourselves and by taking up our cross, replacing human things with divine things. The human
creature that now controls the planet must now outgrow all the instincts that gave us this control
and become another kind of creature: more loving towards other humans and the rest of
Creation; less war-like; more willing to sacrifice ourselves to the common good of all Creation.
e human beings have to re-invent ourselves if we want to survive. The old game of life with its
winners and losers is over.
This sounds familiar because it is the old scriptural message of seeking justice, loving kindness
and walking humbly with God, and Jesus’ command that we must love our neighbour as we love
overselves. It’s the message of love. In one way or another this has always been the Christian
message, and in one way or another, Christians have always managed to avoid following it.
However, the ecological crises present a special urgency because the very survival of human
beings and thousands of other species is now on the line.
Can we move away from what Jesus called human things and move closer to divine things?
Thomas Berry believes that this shift should be called the “Great Work” of this generation of
humanity. If it can be done he believes that humanity will establish a new relationship with the
Earth and the cosmos. It will be the beginning of what he calls the “Ecozoic Era”. We
Christians have our role to play in this transformation, and we can find guidance from scriptures
that have existed for thousands of years.
This is our calling in our day. May God grant the courage to take this path, and the wisdom to
follow it to the end.
Amen
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