Rev. Dr. Rebecca L. Kiser
SOMETIMES GOD’S WISDOM SOUNDS ODD
Sept 16, 2018 Pentecost 17-B Mark 8:27-38
Who do people say I am? Who do YOU say that I am?
Interesting questions from Jesus. We talked about our answers last week. I hope we had some thoughts about it over the week, too.
He’s the Son of God, we might answer. But what in the world does that mean? Son of God - Like Zeus had children, half divine and half mortal? Greek and Roman mythology, like? Other places in Scripture he’s called Son of Man. And what in the world does that mean? Theologically, we are referring to the belief that Jesus, although a human, was somehow also God in the flesh. We know this because we’ve attended a good bit of church services, and we’re used to biblical imagery. Someone not familiar with church might have to ask further.
The apostle John refers to Jesus in a metaphorical and philosophical way as the “Word of God,” the logos of God, the statement of God, the self-expression of God. It also takes a bit of unpacking for the person on the street. We Presbyterians know that Scripture is the written word, Jesus is the incarnate and living word, and that preaching is the spoken and interpreted word. We’ve all pondered in sermons and maybe Sunday School about how this is a philosophical term for how Jesus in the flesh is a revelation of God, and how God speaks through Jesus to us.
The apostle Peter here says Jesus is the Messiah - which is an insightful application of the Messianic hope in Judaism. We Gentiles, though, are not raised in the Jewish tradition where the messiah is a large concept. So what in the world does that mean to us? We translate it as the Sent One, the idea that Jesus fulfills a special promise to God’s people of Israel for one to deliver them from enemies and establish them as a people in their own right.
Early Christian theologians wrestled over who Jesus is, until they came up with the phrase, ‘wholly God and wholly human.” Well, they said wholly man, but they meant human. How in the world is this combination even imaginable to people? What does it mean? How does it work? Is it like Superman? We understand that this refers to how Jesus can be human as well as Divine, that both parts are important, and that neither side can be lost without doing damage to how we understand Jesus.
People who come to ‘witness’ to you might ask if Jesus is your “Savior and Lord.” What does that mean? In some Christian circles, it is important that a person individually recognize that Jesus ‘saves’ them, in a way that means Jesus was killed for us, taking on our bad actions and thoughts - and we are therefore spared from God’s vengeance. ‘Lord’ means that we try and put Jesus and his teachings at the center of our lives, for full obedience and respect, as if we are the slaves and he is the master. People might hear it as in “lords and ladies” language of earlier centuries, or perhaps as a slaves’ overlord. Since Star Wars, like Lord Vader, 2nd to the evil Emperor.
Mostly, we’re all so familiar with the concepts and the words that we may kind of gloss over things. That’s why this question from Jesus in the text today is such an important one for us to ask ourselves, and to really dig for what we actually think or believe. What do our words mean for us, how do they translate into our life?
A problem is that its difficult to talk about Jesus in any larger sense than just a human who lived some 2000 + years ago and said some cool things, without going into metaphor, isn’t it? Or using Christian code language, piled with history and sometimes controversy. Yet its an essential question = What do Jesus and who he is have to do with our lives in 2018, here in Indiantown, SC?
Joyce sent me a text about what a teacher of hers said in a class, which has stuck with her over the years - that Jesus is a like a window on God. I liked that image and couldn’t come up with a better. I can imagine a wall like in my house, a wall keeping out the wind and rain, yes, but also keeping out the light, the colors, the trees and wildlife - I might place pictures of trees and wildlife on my wall, but its not like a window - a window where the wall is cut through, where what is out there is visible to my eyes and is real - I can observe it, see it, smell it if the window glass is raised, feel it if there’s a screen for the wind to blow through. With a window, I am not enclosed in my own little reality; the reality of outside comes in. The light from outside comes in. Jesus is like a window open through the unseen, the mysterious, the unknowable nature of God who is so different from us - a window where we can see God living on earth, pictured in Jesus as he speaks and acts.
So Jesus, for us, becomes a way to know that there’s more to life than what we see; he becomes a way that God becomes knowable, assuming we accept Jesus as Divine. And IF we DO accept Jesus as Divine, then what he says and does become incredibly important; learning what he said and does becomes of deep significance for our own living. Wrestling with what JESUS says and does, as it confronts what WE say and do, becomes essential work. For if we take issue with Jesus, we take issue with God. And Jesus said some difficult things.
A few verses later in Mark, Jesus asks, “What does it profit us if we gain the whole world but lose our soul?” Listening to Jesus often runs counter to gaining the whole world. Jesus’ attitudes towards the religious of his day speaks to the similar failings in the religious in our day - who are, more or less, us and our teachers. Clean on the outside but tombs of deadness inside, he said about the way religion had become empty and passionless, a matter of forms of behavior that trumped loving acceptance of all, especially those often overlooked by the elite - the poor and powerless. Jesus said that rich folks entering the realm of God is like a camel going through a needle - whether it meant a sewing needle of some arch in a gate is immaterial - camels don’t fit. Who are the rich in our day? Us, mainly. Immediately following Peter’s words that Jesus is the Messiah, Jesus begins to talk about how he will be rejected and killed. Peter evidently forgets his insight of few moments earlier, because he says, No way, Jesus! He tells the Messiah that he’s wrong. Duh! Who is it that really misunderstands what being the Messiah means? Not Jesus....
So who do we say that Jesus is for us? for the world?
If Jesus is a window to God, then what Jesus teaches ought to be the bedrock of our living - not something we pull out now and then, not something that we follow as long as it doesn’t mess with our life, not just some nice suggestions - but essential, vital, even ultimate realities, even if they run counter to what our culture says and what everybody else does. To follow Jesus, as we would do if we truly saw him as the window to God,would be the great work of each of our lives. Like that pearl of great price, we would give all we are and all we have in order to find it. What we do, how we live - these things show who Jesus is for us.
I am challenged by asking myself the question, “Who do you say that I am?” I can imagine Jesus standing out here in the parking lot, asking us as we leave - Who do you say that I am? Why, you’re the Child of God, the Word of God, the Window open in this world so we can see God. You’re the Savior, and Lord of my life. And then, y’know, I’d cringe, and I’d have to ponder my life choices and my life actions. I’d have to ponder yet again how I spend my time, how I spend my money, how I treat the less fortunate, how my life shows the compassion of God to my associates and colleagues.
I’m pretty good at the guilt game, as are many of us already….I’m also pretty good at the self-justifying game, so there’s reason to examine whether the guilt feelings are real, or whether the justifications are warranted…. half and half maybe...but worthy of pondering all the same. Not every day - some days we can walk with Jesus as our friend, and join in the joy of life and the work of ministry side by side. But examining what my life says about who Jesus is, is worth doing occasionally ...and regularly.
We were talking at Session meeting about the rights and duties of membership, and we read the part in our Book of Order about how we church folks need to examine ourselves as to how we can increase our discipleship, our following, of God. How we might increase our knowledge of Scripture so we can better understand and follow. How we might increase our involvement in mission, how we might increase our giving, how we might increase our outreach to the sick or suffering, how we might better our involvement with the needy in our community, how we might be better ambassadors, how we might better control our speech….
Sometimes we can do this by the calendar, like after this sermon, or at the New Year, or as in the Jewish calendar, this month of holy days like the day of Atonement; or in Lent when we have our fasting perhaps. Other times the need for pondering comes up as a sense of discontent with the way things are going. A friend called me up the other day to say she was thinking of seminary, although not as a preacher so much. So I asked, what’s been bubbling up that you’re thinking about this? What are you feeling a need for, or a lack of? What are you hoping seminary would offer? She quickly recognized a need for a deepening of her knowledge of the spiritual life, so she could better serve those she encounters in her profession. Seminary may or may not fulfill that, I told her. Seminary is academic, and profs are often the kind of people who either assume parsing Greek verbs deepens your faith, or that you are pursuing the dimensions of faith development on your own time. So we had a good conversation about what was a growing longing in her heart for growth in her faith.
Sometimes a crisis in our lives suddenly throws us into a time of pondering our faith. The crisis hits and we feel like Wiley E Coyote stepping off a cliff and plunging into an abyss, where everything we thought we understood suddenly is swirling around us and not working anymore. THAT kind of pondering takes months or years, as life re-integrates and meaning emerges through prayer and seeking. A death, losing all we have in a fire or flood, a divorce, being fired, retiring - events like that are crises, when sometimes our old ways of being are found inadequate. These can be crises in our faith.
Perhaps our shrinking church is a slower crises, but a crises we all see is eventually coming towards us. The ways we’ve been the church are not reaching new people in this setting anymore; there’s a need for pondering, for rethinking, for seeking in prayer how to change in order to persevere. Maybe we could hear Jesus asking us, “Who do you say that I am?” and begin again to answer it, without preconceived notions and without our code words. What does it mean to us as a church to say Jesus is the Child of God, to heed his words and actions, and compare them to ours? I’m not saying I know the answers - I’m saying that to ask the question is a starting place for the Spirit to speak a new word in us. To ask the question is to give the wind of the Spirit a sail to fill. To ask the question is to clean the window. We together are figuring out the way forward in faith, discerning that faithfulness and mission don’t have to necessarily look like it always looked.
Well, we’ve covered a lot of ground in this sermon on Jesus’ question. We’ve looked at it individually as well as corporately. My hope is that each of us is challenged by this question to reflect on how we are doing as followers of the Christ, and that the answers that we hear through the Spirit’s voice will lead us. AMEN.
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