Secret Medicine

Mark 8:31-38, Psalm 22:23-31
February 25, 2018
First Presbyterian Church, Sterling IL
Christina Berry

We continue in our gospel readings from the Gospel of Mark, another brisk rendering of a crucial exchange between Jesus and Peter. Peter, you’ll remember is the name that Jesus gave to Simon, Son of Zebedee, and the literal translation of that name from the Greek is “rock.” Such a name can be taken in more than one way. Perhaps Peter is indeed “solid as a rock” but there are times when he seems so thick headed that the name could be taken as a description of his intellect – just rock headed. I think that second meaning is what applies in this reading. Jesus’ frustration with Peter in this exchange is evident. Jesus is telling his followers what is going to happen to him, and why it matters. Let’s listen for God’s word to us in Mark 8:31-38

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them,
“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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

The word of the Lord.
Thanks be to God.

Our Psalm for today is the second half of Psalm 22. The first part of this Psalm is used on Good Friday, and begins with the familiar words that Jesus echoed on the cross:
“My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

However, although the Psalm begins in a cry of desolation, it ends in a song of praise.  Let’s join in that song as we pray Psalm 22 in word and song.

Psalm 22: 23-24

You who fear the LORD, praise him!
All you offspring of Jacob, glorify him; stand in awe of him,
all you offspring of Israel!
For he did not despise or abhor the affliction of the afflicted;
he did not hide his face from me, but heard when I cried to him.

What Wondrous Love Is This, verse 1

25-28
From you comes my praise in the great congregation;
my vows I will pay before those who fear him.
The poor shall eat and be satisfied;
those who seek him shall praise the LORD.
May your hearts live forever!
All the ends of the earth shall remember and turn to the LORD;
and all the families of the nations shall worship before him.
For dominion belongs to the LORD, and he rules over the nations.

What Wondrous Love Is This, verse 3 (To God and to the Lamb….)

"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-UmemwpAvA

29-31
To him, indeed, shall all who sleep in the earth bow down;
before him shall bow all who go down to the dust, and I shall live for him.
Posterity will serve him; future generations will be told about the Lord,
and proclaim his deliverance to a people yet unborn,
saying that he has done it.

What Wondrous Love Is This, verse 4

God’s word for God’s people.
Thanks be to God.




Nobody likes to hear bad news.
Nobody wants to hear sad stories, painful stories, hard stories.

Some days it seems that if we want to feel happy, we are better off not knowing what’s on the news. Some weeks, ignorance really is bliss. Sometimes I think that we would all have happier lives if we just didn’t turn on the news any more.

In addition to all of the other bad news this week, Billy Graham died. He was ninety-nine years old, so it wasn’t a shock, but it is sad to see the passing of such a giant of the Christian world. I’m not a big fan of TV talk shows – don’t even have cable, but I saw on Youtube that Kathie Lee Gifford had given a heartfelt eulogy to Billy Graham. I’m not too familiar with Kathie Lee Gifford beyond knowing she’s a TV personality, but I had a lot of respect for Billy Graham.

His genius as an evangelist was unmatched, and he never fell prey to the immorality of many of his peers. He seemed pretty decent, and he was even able to apologize when he realized he had wronged someone. He wasn’t perfect, of course. and there were certainly some things he said that were regrettable, but it felt like the world lost a moral weight when he died.

Forgive me if I am repeating something you already heard – but Kathie Gifford said something that I thought was worth repeating. She said “I have a cure for the malignancy of the soul….and it’s Jesus.”

That’s an oversimplification, in many ways. But I don’t think she meant to say that you just say yes to Jesus and then all your troubles go away. I think she was saying that Jesus is a healer of souls.

As we know, following Jesus can be challenging. Jesus said it himself, in our Gospel reading: “if you want to be my follower, deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” The path Jesus had just described to Peter was not exactly a magical run through a dreamy meadow with flowers and unicorns and fluffy clouds. The journey to Jerusalem was a pathway to rejection, suffering, and death. It was a journey that would end with Jesus on the cross, crying out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”

Nobody likes to hear bad news.

So you can easily understand why Peter didn’t want Jesus talking like that. He tried to get Jesus to stop, maybe hoping that if he stopped saying it, the future would be different – Jesus would do something else. Peter resisted following in the footsteps of Jesus. He believed that somehow he was the master of his fate, that his personal sovereignty outweighed the plans of God.

But the Psalmist – the psalmist is not so arrogant.
The Psalmist seems to say,
“When misery melts your bones, and pain persists beyond description, you just let go.”
You give up on your ideas, and your plans, and your ego.
You come to a place of feeling absolutely dependent upon God.

And in that place, where you have released all your attachments, where you have thrown yourself entirely on the mercy of God, you can pray like this Psalmist. You can pray in praise of the power and glory of God no longer contemplating your own loss and difficulty, but simply standing in awe of the God who tends to the afflicted, who fills the empty bellies of the poor, who saves all the people of all the nations. Not only does God’s power redeem the living, it also proclaims deliverance to those who have died, and those who have yet to be born!

So the Psalmist is not thankful for what God has done, not giving thanks for a state of misery. They are expressing praise and wonder at who God IS! This kind of praise of God emerges not from an idle wish, or a passive kind of lukewarm belief. Praise this robust, this heartfelt, can only come up from the depths of the heart that has been broken.

There was a saying being passed around last week that implied that school shootings happen because God isn’t present in schools. I understand the sentiment in that, but we believe that there is no place we can be that God is not present. And I want to say to you that where there is violence, God is present.

Where there is suffering, God is present.
Where there is death and heartbreak, God is present.
And God’s heart breaks right along with ours.

Nobody likes bad news.

But in the midst of it, in the middle of Lent, when on some days it all seems like bad news, we have a remedy. We have healing for our souls.

Back in the 13th century, the Persian poet Rumi wrote
“When water gets caught in habitual whirlpools,
dig a way out through the bottom
to the ocean.
There is a secret medicine
given only to those who hurt so hard
they can’t hope.
The hopers would feel slighted if they knew.
Look as long as you can at the friend you love,
no matter whether that friend
is moving away from you
or coming back toward you.”

Secret medicine.

It’s the hope we have in Jesus –
hope that doesn’t make much sense to those who would divide us,
hope that doesn’t make much sense to those who tell us we are in charge.

That kind of hope is what lets us praise God 

even in the midst of winter,
even on a day filled with bad news,
even in times of suffering,
even when we feel hopeless.

Nobody likes bad news, but we are a people of hope.

That hope enables us to pray a prayer of praise even on days when we feel overwhelmed by the swirl of conflict and anger and violence around us.
That hope enables us to make our lives a prayer of praise when we are downcast.
That hope enables us to continue standing with the downtrodden, and lifting up the downhearted.
That hope helps us lift our eyes from the path and turn our attention away from ourselves. That hope shows us how to “be aware only of Christ and no more of self, to see only him who goes before and no more the road which is too hard for us.”  Dietrich Bonhoeffer said that, and he more than anyone knew what it was to hope in the midst of despair.

When we are aware only of Christ, and following him, keeping our eyes fixed on him,
hope can rise and live in us because Christ dwells in us.
Then we can praise God, our sovereign.

That’s the secret medicine, the healing for a malignant soul.
This “hope does not depend on us, but it cannot do without us.”[1]

God’s strength enables us to suffer, knowing that God suffers with us.
God’s grace teaches us how to listen and love in a world that is shouting and hating.
God’s hope enables us to overcome our self-centeredness,  and our arrogant belief that we are in charge of the world.

Hope in God means that God is sovereign, and not the individual
not you, not me, not anyone who seems to have power in the world-
God alone is sovereign.

The good news is that this “secret medicine” is available to each of us,
to heal us so that we can face whatever news comes to us.

This secret medicine of hope
is the conviction that God’s love
is stronger than any human hatred,
and that God’s mercy is greater than any power of evil,
and that God’s presence is with us in every moment.

Look as long as you can at the friend you love.
Offer up your prayers of praise for who he is.
Take up your cross and set out to
follow that friend along the path where he leads.

That friend is Jesus,
and the hope he gives is our secret medicine.

Amen.




[1] Jan Richardson, Painted Prayerbook