George A. Mason 17 th Sunday after Pentecost Wilshire Baptist Church 16 September 2018 Dallas, Texas The Quintessence of a Christian Mark 8:27-38 It s a beautiful place, Caesarea Philippi. It s located northeast of the Sea of Galilee in the Golan Heights at the foot of Mount Hermon. Jesus took his disciples there on retreat. He was at the peak of his popularity, after months of teaching and healing and gaining a reputation that led many to ask who he was that he could do all these things. So, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that I am? They reported to him, Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah, and others one of the prophets. Now I should stop right there and remind you that John the Baptist is already dead, having lost his head to King Herod for calling the king to account for marrying his brother s wife. Prophets used to do things like that. Go figure. Strange as it sounds to us today, some must have thought John had returned from the dead as a divine act of justice. As for Elijah, people associated him with the coming of the messiah, making way for Jewish sovereignty in the land by throwing off the yoke of Roman occupation. Jews to this day leave a seat at the table open for Elijah at the Passover seder. Others thought Jesus was one of the other prophets returned to bring God s word and moral order to the people. All very interesting. But then Jesus gets straight to the point, a question he not only asked of the disciples then but also is asking us as disciples now: Who do you say that I am? See, it doesn t matter what everyone else thinks; it matters most what those closest to Jesus believe about him if he is going to be able to depend upon us to be with him in his work. Peter answers: You are the Christ. You are the one we ve been waiting for. You are the one God has sent to usher in the age to come and make things right. Even today, many people think many things about Jesus. He s a great teacher. He s a man of great wisdom. He s an ethical idealist who left behind a pattern of life for us to follow. But in every human heart, and in this room today, the question demands an answer that echoes Peter s words: You are the
Christ. And that s the first thing I would say to you, today. Have you come to the place in your life when you can answer Jesus for yourself, You are the Christ? Settling on the identity of Jesus is crucial. If he is just another man, we can take him or leave him without consequence. But if he is the Christ, it makes all the difference for who we are and how we live our life. Confess him as the Son of God, Savior of the world and Lord of all. If you ve never done so, I urge you to do so today. The question will hang over you until you do. Now, assuming you have, I need you to see what Jesus says next about himself to see if you want to change your answer, lest you think this is only an intellectual exercise. Faith, Peter found out, is less about what you think than about what sets the direction of your life. Jesus makes that clear when immediately he begins to tell us what being the Christ means. He must undergo great suffering, be rejected by the religious leaders, be killed and then be raised on the third day. How Jesus knew this goes to the heart of who he is as the Christ. And I don t mean that in the sense that because Jesus was the eternal Son of God, the Second Person of the Trinity, he had special knowledge of what was to come that no other human could have known. I mean that because of his being completely grounded in the nature of God and being completely in solidarity with the world he came to save, he understood exactly how dangerous it would be to bring salvation to pass. When he says he MUST undergo great suffering, that must is tied to his dynamic nature of being the link between a completely loving and self-giving God that he must reflect in all his actions and a world that is beset with selfinterest and will fight for rights and privileges that don t include everyone. If it is true that Jesus is the Christ, he MUST suffer. He must because that is the quintessence of the incarnate Son of God. Quintessence is not a word we use much unless you read the dictionary for fun. (How s that social life going?) It means the perfect or most typical example of a quality or class. It s the aspect of something regarded as the intrinsic and central constituent of a thing s character. In other words, quintessence is what make a 2
thing the thing it is. But that s kind of an elusive definition, isn t it? And that s by design, since the word comes from physics and philosophy. The prefix quint, meaning five, comes from the idea that there must be some invisible fifth something that joins together the four elements of earth, air, fire and water that hold everything together by being latent in all those things. We don t know what that is, but when we use the term quintessence that way, we are talking about what is really real. Jesus is the quintessential human, joining together the true nature of God with humanity. So, if Jesus says he MUST undergo great suffering, it s because he understood that the full presence of God in him meant that he could do nothing but give himself up in love for the world and that would involve suffering. Enter the other contestant view. Peter rebukes Jesus for saying this, and Jesus turns and rebukes him right back, saying that he s talking like Satan--the great divider, not like God--the great uniter. Peter wants to win by defeating his enemies with the sword. Jesus knows that God wants to win by defeating his enemies with love. If Peter had his way, some would be winners and others, losers. If God has God s way, everyone wins by losing. And that s because the nature of God is, always has been and always will be only love. And that s because the nature of love is giving. Love binds all things together. It goes out from the self in sacrificial love to other selves. It gives up by giving everything. That s the most vulnerable thing for any of us to do, and yet it is the secret to life. Bette Midler sang a popular song a few years ago okay, more than a few, but I m old, don t you know?! It was titled The Rose. Some of the lyrics go like this: It s the heart afraid of breaking that never learns to dance./ It s the dream afraid of waking that never takes the chance./ It s the one who won t be taken who cannot seem to give./ And the soul afraid of dying that never learns to live. The soul afraid of dying that never learns to live. How many of us does that describe? That s why Jesus next turns to the crowd and says, If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take 3
up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. If love is the true nature of God and therefore the true nature of reality itself, then that is life s quintessence. And if we are going to call ourselves Christians, followers of Christ, that is what must mark us at our core self-sacrificing, empathetic love for others. To have the nature of Christ then, means that we will be loving people. And love is both passionate and compassionate. It is willing to be acted upon by others and suffer their rejection and scorn while loving nonetheless. It is willing to love others enough to feel what they feel, rather than to assert our own interests. This kind of love doesn t look for ways to dismiss the pain of others or play the what-about game to diminish the need for sympathy. Love has empathy for the plight of others. Love cares. Frederick Buechner wrote: Compassion is the sometimes fatal capacity for feeling what it is like to live inside somebody else's skin. It s the knowledge that there can never really be any peace and joy for me until there is peace and joy finally for you too. Beautiful sentiment, isn t it? Hard to live, don t you think? It s been a hard week in Dallas. The fatal shooting of a young and impressive professional man named Botham Jean by an offduty police offer, Amber Guyger, is a tragedy that has rocked this city. The permutations of this crime are many: a police officer works a 15-hour shift and surely is exhausted when she comes to this moment; nonetheless, she shoots an unarmed citizen in his own home; the victim is black and the officer is white, even if race didn t factor into the event initially; the preferential treatment of the officer by the criminal justice system reminds us that justice is still not blind to color whether white, black, or blue; and the smear campaign of the dead man s character immediately after his funeral is a long and nasty practice used against people of color to gain sympathy for defendant. Lord, have mercy. I sat for three hours in Botham s funeral service, thinking how touched I was by the man s faith and that of his family and 4
church, but also thinking I don t want to ever have to attend one more funeral like this as long as live. Friday morning, I sat in a room with about a dozen Dallas pastors, including colleagues like Jeff Warren from Park Cities Baptist and Todd Wagner of Watermark Church, along with black clergy like Bryan Carter of Concord and T.D. Jakes of the Potter s House. We met with the District Attorney, Faith Johnson, to hear how she would be handling things from here, given the pain and anger that the African American community is feeling that is boiling in outrage right now. After the DA left the room, things got honest. One black pastor thanked the white pastors for being there but expressed frustration with what he called the way white churches have privatized the gospel so that it keeps our congregations from understanding that the call for justice is not optional in following Jesus. He wondered why we don t speak out more. Bishop Jakes talked about how hard it is convincing black youth that following Jesus is worth it. They are being lured by other voices who don t believe in the nonviolent love of Jesus. The main thing they hear from white preachers is defense of policies rooted in white supremacy that continue to demoralize people of color. He said, I believe you care because you are in this room; but we need to know more than where your heart is. We need to hear you say clearly in the pulpit and in the streets that white supremacy and racism is wrong. And no more generalizations. It has to be specific. I know it will cost you something to do so, but isn t that what Jesus calls us to do, to take up our cross and follow him? It is. And it s not just preachers, but all Christians. What is God calling you to risk of your life for the sake of the gospel? That s what denying self means. If we want to call ourselves by the name of Jesus, we have to stop defending things he would condemn and start loving people like he did. It may cost us friends. It may even cost us our life. But after three days, give or take, there will always be a rising with Christ. Amen. 5