The Journey of Faith (Sept 16 2012)

Homily:  Yr B Proper 24, Sept 16  2012, St. Albans

Readings:  Prov 1:20-33; Wisdom 7:26-8:1; James 3:1-12; Mk 8:27-38

The Journey of Faith

This morning we baptize Isaac.  It’s a time for celebration, and we will celebrate.  But baptism isn’t just a celebration.  It’s serious stuff.  As Jesus himself reminds us in today’s gospel, being a follower of Jesus isn’t trivial. It’s serious. 

The baptism we will celebrate is a rich sacrament , a symbol which incorporates many different images and meanings.  One of these meanings is the one that I talked about with the children earlier.  Baptism is a sign of the new life that we have in Christ, it is a symbol of new birth, of being born as a child of God and adopted into God’s family, into the family that we call the church.

But we are also baptized, and Isaac too will be baptized, into the death and resurrection of Jesus.   Baptism is a sign that we have become followers of Jesus, the one who said that “if any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

It’s not always easy to follow Jesus.  Have you ever noticed that in the gospel of Mark, Jesus is always on the move?  Always going somewhere, always on a journey.  Today’s gospel reading is a turning point in that journey, quite literally.  Jesus and his followers start out by heading north, and then they turn around 180 degrees and travel in the opposite direction towards the south.  Why did Jesus go to Caesarea Philippi?

Some of us here are old enough to remember the Cold War, the period of conflict and confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States and its allies.  The height of the Cold War was in the early 60’s.  In 1962 there was the Cuban Missile Crisis.  In 1961 the Berlin Wall was built. In the early 60’s the atmosphere in West Berlin was tense, there was the constant threat of invasion.

In 1963, John F. Kennedy went to Berlin, to the farthest frontier of Western Europe.  And standing in the shadow of the Berlin Wall, with a million people gathered in the streets, he made his famous statement “Ich bin ein Berliner”.  I am a Berliner.  And with those words he pledged the full might of the American military to protect the people of West Berlin against the aggression of the Soviet Union.  And the crowds cheered, because Kennedy had said what they hoped he would say, what they expected him to say, what they had been longing to hear.

In the year 33 AD, Jesus went to Caesarea Philippi.  Caesarea Philippi was at the very northern frontier of the land of Israel.  It was a Roman city, built in honour of the Roman Emperor.  It had a gleaming white marble temple dedicated to Augustus Caesar, Son of God, Saviour of the World.  For a Jew in the year 33 AD, Caesarea Philippi was the symbol of everything that was wrong, everything that was evil in the world.  The Jewish people had been under Roman occupation since 63 BC. The last hundred years had been a time of festering resentment, violent protests, humiliation and shame.  Every Jew dreamed of the day that the Romans would be overthrown and defeated.

Jesus led his disciples and the crowds that followed him on a long journey from Galilee to Caesarea Philippi, with its blasphemous temple dedicated to Augustus Caesar, and its threatening military barracks housing the Roman Legion.  In the crowd that followed Jesus were people whose mothers and fathers had been killed by Roman soldiers in the Galilean rebellions of the year 6 AD.  The crowd must have been nervous; they must have wondered why he was leading them to Caesarea Philippi.

And as they come within sight of the city walls, Jesus pulls his closest followers aside and asks them, “Who do people say that I am?”

And they answered him, “some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets.”

And then Jesus asks them, “But you, who do you say I am?”

And I can imagine Peter, looking at Jesus, and then looking at the Roman city with its temple and soldiers.  I can imagine the events of the past few months running through Peter’s mind, the huge crowds that gathered wherever Jesus went, they way they follow him and hang on his every word, Jesus acts of power, the growing conflict with the authorities.

And all of a sudden he gets it.  Jesus is the one, the one sent by God, the one that all of Israel has been hoping for and dreaming of for hundreds of years, the one who will save his people. 

“You are the Messiah.”

The Messiah.  The one the prophets had promised that God would send.  The one who would purify Israel, re-establish its supremacy among the nations, defeat the Romans and usher in a new era of peace.

I’m sure Peter expected that at any moment Jesus would address the crowd in the fashion of JFK, or of a great military leader and announce his mission, declaring that anyone who wanted to join with him to overthrow Rome must be ready “to deny themselves, take up their sword, and follow me.”   And with that they would begin the long march to Jerusalem, gathering strength along the way.

But Jesus doesn’t do that.  Instead, Jesus begins to teach them that he must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the authorities, and be killed, and after three days rise again.

And when Jesus addresses the crowd, there is no talk of taking up the sword.  Instead they are told to take up their cross.  The instrument of Roman terror and torture.  The cross, that burden, which as a final act of humiliation, the Romans would make a convicted rebel carry to his own execution. 

There were no cheers from the crowd.

At first Peter tries to convince Jesus that he’s got it wrong.  He takes Jesus aside and rebukes him.  But Jesus in turn lets Peter have it, right in front of all the others.  There is to be no misunderstanding on this.  Jesus will not be the Messiah they are expecting. 

And with this, Peter’s hopes and dreams, his expectations are crushed.  He is angry, he is embarrassed, he doesn’t understand, but most of all he is profoundly disappointed.

Like Peter, sometimes we don’t get the God we want.  What do you do when God doesn’t meet your expectations?  When God disappoints us?

I was told a story of a small rural congregation in which one of the woman became very ill. 

This congregation rallied together.  They held prayer vigils for the woman who was ill, they visited and provided support, and they had a tremendous faith that God would heal the woman.  They expected God to restore her to health.

Sadly, after some time, after many prayer services, the woman died.  And the congregation was devastated.  They experienced doubt.  The God they had hoped for, that they had expected, didn’t show up.  And they were profoundly disappointed.

Somewhere along our journey, something of the same sort will happen to us.  There will be times in life when things are hard, when we are lonely, when there is sadness or illness or brokenness.  There will be times when the God we want and expect doesn’t show up. 

You know, when I read today’s Gospel earlier this week, I came at it with the assumption that Jesus is my role model.  That this Jesus who teaches that he will suffer and be put to death, that this Jesus who teaches us to deny ourselves and take up the cross like he did, that’s what I’m supposed to be like. 

But that’s hard.  I don’t know if I can be like that.  Honestly, I don’t think I can ever live up to that standard.  I don’t know if I even understand what it means for me in my culture to take up my cross and follow Jesus.  This gospel became more and more disconcerting to me.  I started to have doubts. 

It’s not that I don’t accept Jesus teaching.  I do.  When I read about people like Oscar Romero or Mahatma Ghandi or Mother Teresa, I am awestruck and full of admiration.  It’s just that I’m not sure that I’m up to that sort of thing, in fact I’m pretty sure I’m not.

And that’s when I discovered that there’s another role model for me in today’s gospel.    And that’s Peter.  Peter.  The one who gets it wrong.  The one who gets chewed out.  The one who doesn’t understand, the one who is profoundly disappointed.  Because you know what Peter does?  He continues to follow Jesus.  He doesn’t know why Jesus is doing what he’s doing.  He is full of doubts and fears.  He doesn’t understand.  But somehow, in spite of all that, he has faith. 

Somehow Peter realizes that even though Jesus may not be what he wants, and Jesus may not be what he expects, Jesus is the one in whom he can put his trust.  And so at a time when many in the crowd turn away from Jesus, Peter follows.  Peter walks the journey of faith, dogged by doubt and fear and misunderstanding and missteps along the way.  It won’t be until Easter morning, three days after Jesus prediction of his own death has come true, that Peter will finally get to look into an empty tomb, and start, just start, to understand.

Our journey is like that.  Isaac’s journey will be like that.  We don’t have to have it altogether.  We don’t need to understand everything.  We will be disappointed, we will have doubts along the way.  We will be tempted to turn back.  But all these things are part of the journey of faith, the journey that each one of us embarked on at our own baptism.  Just ask Peter.  

Amen.