Scripture: Mark 8:31-38 Series: 2021
Second sermon in a Lenten ‘Restless’ series built on Augustine’s ‘our hearts are restless until they rest in you.’ Drawing on Mark 8:31-38, the preacher uses his Appalachian Trail shoulder dislocation in the Mahoosuc Notch to illustrate how suffering makes us restless, fogs our vision, and links body and mind through trauma. Like Peter trying to keep Jesus ‘dry’ from the cross, we cannot avoid suffering; the gospel answer is not avoidance but taking up the cross, denying the self that clings to safety, and standing in solidarity with those who hurt as members of the body of Christ.
Illustrations: mahoosuc-notch-dislocated-shoulder, trail-lite-untrained-reduction, canadian-couple-stayed-and-cried, wilfred-owen-trench-poetry, pea-soup-fog-driving, peter-comforting-jesus-mary-margaret, staying-dry-in-the-rain, boil-water-notice-just-unjust
February 28
Restless with suffering
Mark 8:31-38
After college, I took a bus from Austin to Maine and started walking south. I was not in great shape. I didn’t work out much. I packed way too many things. And the first part of the Southbound Appalachian Trail is climbing the 5000 foot Mt. Katahdin, then the 100 mile wilderness. It was pretty swampy when I was there in July of 2004 and it was hard. I was going like seven miles a day. I had blisters the size of nickels but I just kept going. There wasn’t a turnaround. There was no exit ramp. I started that first day with one guy whose trail name was Trail Lite, who was hiking a yo-yo which means that he had gone from Georgia up to Virginia and then he had taken a bus North to Maine in order to come south and miss winter. So he had already been hiking for like two months and was in pretty good shape. I was not in good shape when I started but after that first hostel, I was able to find a post office and I sent a ton of my stuff home: four books, extra clothes, a guitar. My mother also had a care package waiting for me. Mom’s, they’re great. After a month, I had finally caught up to Trail Lite and I was feeling good and I got up early before him. I had started to average 20 mile days and i was so much stronger. Maine is some of the hardest hiking on the East Coast because most of the trails are old Native American Trails that go up creeks beds. There are no switchbacks, so it just goes straight up a mountain. Elevation gains are intense even if they are only 3000 to 5000 feet above sea level. But as I said, I was getting stronger and I had the hardest part of the trail behind me. It was going to be smoother sailings for me. So I was going along and then I get to this stretch called the Mahoosuc Notch. Up in New England, they call canyons notches. it’s the hardest stretch of the Appalachian Trail and it’s a mile that takes about an hour and a half to do because the canyon is so steep. there are so many Boulders that there’s snow in the canyon year round. Here is a picture. (picture) I wasn’t expecting to go through it fast. But I had to go through the Notch in order to make it to Georgia and I was not going to give up. After starting slow, I was making pretty good time, through it, too. And again, there’s snow on the ground in those valley places in the bottom under the shadows and spots that the Sun never reaches. I wasn’t used to snow then. I hadn’t lived in Colorado or Spicewood yet where snow is so common. My pack wasn’t as heavy as it had been, but it wasn’t light. It probably weighed 40 pounds with everything in it. And so about 2/3 of the way through the notch, I was supporting my arm with a Boulder and I slipped and pop! I dislocated my shoulder. I felt it immediately. And then I rolled over and turtled for a little bit, which meant my back was on the ground and my feet were in the air. without a functioning shoulder, I could not do much. It hurt. It was, at that point, the worst pain I’d ever experienced. I had just been talking with a guy whose trail name was Flippy and so I called out, Hey, Flippy, I think I dislocated my shoulder. Can you come in come over and help? And he came back and I had a phone for emergencies but there was no reception. So he took the phone and tried to go find help. A couple from Canada stopped by and stayed with me and there’s an even longer story about the Journey of my phone from Maine to Canada to Houston and then back to me when I was in New York.
so I was stuck in this treacherous canyon. I couldn’t really move with a dislocated shoulder and it hurt and the only book I had, because I sent the others back, was All Quiet on the Western Front, which is about trench warfare. It’s not really uplifting one. I had some poems I had written down by Wilfred Owen Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
They didn’t help. About an hour with my arm out of socket, Trail Lite shows up. The pain is only manageable if I don’t move anything. if I try to move, if I breathe too hard, it’s really really painful. He comes over and tells me, “you know, I’ve never done this before. But my dad’s a doctor and I read an article.” Okay, so normally, when I seek medical assistance, I’m a little more discriminating. I would like to have a doctor or an EMT reduce a dislocated shoulder. Right after I got back on the trail a few days later, I ran into two ER docs who were on a day hike and asked about my sling. They started talking among themselves about what they would have done, and they didn’t get to a straight answer. At least in 2004, standard practice was to just knock a person out if the joint didn’t slip in easily. There are a few different non-medicated techniques. Most of them with similar theories. All of them with lots of pain. I did not know any of this then. I was not discriminating in my medical care. I honestly did not care. Whatever happened, if it got better, if it got worse, it did not matter as long as it would be a different pain. The pain was so numbing. It was a constant buzz throughout my body. I was so restless with the pain. I was restless with suffering. My friends, we are continuing our series on restlessness in this season of Lent, following the words of Augustine our hearts are restless until they rest in you, o Lord. Last week, we talked about being restless with temptation. This week, we’re talking about being restless with suffering. It is one of those aspects of suffering that’s rarely discussed. That is, how it makes us restless. How it makes it hard to think straight or to be reasonable in those moments. Our minds are always racing elsewhere. This happens a lot with with trauma. Trauma is often thought to be solely connected to experiences and events like wrecks or deaths or war. However, trauma is not about an event but about our body’s response to an event. and so something may happen to us that we think is fine and we move on but our bodies have not moved on. As well, physical suffering and emotional suffering are incredibly linked. We can’t separate the mind from the body in the ways that so much of medical science has tried to do over the last hundred years. When we suffer emotionally, it takes an incredible drain on our body and when we suffer physically, it takes an incredible drain on our emotions and on our mind and trauma happens in both directions. Suffering also limits the scope of our vision. We can’t see clearly in the midst of suffering. It fogs our vision. Suffering is like going through one of those pea-soup fogs or driving through it where you are going so slowly because you don’t know what is right in front of you. You can barely recognize what is right in front of you. In the scripture today, Jesus describes what is going to happen to him. He says he’s going to suffer many things. πολλὰ παθεῖνAnd be rejected and be killed. Peter doesn’t like to hear this. He doesn’t want it to happen and Peter tries to correct Jesus like you would correct a child who’s had a bad day at school and say, “Just because Mary Margaret made fun of you does not mean you’re ugly? You’re beautiful, Jesus.” Peter thinks he’s doing the good thing. He’s trying to do the good thing. He doesn’t want Jesus to feel bad. Yet Jesus rebukes Peter, but then he speaks even more strongly and says Get Behind Me Satan.Peter again misses the point. Peter is like the person who’s all dressed up when a rain storm comes and he tries as hard as he can to stay dry. It’s muddy. It is dirty. Once you realize you are going to be wet, it will be fine. But if you think you can stay dry, you are going to do everything he can. Peter thinks that he can keep dry from suffering. Peter thinks he can keep Jesus dry from suffering, but it is not going to happen. As Jesus says earlier, the rain falls on the just as well as the unjust. The power goes off on the just as well as the unjust. The boil water notice is sent to the just as well as the unjust. We are not going to be able to avoid suffering in this life. The Brokenness of suffering is a reality of this world. Some people feel it in more acute ways. This is definitely true. That doesn’t mean anyone is going to get away from suffering of some kind or another. But restlessness in suffering often takes shape in this attempt to totally avoid it. Jesus doesn’t like suffering. God doesn’t like suffering. The whole reason of Jesus coming is to heal the Brokenness of this world, to wipe every tear from our eyes but the path by which that happens is the road to the cross. The point of suffering is not to learn something from it. God doesn’t impose suffering upon us. This is how the world is because we were created free, but what we are left with is this, how can we respond to suffering? How can we limit the suffering we cause to others? This is where Jesus is going, when he says: Whoever loves their soul, whoever loves their life, will lose it. If you are so fixated on keeping yourself from any harm or any change, you will cease to have a life. All love involves change of some kind. if you love somebody and you were not changed by that love, then they are just an object to you. Life happens. Pain happens. The choice for us as individuals, as a church, as a society, is not to try and avoid pain but to stand with those who suffer, to stand with those who hurt. And when we feel strong, may we not see that strength as our own, but as God’s gift for us to use in order to lift up those around us. And when we are hurting and when we are in pain, when we are sitting in our own mahoosuc notches, that we may receive care and solidarity from others.
Peter wasn’t ready for what was going to happen to Jesus. Often, when we come to Faith, we’re not ready for what is going to happen next. Like last week, I spoke about how temptation happens after baptism. Temptation happens after Faith. Challenges happen after faith. Faith does not erase suffering, it transforms it because we no longer suffer alone when we are a part of the body of Christ. We stand together. And when one of us is hurting, we all hurt. And when one of us is joyful, we are all able to be joyful. This solidarity is God’s solution to the suffering of this world, the suffering which separates people, which isolates people. To get back to my hiking story, it worked. My shoulder went back into the socket. Trail Lite’s technique worked the second time, but it worked. The couple from Canada stayed with me the whole time and helped me walk out of that canyon. They cried with me because of the pain they saw on my face, and they helped me as much as the other hiker who reduced the dislocation. They stood with me. They reminded me that I was not alone.
Let us stand with each other in this season of Lent. Let us step out and care for others. Let us not forget the needs of our community and let us not forget our own needs. When we live and act and worship and pray with an eye towards the needs of our neighbor, God is glorified. When we tear down each other, we are tearing down God’s kingdoms brick by brick. Let us instead stand on the side of God. Let us stand on the side of each other. Let us heal when we can heal. Let us stop and stay with others when they need us. Let us support acts of healing. Let us care, let us hope. Let us offer peace. Let us offer rest. In the name of the father and the son and the holy spirit. Amen and Amen.