Jesus Is Not Nice

9-3-17

Grace to you and peace from God our creator and from our Lord and Savior Jesus the Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit, amen.

A former colleague of mine can’t stand the word “nice.” At least, when it was used as a bland description of something or a generic comment about a person. “He is a very nice young man.” “It was a nice day.” “Nice job on the test.” Something that is mildly pleasant, but perhaps unremarkable.

We tell our children to “play nice” at recess, meaning to take turns, share, and say please and thank you. We remind one another with sayings like “It costs nothing to be nice,” “its nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice, “It doesn’t matter who you are, if you’re nice to me, I’ll be nice to you.” “If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”As I typed up this sermon, my grammar check was going crazy, trying to get me to use more descriptive adjectives in place of all the times I used “nice”!

Being “Nice” can mean hedging your bets, avoiding “taking sides,” not rocking the boat, a good thing to do to not cause a fuss or to be viewed as controversial.

So, it comes as kind of a surprise when Peter, the “leaps out of boats before he thinks” kind of guy, wants Jesus to stop saying these ridiculous and audacious things….when much of the time it’s the other way around. And its just last week, too, Peter got a Gold Star for correctly identifying Jesus’ secret Super Hero Identity as the Messiah.

Flashback to last week: Jesus is with his disciples Caesarea Philippi, a Roman town full of statues and temples to every god and goddess under the sun. It is here that Jesus asks the hundred-thousand-dollar question – Who do YOU say that I am? The disciples take a stab at it, but only Peter gets it right – “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” – God who is not a dead stone statue but a living creative force who created the world and is loose in it. A God who gave Peter his new name for his correct answer – Petros, or Rocky.

Though we heard those words a week ago in our time, only days, hours, or even minutes elapsed before Peter puts his foot in his mouth. Just as Jesus begin to explain to his disciples what it MEANS for him to the son of the Living God, Peter, thinking he’s on a role, opens his mouth to protest. “God forbid it, Lord!” “Stop talking like that! That’s not how it’s going to be when YOU are in charge! Suffering and death? You must have gotten the pages of the script mixed up. What you are describing is NOT what power looks like!”

In the musical Jesus Christ Superstar, Simon the Zealot leads a cheering crowd in praising Jesus. Simon, like Peter, tries to get Jesus to toe the “Messiah line,”  - saying, Jesus, “You'll get the power and the glory, for ever and ever and ever!” Like in Peter’s confession last week – only in a big epic musical moment! 

But instead of accepting their accolades, Jesus is a big party pooper. Jesus responds, “Neither you Simon, nor the fifty thousand, nor the Romans, nor the Jews, Nor Judas, nor the twelve, nor the Priests, nor the scribes, nor doomed Jerusalem itself…. understand what power is…. understand what glory is… understand at all.”

News flash Peter and Simon – and the rest of us - Jesus is NOT here to set up his own kingdom made in the image of the world, with power, glory, and might. Jesus came to set up God’s kingdom here IN this world, but not OF it. And we often have trouble understanding God’s kingdom when we encounter it, because it IS so different from the kingdoms of the world we are so used to.

We are surrounded by messages of this Kingdom of Might – where power comes from strength, influence, and affluence. If we do not have access to power in one of these ways, we seek to emulate those who do – we follow in the footsteps of the powerfully, hoping that some will rub off. Power by association.

Most of the time this is unconscious, or so totally ingrained in how we live that we don’t notice. It is even built into the very fabric of this country – pervasive in our founding narrative. We are a nation built on the idea that a scrappy band of colonists forcibly wrested the right to their own freedom out of the clutches of the most powerful empire in the world. We are now in control of our own destiny, and we will use all force necessary to keep it that way.

But there is a dark side to this power, bought at a steep price, leaving wounds in our society that have never fully healed. This is power that excludes, divides, and ignores the humanity of some to elevate the few.

The source of Jesus’ power could not be more opposite… It is the power of God, power found is vulnerability. It is strength found in weakness. It is might found in non-violence. It is the certainty found in mystery. It is gaining the whole world by throwing our entire lives away. It is the way of the cross, following in the footsteps of Jesus, who was called to die for our sake, so that we may die to ourselves for the sake of others.

We as followers of Jesus are not called to merely be nice. We are called to die. We are called to die to our own wishes of self-preservation, pride, and comfort. We are called to die to the wishes of the world, the ways of power and privilege. We are called to die to participation in institutions and cultural norms that benefit some, but not others And we are called to die to the desire to hate and vilify those who hate everything we stand for.

Picking up our cross does not look like “being nice” for the sake of not rocking the boat – for example, staying in an abusive relationship, enabling the poor decisions of a family member, or NOT asking for help when we are overwhelmed. I know last week I told you all that you were heroes for God. But this week I say to you – don’t be a hero. Don’t overextend yourself in a way that is damaging. Don’t carry a cross that was forced on you by someone else.

But heroes DO willingly make pledges to something… to defend the city, to save the planet, to protect the innocent. One hero that I have been talking about ad nauseum lately is Martin Luther King Jr. In a book of his quotes, curated by his wife Coretta Scott King, I came across a pledge written by Dr. King for those who were participating in the 1963 sit-in demonstrations in Birmingham. At lunch counters all over the South, African-American young people were sitting at segregated lunch counters, putting their bodies on the line, to non-violently protest segregation and Jim Crow Laws. They were shouted at, spit on, and sometimes dragged out and beaten, but they did not lift a finger to defend themselves in the face of such evil.

The pledge that these brave men and women followed included some of these “commandments”

-         Meditate daily on the life and teaches of Jesus.

-         Walk and talk in the manner of love, for God is love.

-         Sacrifice personal wishes so that all men might be free.

-         Refrain from the violence of fist, tongue, and heart.

Just to name a few. These heroes, these brave women and men were not being “nice” or “polite.” They were sitting where they didn’t “belong.” They put their bodies into harm’s way and often they paid for it. And Martin Luther King Jr certainly paid for his stand for justice – he paid with his life. Dr. King lost his life, but the movement lived on, and his speeches and writings still inspire us today.

It’s not too late to join the non-violent, non-nice, non-polite movement of Jesus. We may not have the ability to join demonstrations or protests. We may not have the opportunities to physically put our bodies in harm’s way. But I am comforted by what comes at the end of Dr. King’s non-violent pledge: “besides demonstrations, I could help the moment by… run errands, drive my car, clerical work, mimeograph, distribute leaflets…. circle [all that apply].” In other words, carrying the cross in all the boring ways that don’t get a whole lot of press. But perhaps might be just as hard, because of the pushback we may receive from friends, family, and even totally strangers.

Jesus calls us to let go of what is “nice” and instead, as Paul wrote – hold fast to what is good. Hold fast to the cross. Hold fast to Jesus. Amen.