Rev. Cari Pattison
Woodstock Reformed Church
Sunday, September 12, 2021
“Have You Made Up Your Mind?”
Mark 8:27-38
Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets."
He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." And Jesus sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly.
And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, Jesus rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.
For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
Maybe you’ve heard this one:
A church-going man was hiking in the woods one day, when he came across an angry grizzly bear.
The bear stands up on its hind legs and growls ferociously, clearly preparing to charge. In a panic, the man starts to run, but the bear follows close on his heels.
Finally the hiker comes to a cliff and there’s nowhere left to run. He drops to his knees and begs, “Oh Lord, please make this bear a Christian!”
To the hiker’s amazement, the heavens part and a beam of light shines down.
Suddenly the bear stops growling, falls to his knees and folds his paws together in prayer!
"Thank you, Lord!" says the man.
Then he hears the bear pray, “Thank you, Lord, for this food which I am about to receive….”
***
What difference does being a Christian make? Is a Christian bear less likely to eat a man? Is a Christian man less likely to hurt a bear?
What difference does it make in our day-to-day lives, whether we follow Jesus?
The sermon title today is “Have you made up your mind?”
For the past month we have looked at a number of different ways to describe Jesus: as Provider, Savior, Sustainer, Teacher, and Rebel-
But in today’s text Jesus asks us, “Who do you say that I am?”
Have you made up your mind yet?
***
Who we believe someone to be, matters.
If I believe my parents are loving and wise, I want to listen to them and pattern aspects of my life after them.
If I believe our state and national government leaders are capable, then I want follow their guidance on vaccines and Covid prevention.
If I believe the consistory of this church are thoughtful Christians- which I do- then I want to pray and plan with them- seeking God together for the present and future of our church.
If I believe someone sees me and loves me and believes in good things for my life, I feel encouraged to live into that vision.
What difference, then, does it make- who you say that Jesus is?
***
Today’s passage begins with Jesus traveling with the disciples to Caesarea Philippi- which in its very name, praises the emperor Caesar. They are in Roman occupied territory, and the motto there is “Caesar is Lord.”
Because of whom they believe Caesar to be, they structure their life around pleasing and worshiping him.
And it’s on the way there- to this land where there is already one man hailed as “Lord,” that Jesus asks his disciples this daring question:
“Who do people say that I am?”
They say that rumor has it he might be John the Baptist or Elijah come back- these fiery prophets who made people mad by telling them to change their ways, to serve God only. These were known as wild holy men, ever challenging people to go deeper, to resist the culture, to follow Yahweh fully.
But then Jesus asks them point-blank: “Okay, but who do you say that I am?”
***
What do you say, when people ask you what you believe?
What do you say, when co-workers or neighbors ask you about your religion?
What do you say, when a friend hears something about Christians in the news and says, “You’re not one of them, are you?”
Who do you say Jesus is?
***
Over the years there have been countless ways to answer this question.
My earliest experience of Jesus were the songs “Jesus Loves Me,” and “Jesus Loves the Little Children,” sung to me by my mother and my Sunday school teachers.
Jesus was my friend, the one who cared and listened to my prayers. The one who watched over me and forgave me and knew me better than anyone.
But as I got older, I had friends and classmates on all sides of the spectrum- some who said I wasn’t “saved” enough, because I didn’t go to the right church or pray the right prayers. I’d been baptized only as a baby, they said, and needed to do it again if I was a real believer.
On the other end, there were kids who said Jesus was no different from Santa or the Easter Bunny- someone you believed in when you were little to make holidays more fun, but not a real person.
Which was it?
***
As I got older, plenty of people said they respected the teachings of Jesus, as one more religious leader among many. Like Buddha, Mohammed, and others, Jesus had interesting truths about life, but he lived and died and was no different from the rest.
In response to that, I heard countless talks at Christian camps and youth group- called the “Liar, Lunatic, Lord” talk. A minister or speaker would go through all the possible things Jesus might be, and then “prove” why he had to be Lord.
It came from a famous quote from C.S. Lewis:
“People often say: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept His claim to be God.’ … A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic—on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg—or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God, but let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”
It’s a powerful quote. But is Lewis right?
Is there any value in looking at Jesus as merely a teacher?
Over the years I’ve had friends, for whom that was their entry-point to faith. They started out curious about Jesus’ teachings and healings, his care for the poor and his heart for justice, the way he treats women and outcasts, and it moved them to look further.
My friend Dave grew up with no religion, and later became devoted to Zen Buddhism, in part from his many meditation retreats at the Zen Mountain Monastery just up the road in Phoenicia.
But when he encountered Christian monasticism at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, he heard for the first time the teachings and life of Jesus. He asked me and asked the monks, “Why do you speak of Jesus in the present tense? He lived a long time ago and you’ve never met him in person, right? So why speak of him in this way?”
And Dave heard the monks share about who Jesus is to them. One of them directed him to a book called Jesus Before Christianity, by Albert Nolan. The book gave a glimpse of who Jesus was, straight from the Gospels, before all the institutional religious baggage that later came to be associated with him.
This present-tense Jesus goes beyond any of our human attempts to trap or define or contain him in our own religious containers. And that is the Jesus I want to know better.
John Calvin, one of the founders of the Reformed movement of Christianity, who himself was a mixed bag, once said: “The brightness of the Divine countenance, which even an apostle declares to be inaccessible, is a kind of labyrinth.”
I love this idea that Jesus- the way, the truth, the life- is a labyrinth whom we can encounter first as a child, or first as our teacher, and then we wind our way through the Christian life and draw to the center- discovering more and more of who he is.
A friend of mine recently shared that he sensed God encouraging him to pray more, and to hold nothing back. The word he felt from God was, “Show me more of your heart, and I’ll show you more of mine.”
The labyrinth of love.
***
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks.
And Peter- like that kid on their front row in school waving their hand frantically with the right answer- says, “You’re the Messiah!”
And Jesus, knowing it’s true, but not yet time to make it public in a place like Caesarea Philippi, tells him, “Shhh.”
He knows that Peter and the disciples have their own idea of what “Messiah” means.
Like most of their day, they think “Messiah” means a king who will take everything back for the Jewish people and free them from Roman rule. A conquering hero with military might and power, come at last to set things straight.
But Jesus begins to teach them what Messiah really means.
There will be rejection, suffering, and death. Then rising again.
One commentator says it’s kind of like a new football coach coming in, and you’re all excited for his new strategy and vision for the team. He will bring us to victory!
Then he lays out the plan: “So here’s the deal. We’re gonna lose. A lot. We’re gonna get beat in the biggest games and I’m going to get fired. And then a comeback’s going to happen after. Okay? Who’s with me?”
You can hardly blame Peter for saying, “What are you talking about? That’s not what a Messiah does! This must never be!”
And Jesus stops.
Does Jesus speak here to Peter, or to an unseen power of temptation?
He says, “Get behind me, Satan!”
Early in Jesus’ ministry, the Gospels say that Jesus was tempted 3 times by the devil. And one of these temptations was to rule the world apart from God.
Jesus resists this temptation. But here in Mark chapter 8, who knows how much Jesus wished there could be another way? When Peter tells him that the way of the cross is no way for a Messiah, what if Jesus had a fleeting moment of, “Yeah, you’re right… let’s skip that part”?
***
Sometimes people ask, “How does being a Christian make your life better? How does it spare you from suffering and make things easier?”
Sometimes I say, “It doesn’t.”
I can’t tell you that following Jesus has offered any short-cut around suffering. It hasn’t made my life easier. Sometimes begin a Christian has meant doing something hard, or scary, or sacrificial. Sometimes I hide in the corner and say, “I’m not ready.”
Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a teacher and pastor and resistor during Nazi Germany, wrote, “When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die.”
There are things I wish that being Christian could’ve spared me from, and could spare you from.
But this is what I know to be true, from Father Henri Nouwen:
“Following Jesus is moving away from fear and toward love.”
And that love has never let me go.
***
One of the greatest seasons of fear in this nation began 20 years ago yesterday, on 9-11.
I don’t know where you were that day, and I don’t know how you’ve made sense of those events. I don’t know what sorrows and stories you have come to associate with that fateful day. And I don’t know if the actions our country has taken in the two decades since, have caused more good or harm.
But when I see pictures of those Twin Towers, I think of a man named Philippe Petit.
Petit is a French tight-rope artist who once strung a wire from one of the World Trade Center buildings, to the other, and successfully walked across. Over 1300 feet above the streets of Manhattan, he managed to balance once foot, and then the other, until he made it the 131 feet from the south tower to the north tower.
110 stories high, each building longer than a quarter of a mile: and he used no safety net or harness.
Petit considers himself not a stunt man, but a poet, engaging with the world around him- even the greatest obstacles- in a way that brings elegance, risk, and beauty.
The Twin Towers have come to stand for so much human accomplishment, and so much human destruction.
But the image I most like to look at, of those towers, is the silhouette of Philippe Petit walking across them, in 1974.
***
When Jesus says, “Who do you say that I am?” he’s not asking for an opinion. He’s asking for our trust.
That same Philippe Petit was later an Artist in Residence at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine, where a colleague of mine, Susan, served in ministry.
Susan and her husband Ken were friends of Petit’s, and they tell the story of how one day he asked if he could string a tight rope across the Cathedral pillars and walk across it. He said, “Do you trust that I could do this?”
They said “yes.”
Then he said, “Do you trust that I could also push a wheelbarrow across the wire?”
They said, “yes.”
“Well,” he said with a smile. “If you truly trust me, will you get in the wheelbarrow?”
***
Let us pray.