Where No One Has Gone Before

Lent 2B; Gen. 17:1-7, 15-16; Mk 8:31-38; St. Paul’s, Smithfield, NC 3/1/15

Jim Melnyk: “Where No One Has Gone Before”

* Note, I realize that in the audio file I mistakenly remark that Paul was crucified (legend says that he was beheaded). So much for ad libbing.

Forty-nine years ago a group of intrepid explorers began a five-year mission “to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man – [where no person – had] gone before.”  The names of those fictional explorers became house-hold names long ago:  James T. Kirk, Sulu, Chekov, Bones, Scotty, Uhura, and of course, Mr. Spock, played by actor Leonard Nimoy, who died just a couple of days ago.  As an aside, did you know that Nimoy crafted his famous hand sign on the way the orthodox Jewish men held out their hands when offering the Aaronic Blessing at the end of the service -  God bless you and keep you, God smile on you and gift you, God look you full in the face and make you prosper” (Numbers 6:24-26 – The Message) – and that his famous, “Live long and prosper” was a phrase he created based on that benediction?  The show lasted only seventy-nine episodes, but it was transformational in many ways. 

Technologically, they had stuff like flip-phones and hand-held computers – in 1966!  People born in the last couple of decades have no idea how fanciful that stuff was for us seeing it for the first time in the late 60s.  But Star Trek was also a show that came about in the midst of the Viet Nam War and the Civil Rights movement, and the moral lessons we learned from Kirk, Bones, and Spock were even more transformational than their electronic gadgets were inspiring.

In 1968 we saw TV’s first interracial kiss, which took place between Kirk and Uhura. 

Network executives sweated over that one, afraid they would lose their southern network affiliates – which they didn’t, by the way, and perhaps that was part of the beginning of a dream for humanity becoming real.  Writers used stories about alternate worlds with alternate experiences of past wars – one in which the Germans won World War II, as a way of expressing concerns over the ongoing war in Viet Nam.  The Federation was a dream of a time when humankind might come to know the power of love rather than the love of power – but also recognized the brokenness of the human – and not so human – condition that always seems to challenge that dream.

In the 1982 film, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan (spoiler alert here), then Captain Spock, dies saving the Enterprise from destruction.  As he is dying, Spock asks his best friend, Admiral Kirk, “The Ship – out of danger?”  He then says, “Don’t grieve, Admiral, it is logical.  The needs of the many outweigh…” “Outweigh the needs of the few,” concludes Kirk.  “Or the one,” adds Spock.  At the last, Spock tells Kirk, “I have been, and always shall be, your friend.” 

Intended or not, Leonard Nimoy, who was by the way a faithful Jew, acts out a scene at the close of the movie that is in essence a faithful example of the teachings of another faithful Jew.  In the Gospel of John Jesus tells his disciples, “No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (15:13).  And again in today’s lesson from Mark’s Gospel, “If any want to become my followers, 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 for the sake of the gospel, will save it” (8:34b-35).  Jesus has indeed gone where no one has gone before – and Jesus calls us to follow along the Way. 

According to the late Marcus Borg, “The way,” as we understand it in Mark’s Gospel, “is about going with Jesus to Jerusalem, the place of dying and rising…one of the New Testament’s most central images for the path of personal transformation…dying to an old way of being and being born to a new way of being” (Conversations with Scripture: The Gospel of Mark, p. 78-80).  The Way of the Cross is what another commentator calls, “a symbol of a God-inspired transformation that leads to a new identity, a new awareness, and a new way of being and doing” (Marsha Snulligan Haney, Feasting of the Gospels: Mark, p. 250). Borg reminds us that Luke adds the word “daily” to his account of Mark’s story, “suggesting that this transformation is a repeated process, not a one-time martyrdom” for us (op. cit., p. 80). 

Paul, Borg mentioned, understood it that way as well when he wrote about himself, “I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but it is Christ who lives in me” (Gal. 2:19b-20a).  Borg states what is probably the obvious for us, in that Paul “doesn’t mean that he has been literally crucified, but that his old self has died and a new Paul has been born whose identity is now ‘in Christ’” (op. cit. p. 80). 

As people of faith, and as followers of Jesus, we, in and through our Baptisms, have also died to our old selves and have been born anew – and our identities are now “in Christ” as was Paul’s. 

We get to choose between a life of transformation or the status quo.  We get to choose between life in Christ and the life of the world.  We get to choose between being disciples who know something about Jesus or disciples who follow Jesus and make a difference that helps shape the dream of God for this world.  

The Oscar Award winning film Selma, which chronicles the 1965 Voting Rights marches from Selma to Montgomery, has been out for some time.  Unfortunately it’s not showing in Smithfield now, but if the Howell Theater brings it back, I’d like to get a group of us together to see the film, if you haven’t already, and gather afterwards to talk about it.  The marchers from fifty years ago stand as icons of the cost of discipleship – icons of people’s willingness to lay down their lives for the lives of not just their friends, but their willingness to lay down their lives for the transformation of a world – a transformation that is still unfolding, only through other incarnations of brokenness that continually need to be addressed.

Along those same lines, back in the fall of 2010 when I told colleagues I would be coming to St. Paul’s, several folks asked me about “The Sign” outside Smithfield, and if it was still up.  Most of us know something about the sign – reminding people that North Carolina was Klan Country – and for some, probably still is.  Thankfully that sign had been long gone, even if some folks around the state didn’t know that – though we all know the Klan still exists today – and they consider themselves to be following the Gospel.

And I have to imagine that the struggle to have that sign removed was a costly one for those who stood against it.  I imagine the fight to remove the sign cost some friendships – I imagine it caused family strife – I imagine it probably cost people business – and I imagine the desire to see the sign come down probably risked some people’s lives as well.  The removal of that sign was an act of true discipleship – it was a moment in which people counted the cost and acted anyway – recognizing that we are all – in the midst of all our diversity – that we are all created in the image and likeness of God, and that we are therefore all worthy of one another’s respect.  We are what Archbishop Desmond Tutu once called, “The Rainbow People of God,” which is about much more than the differences of skin color, and we are a different community than we once were, because we had the willingness to be more than students of Jesus – we had the willingness to be followers – no matter what the cost. 

A couple of weeks ago on the Last Sunday of Epiphany we explored the question,

“What must we die to in our lives?” and today’s lesson drives that home for us.  There are undoubtedly things in our lives we need to let go of in order to fully experience the kingdom of God.  What are the marches that still need to be marched?  What are the signs – not necessarily along the roadsides, but possibly on some of the Church signs these days, on community bulletin boards and the internet, and perhaps even in our hearts – that need to come down?

We know that many of the choices we face in our lives can be hard – that sometimes it is truly a struggle to figure out the difference between right or wrong, and sometimes although we know what is right, it is hard to make that choice knowing the cost.  Sometimes a part of ourselves has to die in order to make a decision that brings us – that brings our community and the world around us – life. 

Jesus calls us to go where we might think no one has gone before – except once we prayerfully consider the challenge we realize that not only has Jesus preceded us into those challenging places, but that people of faith across the ages have preceded us as well – and they all beckon us forward into new life.