Scripture: Mark 8:27-33
This sermon has several points of origin. As is obvious by now this Sunday is a kind of symbolic starting point for the fall season here at Sojourners, in the case of the Sunday school, an actual starting point. The choir sang last Sunday but it was a holiday weekend and they had their first real rehearsal yesterday, so they’re still in start-up mode, I think. The capital campaign cabinet has been at work already and much of that work won’t be visible until later in fall, so today is more symbolic for them, but the beginning of that work which will continue throughout the fall also deserves to be acknowledged. To say nothing of other things looming ahead: beginning to think about and prepare for pastoral transition and of course carrying on with our church life—worship first of all, committee work, Bible study, small groups of various kinds, and social justice groups—things which don’t necessarily stop in the summer but which certainly do pick up in the fall. I feel like I’m standing at the edge of what promises to be a very busy season at Sojourners—busy, I hope, not only in the sense of burdensome, but an eventful and I hope an inspiriting season. All of that is occupying my inner life these days, maybe even a little more than Sojourners usually does, and although I’m not quite sure what I want to say about that, it seems like I should say something.
With that in mind, I began thinking about prayer again, as I did in connection with several sermons over the summer. Thinking about the fall season at Sojourners, it did occur to me that it would probably be a good thing to be prayerful as we approach the many things that need to be done and thought about this fall. Being prayerful is always a good thing, maybe an especially good thing at this time in our church’s life and as well at this time in my personal life. My mind drifted back to when I was doing those recent sermons on prayer, and I remembered that there were some things I was thinking back then that never got said, some phrases from the prayers that I was taking my cues from that I wanted to say something about but never quite got around to. I want to go back to that line of thought this morning.
Finally, there is the scripture for the day, once again the lectionary scripture. I won’t be preaching exclusively on that passage in the way I have the last two weeks, but in reading it, it also brought back to mind some things I’d been thinking about in connection with prayer and contributed to what I want to say this morning. As you heard it’s about Jesus, about Jesus asking the disciples first what people are saying about him—“who do people say that I am?”—and after getting some answers he then makes the question personal: “Who do you say that I am?” Peter confesses him to be the Christ, the Messiah. Sermons and commentaries on this passage often focus on that question of who we believe Jesus to be, what names or titles we give him, whether we proclaim him to be Messiah, Lord, and Savior and so forth. That’s not the direction I want to go with it, but I do have some things I want to say about Jesus this morning, mixed in with the other kinds of thoughts I’ve referred to.
Let me begin with a story, a memory that may seem far removed from any of the things I’ve just been talking about, although it is about Jesus. In the late 1990’s in Chicago two female clergy, two African American female clergy, two openly gay partnered female clergy started a church. They quit their jobs and with no other income, relying on savings to pay their bills, they gathered together a group of people, hoping to become a church. They felt called to do this because they had not felt welcome in many of the predominantly black churches they had been a part of, and had not felt welcome in many of the predominantly gay churches they had attended, and they knew of a number of other people who had similar experiences. There was a need, they felt, for a church where people who were both black and gay, and their friends, families, and allies could feel completely welcome and at home. I’m not preaching on that set of issues this morning. It’s just background to the memory I’m about to share.
I became aware of this congregation when the pastors decided, and the congregation as a whole decided, that they wanted to be part of the United Church of Christ. There were a number of steps they had to go through in order to do that, the last of which was to appear before an association meeting and be voted in. Prior to the vote there was a conversation, really more of a question and answer period, where people could ask questions or make statements from the floor. We were a little worried that there could be some hostile questions because of the kind of church it was and because, although it was explicitly and intentionally welcoming of everyone, its initial reason for being was to be a place of refuge specifically for certain people, people who were both black and gay and who often felt spiritually homeless. It was open to everyone—the name of the church was “Church of the Open Door”—but it was formed with a particular group of people in mind. We thought there might be some issues raised.
I don’t remember that there were too many questions along those lines but there was this one I do remember that came more from the fact that at least one of the ministers, maybe both, had spent some time among the Unitarians, and someone wondered why they were coming to the United Church of Christ rather than the Unitarians. I think there was probably a lot more to their answer, but the part I’m remembering is that one of the pastors said, “Well, you know, I do love my Jesus.” It was an answer you don’t necessarily expect to hear from a Unitarian minister, and for that matter the way she said it was not language you don’t necessarily expect to hear at a UCC gathering either. But it won her some laughter and some support. She went on to say, as I recall, that there were lots of things that she appreciated about the Unitarians, she certainly found their attitudes on most social issues similar to hers, but that she had come to realize as a Unitarian that somewhere in her soul she was missing Jesus.
I’ve remembered her saying that ever since. I think it struck me partly because as someone who grew up Unitarian and later moved into the Christian camp, I think that maybe what led me toward Christianity in the first place was that in some mysterious way I began to miss Jesus before I ever really made his acquaintance. And I also have to say that my life as a Christian has probably been characterized as much by missing Jesus as by some more conventional term like believing in Jesus or following Jesus or having a personal relationship with Jesus. I’ve even come to think that missing Jesus is not such a bad way to talk about what it means to be a Christian. I’ll have to come back to that; it probably requires a word or two of explanation. But part of why I recalled the minister’s comment this week is because it dovetailed with what I was thinking as I was reading prayers and reflecting on prayers several weeks ago.
What I was doing then was immersing myself in the written prayers of others and just seeing where that would lead me as far as preaching was concerned. I read whole books of prayers, not lots of books, but several entire books of prayers by my favorite authors of prayers. After I did that for a couple of weeks, I realized something: these prayers were largely missing Jesus, not in the sense of longing for Jesus but in the sense of lacking Jesus. Jesus was not a large presence in them. Jesus was scarcely mentioned in them by name, not even in opening or closing phrases such as I often say at the end of spoken prayers, “…in Jesus name we pray”. I guess you could say I was missing Jesus at least in the sense that I began to be aware that he wasn’t there. I was surprised enough by this that I had to go back and re-read enough of those prayers to make sure I hadn’t just slipped over Jesus, glided by him, taking him for granted the way we sometimes do. But no, he really wasn’t there in these prayers.
Or at least he wasn’t there very much in obvious ways. He was present here and there in what I might call quiet ways. Let me give an example. These few, occasional words are from a book of poem/prayers by Ted Loder in a book called Wrestling the Light. “O God of ferocious tenderness and disarming insistence, unbutton my proud bluffs, put your ear to my heart, listen to what I long for, touch me with healing and hope…In rage and resentment I have closed down on others, and on myself—hearing not, forgiving not, risking not, turning no other cheek, walking no second mile, loving no enemy…” Jesus is not present here, not by name, but his words suggest his presence without naming it. “I glimpse again,” Loder says in another prayer, “your power to work miracles by turning the few loaves and fishes of my gifts, and me, into food for some other lonely ones…” Christ is not present except in a fleeting reference, hinted at, not given a starring role. And again: “O God, I think of Christ and am glad for this strange gift of life so strangely shared; glad for what can be broken, unbreakable would be less…” This time a mention, but a mere mention. It turns out that these prayers which I resonate with and which I have often turned to when I want some words for my soul are pretty light on Jesus. Maybe that’s a reason I resonate with them, because they are not heavy handed about how I ought to be putting Christ at the center of my Christian life, more real about how Christ is involved in my somewhat Christian life.
Enter today’s scripture, the dramatic climax of which comes when Peter’s says that Christ is the Messiah. As I mentioned earlier, I’m pretty sure the most usual lesson drawn from this passage is that we should be like Peter, proclaiming Jesus, confessing Jesus, exalting Jesus as the one we believe to be the Chosen One of God, the center of our faith, Lord of our lives, savior of the world. For me there’s a different meaning, and it has to do more with the next sentence than with the one about Peter’s confession. The next sentence says that Jesus “sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.” I don’t know why he said that. It’s been the subject of much discussion and debate. But in the light of the direction of my thinking this morning, it may be that exalting Jesus is not the point of being a Christian. It may be in fact that exalting Jesus and proclaiming Jesus may do more to obscure Jesus than to reveal him, may cause us to miss the Jesus who says, “if anyone forces you to go one mile, go also a second mile.” Being vocal and obvious about Jesus so that we are sure not to miss him may paradoxically mean that we do miss the Jesus who does travel with us in our hearts and minds and spirits, the Jesus who is most authentic for us and who we most need.
Of course we can miss Jesus too, I say to myself, as we go about the business of trying to do the work of the church. That too can be an irony, a paradox. The very organization that supposedly has Jesus at the center of its life, has Jesus as part of the core of its life, can, just by trying to do its work conscientiously, end up missing Jesus.
The spirit of the one who continues to whisper to us to love our enemies and to set free those who are captive or oppressed can be hidden beneath an unending round of church activities.
In a different sense, maybe missing Jesus is precisely what we are called to do. Maybe we are called to get past the theology that surrounds Jesus, the titles we have attached to him, the activities we surround him with. When the church thinks, when we Christians think we are exalting Jesus the most, talking about him, praising him, making a big fuss over him, it may be that at just those points we are missing him most. And it is the Jesus we are missing we most need.
Just as it is the Jesus who we sense to be absent from our public life that we need the most. You know that I don’t mean that I think we should talk a lot about Jesus in our public life, but perhaps part of what it means to be Christian is to be very much aware of when we are missing Jesus in our public life, not missing the name of Jesus but missing the spirit of Jesus, missing any voice that echoes among us saying, “Blessed are the peacemakers,” saying “blessed are the merciful”, saying “love your enemies”. One way of understanding what it means to be a Christian may be that a Christian is one who is able to enter the public arena carrying those words in her heart.
There is another prayer I want to quote a brief portion of for you. This time it is by Walter Brueggemann, whose prayers I referred to in the earlier sermons on prayer. This one says: “We watch as the jets fly in with the power people and the money people, the suits, the budgets, the billions…we listen beyond jeering protesters and soaring jets and faintly we hear the mumbling of the crucified one, something about feeding the hungry and giving drink to the thirsty, about clothing the naked, and noticing the prisoners, more about the least and about the holiness among them…”
In the midst of shrill public debates, in the midst of loud proclamations of political truth and religious truth, in the midst of busy lives including busy church lives, in the midst of griefs and sorrows and worries and emptiness and personal issues of every description that we don’t know quite how to deal with, we hear the mumblings of the crucified one. We could easily miss them, if we were not listening. Amen.
Jim Bundy
September 13, 2009