Baby Powder

Sermon: Gen. 17:1-16, Mark 8:31-38
Lent 2, March 4, 2012

When the comedian Yakov Smirnoff first came from his native Russia to this country he was amazed at what he found in our supermarkets. “On my first shopping trip I saw powdered milk—you just add water and you get milk. Then I saw powdered orange juice. You just add water and you get orange juice. Then I saw baby powder and I thought to myself, ‘What a country.’”

He was speaking the truth about America. We don’t have baby-making down quite that efficiently, but we are into fast-food, fast-communication, and fast-solutions. Sometimes we have the same approach to religion. Powdered salvation. Mix with water, Baptism maybe, and you have instant salvation. There are two kind of extreme approaches of this type. One is the evangelical Christian approach of accepting Jesus Christ as your personal savior and you are saved. It comes across as fast-food salvation. I haven’t looked but maybe there are cans of powdered-salvation for sale in the Christian bible stores. Without beating up on the evangelicals too much and continuing to over-simplify their belief, let’s look at the other end of the spectrum, the Roman Catholics. Their emphasis on the power of the sacraments can come across not only as fast food religion, but instant salvation, as well. The belief, for instance, that if someone is baptized and dies suddenly, they go immediately to heaven or that through confession and the sacrament of anointing a dying person also goes immediately to heaven, smacks of salvation-in-a-can theology. Indulgences, which guaranteed passage from Purgatory, and the sale of which triggered off the Protestant Reformation, are thankfully not for sale any longer.

How about us Episcopals? Are we immune to such thinking? Since we share both Protestant and Catholic origins, we are susceptible to this kind of magic from one side or the other. We consider ourselves the bridge-church, assimilating both the best of Catholicism as well as of Protestantism. We need to check if we are always assimilating the best. Are we perhaps into instant salvation, as well?

Part of the problem is an over emphasis on the afterlife. If I see salvation as primarily about life after death, my major goal will be to do whatever I can to go to heaven and avoid hell. Then I’m tempted to do it the easiest way possible. Go and get saved or receive the right sacraments just before I die.

If, on the other hand, I see salvation as primarily dealing with this life, the one we have right now, then I will take a very different approach. Let me present an approach which I think is much more in keeping with Scripture and with human nature. It is a roadmap for living. It is called transformation. In other words, the purpose of our life and our calling as a Christian is to transform ourselves with God’s help and that of the Christian community into a true follower of Jesus. This does not happen overnight and we can’t get it from canned religion. It is the work of a lifetime. The afterlife will follow from it as naturally as day follows night, sight follows blindness and resurrection follows death.

Today’s readings are transformational. In the Old Testament reading, God is speaking to Abraham when Abe was 99 years old and telling him he would become the father of many nations. Abraham had already done a lot of living and because of his faith he found favor with God, but his faith was still in need of strengthening. When he is told he and Sarah would have a son both of them in different passages are described as laughing in disbelief, but they came to believe, and they had a son, Isaac. That wasn’t enough. Abraham is further tested by God who asked him to sacrifice that son Isaac. Through Isaac Abraham became the spiritual father of Jews, Christians and Muslims, but he didn’t find faith and salvation in a quick fix. His transformation was slow and painful.

Paul in today’s reading from Romans speaks of Abraham and tells us he was justified by his faith and we his spiritual descendants are justified in the same way, by our faith. That faith is not a mere intellectual thing; it is the work of our heart, of our whole self, of our whole life.

In the Gospel reading from Mark Jesus is having trouble getting his disciples to believe he is going down to Jerusalem to be crucified and that they are going with him. They want the quick earthly messiah, establishing His kingdom with them as his lieutenants. None of this crucifixion stuff. He ends up having to say ”If any want to become my followers let them take up their cross and follow me.” This is how we are transformed, not by powdered religion, but by trying to walk with him in faith wherever he leads us. That doesn’t mean we should go out and ask to be crucified. Trouble in the form of challenges will come without our asking. How we deal with them is the determining thing. Do we deny them, run away from them or, worse, try to handle them all by ourselves, as if He and those who care about us were not on this journey with us.

Lent is that time when we figuratively go down to Jerusalem with Him. I’ve asked you during this Lent to work at giving up worry. And you say to me, “Give up worry and you tell us we are going down to Jerusalem to be crucified with Him.” Ah, but you see, that’s the Christian bind. We are called to accept life in faith and hope and love, but to realize we don’t have to face it all alone. He is there, often in the person of caring, loved ones. In another place he has told us that his yoke is sweet and His burden light.