2024.03.10 | I'm Fixed Upon It
“I’m Fixed Upon It”
The Rev. Dr. Arlene K. Nehring
Senior Minister & Executive Director
Eden United Church of Christ, Hayward, California
Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 10, 2024
Matthew 16:22-33 (NRSVue)
We talk a lot about being linguistically and culturally competent around Eden Church, and the Eden Area.
These conversations are important—not only in dynamic international situations and within immigrant communities—they are also important within cultures and churches and families. Examples follow.
When my sister’s girls—both of whom are pushing 40—like Pastor Marvin and Yuliana—were learning to talk, I experienced a great awakening, not unlike our forebears in the faith who were part of the “camp meeting” style of worship that forged the Methodist, Disciples of Christ, and Christian tradition (within the UCC).
For the churches, the great awakening—particularly the second great awakening—had to do with the realization that God could be experienced in the flesh—by the unschooled, around a campfire, and the out of doors—and not just in the academy, from reading books (especially the Bible), or the institutional church, which had become quite institutionalized and all cozy with the establishment.
My first and second great awakenings with my nieces, Susie and Chrisie, were a little different, and on a microscale compared with frontier religion in the US, but no less riveting and transforming for me. My awakenings had to do with the fact that I now—almost 40 years ago—had to embrace the fact that there were at least two people in my family who spoke “Southern.”
This may shock you, given all of the Southerners who now count as “family” for me—and you hear about me if you show up for more than one sermon here—but it was quite a revelation back in the early 1990s.
The news that I had Southerners hit me like this: the girls used to beg to talk on the phone with me. They had big and important things to say. One of Susie’s early stories was a recap of how her father had just the night before shot an armadillo in the front yard with his hand gun.
Imagine my surprise. Imagine what a brain-blowing experience this was for me. My brother-in-law, Dennis Schwerin, had finally had it with an armadillo that was tearing up the front yard that he dug out his National Guard-issued handgun and shot it in the front yard, with the children sitting on the steps watching. (I say brain-blowing because he was the first person in our family to own a handgun. He pulled it out in front of the children. And he shot something that I had never seen in real life, and killed it.) Proof of exactly what I was afraid of—our girls were growing up in the Hillbilly version of “Wild Kingdom.”
A couple of years later, during the summer when Suzie was four going on five, and perfecting her skills at “driving the bus” for the family, I was taking a break from my cushy desk job at a large urban church in Beantown, and left in charge of Susie for the afternoon. I’m not exactly sure where Mar and Chrisie were, maybe they had gone to a baby check-up appointment in town and were going to be picking up groceries. Whatever it was, Mar was pretty sure that we’d all have a better afternoon if Susie and I stayed on the ranch, and she and Chrisie went to town. So that’s the way we rolled.
I don’t recall all of the events of that afternoon, but I will not soon forget that Susie gave me a foretaste of who she was and who she would become in a way that was crystal clear.
It happened something like this. I was sitting in the living room perusing the latest issues of American Quarter Horse and Wallace’s Journal. Susie wakes up from her nap, trity-trots into the living room, and announces that she’s “fixin’ to ride” her pony, Sally.
To which, I replied, “Great. That sounds like a lot of fun. We should do that when your mother gets home, and I can watch Chrisie and your mom can help you saddle your pony.
I knew that my plain spoken, common sense guidance offered to Susie was spot-on, in the eyes of her mother, but Susie was having none of it. She wanted to ride her pony, now! Not whenever her mother got home.
I appreciated how “fixed” Susie was about riding her pony, but I also knew that there were sound reasons for having a more experienced rider than me supervising a preschooler's pony ride. Here’s why.
Ponies aren’t known on ranches for their willingness or ability to follow directions. This is because they are often ridden by people with small bodies who are just beginning to learn to ride—which means that they are barely taking directions from their trainers, much less giving clear and helpful directions to their ponies.
So here we have it, little Susie, who got not just one dose of stubbornness from a parent, but three—one from her father and two from Mar and me—fixin’ to ride her pony, right there and then that afternoon.
II
I’d like to tell you that I prevailed that afternoon, but I did not. A four year old kid with a lot of persistence kicked my butt. She was fixin’ (which means had her sights set on) riding her pony, and she did--and it’s not because I helped her. She put on her own cowboy boots and hats, got her own saddle and saddle pad, and drug them across the yard.
I refused to saddle her pony, because I thought it was too dangerous for her to ride without one of her parents being there to supervise. So she walked up to her pony in the corral, grabbed the halter, clipped on the lead rope, led Sally to the edge of the ring, climbed up the pipe fence, and threw her leg over the pony’s back and plopped herself down.
Her plopping startled the pony, so that Sally took off and started trotting around the outer ring of the corral. Fortunately, Susie knew how to hang on to Sally’s mane and her lead rope, but because she didn’t have a bit in her mouth and because Sally was Sally, she wouldn’t do what Susie wanted her to do. And that made Susie really mad—so mad that she started crying.
I only felt a little bit sorry for Susie, and a lot satisfied myself, because I knew that Susie riding Sally was NOT a good idea—even if she didn’t get bucked off and break a body part while I was left in charge at the ranch.
III
I wonder, have you ever had moments, or days, or goals that you were so fixed on, that you pursued them with the tenacity of a four-year-old ranch hand who was fixin’ to ride her pony? Think about that question for a moment. Have you? What was that like for you? For others around you? While you’re thinking about things that you’ve been “fixed upon” and “fixin’ to do” let’s check back with the Apostle Peter, who is featured in the story that Pastor Ashley just read.
You might say that the Apostle Peter was fixed upon Jesus, and following the ways of Jesus. And he was, to a point, but not in the way that is meant by “fixed.” At least not at first.
At first, Peter was aligned with Jesus’ values, and the espoused truths that he was preaching and teaching around the countryside, but when push came to shove, Peter’s passion to follow Jesus chilled. Because he wasn’t looking to follow Jesus’ through passion week, as Jesus fortold, he was just looking to be one of the boys, and eventually the top dog.
Peter enjoyed being part of a posse, part of an up and coming kewl crowd. He was not yet ready to suffer the consequences of his convictions, or to embrace the courage that would be required to accompany Jesus to his death, to creep back in the dark and take his body off of a cross, or find a grave to borrow where he could “bury” his best friend.
Nope. Peter was just looking to be a boss. In the way that teenagers use the term “boss.” He was looking to be large and in charge. He was eager to embrace a sense of control. A sense of BMOC: Big Man On Campus.
The trouble was, by the time that Peter figured out that he wasn’t all that fixed on Jesus or his mission, it was a little too late. He had already convinced the Roman and religious authorities that he was the real deal--a disciple of Jesus. And that’s when the going got tough, and he either had to rise to the occasion or succumb to death.
The way that Matthew tells the story, Peter, unlike Judas, rose to the occasion. No, he didn’t do it perfectly. There were after all those unglamorous occasions when Peter said, as he did today, “No way, Jesus, you’re not going to suffer and die, because I’m not willing to suffer and die.”
And Jesus said, “Wait a minute, get behind me Satan.”
And Peter, whom Jesus cryptically called “Satan” did get behind him, but not in the way you think. Peter rose to the occasion and fell and rose and fell and rose and fell, several times—until eventually, Peter was stronger, but not perfect. Remember the parts about the bag of silver, leading the Roman soldiers to Jesus, positively IDing him, so that he was taken captive and imprisioned, and then the rooster crowed.
Peter was far from the perfect Apostle. He was just good enough. Not because of his own merit, but because of God’s grace. It was that combination of recognizing his own flaws, becoming intimately clear about his need for God’s mercy, and ultimately his willingness to accept God’s grace that forever changed his life, and the life of everyone in this world.
Ultimately, Peter didn’t turn against Jesus, he returned to the tomb, and confirmed what the women had said, that Christ was risen and hope was alive. And he went on to found the early community that became known as the Christian Church.
If God can do all that with a screw-up like Simon Peter, imagine what he can do with people like you and me. Amen.