Sermon: Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

Mark 8:27-38

Answering (and Living) the Jesus Question

James Sledge                                                                           September 16, 2018

The other day I stopped into the grocery store to grab a couple of items. As I looked for them, I happened down an aisle that was filled with Halloween candy and paraphernalia. I shouldn’t have  been surprised – it’s September after all, but I was. It was one of those sultry, ninety degree days, and it didn’t feel anything like fall.

But fall is almost here, which means the election is just around the corner. I’ve been something of a political junkie for much of my life, but I confess that I’ve grown tired of it. I don’t want to see all the political ads. I don’t want to see candidates who wrap themselves in a Christian mantle while spouting hatred and intolerance and outright racist ideas. I especially don’t want to watch another round of church leaders doing irreparable damage to the image of the faith by insisting that candidates who show not the tiniest inclination to follow the teachings of Jesus are somehow God’s candidate. Wake me when it’s over.

Of course then the Christmas shopping season will be almost upon us, complete with culture war skirmishes. Some of the same folks who touted God’s candidates will insist that we “put Christ back in Christmas,” and they’ll get angry if someone says “Happy Holidays.” Sigh… Wake me when it’s over.

It’s amazing all the ways that Jesus or Christ or God or Christian faith gets invoked to support all manner of things. There are churches that celebrate the Second Amendment in worship and encourage members to bring their guns. There are churches that loudly proclaim, “God Hates Fags.” There are churches that say Donald Trump is God’s man in the White House, and there are churches that stage protests against Donald Trump. There are churches that see same sex relationships as an abomination and sin, and there are churches that marry same sex couples. And all these churches, at least all that call themselves Christian, claim Christ in some way.

When people insist that we put Christ back in Christmas, which one do they mean? Is it the one who blesses same sex marriages? Is it the one who says to love your enemy and not to resist the one who strikes you? Or is it a different Christ? How many of them are there? Sometimes it seems that we Christians have been given the answer to the question, but we’re not at all sure what that answer means.

There’s an old joke about children’s sermons meant to illustrate that young children are concrete thinkers and can’t get object lessons, but it seems appropriate here. A pastor has the children gather round and begins, “I’m thinking of something small and gray with a bushy tail.” One of the children raises her hand and shouts out, “Jesus!” She then turns to the child next to her and whispers, “It sounds like a squirrel to me, but I know the answer is Jesus.”

In our scripture today, Jesus asks a question about who he is. Not everyone knows the answer. Some people think Jesus is John the Baptist or Elijah or anther prophet returned. But Peter blurts out, “You are the Messiah.”

Peter knows the answer to the question. He’s been around Jesus long enough to know that he’s more than a prophet. He’s the one they’ve waited for. (Messiah is a translation of the Greek word Christos or Christ. Messiah or the Christ means the same thing. Jesus is God’s anointed one, and Peter gets an A on the quiz. But almost immediately we discover that Peter understands very little about the Messiah. Like a lot of Christians, Peter wants, even expects, Jesus to be the sort of Messiah, that he has in mind. Peter even goes so far as to pull Jesus aside to straighten him out, to tell him that he’s gotten this whole Messiah business wrong.

What follows are perhaps the harshest words Jesus ever speaks to a follower. “Get behind me Satan!” Jesus saves his harshest rebuke for the follower who knows the right answer, who can correctly say that Jesus is Messiah, Christ, Lord, but then expects Jesus to conform to his religious, political, and cultural assumptions and expectations.

I wonder what Jesus might say to modern Christians on the left and on the right who so easily invoke Jesus to support their views or politics? What rebuke might he have for a Christian movement that has created such a dizzying array of Christs to choose from, a Christ for every possible ideology, philosophy, or political leaning?

Of course Jesus isn’t physically here to rebuke us. He does, however, leave us some pretty clear words about what it looks like to follow him.

"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.” Here, and many other places, Jesus makes clear that simply believing in him or identifying him correctly is not what he wants from us. He wants followers, disciples who will continue his work and will live in ways that show him to the world.

Of course in a highly individualistic society, this call for self-denial is not likely to be very popular, never mind talk of losing your life. Jesus’ words can sound like harsh, even impossible demands. Why would anyone sign up for such a thing?

There is little doubt that following Jesus is difficult, but I wonder if Jesus isn’t saying something a bit more than, “You have to work really, really hard to get you discipleship merit badge.” I wonder if Jesus isn’t saying that to follow him is to discover something much, much bigger than yourself, to discover a cause, a purpose that so animates your life you would do almost anything for it.

This past week, as we remembered the horrific events of that September 11^th seventeen years ago, as we mourned once more those lost, as we recalled the way 9/11 irrevocably changed life in America, some of the most poignant memories were of first responders who rushed into the twin towers, who risked, and in many cases, lost their lives for the sake of others. They had a purpose, a calling that was demanding and difficult but that also was what defined them, what animated them, what they loved. In that sense, they had something that many of us may lack.

I think that is what Jesus is calling us to discover, a passion for God, for him, and for the hope of God’s new day that becomes our ultimate purpose, one we would give our very selves for. And then, perhaps Jesus’ words sound less like, “You must try harder,” and more like, “Follow me and discover a love so strong that nothing could ever stop you from living in ways that share it.”