A turner and the cross

a sermon for the seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost [proper 19B/Lectionary 24]

Mark 8:27-38

Just a couple of years ago one of our youth, Turner Barger, was serving as crucifer in worship one Sunday. He carried the processional cross, like the crucifer is supposed to do, right down the aisle, leading the choir and the worship leaders. He stopped and turned around in the chancel, just like crucifer’s supposed to do, while the choir members filed into their seats.

And that’s when something kind of funny happened. He approached the altar to place the processional cross in its brass stand, but the stand wasn’t there. Someone had, for whatever reason, moved it from the week before. And so there was Turner, bearing the cross in front of God and everyone else, with no logical place to put it down. Turner knew that the stand probably just got shuffled around and was somewhere else up here in the general vicinity, but he couldn’t exactly lay the cross down to look for it or, worse yet, prop it upside the altar, he had to look for it with the cross in his hands.

So while we were still singing the last few lines of the first hymn, Turner proceeded to march around with that cross all over the place up here. He took the cross behind the altar to see if it was there. He marched over to the piano to see if the stand was lurking over there somewhere. Then went over to the other side where the choir sits to see if it was there. All in all, he crisscrossed the chancel several times (see what I did there?) looking for where that stand might be, and when it wasn’t found, and the hymn was almost done he just…walked right out of the side door into the hall and disappeared, cross and all.

Those of you who know Turner know it couldn’t have happened to a more appropriate person. He literally knows where everything in this church is. I still have visions of Turner faithfully wandering the halls of the church, still lifting that cross high, looking for a place to let it properly rest.

Following Jesus means walking the halls of life with a cross we won’t be able to put down. To be one of Jesus’ followers, that is, and to continue on the road he is taking, we will need to be prepared to take on a new way of life, one where we’ll steadily learn to let loose of certain things so that we can grab hold of the divine things—divine things like serving our neighbor—that will give us life. There is no stand for this cross, no convenient little place where we can drop it off and resume whatever else we were doing with ourselves. Like the cross that is placed on our forehead at our baptism, it is really with us for good.

In Mark’s gospel we hit the halfway mark and discover Jesus needs to level with his disciples. It’s as if he says, “This has all been interesting up to this point, maybe even fun. The healings, the miraculous feedings, the debates with the stuffy Pharisees, the crowds that adore me everywhere I go, the anticipation about a kingdom coming. But I need to make sure we’re on the same page. It’s time to talk about this road we’re on.”

And to have this little come-to-Jesus talk Jesus has chosen a very appropriate venue. They are near the villages around Caesarea Philippi, a gleaming new city that was built by Herod’s son Philip as a testament to Caesar’s power and glory. Philip had chosen a location that had been the site of ancient worship to the god Pan. Multiple carvings of that god had been made in the rock face and together with the fancy city on top and all the monuments to empire it would have been hard to stand there and not think about the identity of these figures. It would have been difficult, if not impossible, to stand there as Jesus’ disciple and not think about things like worship and allegiance and kingdom. And right there, with these things surely swirling in their heads, Jesus asks for the first time “Who do people say that I am?” That’s Caesar, up there. That’s the worship of ancient gods. Where do I fit in?

 

After they share with Jesus some of the ideas they’ve overheard people in those crowds murmuring, Jesus turns the question to them. And Peter, the disciple who tends to blurt things out, the disciple who often serves as the group spokesman, gets the question about identity correct, but it’s clear he doesn’t know what he’s in for. In Peter’s mind the Messiah, or the Christ, would march into Jerusalem, bust some heads, and take names. But that is not how Jesus is going to be the Messiah, the one anointed by God to bring in his kingdom of justice and righteousness. Jesus is going to march into Jerusalem and let them bust his head. They will pull out his beard. He will not hide his face from insult and spitting (Isaiah 50). He’s going to hand himself over to human ways of power and control and self-assertion in such a way that we can finally, clearly see where those ways eventually lead. He will be a suffering Messiah, a humble and loving king who trusts not in himself and his own abilities, but in God’s power to set things right. Jesus will let himself be lifted up on a cross and never be set back down—they’ll carry him out of the halls of power, out of the temples of glory and beauty to a most inconvenient hill somewhere outside the city where he will suffer and die.

This is who Jesus is and this is how he comes to be God’s Son for us. He comes to empty himself for us. He comes to bear God’s love into all the dark hallways and pathways of our lives. He comes to set aside his own needs in order to give us the grace we need.

And therefore following this kind of Messiah, means lifting up this kind of leadership and this kind of self-giving life into the world, even though it will be unpopular. That is bearing the cross. That is denying the self. That is saying “I’m not going to lay down the chance to bring Christ into the world.”

And in a day and age when so much emphasis is placed on personal identity and crafting that identity, and putting it our self out there for people to see just how we want it, this is super challenging. Like builders of little Caesareas of Philippi all over the place, we construct all kinds of facades and monuments that we want people to think about when they think about us when really they should look at us and see someone carrying a cross. Because we don’t really find our true selves until we’ve lost ourselves in Christ, until everything we think we are has been offered up for who Jesus is. And not because we’ve been so wise or brave to do it, but because God has been so gracious to claim us.

Today our 9^th and 10^th graders sign up for another year of confirmation ministry. In the Lutheran Church, since we typically baptize infants, we provide young people the chance to be a Peter and publicly profess their faith and affirm the promises God made to them in their baptism. These young people will spend the next year looking more closely at certain foundational aspects of the faith of the church with the hope they’ll start to articulate that faith as their own. Now, I don’t know how this specific group of confirmands is approaching this task, mentally or intellectually. They’re bright and curious, though. At their age I just wanted it to be over.

One helpful way to think about it is to think that they will be learning to answer this question that stands at the center of Mark’s gospel: “Who do you say that Jesus is?” Or, as one of my theology professors from seminary put it, “Who is Jesus and why does he matter?” There are a lot of good and interesting questions that are taken up by Christian faith, but that’s that really is the question that stands at the center. That’s really the question that keeps us coming back to the basics: who is Jesus and why does he matter?

And we’ll be surrounding these young people just as we always do, with our responses to that question, whether we realize it or not. When they see us give up our time to serve at LAMB’s Basket or the HHOPE pantry or CARITAS, up goes that cross we carry and we say Jesus is hope for those in need and he matters because God’s kingdom includes all people, especially those who often get overlooked. When they see us take the time to join a small group or attend a Sunday School class up goes that cross again, and we are saying Jesus is a teacher and he matters because we need more than bread to live. When they see us donate supplies to McShin Foundation or ACTS to prevent homelessness, we are saying Jesus is a healer and he matters because he shows us all people are given God’s mercy and forgiveness. When they see us come as often as we can to this place to worship him and give him praise we will be saying Jesus is the risen Son of God and he matters because he has brought us eternal life.

Whether we realize it or not, we are all given the chance to answer Jesus’ question about his identity through the everyday decisions of discipleship we make. God is gracious, and no matter how many times we set our minds on human things, Jesus gives us another chance to figure out who he is. God is so gracious—the formation of our faith doesn’t end at 10^th grade! Daily we are given the chance to go through all kinds of confirmations, again and again—as if we are given the chance, over and over, to take that life-saving cross down the aisle, to be a Turner—that is, one who turns aside from the paths of selfishness the human things that point us inward and march instead across the chancel with the cross in front of all God’s people and out, out, out into the world.

Thanks be to God!

The Reverend Phillip W. Martin, Jr.