A Fourth Church Sermon by John Wilkinson

September 17, 2000 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

Holy the Name

John Wilkinson
Executive Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Mark 8:27–38

“He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’”

Mark 8:29 (NRSV)

The question is not: How many people take you seriously? How much are you going to accomplish? Can you show some results? But: Are you in love with Jesus? Perhaps another way of putting the question would be: Do you know the incarnate God? In our world of loneliness and despair, there is an enormous need for men and women who know the heart of God, a heart that forgives, that cares, that reaches out and wants to heal. In that heart there is
no suspicion,
no vindictiveness,
no resentment, and not a tinge of hatred. It is a heart that wants only to give love and receive love in response. It is a heart that suffers immensely because it sees the magnitude of human pain and the great resistance to trusting the heart of God who wants to offer consolation and hope.

Henri Nouwen
In the Name of Jesus

Technically, summer ends this week, although in some metaphysical sense it has ended already. The white shoes are put away. Lake Shore Drive and other arteries are now experiencing school-year congestion. We are back, fully back, to work, to school, to routine, to a new season. But we take one more look backward to what really was an extraordinary summer, extraordinary in its witness to an ever-changing world and to our living in it.

The two major political parties gathered on opposite ends of the country, nominating men who each have claimed, in different ways, the influence of Jesus on their political philosophy. Even more so have issues of religion and public life entered our common conversation with the nomination of Senator Lieberman, whose Jewish faith is important for many reasons, the least of which not being that he actually seems to take it seriously.

But there was more than politics in this extraordinary summer. We watched in horror as a Concorde fell from the sky, and we watched with sadness as the submarine Kursk sank to the ocean floor. We watched as millions of acres of beloved forest burned to the ground and through all these events were reminded again of nature’s power, that the elemental forces of wind and water and fire, despite our vast technological competencies, remain beyond our control.

And in the realm of more trivial pursuits, trivial, at least, to some, we have watched a golfer overcome the record books to win a cluster of majors, a cyclist overcome cancer to win a second Tour de France, the White Sox overcome predictions to climb to first place, and the Cubs overcome misplaced hope to remain, well, the Cubs.

And onto this canvas of macro events we have been painting with the brushstrokes of our own lives. A family reunion. A Little League game. A child’s first step. A broken hip. A blossoming relationship. A faltering relationship. A trip to Kiddieland. A doctor’s prognosis that offers tough news and, down the hall, a doctor’s prognosis that offers hopeful news. A walk along the lake. A spouse’s death after a long, long, courageous struggle. The arrival of a grandchild. A job beginning, happily; a job ending, sadly. A Fourth of July fireworks show. A treatment. An interchange with a Streetwise vendor. An ice-cream cone.

That very rhythm, of micro and macro, of celebration and sorrow, and of God’s presence in it, took root in new ways in my own world over the summer, as I retraced childhood, through Maryland and West Virginia, the land of my grandparents, through Pennsylvania, saluting in the darkness of I76 the hospital where I was born, as I tested the speed limits of our minivan, through Ohio, past the now three exits that mark the community where I grew up.

I paused, at least emotionally, at those exits. A family friend died in those very days in that place, at an age when death is not unexpected, but an unexpected death nonetheless. She will continue to abide in my own little choir of saints. Committed to simplicity, committed to justice. I knew her best in my own childhood, where she presided over a house that included a pool table, which I thought to be very cool. Her two sons, older than I, had long hair and could drive, two also very-cool realities to which I aspired. Her husband died much too soon and she persevered with dignity and grace. She supported this vocational journey of mine. And so as I passed that exit, I remembered her with gratitude, traveling yet down the road with me, as I considered the macro and micro, the broad canvas of politics and culture and the finer brushstrokes that really do compose the painting itself, like the components of a Bach fugue coming together to create texture and color and harmony and soul.

We drive along, in a variety of vehicles, do we not, and we then realize that there are fellow travelers, and there is a highway that we share. And through it all we affirm a notion of presence, that God is present in each moment, at each transition, at each turn through each crisis, in each celebration. “Bidden or not bidden, God is present,” the old Latin phrase reminds us, and we would seek to live into that belief in the macro and micro moments of our lives, the broad canvas and the fine brushstrokes. And we would seek to live into that belief with a certain particularity, which gathers itself around a person, a question, and a name.

Jesus has been doing miraculous things, Mark’s Gospel tells us: feeding the multitudes, walking on water, healing the sick. The disciples get drawn ever closer to his work. Crowds gather and are impressed. The Pharisees are less impressed—they view this one as an agitator and a threat to the religious status quo, which he certainly was. And so Jesus is on the move, from village to village, and in a moment of traveling conversation on the road, he poses a question.

We are taught not to guess the minds of biblical characters too much, yet I can’t help but imagine those followers gathered in that intimate circle. His eyes meeting some directly, other eyes looking hard at the ground, avoiding eye contact at any cost, some concerned, some confused, some unsure, some as clear as the clearest crystal. Who do people say that I am? Who do people say that I am? “John the Baptist,” is one response, representing the hope that one would come to proclaim the Kingdom of God, the upheaval of systems and governments, the one come to make everything right politically. “Elijah, other prophets,” is another response, representing the hope that one would come to proclaim the kingdom of God, the transformation of religious institutions, to get the people back in right relationship with God.

Jesus, in the spare leanness of Mark’s Gospel, allows the answers to hang in the air, as he poses another question, from the broad canvas to the fine brushstrokes. Who do you say that I am? And Peter, serving as the proxy for the group, serving, in some sense, as the proxy for all of us, answers, “You are the Messiah.” The focus is on the answer, Messiah, and the rhythm between the one who asks and the community that responds.

Messiah, Christ in the Greek, is a Hebrew term meaning “anointed one.” King, prophet, the Messiah was one divinely appointed to serve a divine task. In Jesus’ age, there were different hopes for what this appointed one, this anointed one, would do—Messianic expectations, the scholars call them. They are well represented by the two responses to Jesus’ question—one to bring about political revolution and one to bring about religious reformation.

Who do people say that I am? Like lightning over the lake, the question grabs our attention. Who do you say that I am? Who am I, to the world, to you? The question is framed communally, in the midst of a group, and so it travels through that group like a rippling wave. But it is also framed to each one gathered there, and, so, to each one gathered here. “Who am I?” may be responded to theologically, academically, socially, culturally, communally, but the response also must come from each one of us, uttered in our own voices, with our own cadences, from our own hearts.

There are eleven books on amazon.com with the title Who Do You Say That I Am? Those titles represent an ongoing quest, centuries old, a kind of theological Ping-Pong game between those on one side of the spectrum who will produce a book on Jesus, to be rebutted by those on the opposite side of the spectrum. So-called “Jesus studies” have held our attention for at least the past 200 years, and efforts like the Jesus Seminar continue to grab headlines and cause controversy, as the ball is hit back and forth between questions that pose false dichotomies: the Jesus of history or the Jesus of faith, the Jesus of the mind or the Jesus of the heart, the Jesus of academia or the Jesus of the church—false dichotomies

And still the question is asked. Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am? We are given hungry minds as well as hungry hearts to ask, to answer. The question’s durability lies in its truthfulness, in who Jesus is, in who we are.

Fully human and fully divine has been one of our responses over the centuries, and even that rhythm is reflected in this interchange, as a very human question is posed from very human curiosity, by Jesus, and the divine response is offered by the very human Peter. Journalist Cullen Murphy writes that “it is the question of a man who wishes to disturb but who himself is also disturbed” (Atlantic Monthly, December 1986). Theologian William Placher writes in Narratives of a Vulnerable God, “Mark uses every strategy to say two things at once: yes, this is the Messiah, the greatest of miracle workers, the Son of God, but, no, that does not mean at all what you thought it meant” (p. 14).

It is, of course, a vocational question—flowing in both directions. The fully human Jesus is testing, exploring his call, glimpsing his destiny, gathering momentum and clarity as his journey continues. And it is a vocational question for Peter, our proxy, a vocational question for us. Who do you say that I am? is answered in some fashion by who we say we are, never in order for Jesus to become who we would like him to be, but so that his answer may resonate truly, with integrity and authenticity, in our own hearts and spirits.

And so to that answer, “You are the Messiah.” Peter, our proxy, proclaims it boldly. Again, William Placher writes that “Peter expects a Messiah and thinks he knows what that means, but he has it all wrong“ (p. 13). Later, as we know, Peter will be the one to betray Jesus in that very moment in which Jesus’ definition of Messiah takes on its fullest humanity.

And so if we are to say with Peter that you are the Messiah, we must stand ready to embrace this Jesus as the Messiah, to join our journeys with his, to live his story. We read the story not to overlay our presuppositions but because in the story we find meaning, and in this story we find Jesus, the Messiah, defined by what he does, by his friends and associates, by his words, by his attitude.

And we find him in his weakness, in his suffering. Remembering Leonardo Boff’s well-known affirmation, we find this Messiah “weak in power but strong in love.” This Messiah is willing to suffer for the sake of his friends, for the sake of his vocation, for the sake of his tradition, for the sake of the God whose vessel he is. He is willing to be vulnerable, to demonstrate his Messiahship not in pronouncements, not in acts of power, but in acts of vulnerable love—holding a child in his arms, conversing with a prostitute, sharing a meal with a tax collector, demonstrating his humanity and his divinity in his willingness to ask the simple question: Who am I? Who are you?

And so in our own vulnerability, we turn to this story of vulnerability. We turn to this Messiah, some making bold answer, some making doubting answer, some making answer with a whisper. And yet we answer, we respond, we look to the story to see what he does, and we pause to discern who he is—believing that he does what he does regardless of who we say he is. Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, tomorrow, Hebrews tells us, and so we believe, in contexts that are ever-changing, in needs that are ever-developing. And we do not overlay our experience to get the answer we seek, who do we want him to be, but rather we connect our experiences to get the answer we need, the answer that will transform, make us new, heal the world.

In the end, he will continue to ask the question of us, and we will continue to respond and to gather around that response. On some days the answer will be brother and friend. On others it will be way and truth and life. On others it will be divine companion or teacher or healer or agent provocateur, prophet, iconoclast, physician, shepherd, savior.

In the end, we will continue to make response, we will continue to travel with him, we will continue to gather around his name, his holy name made strong by love. Jesus is “the builder of the road [we] travel,” Douglas John Hall wrote eloquently (Why Christian?, p. 17). And so we travel. We gather to travel.

We gather around the name that has been claimed to heal and to wage war, the name that appears on bumper stickers and T-shirts and jewelry. We gather around the name to find our own name. We gather around the name to find our calling. We gather around the name to find meaning in each moment—macro and micro. We gather around the name in the name’s own rhythm, gathering and dispersing, being and doing, living and dying. We gather around the name because in that name we discover the vision that needs discovering, that of transformation and reconciliation and hospitality.

In an essay called “The Road Goes On,” Frederick Buechner writes, “Christ is our employer as surely as the general contractor is to the carpenter’s employer, only the chances are that this side of Paradise we will never see his face except mirrored darkly in dreams and shadows . . . and in each other’s faces. He is our general, but the chances are that this side of Paradise we will never hear his voice except in the depth of our own inner silence and in each other’s voices. He is our shepherd, but the chances are we will never feel his touch except as we are touched by the joy and pain and holiness of our own life and each other’s lives. He is our pilot, our guide, our true, fast, final friend and judge, but often when we need him most, he seems farthest away because he will always have gone on ahead, leaving only the faint print of his feet on the path to follow” (In A Room Called Remember, p. 140–141).

And so, dear friends, our task is simple, deceptively, frighteningly, joyfully simple—to travel the road, to travel the road one with another, holding on, all of us, to each other for dear life. And know that in ways profound enough as to erase all sentimentality Jesus travels with us, ahead of us. And know that he is curious. And in that curiosity, we hear the question, we make response, we utter the name, the holy name, the name that is above all names, humbled for a season, and we will follow, as painters of joy, as singers of hope, as artists of love, so as never to be the same again. All praise to him. Amen.