Andy James

A Vision of Peace

October 5, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Psalm 85 and Isaiah 32:16-20
preached on October 5, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There’s been a lot of talk lately about peace, although these days it seems like that the more we talk about it, the more difficult it is to actually find any.

The Global Peace Index, which “measures peace in 162 countries according to 22 indicators that gauge the absence of violence or the fear of violence,” finds that 111 countries have increased in their levels of conflict over the last year, versus only 51 where peacefulness has increased. The whole report is pretty depressing. 500 million people live in countries at risk of instability and conflict, with 200 million of those live below the poverty line. Since 2008, only four indicators reviewed in the index have improved worldwide, while eighteen have deteriorated. And all this conflict costs us an incredible amount. They estimate that the global economic impact of violence reached $9.8 trillion dollars last year—the equivalent of two times the total economy of the entire continent of Africa or $1,350 per person around the world.

With this incredible impact of conflict in our world, it is incredibly surprising to me that we don’t spend more of our time, energy, and money sorting out a way of life that will bring peace to our world. However, our scripture readings today point us to a different way. As we receive the Peacemaking Offering to support the efforts of this congregation and our broader church in the global witness to peacemaking, these two wonderful texts from the Old Testament give us a vision of peace in our world.

As Christians, we tend to examine the question of peace from two perspectives—the internal and the external. When we think about internal peace, we focus on the peace that comes within our lives, “peace like a river in my soul,” as the old spiritual puts it, peace that comes from God to displace our fears, set aside our worries, and give us internal comfort and hope for our own individual lives. But we cannot think only about this kind of peace. We must also consider external peace, the peace that emerges between people and in communities and among the nations of the world, the peace that comes only with hard work, difficult listening, and tremendous amounts of trust built up over time.

Both of these kinds of peace are summed up in a single great Hebrew word that is found in both of our texts this morning: shalom. Shalom is the Hebrew word that always gets translated into English as “peace,” but there’s a lot more contained in that word than is implied in our simple translation. The Hebrew word shalom pulls together a wide variety of understanding related to peace that is more than simply the absence of conflict. Shalom is more about presence than absence—the presence of social justice that enables all to have the things that they need for life and living, the presence of wholeness that offers an understanding of completeness and new life, the presence of hope for something beyond the present reality that is yet still very much achievable in our lives and our world.

This kind of peace, then, filled with wholeness and justice, is exactly the peace that the prophet Isaiah focuses on in our second reading this morning. As he writes to a people who have known little more than conflict for generations and who will end up facing even greater conflict and finally exile in the years ahead, Isaiah pauses from rehearsing all their wrongs to tell them how things will start to go right.

Justice will dwell in the wilderness,
and righteousness abide in the fruitful field.

What stranger place to make things right than the wilderness! What more unusual home for righteousness than the field at the center of the harvest! The prophet knows that God’s way of bringing change and hope will be transformative, that God will challenge the expectations of our world and upend the understandings of our lives that have become the norm.

And then this justice and righteousness will bear even more fruit: peace. Shalom will be “the result of righteousness, quietness, and trust forever.” Peace will come when order is restored, when quiet listening is at the center of all relationships, when trust in God stands at the center of all things. This peace will take root and bear fruit in so many different ways. The people “will abide in a peaceful habitation, in secure dwellings, and in quiet resting places.” The wild forest, filled with terrors and destruction, will be tamed into something new. The city where conflicts rage will find comfort. God’s people will be connected to the land and find comfort in the waters of every stream.

These visions of peace from Isaiah go right along with the words of our psalm for today. Toward the end of these thirteen beautiful verses, we find some of the most unusual imagery of peace in the bible.

Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;
righteousness and peace will kiss each other.

Faithfulness will spring up from the ground,
and righteousness will look down from the sky.

If only this vision could be real! If only we could find this sort of peace in our lives! If only our world could settle into such ways! These things may seem impossible, difficult, and even far off, but it is our call and challenge as followers of Jesus Christ to bear this vision of peace into the world. This vision seeks not simply to eliminate conflict but to promote a way of life in our lives and our world where justice and righteousness will flourish for all people. This vision of peace doesn’t seek to squash conflict here so that it later emerges over there, like a perpetual high-stakes game of “whack-a-mole,” but works to change the structures and systems that allow conflict to flourish and replace them with a way of life that promotes social justice and peace. And this vision of peace doesn’t proclaim peace when things aren’t actually whole and complete and calm but instead gives us a vision of something more so that we can be encouraged in the work of making peace each and every day.

The vision of peace we have in these words from Isaiah and the psalms is one that is still a long way away from being known in its fullness, but that doesn’t mean that we are freed from doing this work in the world now. God’s shalom is still very much distant from us in its fullness, but there are yet little glimpses of it here and now. We see God’s shalom whenever a broken relationship is mended or a new start emerges amidst uncertainty and challenge. We see God’s shalom when we welcome the presence of the Holy Spirit into our lives to feed our hearts with new life. And we see God’s shalom when we work to bring justice and righteousness into the relationships of our lives and our world.

It is not easy to live lives that show this vision of peace. A lot of people will object to the pathway that we offer along the way. Some want an easy peace, simply declared by someone in power without any real consequences for that person—and so without any real consequence in general. And some will say that peace just needs to be put off until some bigger conflict gets worked out. But the work of bringing peace and justice and righteousness to our world begins with each one of us every day, with honest assessments of the relationships in our lives and the things that we do to foster or limit peace, with simple steps to increase communication and build trust when there is uncertainty and fear, with openness to a new and different way that we find first here at this table, where the one with great power and privilege emptied it all to share it more abundantly.

Each Sunday, as we did earlier today, this community passes the peace with one another. I was told when I came to be your pastor nine years ago that we could change most anything in the order of service—except for the passing of the peace! That time of connection and sharing peace with one another is one of the great visions of peace in our life together. The Iona Community of Scotland, in one of its communion liturgies, has taken that ritual and given it new and deeper meaning by introducing it with these words:

not an easy peace,
not an insignificant peace,
not a half-hearted peace,
but the peace of the Lord Jesus Christ
is with us now.

May the vision of this peace be with us every day, and may God guide us as we share it with one another and all the world until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Ultimate Transplant

September 28, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Philippians 2:1-13
preached on September 28, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Advances in medical science in recent years have made organ transplants an almost routine thing in our society. This is a very new thing, though. I attended church growing up with one of the doctors involved in the first lung transplant in 1963 at the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson, and even as a child, I can remember organ transplants being so unusual as to make the news pretty regularly in my hometown.

Nowadays, though, things seem to be a bit different. Organ donors are far more common, and many organ transplants are relatively routine operations. We have moved from transplanting some of the more outlying organ systems like the liver or kidney into the heart and lungs and now even in recent years to the entire face. Yet there seems to be one organ left out of all these transplants: the brain. I suspect that there are plenty of good reasons for that!

But many centuries before anyone even imagined that an organ transplant might be possible, let alone understood how our bodies work, the apostle Paul suggested that we all need that transplant that doesn’t even seem to be on the horizon, a brain transplant! In these thirteen incredible verses, Paul urges his listeners to replace their minds with the mind of Christ, to undergo a transplant of the highest order and be transformed by the mind of Christ.

Paul begins this call by appealing to the fond relationship that he has developed with his listeners. “Make my joy complete,” he says—give him something to be proud of and help him to celebrate the way of life that they have developed. “Make my joy complete,” he says—set aside your own individual cares and concerns and “in humility regard others as better than yourselves.” “Make my joy complete,” he says—look to the interests of others, and take up the mind of Christ.

These instructions regarding taking up the mind of Christ come three times in our reading today. The first two times, Paul suggests that the Philippians need to set aside the things of their minds that divide them and be united in their love and service. It is only third time, though, that he suggests that brain transplant, when he shifts his proclamation to tell them that such unity can come only through setting aside their own minds and taking up the mind of Christ.

Paul describes what this might look like using words that were probably quite familiar to the Philippians long before they received this letter. Most scholars think that verses 6-11 here began their life not as words of Paul in this specific context but as a creed or even hymn of the early church. As Paul casts it here, though, it is far more than just a simple creed to recite with the lips or to set in the mind—it has real and direct consequences for action.

The creed makes it clear that Jesus had a very different approach to the world than our human one. Jesus had every reason to exploit his status and position as equal with God, but instead he emptied himself and took on human likeness. Jesus could have avoided all trial and trouble and tribulation, but instead he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death. So Paul then calls the Philippians and us to approach the world differently and replace our human minds with this mind—a mind that sets aside human status and privilege and seeks to stand with and for the least of these among us, a mind that shuns any and every act that puts ourselves above others, a mind that embraces challenge and struggle, a mind that brings together humility and obedience without restriction and without fear.

But there is more to the mind of Christ than just self-sacrificing love and obedience unto death. The early creed goes on to show how God turns our human expectations upside down even in the response to Christ’s self-sacrificing obedience. By the power of God, Christ’s obedience and humility unto death are transformed into high exaltation, into “the name that is above every name,” into one who will receive all glory and honor “in heaven and on earth and under the earth,” into the simple great affirmation for all time, “Jesus Christ is Lord.”

Unlike the ways in which we take on Christ’s mind in his obedience and humility, taking on the mind of Christ doesn’t necessarily bring us immediate and direct glory for ourselves. Instead, we take on the mind of Christ as we place our hope and trust where they truly belong and order our lives as God intends, giving glory to God by giving up our own, exalting Christ and not ourselves, and confessing his lordship in our lives and our world. We take on the mind of Christ as we set our obedience to God above the other allegiances of our world, above family, nation, privilege, status, or any other human thing. And we take on the mind of Christ any and every time we gather to sing praise as we do today, joining our hearts, minds, and voices to that chorus who already give honor and glory and confession to proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord.

These words are an incredible and beautiful gift. They stand as a very important part of the theological foundation of Christian faith. They call us to seek a new and different way of living that is beyond our expectations and our worldly ways. And they challenge us to figure out how to get a brain transplant as we take on the mind of Christ for ourselves. Paul’s concluding words give us a little more guidance as we think about how we are to live all this out. He knows that each of us will approach taking on the mind of Christ in different ways, so he concludes by encouraging us to “work out your own salvation with fear and trembling.” This does not mean that we should be afraid that we will get it wrong, because the reality is that we will! But Paul makes it clear that we really don’t have so much to worry about: “It is God who is at work in you, enabling you both to will and to work for [God’s] good pleasure.” All our best attempts at sorting all these things out will fall short, but God will always be working to transform us beyond what we can understand.

God is replacing our minds with the mind of Christ bit by bit. God is performing the ultimate brain transplant on each and every one of us day after day, not trying to make us all the same but trying to bring us together to live and work as God has shown us in Jesus Christ our Lord. So may God open us to this powerful movement in our midst as our minds are transformed into the mind of Christ, so that we too might live with humility, obedience, and hope and join in God’s transformation of the world until all things are made new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Worthy of the In-Between

September 21, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Philippians 1:21-30
preached on September 21, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Sometimes it can be a bit strange to read letters like what we read this morning from Philippians. I often find it to be something almost like eavesdropping on a conversation between two good friends. There is so much more being said that what we ourselves can hear. There is so much written between the lines—shared experiences, conversations at meals about the meaning of life and the importance of faith, even inside jokes—that remains beyond our grasp and yet is integral to understanding what is being said. In the case of reading letters from the Bible, add in two millennia of of time difference and at least one layer of translation and you’ve got the perfect recipe for confusion, misunderstanding, and head scratching!

Paul’s letter to the Philippians is very much one of those letters that doesn’t always sense to us at our distance. Many scholars think that the Philippians were Paul’s favorite church, so when we read the letter, it really does feel like we’re missing something here. There’s a real sense of affection throughout his words to them. His tone is never harsh but always encouraging, never focused on lifting up the places where they have gone wrong but on rejoicing in their faithfulness, never distant but very personal and friendly and loving. All this makes Philippians a wonderful, warm book to read, but it can also make it a bit difficult to connect to our lives.

The first line of our reading this morning is a perfect example of this: “For to me, living is Christ and dying is gain.” What? That just doesn’t make sense to me on a linguistic level, let alone a practical one. Paul’s attempts to explain what he means just make me all the more confused. Some of the confusion is a translation issue—there are certainly other ways to look at these words beyond the trusty New Revised Standard Version, descended as it is from the good old King James, which has nearly the same confusing translation. The thoughtful paraphrase The Message clarifies Paul’s intention a bit, I think: “Alive, I’m Christ’s messenger; dead, I’m his bounty. Life versus even more life! I can’t lose.” But what does this mean, anyway? What is the life that Paul is referring to? Does he really prefer life after death to life here and now? Or is he trying to get at something else here?

As he goes on to explain all of this, Paul appeals to that deep relationship that he shares with the Philippians. He says that he prefers to “depart and be with Christ,” yet his continued life on earth “is more necessary” for them. He is so devoted to them that that relationship, among other things, pulls him back toward this life. He has been living in the tension so prevalent in the New Testament between the here-and-now and the world-to-come, the already and the not-yet, life in the flesh and life with Christ. He has every reason to want to move on—he has lived a good and faithful life, he is suffering from an unknown-to-us physical affliction, and he is living under Roman imprisonment. Yet he doesn’t set this world aside. He longs to be with Christ, to know the fullness of God’s love, to set aside the pains of living, and yet he knows that there is still labor for him in the days ahead, that he can continue to grow in his own faith, hope, and love, and share the joys of life in relationship with communities like the Philippians.

All this focus on the life here-and-now, though, requires careful attention to the way of living in this world, not just for the sake of living today but to find a faithful way forward in this in-between time. So Paul insists that this beloved community “live… life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ,” which for him is grounded in unity of spirit. This unity of spirit brings them together and gives them common purpose for the actions that live out the gospel. This unity also forms the basis of their witness against anyone who may oppose them, for these opponents will not realize all the ways in which God is working through the Philippians’ faithfulness and courage to seal their destruction. This unity supports the Philippians and brings them together, helping them to believe and to face the challenges of faithfulness together along the way. This unity takes its clearest form as he and the Philippians face the suffering that they both endure, and he assures them that this is not just something that must be endured but indeed is a privilege to be celebrated!

While the deep relationship between Paul and the Philippians makes for beautiful reading, it can make it a little more difficult for us to figure out where we fit in in these words. What does all this mean for us in our world? What does it mean for us to live our lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ? How are we to understand this call in our world where we are still in this in-between time many centuries after Paul would have suspected that all things would be made new?

Perhaps Paul’s call to unity of spirit is more important for us than we might realize. It is far too easy to let the fractures of our world break into our lives. We see a broken political system where women and men spend more time campaigning against one another and posturing against another perspective than in finding a solution that brings us together. We lament the end of the structures that have bound together our communities for years, yet we ourselves no longer contribute the time and resources to them that are necessary to make them work. We complain that society is changing from the way it always was and fail to recognize how even what we remember is the product of so many different perspectives of time and place. We sigh that our churches no longer have the members or privilege that we remember in them, yet we ourselves have too often looked only within these walls rather than seeking to work in new and different ways beyond them.

When challenges and struggles like these come before us, the temptation is to let those things push us apart, to allow conflict to blossom and flourish, to set aside the call to live in peace together, to be intimidate by others who shine light on our divisions, to be divided even amidst our unity in Christ. So perhaps in our fractured world we are called more than ever before to live life in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ, coming together from our different perspectives to stand firm in one spirit. In our world where those with different perspectives are best placed in entirely different camps, we are called to strive side by side with one mind for the faith of the gospel, not focusing on our own understanding but on the faithfulness of God in Jesus Christ. In our world where everything is changing and our temptation is to hold tight to the ways that we know, we are called not to be intimidated by change, to struggle with the different and emerging understandings of faithfulness in our lives and our world, to seek together, amidst all our differences, to find the new life that is coming into our midst in Jesus Christ.

Like many Presbyterians and Americans, I’ve followed with some interest the news of this past week as the people of Scotland voted in a referendum on independence from the United Kingdom. When I was last in Scotland about two years ago, this referendum was still a good ways off, and most people assumed that the result would be a clear vote against independence, so I think many people ended up a bit surprised that the vote was actually as close as it was, with the “yes” vote for independence receiving about 45% of the total.

What has been most amazing about this referendum, though, is the way in which it seems to have brought out the deepest passion for the good of the nation. Some 85% of registered voters cast ballots in the referendum—compare that with the meager 10% of New Yorkers who voted in our own party primaries two weeks ago! As one commentator put it, “That nearly every Scottish adult over the age of 16 has been engaged, peacefully, in a crucial political decision is widely recognised as the referendum’s great achievement.”

Both sides offered impassioned arguments for their perspective, yet in the end the result seems to have brought everyone to want to work together for a better nation. Our sisters and brothers in our parent church, the Church of Scotland, maintained intentional institutional neutrality in the referendum, recognizing that people of good faith and practice might disagree on the best pathway for the work of God’s kingdom in our midst. Good, faithful, Christian people worked on both sides of the referendum, yet the church did not take its own stand. Some criticized the church for its neutrality, yet it may be the Church of Scotland’s very example of unity amidst differing opinions that can be its most powerful witness in these days. Amidst the fractures in society, it can stand as a witness to the ways in which God’s faithfulness can bring people together.

So may God guide us to live lives worthy of this in-between time, striving together for the unity we know in Christ so that we might be a witness to new life even as we struggle to live these lives in a manner worthy of the gospel of Christ until all things are made new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Balance of Forgiveness

September 14, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 18: 21-35
preached on September 14, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

The Irish writer Oscar Wilde offers us some wisdom that seems quite appropriate for the events of today and our reading this morning: “After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relatives.” So maybe the outcome of today’s parable might have been a bit different if only they had come to our fall picnic for a good meal first!

On this day of celebration, as we begin a new year in our life together, kick off the annual restart of Sunday school, commemorate the beginning of a new school year for our children and youth, and gather after worship for a festive picnic, it seems strange to turn our attention to a parable that ends with two men thrown in prison and the rest of us threatened with a similar fate. Wouldn’t it be nice if all of Jesus’ parables ended happily ever after? Can’t we just have one nice, happy story from Jesus every now and then? Isn’t the gospel supposed to be filled with good news anyway?

Alas, that is not the kind of story that is before us. Like much of the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ, this parable and all its surrounding reflection are focused on forgiveness, even though the good news about forgiveness here is a bit more conditional than most as it explores how human and divine forgiveness get balanced out in the great equations of life and living. Jesus told this parable in response to one of Peter’s many questions to him. They had been talking about the importance and process of forgiveness for a good while now, and Jesus had paid special attention in his teaching to how the disciples would deal with one another when there was conflict between them. This process focused on individual attention to wrongdoing that would escalate to a broader confrontation only when reconciliation was unsuccessful, and it insisted on accountability for sinfulness while also encouraging a graceful approach to wrongdoing and especially wrongdoers. And this parable comes after Jesus instructs his disciples that they must take up their cross and follow him, so it quickly becomes clear that part of this call is to pay attention to forgiveness and reconciliation.

In the midst of all this, when Peter asked Jesus how many times he must forgive someone who sins against him, I can’t imagine that he expected anything quite this generous. “How often should I forgive? As many as seven times?” “Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.” That’s a whopper of a number. Forgiving someone seven times is enough already to ask, so forgiving seventy-seven times is just flat-out ridiculous. But Jesus clearly meant what he said to Peter and so defined the balance of forgiveness in the parable at the center of our gospel text today.

The parable is strangely simple, as it portrays the interaction between two debtors and the men that they owe. Despite owing very different amounts—one an astonishingly large amount, perhaps even beyond what could ever even be owed, and the other a very tiny, nearly insignificant, amount—both debtors plead with the men that they owe to seek some sort of patience or relief. Here the two stories diverge. Strangely, the man who is owed the larger debt, worth many times more than a lifetime of wages, relents and not only gives him more time to pay but forgives the debt entirely. But the man who is owed the much smaller debt is ruthless in his insistence that he immediately be paid what he is owed, and when his debtor cannot do so, he has him thrown into prison.

The parable brings these two stories together because the man who is forgiven a large debt is the one who is owed a much smaller debt. The one who receives incredible forgiveness cannot offer even a little of it to others. The one who seeks generosity for himself cannot find a way to share that gift with another. When the one owed the greater debt hears of this outcome, he immediately rescinds his offering of grace. “You wicked slave! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not have had mercy on your fellow slave, as I had mercy on you?” He then hands “him over to be tortured until he would pay his entire debt.” Then Jesus closed his telling of the parable with a warning about the balance of forgiveness: “So my heavenly Father will also do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”

Such a warning does not feel like good news to me. The gift of forgiveness from God in Christ seems to come without conditions such as this. The hope of new life seems a little less hopeful and a good bit less new if we have to worry about how our actions toward others will be judged along the way. And while the promise of divine retribution may be entirely reasonable and even deserved, it can leave us trembling in our boots over potential bad acts even as we examine our actions more closely.

Even when we enjoy incredible forgiveness from God, sorting out the balance of forgiveness with those around us is not easy. It is far easier to bear grudges against others than to address the things that keep us apart as part of the process of reconciliation. It is far more normal in the eyes of our world to end a relationship over the perceived sins of those around us than to work through the challenges of new life together. And it is even at times necessary to insist that those around us face the consequences of their actions that have harmed us.

Over this past week, we have been reminded of the incredible challenges of domestic violence in our culture as a professional football player brought the culture of violence learned on the football field into his relationship with his then-fiancée and now wife. Even after video was released that showed him punching her in an elevator until she became unconscious, she has insisted that she forgives him and that he should not be punished severely. Could Jesus really have meant that she needed to forgive his harm to her seventy-seven times? Was he really suggesting that she ought to put up with such behavior and place herself at greater risk?

The balance of forgiveness that is at stake here isn’t quite as simple as what Jesus portrays in the parable, and I cannot reasonably suggest that he would insist upon the abused returning to the abuser or immediately offer forgiveness to those who have deeply wronged us when they are unprepared to admit their wrongdoing. Yet in the light of Jesus’ instruction to take up the cross and follow him, the balance of forgiveness requires that we seek some sort of reconciliation, that we not build our lives on the grudges we carry against others, that we stop placing our focus on keeping score or sorting out who is more right or wrong and seek a new and different way of living together, that so much as is possible we set aside the anger we carry toward those who wrong us and so open ourselves to new and right and safe relationship with them along the way, even if that means stepping away from them entirely for our own safety or for the safety of others.

This kind of approach to life and living can be transformative for us. Imagine if the first misstep did not immediately result in the end of a relationship. Imagine how the connections between nations would be different if we approached difficulty not with guns blazing but with cooler heads and an openness to listening and forgiveness. And imagine how the controversies that so easily swirl in our world over the smallest slights could be transformed through open acknowledgement of the places where we all have gone wrong. As much as anything, I think Jesus is calling us in this parable to do our best to live in this way with one another, to make it clear that when we deal with others, we approach one another with grace and mercy at the forefront, and to embody the kind of forgiveness and love in our interactions that he shows us each and every day.

So as we work to make this parable good news in our lives and our world, as we seek to find the right balance of forgiveness amidst the difficulties we face, may God open us to this new way of life with one another, may God help us to be gentle and gracious in our actions toward others, and may God work in us and through us and in spite of us to bring reconciliation to this broken and fearful world until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord. Thanks be to God! Amen.

The Pathway of New Life

September 7, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on Matthew 16:13-28
preached on September 7, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Poor Peter. He just can’t figure out what Jesus is up to. One minute Jesus was celebrating him for being the first disciple to acknowledge that he was the Messiah, then the next he’s getting called Satan.

Peter had always been one of Jesus’ favorites, among the first disciples that Jesus called out from his daily work as a fisherman. I have this image of Peter listening intently to every word that Jesus spoke, waiting to soak up the latest morsel of new knowledge and instruction that Jesus would offer.

But the teacher’s message didn’t always get through to him very well. Peter was the one who decided it would be a good thing to look down when he started trying to walk on water. Peter was the one at the transfiguration of Jesus who suggested that they build houses on the mountain so everyone could stick around for a while. When Jesus told them that the way to the kingdom of heaven was leave behind all their worldly wealth, Peter was the first to remind him of everything that the disciples had left behind. And Peter was ultimately the one who denied even knowing Jesus after he had been arrested and as he was facing his death.

And then there is today’s story about Peter. Jesus started out by querying his disciples about what they had been hearing from other people about him: “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” It’s not immediately clear why Jesus was asking this question. Was he using the disciples as informants of some sort, trying to get information from them about what others were saying and thinking so that he could adjust his words and actions accordingly? Was he trying to figure out if his time had come, if people had really begun to understand what he was up to? Or was he quizzing the disciples to see if they themselves had shaped their own opinions of him based only on what they had heard from others?

All the responses that they shared were pretty timid. According to the disciples, the people were seeing Jesus as a messenger following after John the Baptist or a prophet in the line of Elijah or Jeremiah. It was clear from the disciples’ reports that the people were understanding a portion of Jesus’ message but were ultimately missing the bigger point.

But maybe in asking this question Jesus was just trying to set up his next question, for he then turned to the disciples and made it personal: “But who do you say that I am?”

Like the good teacher’s pet that he was, Peter immediately piped up with a response: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” This was a monumental moment. It is the first time in the Matthew’s gospel that any particular person beyond the narrator uses the word “Messiah” to describe Jesus.

Jesus was clearly excited by Peter’s confession. He offered accolades to Peter for his willingness to receive and share this truth. He made it very clear that this was not Peter’s own doing but God’s. And he promised that Peter would be the foundation of things to come.

But Peter must have let all this praise get to his head. It didn’t take long for him to show that he just didn’t understand anything at all about what this meant. After Peter’s confession, Jesus began to teach the disciples about what it meant for him to be the Messiah, about how he would need to face great suffering, about how he would ultimately die and be raised because of all that he said and did.

But Peter would have nothing of it. If his friend and teacher was the Messiah, then he should not have to suffer in any way. The honor and status of such a figure should never have to face such humiliation. He pulled Jesus aside and told him that this should not, even could not, happen. But then Jesus turned to Peter, the teacher’s pet who had sat at his feet listening intently from the very beginning, the disciple who had seemed to understand it best, the very one who had offered the first confession of Jesus as Messiah, and condemned him: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”

Jesus proceeded to make the implications of being the Messiah clear. It had nothing to do with status or position, and in fact it had everything to do with giving up those very things. The Messiah’s way to exaltation was not through recognition of kingship as the world knew it—it came instead through giving up everything, through suffering and death, through the foolishness and humiliation of the cross. Anyone who wanted to find this kind of glory in and through the Messiah would need to find this kind of suffering, too. A profession of mere words such as Peter’s would not be enough—such a confession required similar steps in actions to show a denial of self-interest and a taking-up of the interests of others, actions that set aside personal gain for the well-being of the world, actions that offered even the fullness of life itself so that others might live.

While we might say that Peter’s actions from confession to correction here are wholly unlike our own, I think they are probably more familiar to us than we care to admit. Following Jesus has two parts, belief and action, and Peter had gotten the belief part right but missed how that belief necessarily changes our actions. We are probably more like Peter than we can even begin to realize. How often do we set our minds on human things and ignore God’s new and different way? How often do we try to define what God says or thinks about others because we feel the need to defend God or make sure that God’s honor isn’t put at risk, as if God didn’t have enough power to do it? And how often do we offer a word of confession of what we believe about God and then leave it behind quickly when it doesn’t fit quite so well into our lives?

It is not easy to live out the full and real consequences of what we say we believe in this world. So many interpretations of Christianity have twisted Jesus’ message for purposes that have absolutely nothing to do with what he said he was about. So many people have claimed that Jesus is the Messiah while using that very declaration as the basis for condemning others. And so many times we make faithfulness as simple as wearing a cross around our neck, showing up at church on Sunday, or following a traditional moral code and miss that there might be more.

Claiming that Jesus is the Messiah and so taking up the cross in our world has real consequences. It means more than having to give up a relaxing Sunday morning drinking coffee in bed with the newspaper, more than claiming protection for ourselves and those we love amidst the perceived threats to our privileged lives, more than preparing to enjoy eternal life in a heaven where the streets are paved with gold and we are reunited with beloved spouses, friends, and pets. As nothing other than our Presbyterian Book of Order puts it, “We are persuaded that there is an inseparable connection between faith and practice, truth and duty. Otherwise it would be of no consequence either to discover truth or to embrace it.” (F-3.0104)

So what is the connection between your faith and practice? What is the consequence of confessing Jesus as the Messiah in these days? How are we called to live differently because we must take up our cross and follow Jesus? Over the next month, as we prepare to receive the Peacemaking Offering on the first Sunday in October, we’ll be thinking more about these very things.

In the meantime, though, I encourage you to examine your lives and our life together. Where can we make these things more real? Who around us is walking the way of the cross—not so much those who are subjecting themselves to difficulty but more those who face suffering each and every day at the hands of systems and structures that oppress? How can we walk this way in our lives—not so much so that we can be enjoy the glory that may come at the end but more that we can join God in making a new way for all creation?

So may God guide us as we offer our confession, as we acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, as we make the connection between this confession and our daily lives, and as we take up the crosses of our lives and walk with Jesus on the pathway of new life. Thanks be to God! Amen.