July 29, 2012
Who Do YOU Say That I Am?
By The Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
Morningside Presbyterian Church, Atlanta
Who Do YOU Say That I Am?
Mark 8:27-9:1
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
July 29, 2012
Who Do YOU Say That I Am?
Mark 8:27-9:1
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
July 29, 2012
My friend Nora Tisdale told a story about a friend of hers who was preaching his last sermon in the congregation that he had served for many years. In preparing for the sermon he determined that it was time to say everything that he had wanted to say about Jesus during the course of his time with this congregation in this last sermon. He preached and preached, as I recall Nora saying, and at the end of it all, he went to shake hands at the door as his now former congregation filed out. As they did, one congregation member, an older woman who, if I recall the story correctly, had not been one this minister’s greatest supporters through his pastorate approached the door. As she approached, he saw that there were tears in her eyes, and she said to him, “What I want to know, is why didn’t you say this to us years ago?”
Nora was still on the Staff of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church when she preached this story, and she concluded her sermon by saying that she didn’t want to wait until she left the Fifth Avenue Church to say to her congregation who it is that Jesus is to her, and so she did. I am in the opening years of my pastorate here at Morningside, nowhere near the waning years, but I will do the same. First, though, I want to talk about what it means to us to say who we believe that Jesus is.
There are many things that we might say about Jesus. Many, if not all, may even be true. But they do not carry equal weight. And if we are not very careful, what we say may be our own way of trying to contain Jesus so that he is safe, and while we may be tempted to do so, that’s not really what we want, not if we’re serious about following Jesus.
Mark loves irony. His Gospel is full of it. Modern readers, though, often confuse irony with coincidence. That’s not what Mark means. We, the readers, always know more about what is happening than do the characters in the story. So as Jesus begins his query of the disciples, “who do people say that I am,” well, we already know who he is. We already know that he is the Son of Man, the Messiah, God’s own son because we’ve read or heard the whole story. So we can sort of chuckle to ourselves as the disciples start to give the rundown on what the general running understanding of Jesus is. And to their credit, the disciples do not appear to whitewash reality for Jesus. They own up that there is some confusion, they have noticed, among the people that have been following him as to what exactly it is that he is about, and who he is.
“You’re Elijah,” they tell him. “Well, actually, there are some who just think you are a prophet.”
“But who do YOU say that I am,” he counters?
We shouldn’t be too smug about enjoying the irony though. It’s not as though there isn’t modern confusion about who Jesus is.
If it were all that clear, don’t you think the disciples could have gotten it right away also? It is not as though Jesus has been wandering around the Judean countryside taking out billboards declaring his existence. As we learned last week, Jesus seemed bent on keeping it a secret…at least at first
But bless Peter, he gets it this time, “you are the Christ, the Messiah.”
Now Christs, or Messiahs, to use the old Hebrew term, were somewhat ubiquitous figures in the time of Jesus. I say this not to cast any doubt onto the uniqueness of Jesus as messiah, but to clear up, I hope, some misunderstanding about what exactly the disciples were attesting with this statement. The old term Christos, which was nothing but the Greek translation of Mashiah, meant very little. It means a lot to us now, but it was much more of a vague term then. Then, it just meant the smeared on one. The smearing referred to the oil of anointing that was used to indicate that the one that got smeared on was set aside from the regular run of the working stiffs, and was in fact, God’s agent.
You can frequently tell who was significant in the Bible in large part by whether or not somebody dumped a vial of oil on their heads. As a general rule of thumb, if you get anointed, you’re significant, if you don’t get anointed, well, not so much. David was anointed, as was Saul before him. Prophets were generally anointed, although sometimes figuratively rather than literally. Generally, it meant one was picked out by God for something significant. Everybody who was anybody got anointed.
So Peter said a lot, but not necessarily as much as we might think. He said to Jesus, “we think that you are God’s agent.”
And that is when Jesus got specific about what exactly making this proclamation entails. And frankly it is not a pretty picture. I wish that I could tell you otherwise, but the text is pretty clear about this. To be the son of man is to take on certain unpleasant side effects, to undergo great suffering, to be rejected by the religious folks and to be killed. Mark tells us that Jesus said this quite openly.
Too openly, it seems, for Peter.
Peter took Jesus aside in a moment that seems almost commonsensical, said to Jesus, “well, you see, all this talk about suffering and death, well, people don’t’ really like that. Frankly, I don’t like it, Jesus. If you want people to follow you then let’s down play the death and dying but just a tad, shall we? If you’re so worried about this big secret, keep it yourself. Tone it down a bit, you’ll live longer.”
Jesus’ response is short, sharp and clear.
“Peter, if you think self-preservation is what I’m about, you’ve missed it… get behind me Satan, because you’ve missed the point.”
I suppose this is the equivalent of tough love because Jesus gathered together the disciples and the crowd and more or less gave them their walking papers. “If you think that I’m God’s agent, he says, then you need to be prepared to deal with what is coming your way. You better be prepared to take up your cross and follow me.”
That taking up the cross part, that’s difficult. Done that lately?
There’s a story I’ve heard about the late Dr. James Iley McCord, president of Princeton Seminary. Dr. McCord was visiting a personal friend, Carlyle Marney who was the pastor of a congregation in the Myers Park neighborhood of Charlotte, NC, which is roughly the equivalent of old Buckhead here in Atlanta.
Dr. McCord was visiting this pastor and they retired to the porch of the manse of this church for a drink. They were reared back on the porch of the gracious manse, drink in hand opining about the state of the church, and Dr. McCord observed to his friend, “Well, Carlyle, you don’t look like you are doing so bad here.” And then Marney raised his drink, made a sweeping gesture of the hand surveying the graceful physical plant of the church, and replied, “J.I., this is suffering for Jesus, suffering for Jesus.”
I’m certainly not in any position to throw rocks, but that’s a far cry from take up your cross and follow me, now isn’t it?
When Peter makes his confession, it is a moment of clarity, a distillation of what he had seen and experienced. But it didn’t last long. It sort of faded and lost its luster. It didn’t take all that long to drift into, “Jesus, don’t talk about suffering and death, you’ll last longer.”
Ah, but that is the problem, isn’t it, how easily we drift from our proclamations of who Jesus is to sort of letting it slide into something a little less significant, a little less costly.
I did a little field research this week. I posed the question, if Jesus asked you, “Who do YOU say that I am,” what would you reply?
Here are a handful of the answers: “Lord and Savior. The Light of the World. God and Man, Spirit and flesh, like the rest of us. The perfect embodiment of God’s divine love, prophetic wisdom and the promise of hope.”
What would you say? Who do YOU say that I am?
You seem, any one of those is a starting point for discipleship if we take it seriously. The important thing, though about any observation of who Jesus is, provided it is a scriptural observation, is that rather than allowing it to define Jesus for us, we instead allow it to define us for Jesus.
Peter has shown us what happens the minute we try to define and codify who Jesus is… It is so tempting to look for the path of least resistance, the easy way.
It is so tempting to offer Jesus a consultation about how we think discipleship ought to be done, because, well frankly, I’ve got all kinds of ideas and I bet you do too.
It is much tougher to open our hearts for Jesus to tell us how it ought to be done.
This is going to sound simplistic, but a colleague of mine asked me this question, “what is your vision for ministry?” And after a moment, this is how I replied: “there is a tug of war in my understanding of the church and its purpose. The purpose of the church is, over and over and over again, to let the people know that God loves them, indeed that God loves them more than they can imagine. That God’s goodness and love are beyond the scope of human imagination. The call of the church is to say that over and over and over again. But the tug of war is this: that in recognition of this love, there is an expectation that it will affect us. In affluent congregations like the one I serve, that’s us by the way, the tug of war is especially strong because the gifts are so great, therefore the expectations are also great.
“Take up your cross and follow me…”
There is a lot to be done and the expectations are never ending. I almost hate to point that out, because it means that I fall under it too. The love of God never goes away. But neither do the expectations that we follow. It’s a big calling.
The tough part about that for us is that we never get to slow down, to rest on our laurels, but that’s not really Morningside’s DNA, is it?
The tough part is that when we say who Jesus is, Jesus is going to say to us, “well, then follow me.”
That’s like saying, “so what?” So what…you gonna do anything about it… today?
Nora took a moment to say to her congregation who she believes that Jesus is. I think I will too.
Jesus is my hope, my comfort, my trust in life and death. Jesus is my friend, and Jesus is my judge. Jesus is the ground of my being, even when I forget it. Jesus is my savior because I am a sinner in need of redemption. On my best days these are the beliefs I hold. On my worst days, these beliefs hold me.
Who do you say that he is?
Who you say that he is matters. Because that will shape who you are, and who you will be. If you need to know more to answer this question, then get educated.
I want you to come into my office, even if I’m not there, and take a book and learn more. I’ve got tons of books about Jesus and half the time my door is standing wide open. The only thing I ask is that if you do it is that you will leave me a note on my desk and let me know what you took so that I can call you in case I need to check something, and that when you bring it back you are willing to teach me what you learned. Because who you say that he is matters. It matters enough to learn who he is.
If we take Jesus seriously, it is liable to change us.
It is a humbling thing to stand here and tell you that Jesus is going to change you. Jesus isn’t even done changing me yet. Not by a long shot, but I’m standing here telling you that he’s going to change you. I’m standing here telling you that if you know who Jesus is, it’s going to make a difference for you. Well, it will if you follow him.
I don’t want you to leave here feeling good today. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to leave feeling bad either, it’s just that I don’t want the end of the service to be the end of church for the week, and more importantly, I don’t think that is what Jesus wants. I have to be really careful when I claim to speak for Jesus because I don’t want to usurp authority that is not mine, but I think Jesus wants us to take up our crosses and follow him. At least that is what he said.
Who do YOU say that he is?
Is he the son of God? Is he your comfort, your peace, your perplexity? Is he your savior?
I want to tell you about my friend Lou. I was lucky to get to know him Charlotte before he died. He was the retired minister of the church I served in Charlotte and he was a character. Actually, he was a rascal, but that’s a story for another day. But let me say this for him: he always seemed to get it right on the things that mattered.
Lou was a chaplain at Iwo Jima and that experience sort of shaped his life, I think. He didn’t get too worked up over things. It was like he had looked at death and destruction, he had considered who Jesus is and decided that he would follow him, whether he wanted to or not.
Anyhow he befriended a homeless man. Or the homeless man befriended him. I’m still not sure which way it went, but that’s not the strange part of the story. Lou had a huge personality, buyt he was also kind of shy man at times, so maybe it was the other guy that found him. Trinity church was on the bus-line, and Lou would see this fellow hanging out at the bus-stop. After he had driven by a the man a few times, I guess he just figured he ought to see what he was up to. He found out that he, too, was a veteran of the second world war, and he had no home.
Now, the manse was on the church property and Lou tended to work late. He didn’t tend to get up early which is one of the reasons I liked him, but he would work late.
This was a different era and services weren’t what they are now, and so one very cold night, he walked out to the bus-stop and said to his friend, “Look, I don’t know what your circumstances are, but it’s pretty clear to me that you don’t have a place to go. I can’t take you home with me. So here’s the deal. I’m the last person to leave the church at night. I’m not the first person to get there in the morning, but I’m definitely the last to leave. I’m going to leave the kitchen door unlocked each night as I leave. You and I are the only ones that know. Come in and stay warm. Be gone before the custodian arrives at six, but come in and be warm.”
I don’t think I can do that yet. I’ve either got too much sense or too little courage. But I’m working on it. I’m working on it. And Jesus is working on me.
Who do you say that he is? And what is it going to make you do?
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
Who Do YOU Say That I Am?
Mark 8:27-9:1
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
July 29, 2012
Who Do YOU Say That I Am?
Mark 8:27-9:1
Morningside Presbyterian Church
Rev. Dr. Baron Mullis
July 29, 2012
My friend Nora Tisdale told a story about a friend of hers who was preaching his last sermon in the congregation that he had served for many years. In preparing for the sermon he determined that it was time to say everything that he had wanted to say about Jesus during the course of his time with this congregation in this last sermon. He preached and preached, as I recall Nora saying, and at the end of it all, he went to shake hands at the door as his now former congregation filed out. As they did, one congregation member, an older woman who, if I recall the story correctly, had not been one this minister’s greatest supporters through his pastorate approached the door. As she approached, he saw that there were tears in her eyes, and she said to him, “What I want to know, is why didn’t you say this to us years ago?”
Nora was still on the Staff of Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church when she preached this story, and she concluded her sermon by saying that she didn’t want to wait until she left the Fifth Avenue Church to say to her congregation who it is that Jesus is to her, and so she did. I am in the opening years of my pastorate here at Morningside, nowhere near the waning years, but I will do the same. First, though, I want to talk about what it means to us to say who we believe that Jesus is.
There are many things that we might say about Jesus. Many, if not all, may even be true. But they do not carry equal weight. And if we are not very careful, what we say may be our own way of trying to contain Jesus so that he is safe, and while we may be tempted to do so, that’s not really what we want, not if we’re serious about following Jesus.
Mark loves irony. His Gospel is full of it. Modern readers, though, often confuse irony with coincidence. That’s not what Mark means. We, the readers, always know more about what is happening than do the characters in the story. So as Jesus begins his query of the disciples, “who do people say that I am,” well, we already know who he is. We already know that he is the Son of Man, the Messiah, God’s own son because we’ve read or heard the whole story. So we can sort of chuckle to ourselves as the disciples start to give the rundown on what the general running understanding of Jesus is. And to their credit, the disciples do not appear to whitewash reality for Jesus. They own up that there is some confusion, they have noticed, among the people that have been following him as to what exactly it is that he is about, and who he is.
“You’re Elijah,” they tell him. “Well, actually, there are some who just think you are a prophet.”
“But who do YOU say that I am,” he counters?
We shouldn’t be too smug about enjoying the irony though. It’s not as though there isn’t modern confusion about who Jesus is.
If it were all that clear, don’t you think the disciples could have gotten it right away also? It is not as though Jesus has been wandering around the Judean countryside taking out billboards declaring his existence. As we learned last week, Jesus seemed bent on keeping it a secret…at least at first
But bless Peter, he gets it this time, “you are the Christ, the Messiah.”
Now Christs, or Messiahs, to use the old Hebrew term, were somewhat ubiquitous figures in the time of Jesus. I say this not to cast any doubt onto the uniqueness of Jesus as messiah, but to clear up, I hope, some misunderstanding about what exactly the disciples were attesting with this statement. The old term Christos, which was nothing but the Greek translation of Mashiah, meant very little. It means a lot to us now, but it was much more of a vague term then. Then, it just meant the smeared on one. The smearing referred to the oil of anointing that was used to indicate that the one that got smeared on was set aside from the regular run of the working stiffs, and was in fact, God’s agent.
You can frequently tell who was significant in the Bible in large part by whether or not somebody dumped a vial of oil on their heads. As a general rule of thumb, if you get anointed, you’re significant, if you don’t get anointed, well, not so much. David was anointed, as was Saul before him. Prophets were generally anointed, although sometimes figuratively rather than literally. Generally, it meant one was picked out by God for something significant. Everybody who was anybody got anointed.
So Peter said a lot, but not necessarily as much as we might think. He said to Jesus, “we think that you are God’s agent.”
And that is when Jesus got specific about what exactly making this proclamation entails. And frankly it is not a pretty picture. I wish that I could tell you otherwise, but the text is pretty clear about this. To be the son of man is to take on certain unpleasant side effects, to undergo great suffering, to be rejected by the religious folks and to be killed. Mark tells us that Jesus said this quite openly.
Too openly, it seems, for Peter.
Peter took Jesus aside in a moment that seems almost commonsensical, said to Jesus, “well, you see, all this talk about suffering and death, well, people don’t’ really like that. Frankly, I don’t like it, Jesus. If you want people to follow you then let’s down play the death and dying but just a tad, shall we? If you’re so worried about this big secret, keep it yourself. Tone it down a bit, you’ll live longer.”
Jesus’ response is short, sharp and clear.
“Peter, if you think self-preservation is what I’m about, you’ve missed it… get behind me Satan, because you’ve missed the point.”
I suppose this is the equivalent of tough love because Jesus gathered together the disciples and the crowd and more or less gave them their walking papers. “If you think that I’m God’s agent, he says, then you need to be prepared to deal with what is coming your way. You better be prepared to take up your cross and follow me.”
That taking up the cross part, that’s difficult. Done that lately?
There’s a story I’ve heard about the late Dr. James Iley McCord, president of Princeton Seminary. Dr. McCord was visiting a personal friend, Carlyle Marney who was the pastor of a congregation in the Myers Park neighborhood of Charlotte, NC, which is roughly the equivalent of old Buckhead here in Atlanta.
Dr. McCord was visiting this pastor and they retired to the porch of the manse of this church for a drink. They were reared back on the porch of the gracious manse, drink in hand opining about the state of the church, and Dr. McCord observed to his friend, “Well, Carlyle, you don’t look like you are doing so bad here.” And then Marney raised his drink, made a sweeping gesture of the hand surveying the graceful physical plant of the church, and replied, “J.I., this is suffering for Jesus, suffering for Jesus.”
I’m certainly not in any position to throw rocks, but that’s a far cry from take up your cross and follow me, now isn’t it?
When Peter makes his confession, it is a moment of clarity, a distillation of what he had seen and experienced. But it didn’t last long. It sort of faded and lost its luster. It didn’t take all that long to drift into, “Jesus, don’t talk about suffering and death, you’ll last longer.”
Ah, but that is the problem, isn’t it, how easily we drift from our proclamations of who Jesus is to sort of letting it slide into something a little less significant, a little less costly.
I did a little field research this week. I posed the question, if Jesus asked you, “Who do YOU say that I am,” what would you reply?
Here are a handful of the answers: “Lord and Savior. The Light of the World. God and Man, Spirit and flesh, like the rest of us. The perfect embodiment of God’s divine love, prophetic wisdom and the promise of hope.”
What would you say? Who do YOU say that I am?
You seem, any one of those is a starting point for discipleship if we take it seriously. The important thing, though about any observation of who Jesus is, provided it is a scriptural observation, is that rather than allowing it to define Jesus for us, we instead allow it to define us for Jesus.
Peter has shown us what happens the minute we try to define and codify who Jesus is… It is so tempting to look for the path of least resistance, the easy way.
It is so tempting to offer Jesus a consultation about how we think discipleship ought to be done, because, well frankly, I’ve got all kinds of ideas and I bet you do too.
It is much tougher to open our hearts for Jesus to tell us how it ought to be done.
This is going to sound simplistic, but a colleague of mine asked me this question, “what is your vision for ministry?” And after a moment, this is how I replied: “there is a tug of war in my understanding of the church and its purpose. The purpose of the church is, over and over and over again, to let the people know that God loves them, indeed that God loves them more than they can imagine. That God’s goodness and love are beyond the scope of human imagination. The call of the church is to say that over and over and over again. But the tug of war is this: that in recognition of this love, there is an expectation that it will affect us. In affluent congregations like the one I serve, that’s us by the way, the tug of war is especially strong because the gifts are so great, therefore the expectations are also great.
“Take up your cross and follow me…”
There is a lot to be done and the expectations are never ending. I almost hate to point that out, because it means that I fall under it too. The love of God never goes away. But neither do the expectations that we follow. It’s a big calling.
The tough part about that for us is that we never get to slow down, to rest on our laurels, but that’s not really Morningside’s DNA, is it?
The tough part is that when we say who Jesus is, Jesus is going to say to us, “well, then follow me.”
That’s like saying, “so what?” So what…you gonna do anything about it… today?
Nora took a moment to say to her congregation who she believes that Jesus is. I think I will too.
Jesus is my hope, my comfort, my trust in life and death. Jesus is my friend, and Jesus is my judge. Jesus is the ground of my being, even when I forget it. Jesus is my savior because I am a sinner in need of redemption. On my best days these are the beliefs I hold. On my worst days, these beliefs hold me.
Who do you say that he is?
Who you say that he is matters. Because that will shape who you are, and who you will be. If you need to know more to answer this question, then get educated.
I want you to come into my office, even if I’m not there, and take a book and learn more. I’ve got tons of books about Jesus and half the time my door is standing wide open. The only thing I ask is that if you do it is that you will leave me a note on my desk and let me know what you took so that I can call you in case I need to check something, and that when you bring it back you are willing to teach me what you learned. Because who you say that he is matters. It matters enough to learn who he is.
If we take Jesus seriously, it is liable to change us.
It is a humbling thing to stand here and tell you that Jesus is going to change you. Jesus isn’t even done changing me yet. Not by a long shot, but I’m standing here telling you that he’s going to change you. I’m standing here telling you that if you know who Jesus is, it’s going to make a difference for you. Well, it will if you follow him.
I don’t want you to leave here feeling good today. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t want you to leave feeling bad either, it’s just that I don’t want the end of the service to be the end of church for the week, and more importantly, I don’t think that is what Jesus wants. I have to be really careful when I claim to speak for Jesus because I don’t want to usurp authority that is not mine, but I think Jesus wants us to take up our crosses and follow him. At least that is what he said.
Who do YOU say that he is?
Is he the son of God? Is he your comfort, your peace, your perplexity? Is he your savior?
I want to tell you about my friend Lou. I was lucky to get to know him Charlotte before he died. He was the retired minister of the church I served in Charlotte and he was a character. Actually, he was a rascal, but that’s a story for another day. But let me say this for him: he always seemed to get it right on the things that mattered.
Lou was a chaplain at Iwo Jima and that experience sort of shaped his life, I think. He didn’t get too worked up over things. It was like he had looked at death and destruction, he had considered who Jesus is and decided that he would follow him, whether he wanted to or not.
Anyhow he befriended a homeless man. Or the homeless man befriended him. I’m still not sure which way it went, but that’s not the strange part of the story. Lou had a huge personality, buyt he was also kind of shy man at times, so maybe it was the other guy that found him. Trinity church was on the bus-line, and Lou would see this fellow hanging out at the bus-stop. After he had driven by a the man a few times, I guess he just figured he ought to see what he was up to. He found out that he, too, was a veteran of the second world war, and he had no home.
Now, the manse was on the church property and Lou tended to work late. He didn’t tend to get up early which is one of the reasons I liked him, but he would work late.
This was a different era and services weren’t what they are now, and so one very cold night, he walked out to the bus-stop and said to his friend, “Look, I don’t know what your circumstances are, but it’s pretty clear to me that you don’t have a place to go. I can’t take you home with me. So here’s the deal. I’m the last person to leave the church at night. I’m not the first person to get there in the morning, but I’m definitely the last to leave. I’m going to leave the kitchen door unlocked each night as I leave. You and I are the only ones that know. Come in and stay warm. Be gone before the custodian arrives at six, but come in and be warm.”
I don’t think I can do that yet. I’ve either got too much sense or too little courage. But I’m working on it. I’m working on it. And Jesus is working on me.
Who do you say that he is? And what is it going to make you do?
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, Amen.
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