Origin Stories and Superpowers

 Sermon 8-30-2020

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.

Every superhero has origin story. Some of my favorite superheroes and heroines were born with their special powers, like Wonder Woman, Black Panther, and Luke Skywalker. Others - such as Captain Marvel, Spider Man, and Harry Potter - got them in all kinds of unexpected ways. And still others were simply chosen to save the world, like the Mighty Morphing Power Rangers, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer.

You might be surprised to hear that we are part of a very special league of super heroes, right here in real life. Part of my origin story is growing up in a group of other baptized super hero people, being nurtured and encouraged in my faith by my family and other caring adults, and working at a Bible Camp in Wisconsin. 

Your origin story is probably different. But we were all chosen in the same way: We all had our forehead splashed with water three times, surrounded by others who pledged to help us on our journey. Then we were sealed with the Holy Spirit, and marked with the cross of Christ forever. It is a cross that we all carry with us, present every moment of our lives. That is OUR shared origin story.

As we wrap up our 90 Day Bible Challenge today – congratulation! – I hope that you noticed some of the really cool “origin stories” of our favorite Bible Heroes and heroines. The devotion of Ruth. The perseverance of Esther. The dreams of Joseph. The strange call stories of the prophets. The conversion of Paul. And today… we heard how Moses got going with his mission to free his people, directly from God, via a shrub that was on fire!

You could also say, in our reading from the Gospel of Matthew, that the origin story of the Christian church began here. Jesus is with his disciples in Caesarea Philippi, a Roman town full temples to every deity 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 got it right – “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” Good job. Peter!

Though we heard those words a week ago in our time… only days, hours, or even minutes elapsed before Peter … then puts his foot in his mouth. Peter, thinking he’s on a roll, says: “God forbid it, Lord!” “That’s not how it’s going to be when YOU are in charge! Suffering and death? You’ve got to be kidding!”

News flash Peter: Jesus wasn’t kidding. Jesus is NOT here to set up his own kingdom made in the image of the world, with power, glory, and might. But…. Peter is also not alone in his hasty judgement about the kind of Kingdom that Jesus is bringing. We often have trouble understanding God’s kingdom when we encounter it, too

We are surrounded by messages of the Kingdom of Might – M-I-G-H.T…where power comes from influence and affluence. Those who have it, flaunt it. Those who don’t have it, want it. And the easiest way to get it is to hang out with the powerful people – and hope you get some of it by association. This is, by the way, what Peter is trying to do with Jesus, and is also why he freaks out when Jesus reveals this is NOT the kind of kingdom he’s ushering into being. After all, who WANTS to be in the inner circle of THAT kind of King? Who wants suffering as part of their origin story?

These messages have become the water we swim in - so totally ingrained in how we live that we don’t notice. It is even built into the very fabric of this country. We are taught our origin story as a nation is one of a scrappy band of settlers who valiantly wrestled their rights and freedoms out of the clutches of the most powerful empire in the world. But is that the whole story?  

We don’t have a time machine… but we do have a show from 2004 called Colonial House (found on Amazon Prime and YouTube), an entertaining blend of historical documentary and just good, juicy reality TV. Two dozen people committed to living in the back country of coastal Maine for four months, in an approximation of how a settlement would have operated in 1628. That’s right – no electricity, running water, or privacy.

Instead of the pure and simple utopia that many of the contestants expected, these “settlers” quickly came face to face with the harsh realities that shaped our early days as a nation, besides the daily struggle to survive.

From the very start, religious intolerance, strict social classes and power struggles, homophobia, the never-ending focus on productivity and output, land-theft from native people, rigid gender roles, and racial tension were very uncomfortably present in our national identity. The realization that the “Origin Story” of our country is not simple or spotless was an eye-opening moment for many on this show – and those of us who watched to the show, too.

Some of us are waking up to threads of a story we didn’t know had been woven into our fabric since the beginning, while others have been awake this whole time, seeing our past play out again, and again, and again, the cycle of violence against the bodies of our black and brown siblings, which turn into rage, blame, and more violence, most lately in my home state of Wisconsin, which is so much part of my own origin story.

In the middle of all the memes and rhetoric, I wonder if in this moment, Jesus is saying to us: If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take 7 bullets in the back, and follow me. For those who want to save their life will find it looted, and those who loot their own lives, for my sake, will find life.

The source of Jesus’ power - the power of God – is found in vulnerability. It is strength found in weakness. It is might found in non-violence. It is gaining the whole world by throwing our entire lives away. It is 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.

This is Jesus’s superpower: Resurrection. And it becomes our superpower too: The broken being made whole. Hate turning into love. Death transformed to new life.  Jesus transforming the cross as an instrument of death into a symbol of hope, the symbol that all of us baptized superheroes carry on our foreheads. Invisible, like a secret superhero identity, but still always present.

Only our secret superhero identities are supposed to be public. We are meant to follow Jesus, to carry our crosses, in a way that others can see. Sometimes, like Moses, we are called to work for the liberation of an entire oppressed people. Sometimes, like Moses, we put our bodies on the line and into harm’s way. Sometimes, like Moses, we are sent to speak truth to power.

Moses’s origin story may have involved a supernatural shrub on fire. But his origin story is similar to our own – God calls us by name. And even in the face of all the questions we have, God reveals to us God’s own name – a God who is Faithful, a god who Liberates, the God who Is and Was and ever will be with us.

In our baptisms, we have died to our old selves, and we rise up as part of a new family in Christ. And so, as God’s superheroes, we are sent into the world as a chip off the old boulder…to follow Jesus’ lead. As the affirmation of baptism (or confirmation) liturgy goes, we are called “to follow the example of Jesus, and to strive for justice and peace in all the earth.” In the face of these big tasks, we as a church respond, “We do and we will, and we ask God to help us.”

In the words of Black Panther: "It is time to show the outside world who we are."

Thanks be to God. Amen.