Near the beginning of today’s gospel reading from Mark chapter 8, we find two of the very most important questions in all of scripture. But before we get to those two questions, I’d like to ask another question.
The question
is this: Is any of us ever fully aware of the lasting impact of our words or
actions?
Numerous
times, I find myself recounting things that others have said to me: relatives,
teachers, preachers, co-workers, friends.
I wonder if they know how influential their words have been? And even more than that, I wonder if they
would remember saying those things, or if they would remember them the same way
that I remember them? Well, in the same way that we can recall
things that others have said to us, others most certainly remember things that
we have said to them. Parish Ministry is a great venue for
this: days or weeks after a Sunday
sermon, someone will come up to you and say how much something you said has
meant to them. Sometimes you get a wee
blush of pride, when you remember saying it and are pleased it made an impact,
but more often you don’t remember saying it at all… or even worse, you remember
saying it, but you meant the exact opposite of what they remember!
As the letter of James has been
telling us for the past few weeks, not only do people remember what we say,
they compare what we say with what we do.
Although the old adage says, “do as I say, not as I do, “ Ralph Waldo
Emerson came much closer to the truth when he said, “Who you are speaks so
loudly I can't hear what you're saying.”
What we say and even moreso, what
we do, will often have an impact much more far-reaching than we would ever
imagine at the time.
And with that reminder, that we
know about our present but can only surmise how that will fit in with our
future, we return to the Biblical
question at hand. In the 8th
chapter of Mark, Jesus asked his disciples the lead question, “Who do people
say that I am?” The disciples answered,
“some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, or another of the
prophets.” Then Jesus zeroes in on the
real question: “But you do YOU say that I am?”
Peter, usually the first of the group to offer an opinion, says “You are
the Christ.” And Jesus, implicitly affirming this answer but not repeating it
himself, charges them to tell this to no one.
The form of the answers to these
two questions is important. For in the first answer to Jesus, the gospel has the disciples saying
something that they absolutely would have come up with at the time; but the
second answer, offered by Peter, sounds a lot more like a declaration of faith
that would be said after Christ’s death and resurrection.
“The Jesus of History and the
Christ of Faith” is a term first coined by Martin Kahler in 1892, one year
after this Church was built. Kahler, and
others engaged in what was called the “Quest for the Historical Jesus” wanted
to strip away anything in the Bible that looked like it had been added later
on, to get at the true story of this man named Jesus. It’s generally acknowledged that the story of
Jesus was passed around verbally for a decade or two before any of it was
written down, and even when it was written down, it tended to be
randomly-organized collections of miracle stories, or parables, or travel
narratives of where he went and who he healed.
The gospel writers, known to us as Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, did us
the favour of organizing the material into a sensible narrative, but each of
them has a specific story to tell, and a specific audience to whom they wish to
tell the story.
The scholars engaged in the quest
for the Historical Jesus wanted to strip away some of these additional intentions
of the gospel writers, to get closer to what Jesus actually said and actually
did. To an extent, they were able to do
so: by comparing what was said in the different gospels; by looking at the
style of language used, some of which sticks out from the rest of it; by
looking at various physical fragments of scripture from all around the
Mediterranean; and by setting aside lots of superfluous material that was
almost certainly later commentary on the story.
They, and other scholars since them, had some success in saying how
confident they were about the authenticity of various gospel stories.
This approach to scripture – an
aspect of what is generally called the “historical-critical method” - is
certainly something that I was trained in, and is something I still use as one
of the tools of the trade. But I use it judiciously, for something that happens
when you strip away part of the gospel in order to get at the kernel of the
story, is that you also run the risk of removing something critically
important.
For in addition to telling us
about Jesus in a particular way, each of the gospel writers, we presume, was
part of a community fully committed to walking with the risen Christ. Each of them had a life-changing experience
that they cannot forget, and they WANT that to colour everything they would do
and say from that moment forward. Back on July 8th, my first Sunday in
ministry with you, I preached a sermon loosely entitled “Paul has a problem”
and went on to state that Paul’s problem, was that he’d had a direct experience
of Jesus some 14 years earlier and every single day since then it pushed and
prodded and bugged him to share what he knew of the risen Christ. The authors known to us as Matthew, Mark,
Luke and John had a very similar problem.
They absolutely believed in the resurrection of Jesus, they saw the
power of Christ at work in their lives and in the lives of their communities in
spite of the inherent risks of following him, and in telling us about the
earthly life of Jesus they couldn’t just set this aside.
A number of you, I hear, are
familiar with the work of Marcus Borg, a wonderful pastor and author based out
of Oregon. In his 1994 book, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time,
he describes a modern-day version of the quest to find the Jesus of History and
the Christ of Faith. He uses two very
helpful terms: post-Easter Jesus and pre-Easter Jesus. The
post-Easter Jesus is what we have described to us in the gospel: all that Jesus
said and did, as seen through the lens of someone whose life was energized and
directed by a relationship with the risen Christ. The pre-Easter Jesus is the Jesus that the
questers were looking for in the 1890s – Jesus, presented as if someone were
following behind Jesus and the disciples with a steno pad, writing down events
as they happened without having it coloured by the way the story ended.
In his view of the pre-Easter
Jesus, Borg (p.30) presents “four broad strokes” that would have been evident
to those who met Jesus:
1. “The historical Jesus was a sprit person, one
of those figures in human history with an experiential awareness of the reality
of God.”
2. “Jesus was a teacher of wisdom who… [taught]
a subversive and alternative wisdom.
3. “Jesus was a social prophet… [who] criticized
the elites of his time.
4. “Jesus was a movement founder who brought
into being a Jewish…revitalization movement.”
I’ll only speak about the first
of these today, the notion of Jesus as Spirit Person, because it so closely
aligns with the questions and answers between Jesus and his disciples.
When Jesus asked his disciples,
“who do people say I am?” the answer comes back with names of actual people. The answers are personal, rather than
functional. The disciples do not say, “people say you’re a wise teacher” or
“people say you’re a miracle-worker,” but instead they say “people say you’re
John the Baptist, or Ezekiel, or [Jeremiah or] one of the other prophets.” To use Marcus Borg’s framework, we could say
that people of the day recognized Jesus as a Spirit Person, embodying the same
wondrous mystical presence as the Hebrew prophets. Those who actually met Jesus knew that
whoever he was, he was someone special. And
the “pre-Easter” stories bear this out: the gospels tell us that Jesus used
spiritual practices, including fasting and prayer. He had a vision at his baptism
and a “vision quest” experience in the wilderness. He spoke intimately when he addressed God,
calling God “Abba,” the way a child would say “Papa.” He had a charismatic,
contagious presence, and spoke with an authority that sounded like the voice of
the Spirit itself, rather than a mere recitation of tradition. (Borg, pp.35-36)
When the disciples shared what
people were saying about Jesus, it sounds very “pre-Easter.” But when Peter
says, “You are the Christ” in answer to the more direct question, “who do YOU
say I am?” we reach a point of considerable debate because this sounds very
“post-Easter”. Once again, Marcus Borg
(p.29) has a very helpful way of framing this: “we have no way of knowing
whether Jesus thought of himself as the Messiah or as the Son of God in some
special sense,” says Borg. “According to
the earliest layers of the developing gospel tradition, [Jesus] said nothing
about having such thoughts. They were
not part of his own teaching. His
message was not about believing in him.
Rather, the pre-Easter Jesus consistently pointed away from himself
to God. His message was…centered
in God, not centered in a messianic
proclamation about himself.” In the
gospel of Mark, then, when we read of Peter declaring Jesus to be the Messiah,
we are most likely hearing the voice of Mark moreso than what Peter would have
understood in the days that he was traipsing around the middle east with his
beloved friend Jesus. Mark has the
post-Easter advantage of knowing how the story turns out, and wants everyone
who reads his gospel to know that.
I realize that I’ve put out a
fair bit of heady, academic material in the past few minutes, so let’s bring it
more down to earth for a few moments. At the start of the sermon I asked if any
of us are fully
aware of the lasting impact of our words or actions?” and
I’d like to quickly revisit this with an example from the world of sports. (I
offer this story with apologies to those of you who are sad about the NHL
lockout). Other than a pick-up game of shinny, what’s the last time any of you
saw a hockey goalie play without a mask?
I remember a guy named Andy Brown playing WHA hockey without a mask in
about 1975 but that’s the last maskless goalie I can remember. Well, back in the late 1950s, the Candiens’ Jacques
Plante started wearing a crudely-made goalie mask in practice because he was
sick and tired of the bruises and cuts that inevitably arise when you’re facing
hundreds of pucks. In November of 1959,
a shot from Andy Bathgate nearly ripped Plante’s nose off during a game against
the Rangers, and he agreed to go back into the game, but only if he could wear
that practice mask.
Do you think he knew that donning
that emergency mask would literally change the face of hockey? Plante may have known that other goalies
would consider wearing a mask when they were hurt – after all, a couple of
goalies had used leather masks in the late 1920s when they got nicked – but
could he really have forecast that all goaltenders, in every nation, at all
levels of hockey, would be wearing masks or cages within 10 years? Or that 50 years later, they’d still be
wearing masks and will continue to do so for as long as the game is
played? He may have understood that what
he did was significant, but I cannot imagine that he knew how significant it
would be.
My hunch is that the disciples were
in that same position,. They knew that
this Jesus they were committed to was, to use Borg’s language once again, a
spirit person, a teacher of wisdom, a social prophet, and perhaps would even
have seen him as a movement founder… but unless they had our advantage, of
seeing him through post-Easter eyes, would they really have seen him as
Christ? Would they have anticipated his
resurrection? Even if Jesus, like the
spirit people of old, had a degree of knowledge of how his life would unfold,
how could any of them possibly have
seen all that was to come?
As I wrap things up this morning,
I want to say three things to you. The first is, I think that Marcus Borg is on
to something important, in identifying that Jesus really made an impression on
those who met him. Jesus’ presence, his
teachings, the way he approached the poor and infirm, were all memorable in
themselves. It is truly a gift to us to try to see Jesus through the eyes of
those who knew him first-hand, unencumbered by later interpretations, and we are
indebted to Marcus Borg and countless scholars who help us really dig into the
gospels, and indeed all of scripture, to find its original, uninterpreted message
for us.
The second thing I want to say,
though, is that the gospel writers have also given us a gift, in telling
us the Jesus story from their post-Easter perspective. I
honestly believe that the stories of Jesus the teacher would have faded into
oblivion, along with the teachings of a bunch of other inspirational teachers
of his day, if not for the unshakeable belief of that post-Easter
community. Those eye-witnesses and
early adopters of the Jesus way were convinced that he was still alive: in
them, and between them, and through them.
Even under threat of death, they felt compelled to tell his story and
live his life. This wasn’t fiction they were spreading, nor were they merely
trying to “spin” the story in a favourable way.
This was the story of the one who meant everything to them, the one
whose ongoing power energized their lives every day.
As those who continued to
experience the power of Jesus, the gospel writers told his story in a way that
would not die. So when Mark reports that
Jesus ask the disciples, “Who do YOU say that I am” the gospel writer wants us
to know that Jesus continues to ask that question, even now, of each and every
disciple. Whether the question was posed in that very way to the twelve
disciples in their time and place, we cannot know, and it hardly matters, because Mark doesn’t want it to be understood
as a question that is asked once (by Jesus) and answered once (by Peter). Mark wants us to hear it as ’s a question
asked of us by the risen Christ, over and over again, as we seek clarity in our
life with him.
The third, and final thing I want
to say, is that however
we approach these words, they remain a gift to us. I know that here, as in every United Church
congregation, we have a broad range of Christian understandings. So when we gather for communion, for example,
the words of the invitation do not just invite those with rock-solid faith and
traditional doctrine. We invite everyone
who wants to relate to Jesus: those hungering to learn about Jesus; those
striving to follow Jesus; those desiring a personal relationship with Jesus; and,
to be sure, those who do have a confident, long-standing, definable belief in
Him. We give permission for people to
engage their doubts, but we also give permission for people to embrace their
belief. Wherever we are in our journey, however we frame our connection to
Jesus, the pre-Easter story AND the post-Easter story both speak to us, and
nudge us closer to the new life promised by Christ Jesus.
The gospels were
not a diary of events, jotted down daily with only a vague notion of where the
life story of Jesus was heading. They
were written in the post-Easter world, with full knowledge of how the story
unfolded: his death on a cross, his
post-resurrection appearances to those who loved him, his ongoing presence to
those who risked everything in his name.
The Gospels were written, not as a collection of factoids that could
help Christians pass a content exam, but as the testimony of devout Christ-followers,
who needed to tell the world why Jesus mattered to them. As recipients of their
gift, we continue to question and dig for meaning, we give thanks for the sure
and inspiring faith of those who have gone before us, and most of all, we thank
God for the gift of Christ Jesus. In his
name, Amen.
Works cited:
Borg, Marcus
J. Meeting Jesus Again for the first
time. Harper: San Francisco, 1994.
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/who_you_are_speaks_so_loudly_i_can-t_hear_what/14497.html
Kahler
quoted by Richard Longenecker, http://www.mcmaster.ca/mjtm/2-51.htm
And more
about Jacques Plante! at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMbXU4njAw4
© 2012 Rev Greg Wooley, Ralph Connor Memorial United Church, Canmore AB
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