Category: sermon

Who is Jesus? Who are we?

sermon

A sermon for 15th September 2024 (Trinity 16 B – proper 19)
Isaiah 50.4–9a, James 3.1–12, Mark 8.27–38

I haven’t posted a sermon for ages, as I don’t usually write them out in full, but here goes.

‘Who do people say that I am?’ Jesus asks.

He knows that people have strong views about him – by this point in Mark’s Gospel he has been adored, admired and believed, but also criticized, doubted, misunderstood, even threatened. The disciples aren’t sure how to answer Jesus’ question because the answer would depend very much on who you ask!

Maybe because they’re his friends, they don’t remind him that he’s been called him a lawbreaker or that some people think he’s possessed, but stick to the more positive things they’ve heard: that Jesus might be John the Baptist or Elijah or another of the prophets come back from the dead. These aren’t unreasonable suggestions. Jesus speaks and acts powerfully: so far in Mark’s Gospel he’s controlled the weather, healed people, miraculously fed a crowd of several thousand, and challenged those in authority. He absolutely comes across as a prophet.

‘And who do you say that I am?’ Jesus then asks. Peter is the one who dares to speak. ‘You are the Messiah,’ he says. Not just a prophet but more than that, the one who is anointed by God, in whom there is hope for salvation, specifically freedom from oppression.

So, Peter is kind of right.
He has the right word, but hasn’t fully understood what it means, and it’s likely that others won’t either, so Jesus sort of sets that word aside in order to explain more.

Perhaps Peter should have remembered the words from Isaiah. The figure that Isaiah identifies as ‘the servant of God’ declares ‘I gave my back to those who struck me and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting’.  If those words sound familiar it may be because (in a slightly different translation) they are used in Handel’s great Oratorio, The Messiah. Today’s passage from Isaiah connects prophetic speaking with a willingness to endure suffering – a connection which all the old testament prophets would have recognised in their own experience, and which Jesus also sees as intrinsic to his vocation:   And so he begins to teach them that he must undergo great suffering, and be rejected. 

Peter could simply have turned the question round and asked Jesus, ‘well, who do you say that you are?’ But Jesus beats him to it, describing himself as Son of Man – on one level this is just ‘ben adam’ as in ‘human being’ or ‘a mere human being’ – that is,  someone who is vulnerable to suffering. But it also echoes the apocalyptic vision in the book of Daniel in which the Son of Man embodies the salvation and glory of God’s people no longer suffering but vindicated. Jesus as Son of Man makes perfect sense in today’s gospel because he’s talking about both his coming suffering, and the glory of the resurrection. 

So there is a lot going on behind Jesus’ original questions. They’re not trick questions but they are complex and multi-layered, so it’s not surprising that Peter misses the mark, or that the rest of the disciples don’t even feel confident answering at all! It feels like Jesus is bringing together a lot of important ideas that won’t truly make sense even to his closest followers until the whole story has unfolded.

What they need right now is to understand what it all means for them as disciples. Let’s start with Peter, and who he is.

In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus calls Peter as a disciple, drawing attention to his name, which means ‘rock’ to commend his faith.  ‘On this rock I will build my Church’ he says. By contrast, today when Peter questions Jesus’ coming suffering, he is given a rather more disturbing name: ‘Get behind me, Satan’ Jesus says. Seems a little harsh, right?.

We met actual Satan earlier in the gospels when Jesus is tempted by him while fasting for forty days in the wilderness. Matthew and Luke both provide more detail than Mark does, outlining three temptations, of which two are particularly relevant: Satan tries to get the very hungry Jesus to turn stones into bread, then tells Jesus that if he jumps off the top of the Temple it’ll prove that God won’t let him get hurt – Satan quotes Psalm 91, ‘his angels will bear you up, lest you dash your foot against a stone’. Jesus resists all three temptations and Satan gives up – for the time being.

Notice that two of the temptations mention stones, and remember that Peter has been named by Jesus as ‘the rock’.  This is a really key material image in scripture, with a lot of meanings attached to stones.  I don’t think it’s a huge stretch here to suggest that when Peter the rock tells Jesus that he shouldn’t suffer, Jesus realises it’s the same temptation again and it’s as if Satan is back for another go.  No wonder he reacts so harshly. Jesus resisted that temptation before and he does so again now. He’ll have to resist the same temptation in Gethsemane and on the cross.

So who is Peter in this whole incident? He is the rock, the one with the courage the speak and the insight to name Jesus as Messiah. But he’s also potentially a stumbling block, a temptation, someone whose words seeks to pull Jesus away from his vocation and purpose. Fortunately through the grace of God stumbling blocks can be repositioned to become the most amazing cornerstones. That’s what Jesus seeks to do: he is turning Peter from a dangerous temptation into someone who can grasp not just Jesus’ coming suffering but also his own.

Jesus rebukes Peter in front of all the disciples not to shame him, but because all he did is put into words what the others were probably thinking, and what many of us might be thinking too: this misunderstanding and mis-speaking isn’t a Peter thing, it’s an everyone thing, and we all need to hear the next bit of what Jesus has to say.

Which is where we move from asking ‘who is Jesus’ and ‘who is Peter’ to the question of  ‘so who are we?’

We may be, at times, people who wish that faith  protects people from the thorns about our path or from life’s storms.  As one of my favourite hymns points out, it is not that the journey is objectively easier if we have faith, it’s that we’re not alone in it: ‘be our strength in hours of weakness, in our wanderings be our guide, through endeavour, failure, danger, Father be thou at our side’. 

Who are we? We are people with someone to follow, someone who in his incarnation embraced the inevitability of suffering that comes with living a human life, as well as embracing the necessity of suffering in the story of salvation; a Saviour who stilled the storm not from the safety of the shore but in the company of his friends, from a flimsy, sinking boat.

We may be, at times, people who are tempted to deny or downplay the costliness of discipleship, of the life of faith.  We may be in denial in a global context about the ongoing threat of death or serious harm that faith can bring, or about the much lower level friction we may experience when we try to live faithfully in a complex world, or the emotional pain of trying to reconcile human suffering with what we believe about the love of God. We may sometimes be people who are (as he puts it) ashamed of Jesus and his teaching, especially when it difficult, or when we don’t feel equipped to express our faith in a way that will make sense to people. In the light of today’s reading from the letter of James, which is all about the power of speech and how we spend that power, it’s worth noting that Peter’s mistake is only in words, and yet Jesus recognises its potential for great harm. 

I don’t know if you’ve heard the saying about budgeting, that if you look after the pennies, the pounds will look after themselves? For most of us in this context the cost of discipleship is counted in pennies, but they still add up. Our words or lack of words, especially on behalf of those for whom the cost is counted in pounds – these express and shape who we are.  So who are we?

We are fallible: we are people who sometimes – often – misunderstand and mis-speak, who fail to realise the power of what we say and that our words can undermine the vocation of others, or downplay the crosses that others bear – we are all of us capable of being stumbling blocks.

We are also called by God, to follow Jesus, to discern what is the particular cross that we must pick up, and then walk the difficult path before us alongside one another with Christ as our guide.

We are works in progress: we are people with questions, for whom the most important answers are rarely fully understood in theory or captured in propositional statements, but are worked out over the course of a life’s journey, and often during the times when we find that journey most challenging.

Who are we? In the end, it is less about who we are, and more about whose we are. Knowing that we are made and named by God, we will know who we are most truly when we grasp who God believes us to be. This was Peter’s journey, and it can be our journey too.

Mothering Sunday – all age talk

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Here’s something I did last year and which worked pretty well. But NB it only works in a church that would recognise what a chasuble is and in which the service is Eucharistic, so apologies if your church isn’t that kind of church or you’re not doing a Eucharistic service (and please do search ‘Mothering Sunday’ on this site for alternatives – there are quite a few I’ve posted). Anyway, if your church does do chasubles please read on…

Beforehand:
1. Ensure that you’ll be using the Exodus and John readings
2. Find an old (pale coloured) bedsheet, ideally one that’s not really manky – the perfect bedsheet for this is one with a coffee stain in the corner but which is otherwise still quite respectable. Fold it in half so the short edges meet and the long edges are halved. Cut out a poncho/chasuble shape complete with neck hole. You might need to hold it up against yourself to make sure it’s roughly the right size and shape. But it doesn’t have to be perfect.
3. Get hold of some sharpies or fabric pens, and make sure you have somewhere in church you can lay it down, unfolded. You might want to protect that surface with a plastic sheet or something in case the pens soak through.
4. Recruit someone to stand by the blank chasuble during the service, starting from when people come in – ideally this should be someone who knows your children and families and can get them involved. Tell your helper that when people arrive they can start writing and drawing on the chasuble words and pictures that they associate with mothering, on one half of the chasuble (ie either the front or the back of it). Give that person some hand gel that they can get everyone to use.
5. Recruit someone to do the intercessions that day who is able to respond pastorally and appropriately to anything difficult that emerges from the talk. Mothering Sunday is the worst day of the year for a lot of people…

In the service:
1. In the notices, encourage any families (or indeed anyone who likes doing stuff rather than listening to stuff) to go over to the chasuble area and the helper you have there will encouarge them to start decorating the chasuble once they’ve used the hand gel.
2. After the readings, encourage any families or others who like that sort of thing to go over to the chasuble and keep working on it while you all reflect together on what you’ve heard.
3. Ask the chasuble team what sorts of things are already on the chasuble – what have people written and drawn?
4. Look back at the readings, and see what you notice about mothering in the two stories, for example:
– mothering isn’t just about being a biological mother (there are four women who have a role in mothering the baby Moses; on the cross Jesus creates a new family) – this can be affirming for people who find mothering Sunday difficult because they feel that their own families are not ‘standard’.
– mothering often involves courage, cunning, sadness, ingenuity, improvisation, rebellion, solidarity, sorrow….
Ask your chasuble team to find ways to express these suggestions on the other half of the chasuble.
5. Draw attention to the wide range of gifts and feelings, and allow people if they wish to give voice to some of the really difficult aspects of mothering, and of being mothered. Is there room for these on the chasuble too? Reassure everyone that these are things that will be included in the prayers.
6. When the chasuble is decorated with all this, get the team to bring it forward, and either put it on yourself, or get someone else to put it on, so that everyone can see it – maybe even walk down the aisle and round the church. It will likely be both beautiful and chaotic. It will not be pefect. That’s OK. Thank the chasuble team – they can go and sit down now.
7. Some background for this next bit: my son when he was little always said ‘chasuble hugs are the best hugs because chasubles are like wings’. So at the end of each service I’d always wrap him in the biggest chasuble hug, and I’d tell him that it was like when Jesus described himself as a mother hen who wanted all her chicks tucked under her wings. When I did this talk last year, I had someone that I could hug to demonstrate this, but this year because of Coronavirus we’re not doing hugs, so here is my alternative:
Tell the congregation about Jesus being the mother hen – and you can tell them about what my son said, too, if you like. Suggest that the chasuble is a challenge for the church to see how the church can be a mother hen for people. At the moment hugging isn’t a thing we can do safely, in order to care for and protect one another. But there other ways that we can be a mother hen, and some of those ways are already written and drawn on the chasuble.
8. Get the congregation to suggest ways for us as a church community to be mother hens for one another and especially for the most vulnerable. Link to any initatives that the church is already taking. Let this take you into the creed (‘Let us stand and affirm in God, who made us and loves us and cares for us, in Jesus Christ, our mother hen, and in the Holy Spirit who wraps us in God’s love every day of our lives’ or whatever).
9. If you’re presiding, you can wear the chasuble for the rest of the service, or you someone else can.

Please feel free to adapt this to your circumstances – I’d love to know what you did differently and how it went, so please do leave a comment if you’d like to.

Preaching with All Ages

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I got an opportunity to pull together some of the things I’ve been going on about for the last decade and make them into a book. I just got my author copies, so it must be real. The book is about reflective practice and preaching, particularly all age preaching. And it has pictures!

You can hear me talk about the book on this podcast, courtesy of the Church Times.

How big is a tree?

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How might we measure
a mustard tree, Lord?
By metres or cubits?
Why, no, he replied,
For the measure that matters
Is this: hospitality.

How big is a tree?

Can it offer a perch to bird on the wing?
Can the pair of small sparrows
(once bought for a penny)
Have room here to build
an affordable nest?
Can they nurture their young,
In safety away from the predators
Prowling the night?
That is the way that we measure a tree.

Like the wilderness oaks
That offered their shelter
to Abraham, Sarah, and all that they had,
In order that he would be able
to offer the same to the visiting strangers
Who brought them the promise of hope
And the chance to fulfil the command
To be fruitful and fill all the land.

Like the wilderness broom bush
That gave to Elijah permission to stop,
And to sit and give voice to his grief and despair,
a place to find rest and be nourished
So he could continue his journey
To and come to the cleft in the rock
Where he met God in silence.

Like the sycamore tree
That was sturdy enough
To carry the weight
of a man who was rich
but had nothing of worth.

Like the tree that was felled
To be shaped like a cross
And offer a place
For all the world’s pain
to be faced and embraced
by the man who said,
That’s how you measure a tree.

When we measure with numbers
And money and cost
And reduce all the value
To what can be counted
We’ll find we have lost
All sense of what counts:

Our chances to offer the shade of a tree in the heat of the sun;
the grace to receive, sit down and admit that we cannot go on;
a way to stand tall when we’re burdened by all of the things we have done.
A place to feel safe, to love and be loved: a place to call home.

Hands holding a hazel nut

The seed is so small.
It’s a universe held
in the palm of God’s hand.
A hand that’s the only hospitable scale
for the measure of worth
For the God who loves everything.

 

Maundy Thursday

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This evenings sermon doodle…