Here is tomorrow’s sermon.
Introduction
Among the new religions and churches you can find today is The
First Church Of Jesus Christ, Elvis. Their catchphrase is, “For unto you is
born this day in the city of Memphis
a Presley, which is Elvis the King.” Their picture of Elvis is rather Catholic:
the sacred heart is beating in his chest.
If you feel more Protestant, you could opt for The First Presleytarian
Church Of Elvis The Divine. And their picture of Elvis makes the recent
furore over Madonna singing suspended from a cross in Russia look
tame: Elvis is hanging on a cross made to look like a guitar.
Should you wish to be more political, you can join The Church Of The
Militant Elvis Party, who put up candidates in by-elections.
Why do I tell you this? Because this week, Elvis has
inspired my thinking for the sermon.
Now I’d better explain that before you either charge me with
heresy or ask some friendly doctors to section me. I’ve been reading a book
called ‘Velvet
Elvis’ by Rob Bell of Mars Hill Bible Church in Michigan. The ‘Velvet
Elvis’ is a piece of art that Rob Bell owns. He makes the point that the artist
would be crazy if he said that his interpretation of Elvis were the final one
and that no-one else need waste their time painting him. So it is with the
Christian faith. We have the historic faith but we are forever ‘repainting’ it,
interpreting it for our day and circumstances.
And it’s his angle on Jesus’ time with his disciples at Caesarea Philippi. I want to
bounce off some of his insights to explore this key passage on discipleship.
1. Location
Well, the saga of our grumpy neighbour continues. He has
carried out his threat to complain to the Methodist circuit about us. They have
denied any responsibility by them or us for the oil spillage on his sacred
drive, but are paying up out of good neighbourliness. Meanwhile Mr Misery still
hasn’t sold his house after three months. We have found on the Internet someone
with his name who could well fit his description who is an auctioneer. And
wouldn’t that be an irony if it’s true? The auctioneer can’t sell his house!
And the mantra about property sales is of course the one
encapsulated in the title of the TV programme: ‘Location, Location,
Location’. A journey to Caesarea Philippi is the location for this
confession of faith [verse 27]. Here is where Jesus leads his disciples, and
Simon Peter in particular, to confess what their faith in him is.
Straight away we notice a difference. If you are Anglican by
background you are used to saying the Creed in worship on a Sunday morning. You
make the classic confession of faith in Jesus Christ during Christian worship
in a building dedicated to him.
But Jesus invites a confession of faith in him that is
located in the world. This is not just something for the Sabbath. It is
something for every day. Confessing faith in Jesus is not something we do in
the privacy of our own churches, so to speak, in our fortresses with the
drawbridge up. We confess him in the world. And if you think I’m making a
fanciful point out of the location issue, note the verse where the reading
ends:
‘Those who are ashamed of me and of my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also
be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.’
[verse 38]
We confess Jesus in the world, in the midst of an
‘adulterous and sinful generation’. And that’s just why Caesarea Philippi is
important. Historically it was a place dedicated to worship of the god Pan. And
Pan being a half-man, half-goat figure, worship included some pretty decadent
practices with goats. There was also a cliff there with a giant crack that
became known as The Gates Of Hell, because people believed it was the place
where evil spirits would come to and go from the earth [Bell, p 132].
Jesus is not calling us to hide. He is calling us to the
risky occupation of confessing our faith in him right in the heart of a
depraved society. For us it is a culture that does not hold the marriage bed
pure but increasingly wants to normalise sexual perversions and sexualise small
children. It is a culture where drug
taking is respectable in social and sporting circles: everywhere but in
law. It is a world that believes not in self-denial but in the healing powers
of retail therapy. It is a society where many would rather sue than forgive,
and where violence rather than peace-making is used to decide disputes.
We are called to confess our faith in Jesus in our ‘Caesarea
Philippi’. We are called as his church not to be a private club that exists for
our own benefit but a counter-cultural group, who witness to the only One who
can heal the deep wounds of this world.
2. Person
In a past circuit we once decided to have a whole day where
the circuit ministers and circuit stewards went away and told each other their
stories of faith. It was meant to be the spiritual version of a team-building
exercise. The stories were highly varied, as you would expect – God works
uniquely in each of our lives. Some spoke of great things God had done in their
lives, some spoke of their struggles, some spoke of both.
But one person’s story saddened me greatly. A story of
wrongs done to this person that left all sorts of bitterness. And at the end all
this person said was that they had their beliefs. Bitterness and no Jesus. One
of life’s great tragedies.
In the story from Mark’s Gospel Jesus makes confession of
faith a personal thing. By that I don’t mean private. I mean that we confess
faith in a Person – Jesus himself. His opening question is, ‘Who do people say
that I am?’ [verse 27] And he refines that to, ‘But who do you say that I am?’
[verse 29]
The confession of faith is in Jesus – in who he is. Unlike
the person on the team-building day true Christian spirituality cannot avoid
the centrality of the Person of Jesus. And neither can we.
It’s easy even in church life to focus on almost anything
but Jesus. We concentrate on the mechanics and maintenance of keeping the
institution going. And somewhere Jesus gets forgotten. Methodists have got to a
point of finding it so hard to speak of him that Conference commissioned a
report and study course entitled Time
To Talk Of God to help address this problem.
The tragic irony is that we too are in a culture where
people can give their answers to the question of who Jesus is. Just as the
disciples heard people say ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still
others, one of the prophets.’ [verse 28] so there can still be found genuine
interest in Jesus today. They may not give the answers we believe are right
about him. They may see him as no more than a spiritual teacher or guru; they
may well see him as one option among many in the supermarket of faith, to be mixed with
other options.
But the opportunities to confess Jesus in this world are
there, if we take them aright. John Drane
explains
(pp 41-89) that people who are no longer ‘religious’ in the traditional or
conventional sense still find ways to be spiritual. They try to make everyday
life sacred, so when someone dies you find roadside shrines, as
happened locally when on 3rd September a twenty-one-year-old
biker died after colliding into a lamp post on Victoria Road South. For others, adopting
a healthy disciplined lifestyle is effectively their spirituality. From the
health club to Body Shop, it’s there. The discipline that believers have
traditionally imposed upon themselves is now about looking after one’s body or
the earth. And for another group it’s a high-energy enthusiastic approach that
looks for mystical, non-rational experiences as the key to life.
Now if that is our world (alongside the somewhat hostile
description I gave in the first point) then it is a challenging but hopeful
place in which to confess Jesus. Biblical faith is not about dividing between
the sacred and the secular: as has been well said, ‘The only thing that is
secular is sin.’ Rather, with the Psalmist we affirm that ‘The earth is the
Lord’s and everything in it’ (Psalm 24:1). We follow a Jesus who gave most of
his teaching outside the synagogue in the world and who as the ascended Lord is
present throughout creation.
Likewise, we know the value of spiritual discipline. Jesus
himself encouraged it in the Sermon on the Mount – he never in Matthew 6 said
‘If you pray’, ‘If you give’ or ‘If you fast’, he said ‘When …’ A vicar called Steve Hollinghurst sets up
stalls called ‘Regenerate’ at Mind, Body And Spirit festivals. He explains that
they are exploring spirituality from the Christian tradition and gives talks on
‘Discovering Meditation With The Christian Mystics’ [article
here]. And there is certainly the strong tradition of deep spiritual
experience in following Jesus. In the Methodist tradition it goes all the way
back to John Wesley’s conversion experience, feeling his heart ‘strangely
warmed’ and his later insistence that if you are converted you will in some way
experience God.
We must certainly acknowledge the faults of the Christian
Church that have led people to reject us as a place to find worthwhile
spiritual experience, but what if we approached people humbly (even
repentantly?) with our confession of Christ?
3. Failure
We confess our faith in Jesus the Messiah in the world. And
that’s the point Peter gets too, as well. ‘You are the Messiah,’ he says at
Caesarea Philippi [verse 29].
But there’s always a shock with Jesus. On other occasions in
Mark’s Gospel when people have recognised who he is, he has told them to be
quiet. That’s surprising or shocking enough. But now we see why. Peter – let
alone others – cannot accept Jesus’ description of his messianic mission. Not
military victory but betrayal, suffering and death. Then resurrection.
However we may explain Peter’s reaction – that it doesn’t
fit his ideas of who the Messiah is, or that he just doesn’t want to see a dear
friend suffer – Jesus’ gentle pastoral retort of ‘Get behind me Satan!’ is
followed by the explanation, ‘For you are setting your mind not on divine
things but on human things!’ [verse 33]
Now I’ve already said in my first point that confessing
faith in Jesus in our ‘Caesarea Philippi’ will lead us to conflict – and by
implication, into suffering. So I’m not at this point going to concentrate on
what Jesus says about denying ourselves, taking up the cross and following him.
I simply want to concentrate on Peter’s mistake and Jesus’ correction of him.
Now as I said, Jesus was hardly the model of pastoral
sensitivity in correcting Peter: I don’t think I’ve ever said, ‘Get behind me,
Satan!’ to a church member. I may have thought it, but I’ve never said it!
Although I came close last weekend when someone kept telling our little girl to
sit down in – of all things – an all-age service!
Peter needs the correction, and if you’re of a sensitive
disposition you could say it’s harsh. But – he doesn’t dispense with his
services. There is no hint with Jesus of, ‘You’ve made such a complete mess of
things, Peter, that there’s no way I can continue to have you as a disciple.’
Rather, the dressing-down Jesus gives him is precisely so that he can continue as a disciple. It’s
discipline for the sake of spiritual growth.
So for those of us who think, I’ve made such a hash of my
Christian life that I don’t see how God can possibly use me, it may be that we
receive some divine discipline. But the discipline of Christ is not some kind
of locking us up and throwing away the key as some Christians seem to fear,
it’s Jesus saying, ‘I love you so much that I need to bring you back on track.’
Is this not what we do with our own children? And how much more is it what God
does with us?
And it gives us freedom to fail. Some of us need permission
to fail. We’re too scared to try things unless there is a guarantee of success.
We are perfectionists and nothing is allowed to go wrong. If it does, we can’t
live with our consciences and we hold back from trying again.
But Peter is the disciple who fails in his confession, yet
Jesus by his correction picks him up and sets him back on the road.
There are some who think Peter himself expressly wanted
other Christians to know this. There is an ancient tradition, coming from
someone called Papias, that when Mark wrote his Gospel he based a lot of it on
the reminiscences of Peter. And if that’s the case, then Peter certainly didn’t
paint himself in a flattering light.
One of the most liberating things I’ve ever read about
ministry was the comment of an American pastor. He said he’d rather try ten
things in a church and have nine of them fail in order to discover the one
thing that stuck. I guess it’s the old adage that it’s easier to steer a moving
car than a stationary one. In other biblical terms it’s about not hiding your
talent in the ground. Take a risk! God is a God of grace and new beginnings. He
will correct us if we are open. [It could have much to say to us here at St Augustine’s as we hold
our ‘vision meeting’ after this service.]
Our confession of faith can be – usually is! – an imperfect
one. We may have human things more in mind than divine things. But put it in
the hands of Christ and be open to what he wants to do with it. He knows far
better than we do that we are not simply ‘human beings’, we are also ‘human
becomings’. As Paul says in Philippians 1, God who began a good work in us will
complete it.
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