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Sermon – 15th September

    16th Sunday After Trinity

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    Readings: James 3: 1-12 and Mark 8: 27-end

    Pride, it is said, comes before a fall. And I expect we’ve all been there at one time or another. A moment when we were pleased to think that we shone, followed by a humiliation.

    It happened to Simon Peter in the reading we heard from Mark’s Gospel. The ‘fall’ came in the form of a stern rebuke from Jesus, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” And this after Peter had been the brave one; the one who was ready to answer Jesus’ question – “Who do you say that I am?”

    I’m sure we’ve all been in that situation as well. The leader of the group, or the teacher, asks a question that is going to put us on the spot and risk the ridicule of others if we give a silly answer. Better to keep quiet. But not Peter – “You are the Messiah.”

    Now this followed months, or maybe a year or two of the twelve disciples following Jesus around; seeing his miracles; hearing his teaching; sensing the authority with which he spoke. A moment had to come when the disciples would have to step up a gear, and decide how far they would go with this man.

    It’s interesting that when the same story is covered in Matthew’s gospel, Jesus applauds Peter. ‘Blessed are you, Simon, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” But not in Mark’s gospel. Here we get into the subtle differences between the four gospels, and what we can read into that. Probably Matthew’s gospel was intended to portray Peter as the undoubted leader of the twelve, but this does not come over in Mark’s gospel. Rather, Peter is seen as a spokesperson in some ways, but also as a human who can and does get it wrong from time to time, and prone to opening mouth before brain is fully engaged.

    Yes, it was God who revealed to Peter that Jesus was the Messiah. But Peter hadn’t understood that this Messiah would undergo great suffering, and be rejected, and be killed. This didn’t meet Peter’s idea of Messiah, and he said so. So Jesus rebuked Peter, and begins to tell the twelve about the true cost of discipleship.

    And now a slight digression, as we take in the teaching from the other reading today – James chapter 3. Words are terribly important. Peter used the word ‘Messiah’, and even though he hadn’t fully grasped the implications of that word, it was beginning to shape the life of Peter as it had shaped the life of Jesus.

    We don’t usually believe that words have that kind of power. ‘You are what you eat’, we say, but what about ‘You will be what you say?’ We increasingly hear bad and explosive language from people of all ages in every situation – not just spoken, but emblazoned on T-shirts and written in e-mails and texts. The abuse people in public life often have to endure electronically is horrific, and harmful texts and messages young people sometimes receive has made many lives a misery. This week we’ve heard Donald Trump at his worst, and President Putin ‘upping the anti.’ And Jane Williams writes, “As all our media sit increasingly lightly to the truth of what they report, they make truth something that we are no longer sure we can recognize.” You might not entirely agree with that statement, but we know what she’s saying.

    Turning to the first reading today – the Epistle of James, it seems the congregations to which he wrote had a bad word problem. We don’t exactly know who the author – this ‘James’ was, and we are only told at the start of the book that he is writing to ‘the twelve tribes of the dispersion.’ But whoever these communities were – they seemed to be full of people who didn’t really think that words mattered. They were saying horrible things and still calling themselves Christians; they were using religious words but that didn’t seem to have a positive effect on their lifestyle.

    James points out that your words are the things that guide your whole life. Whatever was going on in those congregations was serious enough for James to devote a whole chapter to this issue of careless speech. We may think some of his comments are a bit ‘OTT’, but he makes the serious point that Christian teachers will be judged with greater strictness. As we said, Peter was prone to opening his mouth before engaging his brain; we wouldn’t accuse him of malicious talk, but his failings are a reminder to us all of the damage of ill-chosen words.

    But turning back to the question of Jesus as Messiah, as Peter rightly proclaimed. Jesus accepted the title, but then referred to himself as Son of Man. He indicated that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering. It seems that this suffering was an inescapable part of the vocation. Jesus was also quite clear that what holds true for the leader will hold true for the followers also.

    So then come the uncomfortable verses about the need for true followers to deny themselves; take up their cross and follow Jesus; that those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for the sake of the gospel will save it.

    Peter’s failing was that he didn’t understand this requirement – almost – to suffer, as a follower of the Lord. He didn’t like the idea of Jesus suffering because it could mean that he would be in for a hard time too. Talking about this passage in Mark’s gospel, one commentary says, ‘the crucial divide is not between those who acknowledge Jesus and those who do not, but between those disciples who are prepared to follow him on the way of suffering and those who are not.’ The great preacher C.H. Spurgeon said, “There are no crown-wearers in heaven who were not cross-bearers here below.”

    This incident at Caesarea Philippi was a turning-point in the ministry of Jesus. After this, conflict built up as Jesus moved towards Jerusalem. And Caesarea Philippi was a significant location for such an episode. Here was a temple dedicated to the god Pan – the god of nature. Here Baal, one of the gods of the Old Testament, was worshipped. Here Caesar was worshipped, and various Syrian deities too. This seemed to be an appropriate place for the truth to come out, as the disciples grappled with the question, “Who do you say that I am?”

    An Anglican priest, John Pridmore, says “Christians are those who hear this question, who are dogged by it, and will not drop it, and who wonder about it and work at it until the day dawns when no more questions will be needed.”  Former Archbishop Rowan Williams once said “God is first and foremost that depth around all things and beyond all things into which, when I pray, I sink. But God is also the activity that comes to me out of that depth, tells me I’m loved, that opens up a future for me, that offers transformations I can’t imagine; very much a mystery, but also very much a presence; very much a person.”

    For us lesser mortals ’Who do you say that I am?’ may be a question that we are dogged by all our lives, a question we wonder about and work at. My hero the poet John Betjeman, in later life, recalled his student days: “What seemed to me a greater question then / Tugged and still tugs : Is Christ the Son of God?”

    If we meet life in the constant search for safety, security, ease and comfort, we are losing all that makes life worthwhile. Life becomes an earthbound thing when it might have been reaching for the stars. Someone once wrote a bitter epitaph on a man: “He was born a man, and died a grocer.” Any trade or profession might be substituted for the word grocer. Those who play for safety cease to be truly human, for human beings are made in the image of God. When Jesus is saying ‘leave self behind’ he’s saying ‘don’t choose to make the safety of that person the most important thing in your world, or else it will turn into a hard shell, empty of the soft seed that carries future growth.” Somebody remarked that we feel most at peace when we stop thinking about ourselves; when other people become more important than ourselves.

    We have so many examples of Christians who took this truth to heart, and who can inspire and encourage us. Thomas More, Lord Chancellor in King Henry VIII’s reign, was executed after being found guilty of denying the supreme headship of the king over the Church. A man who certainly took good care over his words, wrote to his daughter Margaret shortly before his death. “Although I know well that because of my past wickedness I deserve to be abandoned by God, I cannot but trust in his merciful goodness. His grace has strengthened me until now and made me content to lose goods, land, and life as well, rather than to swear against my conscience.”

    And a more contemporary prayer with which to finish:

    “Lord, you alone can show me the way back to my Father.

    Give me the strength to let go of my worldly self, my reputation and my privacy,

    my idea of who I am;

    so that when I walk with Jesus I walk unencumbered,

    with room on my back to shoulder the cross.

    Amen.”

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