I told all of you last week that we were going to spend this fall exploring what the scriptures tell us about how to be the church. And so today we start at the very beginning – just like all of those kids heading off to kindergarten for the first time, we are going to learn our own ABC’s. And this morning we start off with A – A for Acceptance.
While that may seem like a strange place to start, the truth is that if we are going to be Christ’s church in this world – the hands and feet and voices of Christ to the world, then we had better figure out who it is that we are following! And as we learned just a few minutes ago – names matter!
We have seven or eight young people starting confirmation this fall and they are going to be learning what it means to Claim the Name Christian. What it means to follow someone named Christ. And what we are going to learn over and over again is that saying you believe in Christ and actually accepting and claiming that name are two very different things.
Accepting Christ means that we not only believe Jesus is the Messiah, it means we take on that identity ourselves. To accept something means that we take what is offered and we receive it willingly –our lives begin to look like the name that we have accepted.
This morning, our scriptures readings go hand in hand as we learn not only who Jesus is, but what his title, “The Messiah” means for our lives, and how then we can accept that name as a church in the way that we live.
In Matthew’s gospel, Jesus is having a conversation about identity with his disciples and he starts off by asking them a simple question. “Who do people say that I am?” After the disciples spouted off the answers of the crowds, Jesus asked the tougher question, the deeper question – “Who do you say that I am?”
For months, Peter had walked alongside Jesus and witnessed first-hand the miracles that took place. His own mother had been healed. Demons had been cast out. Hungry people had been fed. Sight was restored to those who couldn’t see. While the world was still struggling, the hopes of the prophets were beginning to be fulfilled. And Peter was blessed enough to have a front row seat to the glorious coming of God’s Kingdom. And so without hesitation, he answered Jesus question – “you are the Messiah.” And Jesus blessed him for having given this answer.
You are the Messiah – What exactly is “Messiah” supposed to convey anyways? We wrestled with this Tuesday night at our roundtable gathering and it’s a hard question. Messiah or masaich is simply a Hebrew word that means “the anointed one.” The interesting thing is that Messiah and Christ actually mean the same thing – one is just a Hebrew word and the other is Greek. When we think of children or boats being “christened,” they are being anointed, or have something poured upon them. Throughout the Old Testament, Messiah was used to refer to priests, prophets, kings of Israel and even foreign rulers who were anointed by God – set aside for a special task. Eventually the idea of “the Messiah” came to mean many things.
Especially in the prophetic writings, the Messiah was a long awaited king that would rule with divine authority – the one who would be anointed to “uphold the justice and righteousness” of the kingdom, a future King David. But when Israel comes under the authority of foreign rulers – first in exile and then later under Rome, some start to lose hope in a new king for Israel. Others take the idea of a Davidic king and claim that he will return at the end of days, the end of time. Some began to hope not for a political king, but a spiritual leader who would reform the people. As Peter walked and talked with Jesus all of these ideas and more would have been floating around. There really was no one Jewish understanding of what the Messiah would do or look like, when or even if the Messiah would ever come.
So although Peter called Jesus, the Messiah – we don’t really know what kind of Messiah he was looking for. Except that it was very different from what Jesus had in mind. As Peter comfortably felt he had figured it all out, all of a sudden, he began to hear Jesus say things that his Messiah would never say. Suddenly suffering, rejection, and death were swirling through his head and Peter stood up abruptly and motioned for Jesus to come and share a quiet word with him.
You see, Peter, just like we often do, already had his mind completely made up about who Jesus was and who the Messiah was supposed to be. But perhaps none of us have been slammed back into our places as fast as Peter was when Jesus looked him straight in the eyes and said, “Get behind me, Satan!”
When Jesus asked the question, “Who do you say that I am?” technically, Peter gave the “right” answer – he correctly identified Jesus as the Messiah. But what that name might mean for the ministry of Jesus was entirely unclear. Peter’s own preconceptions and his personal attachment to this man – his teacher – overshadowed his ability to fully accept that Jesus had set his face towards the cross. While the name was right, Peter’s expectations for the Messiah were not.
The question really is not about a name or a title, but about what we mean by it and how we use it. And so Jesus has this conversation with his disciples and with us, so that we can get past our false expectations and get to the heart of who Jesus really is.
Barbara Brown Taylor describes in her book, The Preaching Life her own doubts and struggles about the identity God, and sees those doubts and mistakes as opportunities for growth. She writes:
Did God fail to come when I called? Then perhaps God is not a minion. So who is God? Did God fail to punish my adversary? Then perhaps God is not a policeman. So who is God? …every time God declines to meet my expectations, another of my idols is exposed. Another curtain is drawn back so that I can see what I have propped up in God’s place – no, that is not God, so who is God? … Pushing past curtain after curtain, it becomes clear that the failure is not God’s but my own, for having such a poor and stingy imagination. God is greater than my imagination, wiser than my wisdom, more dazzling than the universe, as present as the air I breathe and utterly beyond my control. That is, in short, what makes me a Christian.
This is what is going on with Peter. He was looking for a Messiah who would save him here and now, who would elevate him, who would give them all liberty without the struggle. And to be honest, in many ways that is how we have painted Jesus in our culture today – just say these simple words and believe.
But accepting Christ is so much more than that! Accepting Christ is to take his life and make it our own. And that is why this conversation with the disciples was so important.
Jesus knew that he had been anointed by God to redeem all people, to bring the Kingdom of God here to earth… but he also knew the only way to get there was through the cross. This conversation was a reality check for their ministry. The moment that Jesus begins to speak of suffering and death marks a radical shift in the lives of these disciples, as they are asked to leave behind their prior conceptions and expectations. They now find themselves following someone who will be a failure in the eyes of the world. And yet they are asked to follow anyways.
As a church, we are called to accept that name for ourselves. We are called to take up our crosses and follow this Messiah who asks us to give up everything – our lives, our pasts, our expectations – give up all of our lives in order to take on, in order to accept the new life that Christ offers. The question of Jesus’ identity is not a riddle from the past, but it is a calling for any who wish to be disciples of Christ. His identity must come to shape our own.
And perhaps what is even more difficult is that his name should shape our lives more than any of the other names we identify ourselves by. More than our family names, more than our race, more than our nationality. Christ’s name should guide our actions… if we truly accept it.
As Paul writes to the church in Rome, that is the question of the day: How should we live now that we have accepted Christ? Last week we heard him say that as the body of Christ, as the church, we should not live lives conformed to the world around us but that we should be transformed by the mind of Christ, and then he gives us this beautiful and challenging list of ways to do so. Things like “love from the center of who you are – don’t fake it.” “Don’t quit in hard times, pray all the harder.” “Bless your enemies, don’t curse them under your breath.” “Don’t hit back, discover the beauty in everyone.” “If you see your enemy hungry, go buy that person lunch, if he’s thirsty, get him a drink.” (all from the Message translation of Romans 12:9-21)
Almost every single one of those things are unbelievably difficult. They fly right in the face of everything that our society tells us, every way that our world believes we should live. And yet maybe they are the cross we are to bear as a church. As our roundtable group discussed, we realized that these ways of living require us to give up our instincts toward revenge and getting even, force us to let go of a dog-eat-dog mentality. They represent a fundamental friction between the ways of the church and the ways of the world – whether it’s business or politics or education or even family life.
As a church, maybe the cross we have to bear is to so live our lives after the example of Christ that we ourselves run headfirst into that friction. We take risks and put our lives on the line for the Christ that we have accepted.
One example of this is the act of simply taking someone in to care for them. As four women gathered around the table Tuesday night, we talked about how risky that is in today’s world. To love as Christ loved and without question allow someone in need into our home is not something society would tell us is safe or smart. We’ve heard on the news a hundred stories about people who extended hospitality to strangers and who were later found murdered on the side of the road. But extending hospitality to strangers is exactly what Christ did and what he calls us to do. Too often we allow the fear of what might happen, or even what will happen, keep us from accepting the way of Christ.
In college I was a speech and rhetoric major and so I have been very excited about all of the political conventions. And so Monday night, I listened to Michelle Obama speak and I heard her say
And as I tuck that little girl and her little sister into bed at night, I think about how one day, they’ll have families of their own. And one day, they—and your sons and daughters—will tell their own children about what we did together in this election. They’ll tell them how this time we listened to our hopes, instead of our fears. How this time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming.
This time, we listened to our hopes instead of our fears. This time, we decided to stop doubting and to start dreaming. Take those words out of the political context and just think about them… This time we listened to our hopes instead of our fears.
We have to stop being afraid of what will happen to us if we truly accept Christ and follow him and we have to hope that if we truly follow Christ, the world will be transformed. We have to stop letting our fears and our doubts get in the way of the gospel. We have to put it all out there, take risks, and together step outside of these walls as the church. The let the servant church arise, a caring church that longs to be a partner in Christ’s sacrifice, and clothed in Christ’s humanity. Amen.
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