At the beginning of a new school year, it’s time to go back to the basics. Can’t start a new year without reviewing where you came from – your multiplication flashcards, the alphabet, the MLA handbook, the periodic table, in seminary it was the dictionary of theological terms like paradox and eschaton. Pick your level and your discipline, but you can’t start a new year without remembering where you came from. And this week our lectionary texts are practically synched up with the same idea: We can’t start anew without remembering where we came from. It’s time to go back to the basics…back to the building rocks. Who we are and whose we are. Where we have come from…and then who is this Jesus?
Our first lesson from Isaiah calls us—as well as the people of his day in times of trial to “look to the rock from which you were hewn, the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you.”
Sisters and brothers in Christ, we are called back to the basics this late date in August: we are called to remember that we all come from the same rock. What an image: God shaped us and molded us from a common rock, dug us up and breathed into each of us. We trace our ancestry of faith back to Abraham and Sarah, back to Adam and Eve, back to the very hands of God. “Look to the rock from which you were hewn.”
How…we…can…forget…that we came from God. How we can run and hide, and deny and evade. How our memories can be short-term, tracing our ancestry of faith back only one or two generations (back to Minnesota or Germany or East County)…not hundreds and thousands of generations.
But let’s get back to the basics today: It is the Living God who chiseled away at our being, and who continues to chisel away at us, who dug us out of the dirt and gave us this holy life, this sacred earth, and who continues to dig us out of the dirt: out of our despair, our guilt, our brokenness. It is the living God who refashions, remolds us, puts us back together, breathes into us new life again, and now set us free. It is the living God who set the heavens in their places and filled the seas with creatures. [We can start sounding like psalmists when we go back and start reflecting on the basics!]
May we be psalmists this week as we begin anew, even if you’re not getting back into the classroom, like our children will be (or already have), may we be like little psalmists singing God’s praises with our actions. We have been resuscitated by the living God, brought to life again and now again!
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And now, having been brought back, this God asks us a question. “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus probes his followers.
Kind of a timeless question. People are still talking about Jesus today, saying who he is, or who he is not, or at least who he was. Pick your context and your camp, and off you can go with things to say about Jesus. A few say he never existed and they’ve got all kinds of intriguing reasons why. I think many, many people in our post-Christendom, post-modern American culture today believe that Jesus was just a prophet, like the disciples said, just a radical activist—who was executed for advocating love of the poor and the outcast, violating Jewish laws and undermining Roman authorities. Compelling stories, but he lived long ago, and is pretty much irrelevant today, other than being yet another inspirational role model who we could never fully imitate. [Temple of Self Realization in Malibu]
Others think he was just a super nice pastor who wants to be your best friend in spirit. Not so sure about how radical his activism was, the point of Jesus, some say, is just to have a personal relationship with you. “I just want you.” I had some friends that used to call that “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology.
If you can replace the world “boyfriend” for “Jesus” in your songs or your prayers, and it starts to sound like a love song, you might be in danger of “Jesus is my boyfriend” theology. “I just want you to be with me, Jesus. I just want you all to myself, Jesus. Don’t leave me, Jesus.”
(If Jesus asked me today, “Who do people say that I am,” I might tell him that he’s got a lot of roses to send out because…“some think that you’re their boyfriend.”)
Meanwhile I had a preaching professor who really disliked the song, “What a Friend We Have in Jesus” because he thought it had misled generations of Christians to shortchange their confession about who Jesus is. (Peter didn’t confess Jesus as his friend.) Of course Jesus is a friend, and I don’t mean to undermine or make light of that relationship. But as disciples of the One who came to earth to take on our flesh—who ventured through the pain-filled valleys of our existence, offering both life-giving healing and life-changing challenges, who suffered death, not just for his friends but for this whole world, and then rose from the dead just to have the last word—we must stand and confess a whole lot more than “he’s just my special friend” or just an inspirational figure in history! Amen?
Sisters and brothers in Christ, we join with Peter, and confess Jesus as the Messiah, the anointed one—THE ONE, sent from God, AND YET VERY GOD, God from God, Light from Light, True God from true God (as our Nicene Creed helps give us words for what is beyond words). Sisters and brothers in Christ, we join with Peter, and confess Jesus, the rock of our salvation, yes friend, yes radical activist for the poor and the outcast, yes Son of the Living God, yes God in the flesh before our eyes in this Word, in this Meal, in these holy waters of Baptism! Yes Jesus lived long ago, yes Jesus lives now.
Our confession is great, like Peter’s. And in making this bold confession that we do, do you know what we become?
A chip off the old block is what we are, people of God! A chip off the old rock, the old block, that Jesus names Peter: the church. A chip off the old rock that is God. We are a chip off of God. Broken and shared, that’s what we are, fractured and forgiven. Sent out for many.
Sisters and brothers in Christ, lest we forget who we are and from whence we come: WE ARE THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST, and we’re about to chip off into this world!
Peter’s confession becomes our confession, and so Jesus is beyond relevant: Jesus is necessary! For without him we have no life…not now, not into eternity.
This is all given to us for free! And so now what?
God’s done the work, now we just get to be the church. And Paul’s letter to the Romans speaks to this and gives us further instruction:
“Present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God. Don’t be [chiseled, molded into the ways of] this world, but [continue to be chiseled by God], be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God.”
Is it God’s will that children go hungry (or is God chiseling away at us) that refugees be rejected, that species go extinct, that wars drag on? Is it God’s will that you continue to live in fear, burdened by anger, guilt, sorrow, or resentment? Or God chiseling away at us?
Sisters and brothers in Christ, BACK TO THE BASICS: we are the church, and God is still chiseling. Still working, still calling us, molding us, still tapping away at this world…
Sculpting away for peace…the peace that passes all human understanding. Praise be to Jesus. AMEN.
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