Mark 8:27-38

I know I’ve confessed this from this pulpit before, but I can’t help it; it’s still true. You see, I’m...sigh...an English major. And I can’t even say that I’m a recovering one, since there’s really no cure for that.

I supposed my fate was sealed long ago. When I was four years old, my brother used to come home from school, where he was learning to read, and he would teach me what he’d learned. By the time I was five, I was staying inside the house reading the World Book Encyclopedia for fun instead of going outside playing — unless, of course, my parents shoved me out the door. Apparently, they still hoped that they could save me from the English major curse.

But no. I remember a time in ninth or tenth grade, when a new movie version of MacBeth directed by Roman Polanski came to our local mall theater. A couple of friends and I went together, but we had totally different experiences.

One of them grew up to be a college professor; the other a multi-millionaire casino owner. Maybe those aren’t the usual occupations, but they are far more mainstream than that of an English major. And in spite of the native intelligence of each of my friends, they were totally lost by MacBeth. As far as they were concerned, Shakespeare’s English was a foreign language.

As for me, I sat enthralled in that theater, captivated by the images and brilliant wordplay I was hearing. It was my first exposure to Shakespeare and I could almost feel the neurons in my brain firing where none had fired before. It was one of the most amazing experiences of my life.

So I was shocked afterwards when I heard my friends talking about how lost and bored they were. That’s the moment when I knew I was different and that’s when I chose to embrace the dark side. There was no denying my budding English major fate.

It was an epiphany — a dramatic demonstration of the power of language and of the artistry that could make words dance and sing and soar into life. It was a moment when the future briefly shined with lazar beam intensity into my life.

A similar moment of epiphany is the subject of our gospel lesson this morning. Jesus has taken the disciples out of Galilee, their usual area, and taken them into the neighboring kingdom. Presumably, Jesus hoped to get them away from the crowds, so he could talk with them about serious matters without being interrupted.

It’s clear to Jesus that his time in this life has become extremely limited. He needs to begin preparing the disciples for his inevitable arrest and execution, so they will have a context in which to understand a suffering Messiah and so that they’ll have some hope in the face of his impending death.

Without some sort of explanation and some time for the disciples to think things over, how could they possibly anticipate the redemptive power of Jesus’ death for the world or the incredible joy that lay on the other side of his death?

The spot he chose was the region around Caesarea Philippi, which was, in essence, a microcosm of world religions. The village of Panias near Caesarea Philippi was named that because it used to be a center for the worship of Pan, the god of nature, who was revered by the Greeks and Romans in ways that would remind modern Americans more of a wild college spring break party than a religious experience.

In the same spot was the entrance to a large cave that was said to be the entrance to Hades, the mythological land of the dead. Further up the hillside was a temple built by King Herod Philip to honor his protector, the Roman Emperor Tiberius. This temple was designed for worship of the emperor as a god.

That was the politically expedient thing to do, in spite of the fact that Tiberius had a decidedly nasty habit of indulging in rape and murder. But, then, he was the emperor and that’s what emperors did in those days, if they wanted to. Who could stop them?

Two miles away from Panias was a shrine that had been set up in the years immediately following the death of Solomon to honor the nature god Ba’al and his wife Asherah, the goddess of fertility. Those were the very gods whom the Old Testament prophets repeatedly warned the people of Israel against.

It was as if Jesus had deliberately taken the disciples to a vast marketplace for the religions of the ancient world — the ancient equivalent of the Mall of America for various faiths — to see what the disciples believed about him.

And so, there in the beauty of nature, Jesus asks the disciples a very pointed question: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter correctly answers, “You are the Christ,” and then Jesus immediately begins to teach the disciples that, as the Christ, he had to suffer and die.

Jesus added that to be a Christian means being willing to follow Jesus wherever he may go, even into the unpredictable and dangerous areas of life. Then he specifically says that following him will cost us the life we may have wished to live — in fact, it may literally cost us our life altogether.

Just as Jesus led his disciples into the heart of the world’s cultures and religions to pose his question to the first disciples, so he comes to each of us in the midst of everyday life and asks us also to think about the meaning of our faith.

Who do we say that Jesus is? The way we answer that question has vast implications for the way we live our lives. And it’s a question we’re faced with over and over again on an almost daily basis.

Clearly, in this country, it’s unlikely that any of us will ever have to pay the ultimate price for being Christians. We’re unlikely to be faced with the choice of surrendering our faith or our life. However, we are regularly faced with choices that force us to decide if we’re going to take the easy and self-centered path or if we’re going to follow Jesus in surrendering our own priorities in order to help build community and do our part to bring justice and peace for all to our world.

You can see those choices all around you, if you look for them. Some four years ago, our economy crashed when a group of people in our financial markets lost sight of their original purpose of serving others. Instead, they chose to sell investment products they knew were worthless because that would allow them to shift the losses of their own bad choices onto others.

Since that time, we have discovered that even those regulators who were supposed to be overseeing our international bank rates with an eye toward promoting good fiscal policy were, instead, manipulating those rates for their own benefit or that of their friends. And, to date, we have yet to see anyone go to jail for such widespread fraud.

Most of us don’t have that kind of power — or that level of temptation to deal with. But we may struggle with similar things on a much more limited scale. I used to work for a large corporation in which a few highly-ambitious people were more concerned with the size of their offices — and even the comfort of their chairs — than they were about making sure the company provided a level of excellence in the service they offered their clients.

The choices of all those people say quite a bit about who — or rather what — they worship. But I don’t want want you to think that my point is to simply condemn those people, because then it becomes too easy to justify our own choices. After all, we can always rationalize that what we’ve done isn’t as bad as what someone else did.

But real faith reaches into every aspect of our lives. When you’re tempted cheat on your taxes, remember that you are a follower of Jesus. When you’re tempted to deliver a swift kick to that person who just cut into a huge line you’ve been waiting in for seemingly hours, remember that you are a follower of Jesus.

When someone tries to encourage you to cut corners at your work, telling you that it will allow you finish early and no one will know the difference anyway, remember that you are a follower of Jesus.

When you go to the voting booth with all those appeals to your self-interest ringing in your ears, remember that you are a follower of Jesus and choose the candidate that you honestly believe will be better at serving the whole community, not just your own narrow interests.

When you’re driving and someone swoops into your parking space at the last second and you’re tempted to stretch the limits of your vocabulary in order to describe what a dirty dog they are, remember that you are a follower of Jesus. And, of course, there’s much, much more of life that calls for our decision on who Jesus is.

I recently had a conversation with a young woman who was angry over a man who had murdered his own children and left his wife in critical condition. His crime was motivated by a simple desire for money. He hoped to collect on his family’s life insurance policies after they died.

The woman I was talking with was justifiably angry about that man’s callous disregard for his family’s lives. And her belief was that the Christian faith teaches an eye for an eye retaliation. That is, because this man burned his children to death, he should be burned to death in turn. She said, “He should have to experience the torment that he caused them.”

And while I can definitely understand the feelings that gave rise to that statement, that’s not what the Christian faith teaches. We are religion of grace — that is of free forgiveness. We offer grace to others because it has been extended to us time and time again.

There are times — like that of the murderer — when someone’s actions are so extreme that we’re loath to even think about offering grace. But that’s what we’re called to do. That doesn’t mean the murderer should go scot free; in fact he should have to face the legal consequences of his crimes. However, at the same time, we’re called to pray for him that God’s grace — and our own grace — might break through and change his heart of stone.

Interestingly, whenever we choose to do that — whenever we choose Christ-like community building over our private feelings — we’ll discover that our choice allows God to help melt our own hearts of stone and gives God the opening he needs to bring resurrection to even the most difficult of circumstances. Amen.

(Comments to Jim at :jmfpc@sbcglobal.net.)