Psalm 22:22-30
Romans 4:13-25
Mark 8:31-38
O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy:
Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways,
and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace
and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son. Amen.
It is a striking and difficult thing sometimes to be confronted with truth; to be made to stand in the presence of reality, and hold fast to it without turning away. At times, we may discover truth to be so difficult we find ourselves flinching away from it as if from the heat, light and danger of fire. And for all of us, whether we choose to admit it or not, life is an ongoing process – even a dance – of looking away from and looking towards truth; a constant turning and re-turning. Today’s collect brings all this to mind as it prays for God to recall his mercy, and thus be gracious to those who have “gone astray”, that is, turned away from truth; and in so doing it reveals something of its origin. The collect from which our present one is derived is actually one of the Good Friday solemn collects found in three of the most ancient of service books: the Missale Gallicanum, the Gelasian sacramentary and the Gregorian sacramentary. All of these date from well before the 8th century and represent liturgical use from places throughout mainland western Europe. The Commentary on the American Prayer Book notes that “in these books [the prayer] follows a bidding to pray for heretics and schismatics that they may be delivered from their errors and recalled to the catholic and apostolic church.” Placed where it is in our present Prayer Book during the Lenten season it refers to those who have abandoned the practice of the Christian faith; but coupled with the readings, the collect highlights more immediately this issue of our encounter with truth.
This morning Peter and the rest of Jesus’ followers are confronted with truth – the truth of Jesus’ eventual end, of his betrayal, suffering and execution; and, as the writer of the Mark describes, Jesus says “all this quite openly” (Mark 8:32), almost in contrast to the secrecy which pervades his identity throughout the gospel. There is no secret here, nothing hidden. Now he confronts the disciples with truth, plain and simple. And what is the reaction, of Peter at least? He takes Jesus aside and “rebukes him”. Peter – who only four verses earlier (verses not included in this morning’s gospel reading) proclaims Jesus to be the Messiah – finds the truth of what that really entails too difficult to look in the face, and so denies it, rebukes it. After confessing the truth of Jesus’ identity, he immediately turns away from that truth, goes astray, as it were, from it. Then, on the Mount of Olives shortly after the Last Supper when Jesus predicts that his followers will desert, Peter declares, “Even though all become deserters, I will not.” And we all know what happens, he turns away from what he knows to be true by denying he ever even knew Jesus. Truth and the consequences of truth can indeed be very difficult to countenance, to look in the face and so Peter turns away, and so do we.
Now we can think of Lent as a time when we meditate on our failings, a time to worthily lament our sins, as the Ash Wednesday collect says, but I am not not completely convinced as to the helpfulness of that language. Words like sin, failing and sinfulness have come to carry so much cultural and religious baggage, that I am not sure they completely speak to us effectively, without a whole lot of complicated unpacking; and perhaps, it might be more helpful to talk about Lent as the time when we discipline ourselves by facing truth, when we hone our senses to engage with naked reality. Certainly Lent begins with one of the starkest and most naked truths of all: “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” In more colloquial language, perhaps we can think of Lent as the time for a “reality check”, as it invites us to look truth in the face. Lent, well observed, challenges us to mark the times when we have “gone astray”, that this, the times in which we have settled for the cheap comfort that comes from self-delusion and denial, from flinching away from reality. A large of the part of Lenten prayer is the prayer of today’s collect: that God will grant to us “penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace and hold fast” to truth. The invitation to the observance of a holy Lent in the Prayer Book speaks to this also, when it reminds us that Lent was originally the time “when those who…had become separated from the body of the faithful were reconciled by penitence and forgiveness, and restored to the fellowship of the Church”. Again, if we can approach this in ways more accessible and immediate for us, we might understand Lenten prayer and the discipline of Lent resolving themselves in a return to the way of truth, in our turning to face truth unflinchingly – the truth about God, certainly, but also the truth about our world, the truth about others, and perhaps most importantly, the truth about ourselves. So often like Peter we may want to proclaim certain things – “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” – and yet, doing so without facing the reality which their truth may imply. Or we may want to believe certain things about how we would act or behave, certain things about our character – “Even though all become deserters, I will not” – without facing the truth of our propensity to give into fear, cowardice and willing ignorance. While God in God’s mercy knows how difficult it is for us to engage constantly with the difficult truths about ourselves and our world, the Lenten call is not to fool ourselves into believing that we are engaging with reality, when in fact we are simply deluding ourselves by looking only at what is comfortable, or engaging with only a very narrow patch of reality, and usually one which confirms with what we already want or believe. Again, we can talk in the language of sin or failings, but even over-spiritulized and over-theologized language about these can be ways to avoid the truly difficult, but ultimately transforming, encounter with truth. And in the end only truth will do, whatever it is, whatever its consequences, whatever its cost. After all, we might paraphrase Jesus’ words and say, what will it profit you to gain the whole world and forfeit the truth of your life? (cf. Mark 8:38)
Many of you are familiar with the work Richard Rohr. I remember him once saying that the greatest ally of God is what is. So, whatever the truth is, whatever reality is, it follows that only by engaging these square in the face can we ever arrive at anything meaningful. Sometimes, we want things to be different, we even create situations so that we can ignore that they aren’t different, but ultimately that will not do. Look at Peter, he seemed to think that by rebuking Jesus, that is, by a creating a narrative about Jesus separate from the truth of Jesus’ words, he might be able to avoid that truth altogether. Jesus responds sternly and openly in the hopes of getting Peter and the other disciples to look truth square in the face: “Get behind me Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.” (Mark 8:33) It is hard indeed to face naked truth, and undoubtedly we will flinch away from it at times, we may even take a break from it –“I can’t think about this today, I’ll think about it tomorrow” – but Lent calls us to take stock, make that “reality check”, in order that we may turn our faces, hearts and minds towards the truth and to hold fast to it so far as we are able.
O God, whose glory it is always to have mercy:
Be gracious to all who have gone astray from your ways,
and bring them again with penitent hearts and steadfast faith to embrace
and hold fast the unchangeable truth of your Word, Jesus Christ your Son. Amen.
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