St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas
Who Do You Say That I Am?

A Sermon preached by The Rev. Dr. Steven L. Thomason at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Fayetteville, Arkansas, on September 13, 2009.

 

The Scripture Texts for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost,

Proper 19 are:

Proverbs 1:20-33
Psalm 19
   James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38

 [James 3:1-12] Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, and is itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue-- a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. From the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

 [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 he 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, he 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."

My family occasionally reminds me of the fact that beginning in kindergarten I have been in school for 28 of my 44 years, and anytime I begin to murmur about going back to school again it is usually my wife, who has endured and supported me through more than half of that formal education, that reminds me from time to time that it is her turn next. And it is!

 

The truth is as I look out on a congregation full of people who live in a community that is centered on the institution of learning, I realize that I was truly fortunate in my own educational journey to have had any number of teachers and professors who made learning a wonderful experience for me, and I am grateful to all who have that gift and share it with others. The world is a better place because of such people.

 

One of my favorite teachers in all my experience was one of those erudite English professors at Sewanee who knew a good deal about a lot of things—not just book knowledge, as they say, but insights into the ways that the world fits together and has meaning, and he always seemed to have this knack of taking whatever poem or book we were reading and using it as a portal through which we could step into a new world of meaning and inspiration that transcended the classroom.

 

It was never a simple equation though—this knowledge he was trying to impart. For him, A + B could never just equal C. Life didn’t normally work that way, and most good literature isn’t constructed on such simple equations. In fact, this professor rarely sought such simple answers and if you tried to give them to him, he would say something humorous like, Oh, Mr. Thomason, your mama is not real proud right now. Or, how much are your parents paying for you to give me answers like that?

 

In retrospect, his real gift, aside from his brilliance, was his ability to use the Socratic Method to gently tease new insights out of us. He always found it much more interesting to make us work for the gleanings rather than just serve them up on a platter, and I know we retained more as a result. If one of us asked him a question, he usually replied with a question. Well, what do you think, Steve?

 

 

Okay, so what do the Socratic method, answering questions with questions, and teachers all have to do with our work of responding to God’s word in these scripture passages appointed for today? Well, I would start by saying there are nine questions asked of us in these readings this morning—and yes, they are asked of us. Peter may have answered Jesus, but the question was put to all who would be disciples of Christ, including you and me.

 

I can just envision the conversation just before this—Jesus and his disciples are walking along, and he is teaching them about some aspect of this kingdom of God business, and one of them asks something about it. Well, Jesus, when is this kingdom coming? Or perhaps it was something like: Why is there so much suffering in the world? What kind of God would create the world this way? Where is God in all this? We all have those questions that weigh on our hearts—I bet you have one, too. So fill in the blank—you are asking Jesus a question.

 

To which he replies: Who do people say that I am? And our answers don’t seem to satisfy the teacher. But who do you say that I am?... It’s personal now. And you see how the teacher has relinquished the power over to us. We have the power to name him….

 

Well, you are the Christ.

 

But what does that mean?

 

And for Peter, he can’t understand what it means, and so Jesus steps in to lay it out. Carrying a cross…losing one’s life and saving it…

 

For us, we get that explanation, and this passage from James as well. Now you need to know that for most of Christian history, a good part of the church wanted nothing to do with this letter of James. It was claimed that the Book of James was confusing, or misleading, or even bad theology since it has been interpreted as saying that one must work for his salvation—that one had to somehow earn God’s good graces—which of course is folly.

 

For my part, I think James has gotten a bum rap. I don’t like everything he has to say or how he says it necessarily, but there is something more here than a simple equation A + B = C, or faith plus works equals salvation.

 

To settle for such a simple algebra of God’s grace is just a trumped up form of moralism—that you must be good, or else—and Jesus seemed to have little patience for that.

 

What if James is inviting us, as a teacher might, to grapple with the questions. Or better yet, what if he is inviting us to turn it around…to ask Jesus, the master, a couple of questions—but be careful what you ask for, because you will hear the truth from Jesus’ lips.

 

What if our questions arose from James’ invitation to consider the inspired faith in action that is Christian discipleship? What if our questions put to Jesus were:

 

            Jesus, who do people say that I am?

            Jesus, who do you say that I am?

 

What would Jesus say to you and me if he were to walk in the door this morning?  What would happen if we really gave that power over to him to name us—Jesus, who do you say that I am?—and would the name “disciple of Christ” be involved? I think James is saying live as if that it were true. Jesus is saying live as if it were true.

 

Jesus said: "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

 

So what is your cross, disciple of Christ?

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