The Rev. Carol Wedell
September 13, 2009

Ah - the joy of it.  Sleeping in without the annoying buzz of an alarm clock.  Eating whenever it strikes your fancy. Reading magazines or lightweight novels or re-reading Harry Potter just because you want to. Dressing in swimsuits or shorts and t-shirts all day.  Watching a movie in the middle of the afternoon or napping in the sun.  Having your spouse encourage you to indulge in that scrumptious chocolate dessert - because after all, you're on vacation - right?  It's what we might call a "vacation" mindset.  Relaxed schedules, few responsibilities, priority given to what we enjoy most.   Sadly, this doesn't describe the lives that most of us live on a day to day basis! 

Having just returned from a short vacation, I am well in touch with the shock that comes to one's system when you shift from "vacation mindset" back to "work mindset" or "school mindset."  Its part of the reason many of us hate to see the last days of summer end.  We know too well that the pace will be picking up and that the responsibilities will multiply exponentially. 

Yet those aren't the only "mindsets" you and I know.  Think of the various places you spend your time and energy and you can quickly list off the variety of "mindsets" that help define you and your actions:  a party mindset, a sports mindset, a "get along with the extended family" mindset, a "please the boss" mindset, a "fit in with the crowd" mindset. 

Most of us here this morning can add one more:  a church mindset.  That mindset was fixed for many of us in childhood.  If our family went to church weekly, that is likely what we set as a standard for ourselves.  If our parents gave of their time as well as their money, we learned that was important.  If an important adult in our life served as a church school teacher or on the governing board, we learned that was an act of faithfulness.

If we didn't learn it in our families, we learned it from our culture.  Through most of the 20^th century we viewed (rightly or wrongly) the United States as a "Christian" nation, and many of the core values of our faith were assumed to be taught in neighborhoods and schools, as well as churches. If you were an important public figure, you belonged to an important place of worship.  Having even a bit of a "church mindset" is why so many folks who rarely if ever come on Sunday mornings choose to be married and/or buried in a church, or at least by a clergyperson.

Our gospel reading for today calls all of those mindsets into question - including the "church mindset" that many of us have spent so many years cultivating.  Although familiar, these words are among the most challenging to those who seek to follow Jesus - whether the earliest disciples or those of us who gathered today.

The reading comes in the middle of Mark's gospel, a significant time after Jesus called his first followers.  It comes in between a blind man receiving his sight and the transfiguration of Jesus - when Jesus is seen in an entirely new light.  In words which should shake us up, we are invited to see things in a startlingly new way - to take on a new mindset.

Jesus begins by asking his disciples an easy question - kind of like a warm up.  "Who do people say that I am?"  In other words, "what's the word on the street?"  Well, that's not hard.  The disciples are in touch with what others are saying.  Some think Jesus is a prophet.  Others, a great teacher, or healer. Not too different than today, really.

But then Jesus gets up close and personal.  No more easy questions.  He puts it right on the line.  "Who do you say that I am?"  That was the question posed to his first followers and it is the question posed to each one of us here this morning:  who is Jesus for you?  It is a question that is still being wrestled with today.  A seminary classmate of mine recently found a website entitled, "Who is Jesus?  Legend, Lunatic, Liar or Lord?"  The question is before us.  It just isn't good enough to give someone else's answer, as I will be telling our confirmation class over and over again. 

The story is told of some graffiti that was on a wall at St. John's University in Maryland.  It began as today's passage did with Jesus' question, "Who do people say that I am?' and the accompanying answers.  But then comes Peter's response:  "You are the ground of our being, the ontological kergyma in which we find the ultimate meaning of our interpersonal relationships."  And Jesus said, "what?"   It is a question we must answer in our own words; a question we must answer every day.

Scripture, especially the gospel of Mark, sometimes makes things seem like they happened 1, 2, 3 - right now, hurry up, no waiting, no pauses.  But I have to believe that when Jesus asked that question - "who do you say that I am?" there was at least a moment's hesitation.  The disciples had given up everything to follow Jesus.  They had been with him for a while now.  They don't want to say the wrong thing -which seemed so easy to do. But eventually Peter, ever the one quick to speak, declares, "You are the Messiah!"

Ta-da! Peter actually had the right answer.  The only problem was that his understanding of Messiah was radically different than Jesus'. Up until now, Jesus has been showing his followers how to live.  Now in a striking turn around, he proceeds to show them how to die, by telling them of his coming suffering and death.  Jesus uses a different word than the military term Peter chose.  Jesus broke from the traditional Jewish understanding to a new understanding, a paradigm shift:  the Messiah is not the military leader to overtake the Romans by force, but rather the Son of Man - one who would undergo all the suffering of humanity. 

But Jesus doesn't stop there.  After clarifying his own identity, Jesus takes it a step further, and begins to explain what it will mean to be his follower. Jesus makes it clear that to follow him means to take on a whole new way of viewing the world, a whole new mindset. When we declare who Jesus is for us that declaration has a direct relationship on how we live.

On this first Sunday of the academic year, we are given a passage which places before us the very essence of the Christian faith:  the identity of Jesus and what it means to follow him.  The shock is that there is probably not one of us here who has the "right" answers.

You see, just as Peter was operating out of his religious upbringing, so are you and I.  When we hear, "those who want to save their life must lose it," we water the words down until they have practically no impact at all.  We want a softer gospel.  We want a Jesus who doesn't demand so much of us, a Jesus we can mold into an image that is easier to manage.

Sometimes it is difficult to see the ways in which we are tempted to domesticate Jesus.  Our culture - our theology - has moved far from the reality of the cost of Christian discipleship. As we imagine Jesus, he tends to look an awful lot like us. Urban Holmes, a pastor and writer, tells of a conversation he once overheard on a plane. A rather one-sided conversation was going on between a young man from a ministry group based in Dallas and an older Hindu man from India. The young man spoke about Jesus and quoted Scripture passages to the tolerant Indian. At the end of the conversation, the Indian politely commented, "Sir, I thought your Jesus lived long ago in Palestine. It strikes me that the man you have been describing to me is more like a civic-minded banker in Dallas."  Who is Jesus for us?  What mindset will allow us to see - and follow the Jesus who spoke so pointedly to his earliest followers?

Returning from Mexico last Monday evening and then reading Dr. Peter Marty's searing sermon on this passage on Tuesday brought the issue home.  He writes:  The whole matter of following Jesus is central to living the Christian faith. The question becomes, "What does it actually mean to follow Jesus, especially in modern times, or in middle- or upper-middle class North America?" If you're going to take the words of Jesus seriously - those ones about "losing your life for his sake" and "denying yourself" - well, what's your life going to look like? Should you vacation in Cancun? Or would the Adirondacks be better? Which destination would express your faith more fully? Does camping versus staying in a hotel make a difference? Should you pursue a job promotion, or be content with where you are? What about expensive theater tickets? If you buy a pair of those, is that gross self-indulgence? Or if your house is full of all sorts of material possessions, what will happen to your soul the next time you pass over a person in need?

There aren't clear cut answers to those questions, as Dr. Marty would be quick to point out.  But neither can we avoid them.  For following Jesus is not about making life easier for us - although we sometimes act as if it is.  Rather, claiming Jesus as the one in charge of our life is about a relationship.  If that relationship is living and vital, then who Jesus is will by it's very nature impact how we live.  As Jesus challenged Peter, so he challenges us to give up our "church mindset" and take on a new one - one that is focused first and last on following him.  Or as we often talk about when our governing board meets, the number of church members we have is far less important than the number of folks who are serious about following Jesus.   A "church mindset" isn't what Jesus wants from us.  Rather he calls us to follow him where he goes - losing our life for his sake, willing to give all for the sake of others.

When I was in high school and college there was a group of radical Christians who were called "Jesus freaks."  They looked more or less like your average hippie of the day. "Jesus freak" was a negative term used to describe individuals who were involved in the Jesus movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was quickly embraced by some and soon broadened to describe a Christian subculture throughout the hippie and back-to-the-land movements that focused on universal love and pacifism, and relished the radical nature of Jesus' message.  Because they were countercultural to begin with, they could have cared less what the broader culture thought of them.  They could explore what it meant to follow Jesus seriously because they were not as entrenched in the dominant culture as you and I are.  They serve as good a reminder that "fitting in" is not the goal for those of us who declare Jesus as Messiah - as the One in charge of our lives.

Jesus made it clear to Peter, and makes it clear to us, that we need to understand who he is, if we are to follow faithfully.  Who do YOU say I am?  It's the question you and I must answer.  Is the Christian faith primarily about heaven after we die, or is it about an intimate relationship with God made available to us now through Jesus?

 "Who do YOU say I am?" This isn't a question about a getting the answer "right."  This is a question of joy now as we follow Jesus by letting him lead us every step of the way.  To be sure, he is asking everything of us.  In return we won't necessarily gain an easier life, or our every want answered.  What we get is a relationship, with the One who calls us to see the world through God's eyes, with a new mindset.

Who is Jesus for me?  The One who shows me through his every word and action who God is, and what God wants for us and for our world.  The One who challenges me to be the person God created me to be.  The One who holds me through difficult times, to be sure - but even more, calls me to hold the hands of others whose times are even more challenging and to work to bring God's reign on earth.

Who do you say that Jesus is?  It's the question of a lifetime, friends.  A question we must answer each day of our life.