Lent 2
March 12, 2006

Identity Crisis
by Don Hoffman


Mark 8:27-38



Sometimes I'm really proud of Peter. When Jesus asks, "Who do you say

that I am?" Peter gets it exactly right. "You are the Messiah!" Peter

gets a good grade, a pat on the head, and a bright sticker on his

paper. Sometimes I'm really proud of Peter.



Sometimes I'm really irritated with Peter. He talks just like a

typical member of his culture. He never has an original thought. He

knows Jesus is his leader but he won't let him lead. Or is he scared

of the direction they seem to be going?



Peter knows that Jesus is the Messiah. Trouble is, they have a

disagreement about just what a messiah is.



"Messiah" is the Hebrew word. "Christ" is the Greek word. "Anointed"

is the English word. They all mean the same thing. You set someone or

something apart for a special divine mission by pouring on oil. Glug,

glug, glug.



Do you remember how, way back in the book of Genesis, Jacob has a

dream of a ladder to heaven, and a meeting with God? The next

morning, after the dream, Jacob stands his rock pillow up on end and

pours oil on top. Glug, glug, glug.  That was to signify that this

was a special place, set apart for God.



But mostly anointing was for people. Priests like Aaron, Moses'

brother, were supposed to be anointed, and kings like Saul and David

and Solomon. Eli-jah the prophet anointed Eli-sha to be his own

successor, to follow in his footsteps in a mission from God.



For centuries, by Simon Peter's time, people had been waiting for a

new anointed person to appear: a new Messiah, a new Christ. He might

be a new prophet greater than Elijah or a new king greater than

David. So when Peter has this insight into who Jesus must be--the

Messiah everyone has been waiting for, it's pretty exciting!



And then Jesus pulls the rug out from under Peter's feet! All this

talk about suffering. All this talk about rejection. All this talk

about dying. It just isn't right, Peter thinks, not right for all

this to happen to the Messiah. But when Peter says this, Jesus bawls

him out. "Get behind me, Satan!"



Poor Peter! I feel sorry for him, I guess because I identify with him

so much. If there is anyone who has trouble controlling his tongue,

it's Peter.... Or me.... I'm proud of Peter. I'm irritated with

Peter. I'm sorry for Peter. I identify with Peter.



But I'm supposed to identify with Jesus Christ. The Messiah. I am a

Christ-ian, a "little Christ," according to Martin Luther. I have an

anointing of my own. And so do you. The Bible tells us that--in First

John and in Second Corinthians. God has anointed us and put the

divine seal on us and given us God's own Spirit in our hearts. Jesus

is the capital "M" Messiah, and we are the lower-case "m" messiahs.

Little christs. We are supposed to identify with Jesus.



Just like Peter, we know that Jesus is the Messiah. We even know that

we also have an anointing from God, that we are little messiahs. But

also like Peter, we are a bit hazy on what exactly a messiah is. We

have an identity crisis. We don't know who we are. And maybe, we are

just a little scared that we might find out.



There is all that talk about suffering. All that talk about denying

ourselves. All that talk about cross-bearing. That is scary.



Would you like to know the most reassuring fact about Mother Teresa?

It isn't that she had thick calluses on her feet, or that she cared

deeply about the poor, or that she was willing to touch people dying

of AIDS. No the most reassuring fact about Mother Teresa was that she

lived in Calcutta, seven thousand miles away. I could admire her at a

distance. Her life was never likely to really impinge on mine. I

didn't have to think about the contrast. If being a small-'m'-messiah

is to be like Mother Teresa, I am scared to death. I don't want to do

it. And if I had been there when Jesus was talking about suffering

and cross-bearing and dying, I  would have grabbed him and argued

with him and acted just like Peter. If Jesus was a capital letter "C"

Christ, and Mother Teresa was a lower-case "c" christ, then I am a

microscopic christ, invisible most of the time.



But, you know, I don't think being scared is a real problem for us. I

think the problem is that we're not scared!   The problem with our

Christianity is that we don't think about it even enough to be

scared. We live unexamined lives, thoughtless lives, and mostly we

want to feel good. If we even felt bad occasionally, that would be an

improvement.



When Moses first met God in a burning bush, he took off his shoes.

When the children of Israel first met God at the foot of Mt. Sinai,

they were terrified. When Isaiah first met God in the Temple, he

cried out, "Woe is me, for I am a man of unclean lips." When modern

Americans meet God it's no big deal:



       Earth's crammed with heaven,

       And every common bush afire with God;

       But only he who sees takes off his shoes--

       The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries." 
-- Elizabeth Barrett Browning



Most of the time we are just blackberry pickers, not even aware

enough to be afraid of God's demands.



       Why do people in churches seem like cheerful, brainless tourists on a

       package tour of the Absolute? ... Does anyone have the foggiest idea

       of what sort of power we so blithely invoke? Or, as I suspect, does no

       one believe a word of it? The churches are children playing on the

       floor with their chemistry sets, mixing up batches of TNT to kill a

       Sunday morning. It is madness ...; we should all be wearing crash

       helmets. Ushers should issue life preservers and signal flares; they

       should lash us to our our pews. For the sleeping god may wake

       someday and take offense, or the waking god may draw us out to

       where we can never return.      --Annie Dillard in _Teaching

a Stone to Talk_



So I am suggesting that it's time we became a little more self-aware.

It's time we started asking ourselves some questions, as individuals,

and as a church. What is God calling us to do? What part of our

self-identity is God calling us to deny? What cross is God calling us

to bear?



Here we are as a church, aged 97, approaching one hundred years old.

What are we supposed to do with the next hundred years? Who are we

supposed to BE  for the next hundred years?



Let's start praying, and let's start asking some questions: Who do

people say that WE are? Who do WE say that we are? Who does GOD  say

that we are, or Who does God say that we are to BECOME?



You see, I don't know the answers. I'm as much in the dark as you

are. But I know that there is something lacking in me, lacking in us.

We are lacking a sense of purpose, of meaning, of identity.  The

world is changing. How does the church need to change? God is running

ahead of us into the future. What do we need to do to catch up? What

does it mean to be a small-'m'-messiah in the twenty-first century?



I truly do believe that if we pray A LOT, and if we ask questions A

LOT, that some one of us will eventually catch a vision of what God

means Creston Christian Church to be, and communicate it to the rest

of us.  I doubt that there is any one of us here who knows RIGHT NOW

what that vision will be. But I do think that vision will be scary.

It will make me uncomfortable. There will be some part of my present

identity that I will have to deny. There will be some part of my

personality that will have to be sacrificed. There will be some kind

of cross I will have to bear, and you will have to bear. When we find

our vision, we will be truly uncomfortable. And it will introduce us

into a high-anxiety life. But it will be a life God wants us living.



So I'm committing myself, and asking you to commit yourselves, to the

idea that we are incomplete. I'm committing myself, and asking you to

commit yourselves to asking questions: questions in the church and

questions in the neighborhood, and questions in our prayers. ...



When you start to write an essay for school, or a sermon for church,

the scariest part is that first blank sheet of paper. That first

empty computer screen with the little blinking cursor. Once you get

going, it's not so bad. But putting that first sentence down is hard.



Well we're about to turn over a new page in the history of this

congregation. We're going to be writing a new chapter. We're facing a

new century. And we don't know how the story comes out. We're

finishing an old chapter, a hundred years long, and we're looking at

a ream of blank pages. What is the future going to be like? What are

we  going to be like? WHO ... are we going to be like?



We are about to go through an identity crisis. A blank sheet of

paper. An unknown future. Still, I believe, if we pray, and ask

enough questions, God will see that the story has a happy ending.

(Comments to Don at crestnch@televar.com.)
Creston Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), Creston, WA, USA