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We did a PowerPoint presentation for the sermon on Sunday, March 16. For copyright reasons, I can't include the pictures here, but the text of the script follows: Mark 8:31-38
On the night before he was assassinated, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered a speech in which he mentioned the threats that had been made against him and, in that context, offered a brief look backward over the meaning of his life. Because we now know that he would die the next day, his words sound almost prophetic. He said:
"[...] I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind.
Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will.
And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you.
But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land.
And I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man.
Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."
In our gospel lesson this morning, Jesus has come to a similar point in his life. He has been preaching and teaching and healing for several years and it is becoming clear to him that his time in this life has become extremely limited.
He needs to begin preparing the disciples for his inevitable arrest and execution, so that they will have a context in which to understand a suffering Messiah and so that they will 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? But to make that point, Jesus needed to take the disciples away from the crowds.
So he led them north, out of the Galilee region and into the area around Caesarea Philippi.
It was a site that was carefully chosen for its cultural and religious importance.
Caesarea Philippi was home to one of the sources of the Jordan...
...the river that the people of Israel had crossed to enter the Promised Land under Joshua.
The Jordan River was also the place where John the Baptist took his followers to have the people recommit themselves to following God - in effect, having them re-enter the Promised Land once again as devoted followers of the Messiah who was to come. This trip would be Jesus' chance to see if the disciples recognized him as that Messiah. But there was more to the setting than just that.
The region around Caesarea Philippi was, in essence, a microcosm of world religions. The city of Balinas near Caesarea Philippi was named that because it used to be a center for the worship of Ba'al...
...and his wife Asherah, the very gods whose worship was such a temptation for the people of the Old Testament.
Next to the source of the Jordan was a cave that was said to be the entrance to Hades, the land of the dead.
And carved into the rock wall next to that cave entrance were a series of niches that once held statues of Pan...
...the god of nature, who was worshipped by the Greeks and Romans...
...in ways that would remind modern Americans more of a wild college spring break party than a religious experience.
Further up the hillside was a temple built by Philip Herod to honor his protector, the Emperor Tiberias. 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 Tiberias had a decidedly nasty habit of indulging in rape and murder. But, after all, he was the emperor.
It was as if Jesus had deliberately taken the disciples to a vast marketplace for religions of the ancient world - the ancient equivalent of the Mall of America for various faiths - to see what they believed about him.
And so, there in the quiet and beauty of nature...
Jesus asks the disciples a very pointed question:
"Who do you say that I am?" Peter answers correctly, "You are the Christ," and then Jesus begins to teach the disciples that, as the Christ, he had to suffer and die.
Then 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.
In essence, during every baptism, we are faced with the same question Jesus posed to his disciples...
"Who do you say that I am?" And the way we answer that question has vast implications for the way we live our lives.
Just as Jesus led his disciples into the heart of the world's culture and religions to pose his question to the first disciples, so he comes to us in the midst of everyday life and asks us also to think about the meaning of our faith.
Gayle Bach-Watson writes, "There is nothing God will hold back if it will open up a relationship between God and us. There is no price too high for God to pay so that we can know God and love God.
"There is no place God won't go - to the manger of poverty,
"to the wilderness of despair,
"to the cross of shame,
"to the depths of hell - no place God won't go to save us from sin, death and evil. God becomes one of us to save you and me.
"The greatest lesson a soul has to learn is that God, and God alone, is enough for all its needs. This is the lesson that all God's dealings with us are meant to teach, and this is the crowning discovery of our entire Christian life. GOD IS ENOUGH!"
Although we can do nothing to either earn or evade God's love, surely a love so completely without limits demands a response of love in return from us.
But we tend to put up walls, focusing on ourselves and our own needs and protecting ourselves with a barrier of casual interest and mild faith. Yet, Jesus persistently calls us to a deeper level of faith:
"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves, take up their cross and follow me."
Or, as John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian Church , put it:
We are not our own; therefore neither our reason nor our will should predominate in our deliberations and actions. We are not on our own;
We are not our own
On the contrary, we are God's;
We are God's;
We are God's;
Therefore, we are called to have concern for those things that affect any of God's children, for we are called to create community throughout God's creation with all of God's beloved children. Is that an easy thing to do? No. Of course not. Without God's help it is impossible.
And so, as we approach a seemingly unavoidable war halfway around the world, I'd like to share a poem with you by Ann Weems. It's called, "I No Longer Pray For Peace."
On the edge of war, one foot already in, I no longer pray for peace: I pray for miracles.
I pray that stone hearts will turn to tenderheartedness, and evil intentions will turn to mercifulness, and all the soldiers already deployed will be snatched out of harm's way, and the whole world will be astounded onto its knees.
I pray that all the "God talk" will take bones, and stand up and shed its cloak of faithlessness, and walk again in its powerful truth. I pray that the whole world might sit down together and share its bread and its wine.
Some say there is no hope, but then I've always applauded the holy fools who never seem to give up on the scandalousness of our faith: that we are loved by God... that we can truly love one another.
I no longer pray for peace: I pray for miracles. by Rev. Jim McCrea
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