Who do you say I am?

I am preparing Sunday's address, and reading Mark 8:27-38. As I have read I have been struck by how the dialogue between Jesus, the disciples and the crowd progresses.

Jesus begins asking the disciples who the crowd say he is. Then he asks the disciples themselves who they think he is. There is also from the beginning of this section, an assumption by Peter that Jesus is the Messiah. Peter is right, in a way...

The sort of Messiah that Jesus is one that flies in the face of what Peter and the Judaism of his day were expecting. The Messiah as a concept was a 'blank screen' onto which people could project their hopes and dreams.

The prevolant Messianic dream lying behind the Gospels and in the public mind at the time, was of a mighty militaristic leader, someone who with political and military might would remove Roman rule and introduce the Kingdom of God by force. Was this the Messiah that Peter proclaimed?

Jesus subtly switches the language he uses to describe himself from politically loaded 'Messiah'
to 'Son of Man' and Peter expresses the shock of a faithful generation - how could this Messianic Son of Man have his mission fail in suffering and death?

The question of Jesus' identity is not one though that can be simply answered with a 'this' or 'that.' We can only begin to answer the ultimate question through reading the accounts of Jesus' life, accounts which tell us much about Jesus' life, words and actions.

We have to keep coming back to the Gospels to understand who Jesus is because those accounts consistently challenge our assumptions of who Jesus is too. The Creeds need these stories to understand what it says we believe.

So why is Jesus so abrasive with Peter? Because the only people who have got Jesus' identity right in the Gospels are demons. Is Peter really on Satan's side? Only in the sense that Peter is trying to impose his vision of Messiahship on Jesus rather than watching, listening and learning from Jesus himself.

Everything hinges on this. If our lives and their landscapes are not shaped and reshaped by God and faith in Jesus as the Suffering Messiah, then we are not disciples of the Kingdom but of our own making. This is why to be a follower of Jesus, we are consistently challenged not just to leave our comfort zone and follow, but find our whole world challenged and reshaped as a cross.

Jesus asks who we say he is and we must answer for ourselves. Our answer will determine what sort of a disciple we are - not just ones that speak the truth about him, but who see Jesus for who who he really is and following him wherever he leads regardless of what we do or do not understand.

Ecce Homo

I am struck by this Sunday's gospel reading from Mark 7, it is one of my favourites. There are many things that one could pick up on and run with as a preacher.

There are obviously the healing themselves and this Gospel might lead to a sermon about healing, and yet what could one say? Jesus is sought by this non-jewish woman thinking she has found the local healer, hence Jesus' exchange with her. He was probing to see if there was any substance to her question. In other words did she just have selfish motives or did she understand that Jesus' ministry was far more that that of a healer.

Then there is the healing of the deaf man. Jesus seems to act strangely too. Jesus is begged to heal this man. The people with him, maybe him too, again clearly see him only as a healer. Perhaps that's why Jesus takes the man away to a private place to heal him. Is it a PR exercise?

Jesus orders the man to tell no-one bout the healing. Putting the healing into that context, it becomes clear that Jesus is concerned about who people perceive him to be? A healer only or the Messiah, the Son of God? Here as elsewhere, the healing miracles performed by Jesus point not at him, but beyong him to God and his coming Kingdom.

As I prepare I am left with some questions:

• Other sermon threads to follow would be racism (reference to 'the dogs'), transformation (who was changed - the woman's daughter? The deaf man? Jesus himself as he is challenged by a Gentile.)
  
• Who did people in Jesus day really think he was - see Simon Peter's confession in Matthew 16:16
  
• Who do people today think Jesus was? A historical figure? A story like the Tooth Fairy?
  
• Who do I say he is? How would I explain what I believe?
  
• What difference does it make for Jesus to be so much more than a healer?
• What's Jesus actually offering?
  

Initial thoughts on Mark 7 for Sunday

Mark 7:1-8, 14-15, 21-23

The sermon on Sunday could be titled 'Faithfulness to God', or 'Lip service vs Heart Service' or 'Going Through the Motions' or something similar. The core of what I will be saying on Sunday is about how we take what Jesus teaches seriously - to heart, to head, to hands indeed into our whole lives.

Jesus is out in the countryside teaching the crowd and his disciples and teachers of the law come from Jerusalem to find him. Why did they go out there? To try to discredit Jesus? To sus him out? They notice that the disciples are eating with unclean hands.

The disciples are not in breach of the Law by not washing, but they are breaking with tradition. The fact that Mark has the little aside, and that he records the Pharisees talking about the tradition of the elders, might mean that Mark was writing and Jesus was speaking to a crowd that was largely made up of non Jews who will have needed the explanation. Perhaps that is why the Pharisees were there - they had heard that Jesus was teaching Gentiles as well as Jews.

Jesus sidesteps the question about breaking of tradition and instead, he sees really where the Pharisees are at. To Jesus it felt like the importance of the traditions of the Law had become more important than the Law - spirit and letter - itself. Jesus quotes Isaiah from memory and accuses the Pharisees of teaching others to do as they do - honouring God with words and actions alone but not with holy lives.

Jesus goes on to rubbish the traditions associated with the keeping of the Law, by pointing out how obtuse some keeping of the commandments has become. Jesus refers back to where this discussion began - to ritual cleanliness. What makes someone ritually unclean, asks Jesus - what that person has touched? What they have eaten? What they have done or not done? No, what makes someone unclean, undesirable to God, is what drives the person from the inside of their being, from their heart, not from the exterior world.

Radical obedience is a phrase I have read and heard Christians use before. It sounds good but what does it mean. I have struggled to find a definition. I found this on another blog,

"... To me, radical obedience is obeying God when it doesn't make sense. Radical obedience is doing God's will when our own agenda makes more sense. Radical obedience is not only asking "What Would Jesus Do" but DOING what Jesus did. Radical obedience is denying my flesh while fulfilling God's purpose for me. Radical obedience is heeding the call of God when, by all appearances, it's out of the question. Radical obedience is not compromising even if it means losing friends. Radical obedience is venturing outside my comfort zone no matter how uncomfortable or unreasonable it feels.

Radical obedience demands I do whatever I do so that Christ might be glorified, so that He is the focus of my life, so people see Him and not me. Radical obedience demands I disregard those things which seem to be important to me so that Christ becomes of paramount importance to me..."

The discussion that Jesus had with the Pharisees begins with the washing of hands, and the implications of things that I have touched or not touched on my own spiritual wellbeing. I can see how this tradition began and it is a very 21st century one. In an age obsessed with swine-flu and antibacterial cleanliness how we use our hands is a physical and spiritual issue.

Jesus' challenge to us through this encounter is one that calls to a radical obedience. We live in a world that distances individuals from each other - swine flu aside - when did you last speak to someone rather than email them? When did you last hold someone by the hand and tell them that you love them? In contemporary culture we need to see each other less and less.

How I use my hands indeed my whole self is an act of radical obedience to the God who came to me first in the flesh, in Jesus. How I use my hands shows how my whole being is filled to overflowing with the God who made me.

As I prepare for Sunday I am left with some questions:

• What does it mean for me to be really (radically) obedient to God in Christ?
• Who or what are the Pharisees of our day?
• What sort of Christianity are they teaching us to live out? What traditions are they asking us to keep?
• How do we use our hands to come to God ourselves and bring others nearer his Kingdom?
  

Bread and Discipleship

I have spent this morning reflecting on this Sunday's Gospel reading from John 6:56-69. It's a challenging passage. I have read the passage in a Lecto Divina sort of way. Here are some intial observations:

1. Talk of eating flesh and blood - offensive. Clean/unclean laws - consuming blood
talk of having life - what does Jesus mean
2. Talk of bread from heaven - ref to Moses and Manna and God providing for the needs to Israel. More than physical needs though.
3. Bread - basic foodstuff. The stuff of life. Bread of the Presence in the Holy of Holies in the Temple reference?
4. Capernaum - what was the setting? Home of Matthew the Tax collector, Peter, Andrew, James and John. Jesus seems to have centred his ministry in and around here. It was perhaps his adult home.
5. Jesus’ words are spirit and life. Spirit to do with the nature and being of God. Life - life in all it’s fulness. The spirit gives life. The spirit of God. Ruach the breath of God breathed into Adam. Eziekel and dry bones....
6. Ref to flesh being useless - ref to inability of us to attain to the life of God by our endevours. This teaching is difficult! The flesh/spirit diachotomy....
7. Simon Peter answered him, ‘Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Holy One of God.’ What a confession! Experience of Jesus has led to belief - physical evidence has given Peter at least the ability to make the jump between the physically provable about Jesus, to what he and the scriptures say about him. He has made the existential leap of faith...

Also, looking at the Wordle I created, key words are: life, Jesus, disciples, Father, one, believe, live. There is something about the life of faith leading to life lived fully, richly, and divinely.