14 Pentecost B

14 Pentecost B      Mark 8:27-38            14 September 2003

Rev. Roger N. Haugen

 

“Who do you say that I am?” A simple question.  Jesus is the one born in Bethlehem who gives us Christmas to celebrate.  This is Jesus who healed, and taught.  This is the “Jesus loves me this I know.”  He is the one we sing about in our hymns and our liturgy, “Glory to God, glory to God in the highest.  For you alone are the holy one, you alone are the Lord, you alone are the most High, Jesus Christ…”  Jesus, the one we love, the one who loves us, the one we worship.  So, yes, we do have an answer.  Yet, sometimes when I sing these words, and the often powerful words of hymns, they sound like other peoples’ words.  I can, sometimes, sing through them without them having much affect on me.  “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me.”   It can be a bit like, “Some say John the Baptist, Elijah or one of the prophets.”  Sometimes, there is little connection, simply a reporting.  At times such as those, I can get through it with little cost or commitment on my part.

 

Yet, there are times when I sing a hymn and I can hardly get through without tears choking me up.  At times the words speak to me as though written just for me.  “Here I am Lord, is it I Lord? I have heard you calling in the night.  I will go, Lord, if you lead me.   I will hold your people in my heart.”  “When peace like a river attendeth my way.”  When the words speak to my life, to pain in my life, I know how Peter must have felt, “You are the Messiah!”  We hear the Gospel proclaimed as Scripture is read and proclaimed.  Sometimes it is one ear and out the other, but sometimes we hear it as never before and it speaks to our very centre of being, and we sigh, “You are the Messiah!”

 

Sometimes when we worship, we hear the question less than clear, or maybe we hear the question but want to deflect it.  Sometimes I see, only too clearly, the cost of a clear commitment, a clear confession of Jesus, and I want to run and hide, or at least hide behind a luke-warm response.  Maybe I want to hide behind what other people say, sing the hymns, letting the words slide off me. 

 

I spent this past week at our study conference to consider “The Call.”  Specifically the call as pastor but also the call as Christian.  We spent time discussing how responding to the call of God can be difficult. We shared stories of how responding to the call has enriched our lives, made life worth living, even if the cost was high. Some told of times when they were invited into the lives of people at times of unbelievable pain, and would have gladly turned away, but knew that the place Jesus called them to be was in the midst of the pain with those people.  We all knew how that felt.  We were all at different stages of the journey, but we all recognized when we had been faithful to the call.  Sometimes it is a matter of hanging on for the ride, knowing that Jesus is in charge and “Follow me” means exactly that.  Sometimes we got it right and other times, we knew what Peter felt when Jesus rebuked him, “Get behind me Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  Sometime other considerations took precedence.

 

We heard of the response to the call by student at the Lutheran Seminary in Hong Kong.  There were the four students from Myanmar, formerly Burma, who went to the government each year for their visas and had to declare that they were on a business trip, because to ask for a visa to study at seminary would have meant no visa.  There was the student from Vietnam who went home after the school year and was “invited” for a visit to the police station.  When you are invited to the police station in Vietnam, you go.  He was invited into the sergeant’s office and there on the desk was a copy of every email he had sent to his family and fiancé the past year.  He was being watched very carefully.  There was the young mother of two from Indonesia who would not see her family for four years, because she knew if she went home, she would not likely get out again.  These are people who are called by God to be pastors, and they listened to the call and did what was necessary to fulfill the call.  There was the student from Africa whose daughter was able to talk to him on the phone before he had even seen her.  When asked why he went through such difficulty for his theological education he said, “The Christian missionaries left their bones in my country.  Can I do anything less?”

 

I listened to their stories in wonder at their faithfulness to their call.  I wondered if I would have the courage to respond as they did.  It was clear how they answered the question, “Who do you say that I am?”    But it was still their answer.  Jesus asked the rest of us, “And who do you say that I am?”

 

This week, we heard that all are called to ministry, and some are called to be pastors.  At all times in my life I am called to be a minister, and at some times I am called to be a pastor.  All of you are called to be ministers, and maybe some of you are being called to be pastors.  We are all asked, “Who do you say that I am?”  Our lives are filled with the stories of when we have been faithful and when we have not.  We may never have to make the decision and suffer the consequences laid out for us as clearly as those students in Hong Kong, but we are constantly asked to decide.  One person encouraged us to always remember the 53 visas that were denied to delegates to the Lutheran World Federation in Winnipeg this summer.  He said that should remind us that, at best, as Christians in Canada we are tolerated.  To live on other people’s answers is quickly becoming less of an option, even in Canada.  “Who do you say that I am?”

 

Jesus invites each one into a relationship and invites us on a journey.  It is a journey that each much decide to take for oneself.  It is a journey that begins with the answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?”  There is a cost, as others before us have discovered.  “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”  As Lutherans we place the cross at the centre of our worship and the centre of our lives.  With Jesus question he asks us to walk the walk and not just talk the talk.  We need to remember that just as Jesus gives the insight to answer, “You are the Messiah!” he also gives the strength to follow.  The cross we are asked to take up, is the need of others we see around us.  The pain we are asked to share, the loneliness we are asked to enter.  As we declare Jesus to be not just the Messiah, but my Messiah, we die to ourselves and discover that we have gained life in all its abundance.

 

Worship is serious business.  It is in this place that the words have the ability to change everything.  We sing words, we recite words and we hear the Word of God proclaimed.  Each word is part of God’s desire to help us answer the question, “Who do you say that I am?”  May we have the courage to take the words seriously, to let them enter our lives and create the hunger for new life, the hunger to live as Jesus has in mind for us.  May we sing our hymns vulnerable to the words, that seek to take us out of ourselves and allow us to commit our lives to the Messiah.  After all, the next question is, “For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their lives?”

AMEN