Really? Right Now?

Really? Right Now?

A Sermon on Matthew 16:13-20

by Griff Martin

For the Beloveds of First Austin: a baptist community of faith

On August 20, 2017

The Tenth Sunday of Ordinary Time

Incarnate God, we ask that you once again take the Word and transform it into a living and breathing Resurrected reality we can all together experience. Be present here in this space and in these words God for if you are present here then nothing else will matter, but if you are not present here then nothing else will matter. In the name of the Creator, the Risen Christ and the Comforter.  Amen.

What a month we just had…. Charlottesville and Confederate Monuments, Nazi and KKK suddenly back in our national news, our deep issue and sin of racism back in the spotlight…..  a Presidential address calling for new strategy and plans and what will likely be increased troops in what is now America’s longest war….. the deaths of Jerry Lewis and Dick Gregory, two comedic legends…. Talk of nuclear warfare and North Korea….. a ban on our transgender sisters and brothers serving in the military…. Our kids all went back to school… there were several staff changes in the White House key leadership positions…. Game of Thrones changed everything by introducing ice dragons…. We had a solar eclipse and we all spent half a day staring at the sun….  Sheriff Joe was pardoned on a Friday night… Taylor Swift surprised us all with a new song …a group of evangelical pastors released The Nashville Statement continuing to make us evangelicals look nothing like Christ… And the month ended with historic flooding in Houston and images that we are starting to see all too regularly from hurricanes and floods

And that is August. Maybe we should stop for prayer again.

And we all have opinions on most of if not all of those things, in fact we all have many different opinions on all of those things… just spend 5 minutes on Facebook and you will soon see: we all have a lot to say and share today, there are opinions everywhere.

So in a month, in a year, where there is plenty to have opinions on…where people are constantly over sharing their opinions, where there are plenty of things we want to speak out about and at the same time plenty of conversations we are trying to avoid with certain individuals, it seems entirely unfair of Jesus to ask us this question right now: “Who do you say that I am?”

At the very least he could have started with us like he did with his disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” Because I know that answer today and actually that question I have some real opinions on.

If Jesus asked me “Who do people say that I am?” I could answer: I know the Jesus that I was introduced to in a conservative church just down the road from here. I know the Jesus I heard preached at youth camp and the Jesus who could make all the teenagers cry on the last night of camp. I know the Jesus of Jürgen Moltmann and Karl Barth and Saint Francis, I have taken blue book exams on my understanding of what those men say about Jesus. I know the Jesus of our early baptist parents- the Jesus of Thomas Helwys and John Smyth and Roger Williams. I know about the Jesus of the television evangelist. I know the Jesus of folks I don’t agree with- the Jesus of John Calvin, John Piper and Joyce Myers. I know about the Jesus of folks I adore- Richard Rohr, Anne Lamott, Barbara Brown Taylor, Howard Thurman and Brene Brown.

I could tell Jesus all about what they think about him and I could even engage a conversation about how I react to who they tell me Jesus is, what I believe and don’t believe based on what they believe and don’t believe. But that is not the question Jesus is asking this morning. I don’t think Jesus has the time today to ask us the leading question, who do folks say I am… this morning Jesus is a bit more forward, bc we know the punch line, we know the follow up question, so Jesus does not beat around the bush with us today it’s last call at the bar and there is no more room for small talk.

“Who do you say that I am?”

Who do you say that I am Griff?

Who do you say that I am Amy?

Who do you say that I am Tracee?

Who do you say that I am John?

A few years into my ministry at University Baptist Church a woman made an appointment to see me in my office, I knew exactly what she wanted to meet about, she had let a great deal of the church know that she found my preaching to be truly lacking and not feeding her soul, she had let folks know that her spiritual nourishment required a lot of hellfire and brimstone preaching, which is far from my gift or theology.

So our conversation started there and I knew that was not a good starting place for us so I quickly tried to establish something we could agree on and some middle ground, to build there, to form a connection. Nothing was working. We were about as polar opposite as we could be. And I think she quickly figured out what I was trying to do as we skirted from topic to topic to topic and finally she said, “Griff what do you think about Jesus?”

And maybe it was the exhaustion or the anxiety this conversation had produced in my soul but I find myself saying: “Jesus is my everything. Jesus is my deepest love in life, Jesus is the reason for everything that I do. Jesus is my salvation and Jesus is my Savior. Jesus is perfection. Jesus is my utmost example- I read the Gospels every morning because I need Jesus’ story in my life every day. Jesus is my joy and peace. Jesus is the wholeness that fills me. Jesus is the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

And then I got quiet and said: “And Jesus is also the one who ruins everything for me, he makes it all so hard and complicated with the love your enemy and walk the extra mile and give away you money and love everyone and go to the hard places that will break you and probably kill you, but that is what Jesus calls us to do.”

And then I got quiet again and said: “But he’s still my everything, he’s the only thing in life I have never given up on, he’s my deepest love and lover, Jesus is pretty much my whole life.”

And I looked up and caught her eyes and I was a bit embarrassed because that is not how us moderate progressive baptist who get 4.0 in seminary, that is not how we talk about Jesus. I felt a bit naked and a bit exposed, vulnerable.

I was suddenly living the truth of Emily Dickinson’s line: “To love me is one thing, to tell me you love me is quite another.”

And I looked at the woman sitting across from me and she had tears running down her checks and she simply said, “I wish you preached that more often.”

And I got a bit chocked up and in a moment of confusion, in a whisper of confession, in what might have been true prayer I simply responded, “Me too… me too”

“Who do you say I am?”

Who do you say I am Kirk?

Who do you say I am Sue?

Who do you say I am Nathan?

Who do you say I am Chyrisse?

Because that is what our world needs to hear, because our world is pretty broken today, it’s pretty messed up. And the church is struggling today trying to figure out who we are… and maybe that is because who we are all depends on how we answer the question, who do you say that I am?

And for too long most of us have been like 11 of the disciples that day, suddenly unable to form words, unable to put what we know into any sort of verbal response, looking down at our shoes and just praying someone else will get called on.

An everything- the future of the church and the healing of our world might be based on how we respond to this question: Who do you say that I am?

Who do you say I am?

Who do you say I am Luke?

Who do you say I am Gloria?

And we should not forget that we are in the church of Matthew this morning, it’s his Gospel and we are there until Advent this year. And his Gospel can be very tough at times, it’s written for a very specific audience: for a group of Jewish Christ followers, for the church at a time when everything they thought they knew about religion and God following was changing, at a time when they were finding themselves further and further away from the religion they grew up in and the religion they anticipated staying in for the rest of their lives, for a group of people in a time of political uncertainty and a world that was changing rapidly fast. A world that essentially felt it had no center.

And yet Matthew in the middle of his Gospel, in the very center of his story, stops… actually goes out his way- this is the only thing that happens in Caesarea Philippi which is not just on the way to anywhere and really makes for an odd leap in the narrative flow and yet Matthew places this exchange in the center of his story… for a church that mirrors a lot of what we are feeling today in a world, in a religion, in a church that felt it had no center…. In a world where there were opinions on everything, Matthew makes it a point to get this question in.

As if ‘who did you vote for’ and ‘what do you think about this issue’ or ‘what news channel do you watch’ matters way less than “Who do you say that I am?” As if the answer to every question must begin here in the center with this question…

Who do you say that I am?

Who do you say I am Deb?

Who do you say I am Blake?

Who do you say that I am Chad?

Who do you say that I am Hector?

One preacher said this of our text: “I don’t think Jesus asks us to confess who we believe he is for his sake, but rather for ours, that we might be caught up in the power of his life and his love.”

And it’s on our answer that Jesus will build the church….

It’s not about the right answer, the best orthodoxy, the deepest doctrine… It might be easier if it were, but it’s not. It’s about being bold enough, risky enough, courageous enough and if we are honest maybe even foolish enough to answer Jesus.

It’s stepping away from everything that everyone else says and listening in the quiet of our hearts and in the silence of our souls where flesh and blood are not revealing things to us but instead where our God is whispering.

To spend some time allowing God and the Spirit to tell us who Jesus is.

Who do you say that I am?

Everything and I literally mean everything depends on our answer to that question.

In his letter from the Birmingham Jail, Martin Luther King wrote the following: ". . . all too many have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows." And in the last few weeks those words have not left my heart because they ring so true today.

There is so much for us to speak about today. The world needs us as a church to use our voice: to be bold and courageous and risk things, but for the love of God may everything we say be a way we are answering Jesus: Who do you say that I am?

So may we finally be brave enough to listen to the answer deep within out hearts and then courageous enough to speak out.

Who do you say that I am?

We can be like the 11 and we can be silent or we can be like Peter and be bold enough to say that which is in our hearts.

And when we do that the church that God is wanting to birth today might just finally be born.

Amen and Amen.

*artwork: Jesus Goes Up Alone Onto A Mountain to Pray, by James Tissot, in the public domain.