by Matt Fitzgerald
September 17th
Isaiah 50:4-9 and Mark 8:27-38

My favorite songwriter is a much-celebrated eccentric former third-grade school-teacher named Robert Pollard. His early songs feature a good deal of seemingly bizarre imagery, whose mystery is immediately deflated when Pollard starts talking about his days in the classroom.

 For instance, he wrote a song titled "Gold Star for Robot Boy." An odd and appealing phrase that seems absolutely divorced from reality, until Pollard explains it. "I had a student who knew every answer," he said. This little seven year old boy. He'd memorized the state capitals, he could read, he knew his multiplication tables. The system was that if you raised your hand and answered correctly you got a gold star. Two weeks into the school year this kid had 45 stars and I'd only asked 47 questions. The other kids were grumbling and I knew where they were coming from. Another gold star for robot boy."

 This morning's reading suggests that Peter is the robot boy in Christ's classroom. Jesus asks his disciples "Who do you say that I am?" And Peter practically leaps out of his chair. He knows the answer because he knows the attributes that the messiah should possess. Great mercy, great courage, great strength. He's watched Jesus extend his love to every sort of outcast. He's seen Jesus boldly confront authority. And most importantly, he's witnessed Jesus perform these magnificent acts of power. Watched him walk on water, restore sight to a blind man, heal a woman's daughter from a mile away. It isn't rocket science. It is obvious and it is thrilling. Jesus fits the profile perfectly. He's the Messiah. Peter shouts it out loud. "You are the Messiah."

 Bingo. But more. More than just another gold star for robot boy. Peter is now the first person in history to name history's most important truth. "You are the Messiah." Amen.

And then, and then Jesus has to go and ruin it. Even as Peter's answer is hanging in the air Jesus begins to teach them that the Messiah must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again."

Peter can't accept it. Won't believe it. This is not how the Messiah is supposed to act. How could the One come to save all Israel suffer, be rejected and worse get himself killed by those who don't own one-tenth of his power? Nonsense. Peter takes Jesus by the arm, pulls him aside and begins to explain God's might to his misguided teacher.

In 1841 the great atheist philosopher Ludwig Feurbach argued that rather than worshiping a real deity, Christians praise a projection of our own best attributes. We are a little good, and so we take that goodness, multiply it by one million, set it on an imaginary throne in heaven and bow down before it. We have limited power, which we imagine into a limitless sort of strength which we project onto an imaginary God. The same is true with love and mercy, kindness, judgment. Any attribute you might apply to the One who sits on the throne of glory corresponds to some admirable feature of human nature. For Feuerbach "God" is nothing more than "man" spoken in an incredibly loud voice.

 The philosopher thought he was delivering a death-blow to Christianity with his theory. But in an ironic turn his thought is actually quite helpful in our effort to receive the God that Jesus reveals. Feuerbach alerts us to the fact that rather than placing our faith in the God of Christ, human beings revere the God we wish we had, the God we think we have. Our speculation about who God should be and our fallen destructive understanding of how power should work lead us to imagine an omnipotent wise man sitting at a great remove, pulling strings and engineering the universe. All the while immune to the sort of pain, struggle and pleasure that define humanity.

 You can, of course retain your faith in this God. But you should know that you're worshiping a fantasy. You can retain your faith in immutable ice-cold power, but not if you believe in Jesus. At least, not if you believe that Jesus is nothing less than God's self-definition. Which is, I think, the only way to make sense of him. Which means that in Christ God is busy bringing an end to our speculation, correcting our guessing, upending our theories in order to reveal the true nature of divinity.

Jesus reveals the true nature of divinity. By leaping over our distance from the divine, rushing to us, running to us.  By suffering rejection at the hand of those he loves.  By dying rather than being violent. By experiencing absolute abandonment on the cross, going so far as to be deserted by the very God that he embodied.

 It is, quite simply, too much to wrap your mind around. It was for Peter, and he's the brightest student in the class. Really, he should have skipped a grade. Meanwhile you and I are seniors in high-school taking tenth-grade math, struggling to absorb a lesson we've heard a dozen times before. So let's learn from Peter. Learn that it grieves God, even angers God when we ignore the absolutely radical way Christ has redefined divinity.

 “No. You're wrong.” Says Peter, “This isn't how it works. How can God suffer? And there will be no rejection. Strength conquers it does not die.”

 I think the only way to hear Jesus' response is as a thunderclap from the bluest sky. All seems lovely and then

this roar, divine displeasure at a hundred-times the volume your poor ears can handle. Even if in truth Christ only whispered, it was raging thunder on that road. “Get behind me Satan. For your mind is on human expectation, rather than the reality of who God truly is. And if you can't walk beside me as I bleed this revelation, then get behind me devil.”

 I worked as a bartender for several years and spent many late nights in a room-full of people pouring volatility down their throats. But I only had to leap over the bar and stop a fight once. It was mid-afternoon. A soft and rainy day. Most every afternoon two men came into the bar and drank together. Or, drank next to one another. They were young, in their early-thirties I think. But the habit had aged them and they had the grizzled air of seasoned drinkers. In the hour between the workdays end and dinner both would put back four beers and three whiskeys before walking home, anesthitized and wobbly.

 But this day, one of the two drank only one beer to his partners four. And when his friend stoop up to leave he said, “I don't think I'm coming in tomorrow. I think I'm done with this.”

 The drunker man didn't bat an eye. “Yeah right. You're done. You'll be here tomorrow.” His friend flew at him with fists and shouting. Enraged that this agonizing decision he had reached could be so easily dismissed.

 The same dynamic is at play with Christ and Peter. The problem with this sermon is that I am treating Jesus' fidelity to God's character as if it were some abstract and chilly thing. “And now after healing the sick and restoring sight to the blind I will suffer and die because God is quite different than you assume.”

 Jesus didnt' simply come and subvert our understanding of GOd in some calm and sweeping change. I imagine he spent hour after lonely hour struggling to accept the fact that he had to die because he was God incarnate, and God would not, could not lift the sword. God will not, can not lift the sword. 

Which is good news for you and for me. The very best news.  In our war-torn moment it is good to know that history itself is held in the hands of one who refuses to coerce. That car-bombs and dirty-bombs, missile strikes and violent interrogation are all dischordant notes, appearing nowhere in the symphony which God has written.

It quenches my thirst, it lifts my heart to know that the way things are, is not the way they are meant to be, and that ultimately history will be concluded by the Christ who died to save us from our tendency to tear one another apart. But this wonder, this hope, this love which we receive as wine, “liquor sweet and most divine” our God felt as blood.

This is a stunning, humbling realization. On some level it should cause us to reel. Today our children begin learning and re-learning the story which carries this mystery. Their teachers are good teachers, but our children will never understand the miracle of Jesus. And neither will we. And neither did Peter. But that should not stop us from spending the remainder of our days proceeding toward paradise with our hearts aglow and our minds spinning at the goodness of our God. Amen.

God is non-violent. That he had to become weak because God refuses to coerce. Etc.

 This explains the violence in his response to Peter. It would have been so easy for Jesus to agree with Peter. To say, "yes, your're right. The Messiah isn't weak. Now let's gird our loins and storm the halls of power."

 The story from Nikki's.

 What is really interesting about this is that Jesus doesn't want us to think about God differently. He wants us to live with God differently.

 Live like me. Take up your cross. Etc.