March 11, 2012 | 4:00 p.m.

Unashamed

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Mark 8:31–38

“Journey” is a metaphor that is often used during the season of Lent. We journey with Jesus toward the cross. We journey with each other in the sacred rhythms of the liturgical season. We journey on our own as we observe Lenten disciplines.

In the spirit of this powerful metaphor, I want to share with you this afternoon a significant piece of my own faith journey. If we were in a church of a different time or place, we might call this sermon a “testimony.” In recent conversations, some of us here on the Fourth Church staff have lamented the fact that we do not seem to be a church that invites, encourages, or equips our members to provide such testimonies, to tell our individual faith stories, to articulate what and why we believe and do the things we believe and do. It seems to me, then, that the best way to encourage such a practice is to model it myself. And Lent seems like as good a time as any to talk about a faith journey.

As all of this was swirling around in my head, I found compelling the scripture passage we just heard—perhaps even, to use some more rusty church language, convicting.

The exchange we just heard takes place right after one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible. Jesus brings his disciples to a place called Caesarea Philippi. Along the way, he stops and asks them a very pointed question: “Who do people say that I am?” They tell him some of the things people are saying about him. But then he cuts to the chase: “And what about you? Who do you say that I am?”

This is the quintessential question of Christian faith. Who do you say that Jesus is? Not, “what does your church teach about Jesus?” Not, “what does your pastor say about Jesus?” Not even, “what do you, in your own personal way, believe about Jesus?” Rather, “who do you say that Jesus is?” Jesus expects us to not only believe something about him, but to proclaim that belief, to speak it out loud.

Peter, Jesus’ closest disciple, answers for the group: “You are the Christ.”

In the tradition of the church, this is the most basic, most foundational creed or confession of faith. You’ve surely heard this before, but “Christ” is not Jesus’ last name. Rather, “Christ” is a title, the Greek version of the Hebrew word messiah, which means God’s anointed one, God’s chosen one. So even the simple act of calling Jesus of Nazareth Jesus Christ is a profession of faith.

Quickly, of course, the church added other confessions. “Jesus Christ is Lord” was the first. At the time, it was a radical statement of opposition to the rule of the Roman Empire. To say that “Jesus Christ is Lord” is to refute the claim of the empire that “Caesar is lord.” To say that “Jesus Christ is Lord” is to say that God’s kingdom—so clearly articulated by Jesus, so simply lived in his life, so courageously witnessed in his death—is greater than the Roman Empire or any power that rules in the world. To say that “Jesus Christ is Lord” is to proclaim that God’s kingdom is emerging around us, through us, within us.

To this day, when we baptize people, when people make a profession of faith, when people join the church, we ask them to confess that Jesus Christ in their Lord and Savior. You’ll hear these very words this afternoon when we witness the baptism of Kristina and Michael.

“You are the Christ,” says Peter. If only it were that simple. In Mark’s story, Jesus accepts this answer and then complicates it. He accepts the title of Christ but adds a twist that the disciples didn’t see coming. “The Human One”—an apocalyptic title Jesus often uses when talking about himself—“The Human One must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and the legal experts and be killed, and then, after three days, rise from the dead.”

If David Fincher were directing the film version of this story, everything would come to a screeching halt right here, like the great revelation scene in Fight Club, when the narrator finally learns the truth about Tyler Durden. In Fight Club, the narrator blacks out. In the Gospel of Mark, Peter grabs Jesus and tries to correct him, to tell him that he must be mistaken.

But Jesus will have nothing of it. He calls Peter a Satan—not the devil caricature from Dante or Saturday Night Live, but an adversary standing in his way. “Get behind me, Satan. You are not thinking God’s thoughts but human thoughts.”

Wow. How do you think Peter felt after that? The man he has given up everything to follow just called him a Satan. Peter’s trying his best to listen, to learn, and to follow, but this Jesus guy doesn’t make it easy. Peter thinks he finally has it figured out—that Jesus is the Messiah they’ve been waiting for—but Jesus takes everything they’ve ever been taught to believe about the Messiah and radically changes it. How is Peter supposed to react? What is he supposed to say?

Jesus doesn’t really give him much time to think about it. He calls together the rest of the crowd to join the disciples—whose heads are surely still reeling from the bombshell Jesus just dropped on them—and drops some more.

“Not only am I heading to a cross, but if you want to be my disciple, you must say no to yourself, take up your own cross, and follow me.”

“If you want to save your life, you must lose it.”

“If you are ashamed of me, when all is said and done, when God’s kingdom comes to fruition, I will be ashamed of you.”

Wow. I think I know how Peter felt.

I don’t know about you, but that cuts me to the core. Jesus isn’t interested in wishy-washy followers. Jesus is looking for people who are willing to go all in. Jesus is building a community committed to his vision. Jesus is looking to use that community as a catalyst for the emergence of God’s kingdom in the world.

“Whoever is ashamed of me and my words . . . I will be ashamed of you.”

For many years, I was in fact ashamed of Jesus. In hindsight, I realize now that I was really just ashamed of a particular portrayal of Jesus, a particular way that the church spoke about Jesus. But I was ashamed.

Let me explain.

I didn’t grow up in the Presbyterian church. From birth until sometime in college, I was a Southern Baptist. I got serious about it in high school. By the time I graduated and headed off to college, I was a straight up fundamentalist. I read the Bible literally, or at least I deluded myself into thinking that I did. I was self-righteous and judgmental. I didn’t think women were called to leadership roles in the church. I believed that homosexuality was an abomination.

I was fully confident that I knew who Jesus was and that the Jesus I knew was “the way, the truth, and the life.” The Jesus I knew was the only way to heaven. The Jesus I knew was the singular answer to every problem in the world. I call this the three-syllable Jesus, because most of the preachers I heard pronounced it “JEE-SUS-UH!”

In college, I started taking classes about the Bible. One of the very first was a class about the New Testament Gospels. I learned rather quickly that the four Gospels preserved in our Bible—four stories about Jesus—are all a little different. In fact, if you were to portray Jesus based on those four Gospels, you’d have four different Jesuses.

Add to these four Jesuses the Jesuses of the stories that didn’t make it into the Bible. Add to these the Jesuses of the church’s earliest creeds and doctrines. Add to these the Jesuses of the church’s first systematic theologians, who seemed more interested in philosophy than story. Add to these the various portrayals of Jesus from throughout nearly two thousand years of church history and you have a lot of Jesuses.

Some people try to tell you that there is really only one Jesus, but it’s pretty much always the case that they’ve just decided to hold on to one and claim that he is the real thing. Others have tried to cut through all of these Jesuses and discover the true Jesus of history, but it turns out that their Jesuses are just as shaped by their own interests as any of the other Jesuses they try to dismiss.

When it dawned on me that the way we talk about Jesus—or God, or the Bible, or any aspect of our faith—is conditioned not only by the cultures and contexts of the people that wrote the Bible but by the cultures and contexts of the people that read the Bible, like us, it became rather easy to dismiss some of these Jesuses, the ones I really was ashamed of. The homophobic, misogynist, judgmental Jesus wasn’t too hard to let go of. The Jesus who selects a precious few people to join him in heaven while damning the rest of humanity to eternal suffering—I didn’t shed any tears telling him good-bye.

But I couldn’t just completely get rid of Jesus, could I? It doesn’t make much sense to be a Christian without Christ. Sure, my friends joke that I’m really more Jewish than Christian. And, to be honest, I do have a deep appreciation for and affinity with Judaism. I do believe that there is more continuity between Judaism and the way of Jesus than the dominant voices in the church from Paul through today would have us believe. But I never wanted to just give up on Jesus, like so many other people I knew did. But I was still searching for an answer to that question, “Who do you say that I am?” I was still mostly ashamed of Jesus, because most of the Jesuses I encountered in the world were simply offensive.

I eventually found my way to progressive mainline Protestantism. Even as a pastor in progressive mainline Protestant churches, I found it rather easy to avoid Jesus. On the one hand, I could say just enough about him to reassure people that my faith was orthodox. But I could also circumvent a lot of Jesus-talk and go undetected. That’s probably because the Jesus of progressive mainline Protestantism is rather anemic and weak. He’s not really necessary for the golden-rule Christianity and social justice activism that passes for faith in many churches. The progressive mainline Protestant Jesus accepts everyone just the way they are and doesn’t expect anything from them. This Jesus wants you to be nice, not because there is anything critical on the line, but just because it’s the right thing to do.

Looking back, I think I grew to be ashamed of this Jesus too. I didn’t find much about him to be especially compelling. I’m not sure that we really accomplish much by trading offensive Jesus for an irrelevant or unnecessary Jesus. I’m not sure we gain anything by exchanging judgmental Jesus for a Jesus that doesn’t really care what we do or don’t do.

But in the last year or so, I’ve discovered a Jesus that is similar to the Jesuses I’ve known, but different enough that I am no longer ashamed. The Jesus I follow accepts us for who we are as children of God but doesn’t give us a free pass to do whatever we want. The Jesus I follow wants us to love each other but wants us to do so because we are all children of God. The Jesus I follow isn’t so concerned about what happens when we die but is much more concerned about how God’s children live right now. The Jesus I follow isn’t leading us to a heaven somewhere else; he’s helping us see that God’s kingdom is emerging all around us, right here. The Jesus I follow isn’t the embodiment of abstract goodness; he’s the embodiment of all that it means to be human. The Jesus I follow isn’t an empty idol created in the image of those who call themselves Christians; he’s the living Christ that shapes his followers according to his likeness, according to the image of God. The Jesus I follow doesn’t preach some nice ideas that we can take or leave; he proclaims an urgent gospel that really matters. There is a lot at stake in this gospel, this good news of God’s kingdom. What’s at stake is the salvation of the world. In the Jesus I follow, God is saving us from ourselves and bringing us into a reconciled and recreated world of peace, love, justice, and righteousness.

This is the Jesus I follow. This is the Jesus I proclaim. Of this Jesus, I am unashamed.

What about you? Who do you say that Jesus is?