Proper 17 A – 2005 Jeremiah 15:15-21 Psalm 26:1-8 Romans 12:1-8 Matthew 16:21-27 August 28, 2005 The Rev. J. Brian Ponder Church of the Resurrection, Starkville, Mississippi In the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen. When was the last time you were compelled to “do” something? When you just had to do something about “it,” whatever “it” was … when the fire inside your belly was kindled to get busy … when you felt charged with some kind of mission … maybe to buck the system … or quash the norm … or maybe even to change the world? I can’t help but think of Jonny when reading our scriptures today: Jeremiah, who cries out in his second lament: “Why is my pain unceasing, my wound incurable, refusing to be healed?” (Jeremiah 15:18); the Psalmist calling out: “Test me, O LORD, and try me; examine my heart and my mind. For your love is before my eyes (Psalm 26:2-3a); Jesus who tells his disciples of his impending suffering and death and teaching about faith-filled discipleship (Matthew 16:21); and Paul’s exhortation to “not be conformed to this world,” but rather, “transformed” in renewal (Romans 12:2). Jonny Kennedy was his name. Maybe some of you saw the story of his life this past week, or perhaps earlier this summer, in a televised documentary entitled, The Boy Whose Skin Fell Off. In the span of an hour, I came to know Jonny, or something of him. My emotions ran the gamut, .moving from tears of sadness to being doubled over in tears of laughter, all the while overpoweringly touched by Jonny’s profound trust and faith. He died two years ago at the age of 36, of a disorder known as Epidermolysis Bullosa or EB for short, a condition in which his skin never really attached itself to the musculoskeletal frame. Essentially, Jonny’s skin just hovered around his body, and any bruising or minor trauma or friction-contact made it, literally, fall off. It’s not a pretty subject. It wasn’t a pretty sight. Jonny was covered from head to toe with sores. The skin of his hands and feet had opened and closed so many times, that his skin had enclosed around them many years before, leaving him with no use of his fingers and toes. The cancer that had overtaken his body in the final stages of the disease, resulted in lesions that required bandaging to ward off infection, but when changed, did as much damage as they had been intended to prevent as layer upon layer of skin stuck to them. Because of EB, Jonny never went through puberty. His father, a very athletic, outdoors-type and a proud man, never came to terms with Jonny’s disease—surely some of his disengagement must have been due to the fact that both parents must be carriers of a certain defective gene in order for the disease to occur, and even then, not all children of dual carriers are born with EB. This documentary of Jonny’s final days on earth seemed to capture his full essence—in a way that is hard to describe. It began just after he had learned that he only had a short time left to live. It turned out to be about four months. Jonny was a wonderfully bright and cheerful person, who laughed out loud and often, who suffered long … who knew God. He wanted the documentary filmed in order to bring about an awareness that might help others suffering from the disease. Over the course of his life, he had been an advocate, raising money and awareness through his charm, wit and witness. His impending death made him even more determined to see EB eradicated. Jonny gave himself over to death in dignity, though he never resigned himself from the work yet to be done in life. The documentary shows Jonny living life to its fullest—in his own way—doing those things left to be done in the short time he has been given—everything from flying in a glider to choosing his coffin and then the decorations that would adorn its exterior—on one side a tiger, representing strength and endurance, and on the other a Heinz Baked Beans wrapper emblem … just to keep folks guessing at his funeral. He visited his father’s grave, and said his peace. He met with his pastor, then asked his best friend and his brother to speak at his funeral. He met with a female celebrity—of whom he was quite fond and who had become a spokesperson for EB, even getting a kiss from her and grinning from ear to ear and raising his eyebrows over the excitement of it all. Two weeks before his death, he hosted a housewarming party, finally celebrating his being able to live on his own, though those in attendance knew it would be the last time they gathered with him. His last effort was to meet with Cherie Booth, wife of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, who pledged during their meeting to raise money and awareness for those who suffer from EB. He never recovered from the long trip to London. Practicality should have kept him from making the trip, but he had promised himself that he would go to Downing Street. It was a final mission—to make a difference. He died a day or two later in his motorized chair with family by his side—all somewhat relieved and grieved by his passing. A rock ballad by Queen stirred those who attended his funeral and sang along in Jonny’s memory. One of the most powerful things about the documentary is that with all the snippets and glimpses into his life, Jonny is the narrator. And at one point, during his gliding expedition, while turning and twisting, flipping and whizzing through the air, Jonny points at some clouds, saying something like: “This is how I’ll be. I won’t be one of those angels sitting there, playing some precious little harp. No. I’ll be one who soars and dives and gets ‘em stirred up!” Then saying at one point when asked about enduring and suffering … just how he made it some days, just how he had made it this long: “I haven’t lived some thirty odd years for this to be it … this disease and pain eating away at me. There’s more to this existence … more to life than this shell.” Through his witness to pain, suffering, joy, a reverence for the preciousness of life, laughter, tears, honesty and integrity Jonny has ushered in for me a new awareness within this world—through his message of hope, of faith, of there being something else … something larger, through a simple message of transformation. And Jesus said: “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.” (Matthew 16:24) Jesus’ call to us is not a practical one. Today Jesus tells his disciples that there is a costliness to being his follower—that there is much required in true discipleship. And, it sounds a bit like Bishop Gray’s message last week at the Tent Event—how things will be different, how the road ahead will not be an easy one, how there is much work yet to be done, how together we must go forward in a vision for ministry, as Paul tells us, sharing the unique and various gifts with which we have been equipped and blessed. And Jesus says: “It won’t be easy.” … Peter just couldn’t get his mind around it all, could he? And if Peter didn’t get it, I dare say the others didn’t either. Jesus—already identified by Peter as the Messiah—begins to tell them about their nature, just what is meant by discipleship, just what it would mean to be a follower in the footsteps of Christ … indeed the footsteps of God. But Peter wants control of the situation. In a few short verses, Peter has gone from being the rock upon which Jesus will found his Church, to being likened to Satan—a tempter and an adversary! Peter doesn’t like what he’s hearing. He thinks it’s too much for him to bear; too much for Jesus to bear. It just can’t be true. Jesus, the Christ, will suffer and die? “It can’t be!” And Jesus reminds him. “It is true. Get behind me ….You’re not the leader. Follow me!” We, too, are called to follow. We, too, are called to entrust our lives to Christ. How is it that we are being called to follow Christ? How is it today, at this moment, that we are being called to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, to shine forth the light of Christ in this world? How is it that we are being called—that you are being called, that I am being called—to best share the gifts of our broken lives, to be agents of transformation in the midst of a world that hungers and thirsts for a message of hope and blessing in the midst of need, and turmoil, and strife, and war, and greed, and famine, and terrorism, and oppression, and disparity of wealth, and inequality, and injustice, and disaster, and sickness, and disease, and calamity, and frustration, and you name it? How are we being called to transform and be transformed? “There’s more to this existence … more to life than this shell.” Our individual lives may not be profoundly unsettled in the midst of terrible disease as was Jonny’s … though for some of us this is so. Maybe our lives are filled with deep-seeded burdens or secrets of things done or left undone. Maybe they’re filled with any number of afflictions that if visible to others might be stigmatized or shunned. Maybe some of us have not even identified such heavy loads, but (and I’m going out on a limb here) I’d be willing to bet that there is for most of us something, somewhere in our lives, even in our very midst, that is killing us day by day … through sickness and disease, or pettiness, or comfort, or resignation to hatred in a world too small for anything but love, or complicity in stepping over Lazarus at the gate, or turning a blind eye to injustice, maybe expending time and energies on those things that consume us, those things that conform us to the world around us. Each of us, in ways known and perhaps in ways still being revealed, is being asked to take up the various crosses of our lives and to follow Christ. We have been challenged to a new discipleship, most recently by our bishop, but first some two thousand years ago by Christ himself. There is a costliness to discipleship—a costliness to life, our lives in Christ, the commodity for which Christ paid with his very blood. Taking up one’s cross means entering into the suffering of this world, suffering alongside Christ if necessary, knowing that Christ himself has suffered and that in our endeavors we are not alone. A life in Christ means carrying the cross despite the burden, because without it there is no cross at all. What this means is that we are called into discomfort—something you’ve heard me say many times before. We are not called into the safe places of life, tucked away from reality behind stained glass windows and removed from the world. Rather, as disciples, we are called into the streets, the hapless and haphazard byways of life, intersecting with others at the crossroads, those places where life can still be compromised if we let it, where humanity can still be lessened if we do nothing, where dignity can continue to be outsold if we are complicit … all those places where we can choose to do something, if we will, beyond the status quo, beyond the norm … doing something new … where we participate with Christ in the work of redemption. We are called forth from this place, called to get to work, called to get busy in this short life of ours. Will we follow Christ? Will we shoulder the burden of the cross, or will our own stumbling blocks obstruct the pathways to God?