September 14, 2003 -FourteenthSunday after Pentecost
James 3:1-12
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Mark 8:27-38
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“SomethingCrucial”

A question, “Who do you say that I am?” leads to a command, “Take up your cross.” That question and that command are now considered crucial to what it means to be a Christian. Something crucial, there’s a delightful play on words when you consider the etymology of the word ‘crucial.’ ‘Crucial’ comes from the Latin word crux/cruces – cross. Our friend Webster tells us in his dictionary that ‘crux’ can mean “a puzzling or difficult problem; an unsolved question; an essential point, or the main or central feature of an argument.” To be ‘crucial,’ then, means that something lays at the very center and it becomes the important or decisive point. “Who do you say that I am?” and “Take up your cross” fit that definition to a tee – they’re something crucial to being Christian.

So, pun intended, it seems we’re at a crossroads here, both literally and figuratively. The passage we read from Mark’s Gospel is almost at the exact center of the book. Slowly, but surely, the story of who Jesus is has been unfolding in Mark’s Gospel and now Jesus asks several important questions that give us insight into our faith. From this point on, everything in Mark’s Gospel is directed toward what will happen through the Passion, the Cross, and the Resurrection of Jesus. What we see here is a crux, a pivot point and, I believe, an appropriate one, not only for Mark’s Gospel, but for every believer.

Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?”  He gets a number of responses, “John the Baptist; and others Elijah; and still others, one of the Prophets.” He then goes to the crux of the issue and asks, “But who do you say that I am?” And there it is the question of questions that every honest person who wants to be called a believer has to answer.

That question, “But who do you say that I am?” has led to over two thousand years of discussion. Theologians have argued and fought and published. Councils of the Church have assembled and debated and declared the true definition and all who judged otherwise were excommunicated – deprived of fellowship – and called anathema (accursed).  I guess the point was brought home to me several years ago when my wife, Julie, was in my study looking over the books on my shelves. Those of you who have come to know her understand that her bent and her work are scientific. So, she comes at issues from a different perspective than mine. Long story short, she sees these three shelves of books with ‘Jesus,’ ‘Christ,’ or ‘Christology’ on just about all of them.  She’s aware that I’ve just purchased yet another book -- or was it two? -- with those words in the title and so asks, “All these books are about Jesus?”  “Yes.” “And you’ve just bought another one?” “Yes.” And with a shake of her head came, “After two thousand years you’d think you characters would have figured out who Jesus is by now!” And there’s the rub – we haven’t. And what is more, I don’t think that we ever will “figure out who he is.”

There is no question that Jesus Christ and who he is stands at the core, the crux, of our faith. That we call ourselves “followers of Jesus Christ,” “Christians” testifies to that importance. We simply can’t get away from the historical facts that Jesus was an outstanding teacher, a person of incredible compassion, and an itinerant miracle-worker who was executed by the Romans. Those are the historical facts and, as scholars from David Friedrich Strauss in the nineteenth century down to the ‘Jesus Seminar’ in our own, we’ve been trying to get a handle on just who this ‘historical Jesus’ was. Frankly, as a historian, I think we’ve got all the data we’re going to get and I’ve come to the conclusion, personally, that it is impossible to separate the ‘Christ of history’ from the ‘Christ of faith.’

While the Gospels contain historical fact, they are not primarily historical documents. Our passage from Mark’s Gospel today shows us that rather clearly. In the response to Jesus’ questions and the subsequent dialogue there are six different ways presented for understanding who Jesus is and what his life means for the believer and the Church.

Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?” There are three responses. First, some thought he was John the Baptist come back to life. In other words, here’s an apocalyptic preacher – one who proclaims the fulfillment of God’s plan and the imminent coming kingdom. We should remember that apocalyptic literature – like the books of Daniel, Ezekiel or Revelation – isn’t so much an exercise in foretelling the end of the world as it is something designed to give an oppressed people hope and consolation.

Second, others thought he was Elijah come back. In the Seder supper at Passover each year the door is always left open and a place set for Elijah – the tradition it that he has to come back before God will bring things to a close. Elijah was a miracle-worker who raised the dead – see the parallel? God’s power is mediated through this person and is made real in the world.

Still others, third response, said that he was one of the prophets. A prophet doesn’t foretell as much as forthtell – the predictive side of prophecy is often over-emphasized. A prophet is primarily a preacher – which is why the Cambridge Platform of 1648 would tell you that I am the ‘prophet’ of First Church-Wauwatosa, and its bishop for that matter. The prophet speaks the word of God and brings it by speech and example to the people of God. Jesus did all these things – we see him working in all three ways.

There are three more responses to the far more pointed question, “Who do you say that I am?” Those three revolve around titles, two expressed and one implied, that are given to Jesus by the early Church. First, he is the Messiah, notice that there is a definite article used there. The Messiah was to be a descendant of David; someone who would be anointed, as a king was, if not with oil, then most certainly with the Holy Spirit. Remember, dear ones, that ‘Christ’ is not Jesus’ last name – it’s a title that is the Greek equivalent to the Hebrew term mesiach – ‘anointed one.’ The whole goal of the Messiah was the restoration of the kingdom of Israel and the establishment of God’s reign over it in fullness. This title, is, we understand historically, the earliest given to Jesus and the one by which the first believers understood what his mission was.

The second title is a bit more obscure – “Son of Man.” Some scholars think it’s Jesus’ way of describing himself as a human being. Others think that it relates directly to what Paul would later claim for Jesus, that he was the “new Adam.” The first time the term is seen is in the Book of Daniel, written in the period between the Testaments. There, and again here’s the apocalyptic tradition coming into play, the Son of Man is a semi-divine being who will come on the clouds and restore the reign of God. The early Christians read Daniel and saw a type of what they had come to understand Jesus to be. The dominant tradition has been to regard this as indicative of the reality of the Incarnation – that in the person of Jesus there is the fullness of both the Divine and the Human natures. The great doctrinal battles of the early Church, which led to the classical creedal statements, all stem from this. The Synoptic Gospels – Matthew, Mark, and Luke – all show us Jesus using this term in reference to himself.

The third title is never stated, only implied, and is an oblique reference to the writings of the prophet Isaiah. We’re talking about the “Suffering Servant.” Isaiah, and Jesus’ words in Mark’s Gospel echo him, presents the Servant as one who will suffer and be rejected so that others need not be. This third understanding is going to be one that continues to challenge Christian believers and theologians alike. The Suffering Servant is one who is willing to suffer, willingly and to serve selflessly for what is right. It is this understanding that will lead to the cross.

What we see in these few verses is the evidence that the early Christian community struggled with the question of who Jesus is just as much as we do today. I don’t think that we’re going to stop struggling with who Jesus is, because his message, his example, his life, his person keep confronting us again and again. That’s why books will be written, debates enjoined, and people will think and pray. Part of what we have to come to understand is that the human mind and human language is limited to what we can experience. In the face of the wonder of God and the love of God expressed in this person our language, our thoughts limp. Beloved, Jesus is alive and we continue to engage and dialogue with him every day if we are at all spiritually sensitive and that, I believe, is what God wants – the dialogue must continue.

There’s something else crucial here – the simple question “Why?” and the questions that follow it. Why do we care? What does it matter? What difference does it make? Why? Because to come to understand Jesus is to come to understand ourselves and how we relate to our world. Why do we care? Because how can we not care when two thousand years of human history – including periods, like our own, when indifference seems to triumph – and the whole of Western culture has been shaped by our response to Jesus’ person and teaching.  Why does it matter and what difference does it make? It matters because it lays the foundation for seeing the world through the lens of common good, rather than my own personal gain. The difference it makes is seen in historical examples, like eighteenth century Britain saved from a bloody revolution like France’s because of the preaching of the Wesleys or the movement for human dignity preached in Congregational meeting houses by men like Henry Ward Beecher and Luther Clapp in the pulpit of this church that led to the abolition of slavery in this country. Where Christians answer the question and live their lives as a response to it a difference is made.

Peter Taylor Forsyth, the British Congregational theologian of the turn of the last century, makes the point beautifully in his superb book The Cruciality of the Cross. His time was not unlike our own, with people concerned for an ethical society. He said: “Have we anything else for it but the cross and its cruciality (however newly read) as the re-creative center of our moral world – the cross which is the central act of God’s holiness, and the center of the central moral personality, Christ? Solve Christ’s cross and you solve all life. At that point concentrates what would be life’s moral problem even if there were no God – supreme goodness and supreme calamity. But with a God it must be His goodness and His calamity there – unless He be impotent or indifferent. Which if He be not, then the presence of His goodness means the conquest of calamity; which, again, could only mean the recovery of what He lost and whom He lost. There God’s controversy with man draws to a head in the unity of reconciliation, which solves the tragedy of guilt and grief. There also we solve not only life but God. Whatever solves life solves God in the same act. Not indeed that it solves His constitution, but it solves His purpose. There the moral nature of God lives in the unity of an eternal redeeming act. “All’s love and all’s law” – there is but one spot in the world that is entirely true; and the spot is Christ’s atoning cross, the power center of the moral world. And there in that one eternal act of creative righteousness, is what gives unity the life of all lives – the life of Jesus Himself. The Cross is central to Him who is the central moral figure of such a race.” [The Cruciality of the Cross, p. 66.]

The contemporary, and controversial, Episcopal bishop John Shelby Spong has put it this way: “The human Jesus seems to possess his life so totally that he can give it away without fear. The freedom that marks this man becomes so frightening to those who are not free – and who cannot admit that they are not free – that they rise up in anger to destroy the life-giver. The cross, to me, stands for this destruction, which still goes on in religious disputes. The cross does not represent a sacrifice required by a blood-seeking deity; it rather reveals the ultimate portrait of the threatening power of love that is present in the life of this victim. Even when Jesus walked what later came to be called “the way of the cross,” and even when the threat of death became the reality of death, still the bearer of this gift of life discovered that nothing could finally destroy the life he possessed. As this Jesus succumbs to the power of those who could not abide his call to enter “the new being,” to grasp a new and radical sense of freedom, he still was able to give his life away. The gospel picture drawn of Jesus portrays him as giving life to others even as he died.” [A New Christianity for a New World pp. 138-139]

What we hear from these two very different theologians is the crux of the issue – in Jesus God has expressed loving care for humanity and given us a moral center. In Jesus God has identified with us and seeks to draw us into the freedom of God’s very life. Remember that the question leads to a command: “Take up your cross.” Taking up the cross, at least to my mind, is not so much “suffering in silence” as it is accepting our identity with the one who gave his life on the cross.  To “carry the cross” means being seen as one who lives what one professes to believe. Let’s face it. If we answer the question, “You are the Christ” and if we obey the command to “take up the cross” we can’t help but be changed. Suffice it to say that one who calls one’s self a “follower of Christ” better act in a manner that goes along with selfless giving and other-centeredness. There’s something crucial about action following faith, I think that’s what James is trying to tell us in his letter.

Something crucial is also our own listening for Jesus to ask us that same question: “Who do you say that I am?” The crux of it is in how we answer and how we live the answer. No one has made the point more effectively, in both words and actions, than Albert Schweitzer. I never tire of his Quest of the Historical Jesus and its conclusion will be mine:  “He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, but the lakeside, He came to those men who knew Him not. He speaks to us the same word: “Follow thou me!” and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfil for our time. He commands. And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience who He is.” [p. 403]