17th Sept 200614th Sunday after Trinity
Fr David Cherry
Isaiah 50 : 4 – 9a ;James 3 : 1 – 12 ; Mark 8 : 27 – 38
But whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto him, Thou art the Christ.
Thank God when you are offended by the gospel, scandalised into a new vista.
The answer to the question ‘Who do you say that I am?’
is as varied as our personal experiences. Who Jesus is to you
will vary according to your life experience, your spiritual journey,
your temperament, your personality.
At different times it is easier to relate to God as Father or as
Mother; or to relate to Jesus as a human being, or to a sense of His
Spirit drawing us. The Persons of the Divine Trinity will come
into focus attract or even repel, changing over time or according to
personal circumstance.
I want to say something about this this morning by way of
reassurance. And to begin by perhaps suggesting that we need to
distinguish what is personal to each one of us in our personal faith
journeys with God and with what is the accumulated, distilled, refined
corporate experience of the Church over-time : what we call the
Christian Tradition which we undergo in the Liturgy – itself
arising from human experience in community in the lives of others, like
St Cyprian who we continue to celebrate today.
There is sometimes a dissonance between the corporate experience and
our personal experience and we feel we might be so different from
others we better keep quiet about how we really feel and how we
personally relate to God or what we find meaningful.
In a course book for preparing young people for Confirmation years ago
there was a diagram of a motorway. There was the fast lane, the
medium lane, the slow lane and the lay by. There was also an
overpass. The aim of the diagram – as I recall – was
to help young people to see that going at a medium speed was the safest
lane.
It was a good teaching tool, I thought. However, I come across
people who self-define as being sat in the lay-by for years, neither
wanting nor able to move out into the slow lane. They are either
too traumatised or too hurt, or sometimes just paralysed because of a
visceral dislike of the thought that they ought somehow to be getting
somewhere.
The problem, I think, is that it is focussed on where I am and not
where God is. We wonder who’s ahead, who’s behind,
where am I, where ought I to be? … a nagging worrying which is
neurotic, self-obsessed, self destructive and punitive – and of
course completely unnecessary, but a habit.
It strikes me that God is in the lay-by too. God is on the edges
with us who ever we are. God is in the lay-by, joyfully with you in
your life, and weeping in your pain. God simply is.
Motorways – in this diagram – too easily resemble
race-tracks. Not where am I? But where is God? Who is
God for me? There is no race-track no competition.
There’s no advanced driving certificate for licensed
clergy. There is only me and the way God is dealing with me,
drawing me deeper into the mystery of who God is for me.
Some will find it difficult to express what they are sensing; difficult
to articulate – a ‘not-really-knowing’ but a sense of
something there which won’t go away. Others may be more
clear about who God is not for them. Many are coming to the
realisation that who God is, is not about violence and conflict.
And such are not far from the kingdom of God.
As someone wondering ‘Who do I say Jesus is?’, I will
naturally find myself in the company of others – in the community
of the Church, pondering scripture and in communion with others who
help me find how I wish to answer: Who do you say that I am?
And this is God’s question: Rather than me fussing about
where I am, God is asking me to find him – or allow myself to be
found by him.
Peter answers – perhaps astonished at his own audacity and
wondering where the answer came from or what it even means: Thou art
the Christ. He is about to be lead deeper into the meaning of
what he professes. Jesus tells Peter that he MUST suffer, be
rejected, killed and after three days rise again.
‘Must’ not because God on high has decided this is his
fate, but ‘MUST’ because humans in conflict have ordained
it so and made it inevitable. ‘Must’ because by Jesus
becoming a Victim of human conflict, we discover who we say God is and
how we see ourselves. That is – if God is the Victim, who
are we? Those who ‘savourest not the things that be
of God, but the things that be of men’.
In this same incident in Matthew’s gospel, the Greek word
skandalon is used of Peter. He is scandalised by Jesus’
revelation - offended. A scandal in this sense is a stumbling
block, an offence which brings you into a new experience, an expanded
understanding of the reality and of God.
To discover God as Victim, alongside, identified with all who suffer,
most closely linked to the outsiders, the scarcely noticed in Darfur
and Kurdistan, the homeless and so - to discover such a God is to be
scandalised, offended. Who do you say that I am given the
reality of what I reveal to you?
So in this sense: Thank God when you are offended by the gospel, scandalised into a new vista.
Such scandal, offence, draws us into the Mystery of God. We will
be surprised by the experience of others alongside us, we will be
surprised by the Tradition which calls us into question. This is
what revelation is. What may at first seem offensive,
uncomfortable has power to save us from stagnation and illusion about
reality. I discover what God is like and I discover what I am
like – St James makes no bones about gossip in the epistle;
gossip which is destructive starting from a lose tongue. I
discover too that part of me does want to live at the centre of the
universe. God as Victim is an offence to self-determination.
To be where Christ the Victim is, is to share the burden, the cross of
misunderstanding and even humiliation which Peter would one day know
more fully.
Austin Farrer in one of his sermons talk about crosses – he
begins a sermon something like this: My sermon came to me
ready-made. It drove in on the side of a van into the college
quadrangle. The sign read: ‘Wreathes and Crosses made to
order.’ The point of the sermon is you can’t have a
designer cross. You simply have yourself and who you know
yourself to be. And to know and experience that you are loved.
So here to Communion we come, to discover a God in love with us.
Each in our own way responds with a particular meaning to the words:
Thou art the Christ. Here we own and love a God who is for us and
drawing us, inviting us deeper into that life which most perfectly is
his in the life of the Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, to whom be
the praise of all our hearts, now and through all eternity. Amen