Kendall's Notebook page 15
Sermon: "Who Do You Say I Am?"
By: Kendall Brown
Text: Mark 8:27-38, Proverbs 1: 20-33
September 14, 2003
Today’s Proverbs lesson is from an ancient strand of tradition known as the Wisdom Tradition. The teachings of this tradition are unlike any other body of teaching found in the Bible. The Wisdom teachings are not connected with any particular group or institution. They do not come out of any particular cultic activity: for example, the Psalms were developed as worship ritual. They are not connected with any particular party such as the Pharisees or the Sadducees. Elizabeth Johnson, contributing to our “Seasons of the Spirit” church curriculum writes, that wisdom “is given to anyone who searches out the order of creation in order to live in harmony with it.”
Wisdom stuff is Spirit stuff. The New Testament lesson today reveals that Jesus was operating out of a Wisdom about himself and who he was. It was of great importance to him that his disciples catch some of that spiritual vision about his identity. In response to Jesus’ question about identity, Peter quickly says, “You are the Christ, or Messiah.” Jesus knows instantly that Peter has managed to find the right words but hasn’t got the idea. Peter has the lingo but falls short of the logic. Peter is in tune to the conventional wisdom about the Messiah, that expects a great Davidic leader to come and rescue Israel and vanquish all her enemies. Jesus brings a new definition (a new wisdom, if you will) to “Messiah” and a wisdom about what the Messiah does that Peter doesn’t want to hear.
What our curriculum teaches us about the nature of Wisdom reminds me of the nature of my own weekly preaching process through which I go in preparation for every Sunday morning approach to the pulpit. The Wisdom teachings are not connected to any particular religious party or institution or to any particular cultic activity on the part of the religious community. Biblical wisdom has a life or it’s own. Such is the case with my own hermeneutics that I pull out every week.
Throwing out 50 cent words is not a part of my general practice in preaching, but this morning I am going to toss one before you. Hermeneutics. Hermeneutics is the science of interpretation and explanation. Obviously, such a science is part and parcel of pulpit work.
Every week, parts of my process are such things as struggling with the hermeneutical questions like: How am I to explain this text to the congregation? How have others interpreted this text in the 2000 year history of Christian preaching? What does this text say to me? What are the places that cause me the most struggle?
I explore these questions by searching through my own office library, rummaging around my own memory bank, and attending weekly lectionary groups with other clergy. In all these places, conventional hermeneutics, conventional wisdom, that ties the interpretations and explanations of texts to traditions and systems of thought that have been around for a long tine, are quickly encountered. I am left unsatisfied and I figure that if start my sermon with the unsatisfying wisdom or interpretation then leaving the congregation equally unsatisfied and hungry is guaranteed.
Today’s lesson about Peter and Jesus and last week’s lesson about the Syro-Phoenician woman and Jesus provide illustrations. There are some very traditional ways to present these lessons. One conventional way is to look at the supporting cast (Peter or the woman) in the stories and pick up on the obvious moral lesson that might be in the story. I am sure that countless sermons have been preaching about the Syro-Phoenician’s woman’s persistence and how that persistence pays off in the end. Peter’s impulsive response to Jesus has been the source of amusement for countless preachers for centuries – sometimes the impulsiveness makes him a hero and sometimes the fool – depending on the interpreter and the interpreter’s mood on the day of working with this text.
Another hermeneutical approach is what I call “the catchy saying approach.” I mention this approach because this week’s lesson contains a number of catchy sayings that many ministers read this week, looked up from their Bibles in their studies, and mused to themselves, “That’ll preach. That’ll preach brother, that’ll preach.” Verse 33 in Mark 8 has two catchy sayings in it: “Get thee behind me Satan,” is one, and the other is, “For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Then verses 33 and on are a long series of catchy sayings any one of which could be the foundation for a sermon or meditation.
If we are to follow Jesus, we must deny ourselves and take up our crosses.
In order to gain life we must be willing to lose it.
What is the profit of gaining the whole world and losing one’s soul?
When I turn to the Gospel stories, I am constantly prodding by the nagging question, shouldn’t the Gospel be leading my thoughts to the star and not the supporting cast? When Mark wrote the recorded the story about the Syro-Phoenician woman, did he do so because he wanted the world to remember and be instructed by her persistence and ingenuity of argument? Didn’t Mark write his Gospel and tell this story about Jesus because he wanted to share how he had encountered in the man from Nazareth an experience of making contact with the divine? Isn’t Jesus the star of the show? Why do we run away from him and give all of our attention to the supporting cast so often?
When it comes to the catchy sayings, there are plenty of places to read catchy, pithy sayings. Aren’t we supposed to be looking for something a bit deeper when we read the Bible from what we can find in any issue of the “Farmer’s Almanac?”
In my weekly hermeneutical struggle, I try to push towards Jesus in the reading of the Gospels. I struggle with the questions: What was Jesus doing, thinking, experiencing, trying to teach, trying to say? What was his struggle in the story? The hermeneutical principal in all this is that in order to allow Jesus into our lives and world we must enter into his world and life as we read the Scriptures.
Of all the Gospels, Mark is the best for doing this. His is the oldest Gospel and I think the closest to the simple stories about Jesus without those stories being subjected to the theological developments and traditions that had grown up by the time Matthew and the other Gospel writers were working.
Let us return to today’s story and be with Jesus in his world as best as we can. In the chapters just before today’s story, we find that Jesus was traveling all over. Many commentators find it necessary to include maps in their commentaries about Mark 6 and 7, because in those chapters, Jesus and his disciples had been literally all over the map. Not only had Jesus been traveling but he had also been teaching and preaching, he had healed numerous persons. He couldn’t get a day off without someone imposing his or her self upon his down time, he had mastered a few major miracles like feeding thousands of people with a handful of fish and a few loaves of bread.
It is hard to follow Jesus story in these chapters without growing dizzy. He is like a whirling dervish. Life for him and his disciples must have been like being in a whirlwind of activity, excitement, danger, thrills and work. Then in the middle of it, he draws the disciples up short. Out of the blue of all this whirlwind of activity, Jesus suddenly stops and asks his disciples, “Who do you say I am?”
The Gospel only tells us about Peter’s impulsive answer. Surely the other disciples also responded, maybe in ways that Mark decided not worthy of reporting. Perhaps some of them shrugged their shoulders, looked at Jesus in disbelief and said, “What are you asking that for?” “Are we on the same planet, here?” “Where did that come from?” Here they were in the midst of all this excitement, success, and Jesus gaining popularity every day, and Jesus asks them this off the wall question, “Who do you say I am?”
Maybe it is not so off the wall. Maybe the question is one that we need to hear as much as the disciples. Life can be just as much of a whirlwind for us as it was for them. Sometimes we feel like whirling dervishes ourselves, often on a ride that is not one of our own choosing.
When I was in my thirties, I looked ahead to my fifties thinking that the passage of years would bring a reduction of struggles to struggle and battles to fight. I looked forward to being older, wiser and richer. Of those three things, only one came true. I am older. People use to talk about the Golden Years. We don’t hear that expression any more, or when we do, we hear it being debunked. A club was founded for senior citizens in Oxford, MA 25 years ago and named the Golden Agers. At the time, Golden Age Clubs were being founded across the country often through government sponsored programs at senior citizen community centers. If I announced today that it would be a good idea to start up a Golden Age Club here at Christ Church, some of you would throw your hymnbooks at me and others would wonder like the disciples about Jesus, “What planet do you live on?”
Getting older has it’s own whirlwind and dervish nature. The struggles do not cease. When I left New England five years ago, my parents were in what I now know was their last year or two of living independently. The most recent chapter was written last Friday night when I talked with my older sister on the phone. She had taken my mother to the doctors for some tests last Friday. For the first time, the doctor made official what we were suspecting. My mother has Alzheimer’s Disease. Friday, the Doctor gave her a little test. He asked her to draw on a paper a picture of a clock showing what time it was. Her picture was three or four random, straight and crooked lines. There wasn’t even a circle or two connected lines that might be the hands of a clock. The picture of that drawing quickly became for me a symbol for most of my conversations with my mother for several months. I have been struggling with that whirlwind of accepting that she will never again be the person I have always known.
With the disciples we are in the whirlwind. In the middle of it, Jesus draws us up short and asks, “Who do we say he is?” Like Peter, we can give an answer that has the right words. But Jesus was not looking for a formula of right words. He was looking for a wisdom, which might have been expressed in a number of ways besides the impulsive blurting out, “You are the Christ.” He was looking for the Wisdom of right relationship with him. The Wisdom of knowing he is present and with us in the storms and that he is the one in charge in spite of the roar and power of the stormy winds.
He is with us in the midst of Alzheimer’s. It might not be the same for me to be with my mother or her with me as she ever was. But he is with her, before, now and always as he always has been. A disease does not disconnect her from him or his love.
Today’s lesson isn’t about doing and what to do. Jesus stepped outside of a lot of doing to ask his question. Neither is today’s lesson about why? Jesus points to the cross as a given but offers no theory of atonement to explain why. Jesus reminds the disciples that he is the one who is with them and by his presence makes all the unholy, ungracious whirlwinds of life quiet places of peace and grace.