Mark 8: 27–38,
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May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be
acceptable to you, O Lord our strength and our Redeemer. Amen.
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From what we know about Jesus, he hardly seems the kind of person who
would care what others thought of him. But here he is this
morning on the way to Caesarea Philippi asking his disciples, “Who
do men say that I am? What do they make of me?
What’s the word on the street about me?”
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It was an odd question for him to ask and an odd place to ask
it. Caesarea Philippi was a resort town, a kind of playground
for the rich and famous at the foot of Mount Hermon. The place
was noted for the natural beauty of its evergreens and clear mountain
streams that form the headwaters of the Jordan. But it was also a
place infamous for its gambling and worship of foreign gods. So
it was a strange destination for Jesus and his disciples and an even
stranger question.
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Even so, their answers came easily. They had heard all
the talk these last few months among the crowds that flocked to
Jesus. So now they told him what people were saying.
“Well, some of them think you’re John the Baptist, come back
from the dead. And others think you must be Elijah, because of
the miracles.”
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“Well, OK,” Jesus says.
“But . . . what about
you? Who do you say that I am? Tell me, from
the depths of your own understanding.” And, as usual, Peter
was the first to respond. “You’re Messiah, the
anointed one of God,” he said. “You’re the
one we’ve been waiting for.” Nominally, this was the
right answer, but Jesus realizes they still haven’t fully
understood. So he begins to spell out more clearly for them what
Messiah really means.
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You see, in those days the concept of ‘Messiah’ — a
man come from God to save his people — had as many interpretations
as there were hopes and dreams. Some people thought of
Moses — and a release from oppression. Others hoped for
David, the warrior king, and the glory days of Israel. Still
others believed Messiah would come as a kind of genie, released from a
bottle to fulfill every unfulfilled dream they'’d ever
had. Messiah, you see, was the one who would brighten their eyes
and lighten their step as he took vengeance on their
enemies. Messiah was the answer to all of their problems.
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But Jesus has not come to fulfill their every hope and dream. He
has come, he tells them, to enter into suffering with
them — and so to transform it. He has come as a man of
sorrow, acquainted with grief, who by his suffering and
death — and rising to life again — will bring the whole
world to wholeness and joy. And he knows they won’t be able
to understand this until they watch him live out that way of life,
right before their eyes. Only then will they begin to
understand. Only then will they find the strength to follow
him on the very same path.
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This was a hard message for them to hear. In fact, it’s hard
for us to hear too, though we’ve heard it time and time
again – that the way of Jesus is different from the way of the
world. One way is all about what you can get, what you can earn,
what you can gain through your own efforts — and keep. The
other way is about what you can give, what you can lose,
what you can share and receive from the grace and
goodness of another ’ in gratitude. Each way promises
life – but a different way of life. Which way, Jesus is
saying, will you choose?¹
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Will Willimon has taught theology for years at Duke University. And
several years ago, he says, they had a representative from Teach for
America visit the campus. Teach for America tries to recruit the
nation’s most talented college graduates to teach in some of the
nation’s worst public schools. The hope is that the
combination will transform the schools into something better.
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The woman stood in front of a large group of Duke students – a
larger group than Willimon thought would come out to hear this kind
of thing – and said, “I can tell by looking at you that
I have probably come to the wrong place. Somebody told me that
this was a BMW campus . . . and
looking at you I can believe it. Just looking at you, I can tell
that all of you are successful. Why would you be on this campus
if you were not successful, if you were not going on to successful
careers on Madison Avenue or Wall Street?
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“And yet here I stand, hoping to talk one of you into giving
your life away in the toughest job you will ever have. I am
looking for people to go into the hollows of West Virginia, into the
ghettos of south Los Angeles, and teach in some of the most difficult
schools in the world. Last year, two of our teachers were
killed on the job.
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“And I can tell, just by looking at you, that none of you are
interested in that. So go on to law school or whatever successful
thing you are planning on doing. But if, by chance, just some
of you happen to be interested, I’ve got these brochures here
for you that tell about Teach for America. Meeting is over.”
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And with that, Willimon says, the whole group stood up, pushed into the
aisles, pushed each other aside and ran towards the
front — fighting over those brochures. That evening, he
says, he learned something important: People want more out of
life even than happiness. People want to be part of an
adventure. People want to be part of a project greater than
their lives.²
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I’ll call him Matt. Matt had been a successful attorney,
practicing in a northern suburb of Atlanta when he discerned a call
on his life to the priesthood. Obedient to that call, he went
through the discernment process in the Diocese of Atlanta, graduated
from seminary, and was assigned by Bishop Alexander to Holy Comforter
Episcopal Church, first as assistant to the Vicar and then as Vicar.
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For those of you who might not know, Holy Comforter is a special kind
of church, where they serve people who are mentally or physically
challenged, most of them living in group homes. It’s hardly
the kind of place where you would expect to find a guy like
Matt – highly polished, articulate, intelligent. So when
Matt first arrived he says the Vicar of Holy Comforter took one look
at him and realized he might need some special training for this new
assignment, some loosening up. So he gave Matt a big chunk of
misshapen wood and told him to go to the woodworking room and try to
make a bowl out of it.
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Well, Matt says he didn’t think much of the wood he’d been
given. Somebody had cut it from the trunk of a diseased
tree — and it was full of fungus and knots and insect
holes. But as he worked with that warm, dark wood on the lathe
he discovered something — that all those knots and burls and
insect holes somehow worked together to give that wood character and
beauty. In fact, much more beauty and interest than wood that
had never suffered the invasion of insects or fungus or knots and
burls. So in the end Matt wound up with a beautiful
bowl — full of character and complexity — which he gave
to his wife as a present.
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And in time, he said, he and his wife began to see that bowl as a
parable of sorts for the kind of people who come to Holy
Comforter — people whose lives have been full of suffering,
full of hardship and vain efforts to cope with it all. But
those very difficulties, those very hardships, have added a depth
of character and complexity to their lives — just as the
tough things you and I have been through, the suffering we have
known, have added strength and character to our lives.
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You see, in the end, it’s not what we make of Jesus Christ
that really matters. It’s what he makes of us.
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Amen.
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¹ David Lose In the Meantime Mark 8:27–38
² William Willimon’ Lectionary Sermon Resource (Year B,
Part 2) (Abingdon Press, 2017) P. 164
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