Sunday, August 24 2008
Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today you are confronted with a question that gets right to the heart of what it means to call yourself a disciple of Christ. And this question is of course the question that Jesus confronts the disciples with when He asks them who people say that He is. And the answers that the disciples give indicate a real lack of understanding of who Jesus is, not necessarily among the disciples mind you but among their contemporaries on whose behalf they are speaking. The disciples report that some say that Jesus is John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
And so upon reading this morning’s Gospel lesson perhaps you find yourself wondering how they could have been so wrong about Jesus. Maybe you even think that "Well certainly we don’t find that sort of confusion today." There are nearly 2 billion people on the planet who profess to be believers in Jesus Christ. I think it’s very likely that among that many self-professed Christians there are going to be some pretty different views on the person of Jesus.
Just here in the US you have countless denominations. You have televangelists who try to figure out a way to fit Jesus into their un-biblical vision of America as the nation most blessed by God. You have leaders of national Christian church-bodies who will present their ideas of helpful legislation to presidential candidates, as prophetic, as if when Jesus told us to go out and feed the hungry and clothe the naked He meant we should do it through legislation. And there are Christian "academic scholars" who seem committed to chipping away at the image of Jesus that we read about in God’s Word.
All of these are examples of trying to understand and define Christ Jesus according to human wisdom. It’s something that we are all guilty of everyday. Maybe our examples aren’t as obvious as some of the ones that I mentioned, but they are still there. Through the daily greed and anger and lust and every other sinful thought, feeling and desire that we give into we show that we are just as capable as anyone of trying to define Jesus according to human logic and wisdom and even weakness. And when we do that we show that we are afflicted with the same weakness that the contemporaries of the disciples and often the disciples themselves struggled with.
For you see the question of who Jesus is is one that ultimately we can’t answer on our own. Left to our own devices we are not able to see Christ Jesus for who He really is. And so we find ourselves reducing Jesus to being a moral teacher, or a prophet, or a great teacher. Or we find other ways to try to fit Jesus into our box of reason and logic, going so far perhaps to even exploit His holy name in order to push an agenda, political or otherwise.
But in this Gospel lesson we can see that our Lord is at work revealing Himself to us, and drawing us into the faith that He calls us to and demands of us. After the disciples told Jesus of all the false notions that the contemporaries of the disciples had, Jesus then responds to this by asking all of the disciples and not just Peter, as some would tell you who they say that He is. And Peter, speaking on behalf of all the disciples rightly says to Jesus "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Peter’s confession is nothing short of miraculous. We’re all familiar with so many of the other miracles that took place during Jesus’ ministry; the feeding of the 5000, turning water into wine at the wedding in Canaa, all the healings and exorcisms. and as impressive and glorious as all of those are, Peter’s confession of faith, and for that matter anybody’s confession of Christ Jesus as the Son of the living God and the Messiah and the Savior, anybody’s confession of that, including yours is miraculous.
It is miraculous because it is a confession that human, sinful minds could never declare without the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself confirms this when He responds to Peter’s confession by declaring to Peter that he is blessed because the confession of Christ Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the living God that came from Peter’s mouth did not come from flesh and blood but was revealed to him by Jesus’ Father in heaven. Sin and the devil want nothing more than to prevent you from making this confession of faith.
And it is for that reason that our Lord saw fit to send His Son Christ Jesus the Word incarnate, to live the perfect life, death, and resurrection for us. In Christ Jesus our Lord does not just tell us who He is, He shows us who He is, and that He loves us so much that He would take our sin upon Himself and die for our sin so that we might be forgiven, and be raised so that we might receive eternal life. And through the Holy Spirit coming to us in Word and sacrament, we are called to believe this and confess this.
And when our Lord Jesus says to Peter "…and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." The Rock He is referring to is not Peter himself but the truth that Peter had just confessed; the truth that Christ Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God. In other words, the church is built upon the disciples of Christ, past, present, and future, so this includes you, boldly preaching, teaching and confessing the name of Christ. And He continually comes to you in Word and sacrament to fill you with the faith do just this in the face of the attacks of sin and the devil.
And sin and the devil will and do attack. Sin and the devil try to tear down the Church that is built upon the confession of Christ Jesus as the Messiah and Son of the living God. And one of the primary means that this is done is by attacking the very confession of faith that we are called to bring to the world.
Most of you probably remember that in the days immediately following the 9-11 attacks government officials and commentators alike were quick to point out that our nation’s fight was not with Muslims in general but with fundamentalists and extremists. And so how did they define a fundamentalist or an extremist? The popular definition became one who holds that his or her religion is right and thus that other religions are false. I don’t know about you but this would qualify me as a fundamentalist or extremist.
In fact anyone who would say that they agree with the confession that Peter made in today’s Gospel lesson would qualify as a fundamentalist or extremist by that definition. For Peter did not merely confess Jesus to be a messiah, but the Messiah; and he did not confess Him to be a son, but the Son, and he confessed Him to be not the Son of a god, but the Son of the living God. It’s important to recognize that Peter said living God because that would have stood in direct opposition to the multitude of false, dead, idols that were so present back then, and today stands in opposition to the dead idols of money, power, ego, sin, false idols and yes false religions that are out there.
So we live in a culture that tolerates Christianity but if we dare to confess our faith in Christ with the boldness that Peter did then the world labels us extremist and fundamentalist, and this of course is nothing but sin and the devil attacking the church built upon Christ Jesus.
But again our Lord Jesus promises that not even the gates of hell will prevail against His church. And so we can listen boldly to the words of the apostle Paul in the lesson from Romans where our Lord tells us not to conform to the ways of a world that rejects the truth of Christ Jesus as the One and only Savior and redeemer, which of course is nothing but sin and the devil attacking the church built upon Christ Jesus.
It is true that we live in a culture that is hostile to the Christian witness, but there are many confessors of the faith who have worse it than us, and certainly the disciples and apostles faced rejection the likes of which we couldn’t imagine. This does not mean that the reality of a culture hostile to the Christian witness should not be taken seriously. Of course it should and we can look to how our Lord has sustained those bold confessors who came before us all through the years and those who are with us today proclaiming the Christian witness in lands where doing so in places where doing so is not only rejected but could have you killed.
But Paul reminds us that we are all one body, those of us here today, those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. And the same renewing of minds in our Lord’s Word that sustained the disciples and early-church fathers, even in the face of death sustains us in the face of those who would label us extremist and fundamentalist.
Amen
Brothers and sisters
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Today you are confronted with a question that gets right to the heart of what it means to call yourself a disciple of Christ. And this question is of course the question that Jesus confronts the disciples with when He asks them who people say that He is. And the answers that the disciples give indicate a real lack of understanding of who Jesus is, not necessarily among the disciples mind you but among their contemporaries on whose behalf they are speaking. The disciples report that some say that Jesus is John the Baptist, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.
And so upon reading this morning’s Gospel lesson perhaps you find yourself wondering how they could have been so wrong about Jesus. Maybe you even think that "Well certainly we don’t find that sort of confusion today." There are nearly 2 billion people on the planet who profess to be believers in Jesus Christ. I think it’s very likely that among that many self-professed Christians there are going to be some pretty different views on the person of Jesus.
Just here in the US you have countless denominations. You have televangelists who try to figure out a way to fit Jesus into their un-biblical vision of America as the nation most blessed by God. You have leaders of national Christian church-bodies who will present their ideas of helpful legislation to presidential candidates, as prophetic, as if when Jesus told us to go out and feed the hungry and clothe the naked He meant we should do it through legislation. And there are Christian "academic scholars" who seem committed to chipping away at the image of Jesus that we read about in God’s Word.
All of these are examples of trying to understand and define Christ Jesus according to human wisdom. It’s something that we are all guilty of everyday. Maybe our examples aren’t as obvious as some of the ones that I mentioned, but they are still there. Through the daily greed and anger and lust and every other sinful thought, feeling and desire that we give into we show that we are just as capable as anyone of trying to define Jesus according to human logic and wisdom and even weakness. And when we do that we show that we are afflicted with the same weakness that the contemporaries of the disciples and often the disciples themselves struggled with.
For you see the question of who Jesus is is one that ultimately we can’t answer on our own. Left to our own devices we are not able to see Christ Jesus for who He really is. And so we find ourselves reducing Jesus to being a moral teacher, or a prophet, or a great teacher. Or we find other ways to try to fit Jesus into our box of reason and logic, going so far perhaps to even exploit His holy name in order to push an agenda, political or otherwise.
But in this Gospel lesson we can see that our Lord is at work revealing Himself to us, and drawing us into the faith that He calls us to and demands of us. After the disciples told Jesus of all the false notions that the contemporaries of the disciples had, Jesus then responds to this by asking all of the disciples and not just Peter, as some would tell you who they say that He is. And Peter, speaking on behalf of all the disciples rightly says to Jesus "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."
Peter’s confession is nothing short of miraculous. We’re all familiar with so many of the other miracles that took place during Jesus’ ministry; the feeding of the 5000, turning water into wine at the wedding in Canaa, all the healings and exorcisms. and as impressive and glorious as all of those are, Peter’s confession of faith, and for that matter anybody’s confession of Christ Jesus as the Son of the living God and the Messiah and the Savior, anybody’s confession of that, including yours is miraculous.
It is miraculous because it is a confession that human, sinful minds could never declare without the Holy Spirit. Jesus Himself confirms this when He responds to Peter’s confession by declaring to Peter that he is blessed because the confession of Christ Jesus as the Messiah and the Son of the living God that came from Peter’s mouth did not come from flesh and blood but was revealed to him by Jesus’ Father in heaven. Sin and the devil want nothing more than to prevent you from making this confession of faith.
And it is for that reason that our Lord saw fit to send His Son Christ Jesus the Word incarnate, to live the perfect life, death, and resurrection for us. In Christ Jesus our Lord does not just tell us who He is, He shows us who He is, and that He loves us so much that He would take our sin upon Himself and die for our sin so that we might be forgiven, and be raised so that we might receive eternal life. And through the Holy Spirit coming to us in Word and sacrament, we are called to believe this and confess this.
And when our Lord Jesus says to Peter "…and on this rock I will build my church and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it." The Rock He is referring to is not Peter himself but the truth that Peter had just confessed; the truth that Christ Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God. In other words, the church is built upon the disciples of Christ, past, present, and future, so this includes you, boldly preaching, teaching and confessing the name of Christ. And He continually comes to you in Word and sacrament to fill you with the faith do just this in the face of the attacks of sin and the devil.
And sin and the devil will and do attack. Sin and the devil try to tear down the Church that is built upon the confession of Christ Jesus as the Messiah and Son of the living God. And one of the primary means that this is done is by attacking the very confession of faith that we are called to bring to the world.
Most of you probably remember that in the days immediately following the 9-11 attacks government officials and commentators alike were quick to point out that our nation’s fight was not with Muslims in general but with fundamentalists and extremists. And so how did they define a fundamentalist or an extremist? The popular definition became one who holds that his or her religion is right and thus that other religions are false. I don’t know about you but this would qualify me as a fundamentalist or extremist.
In fact anyone who would say that they agree with the confession that Peter made in today’s Gospel lesson would qualify as a fundamentalist or extremist by that definition. For Peter did not merely confess Jesus to be a messiah, but the Messiah; and he did not confess Him to be a son, but the Son, and he confessed Him to be not the Son of a god, but the Son of the living God. It’s important to recognize that Peter said living God because that would have stood in direct opposition to the multitude of false, dead, idols that were so present back then, and today stands in opposition to the dead idols of money, power, ego, sin, false idols and yes false religions that are out there.
So we live in a culture that tolerates Christianity but if we dare to confess our faith in Christ with the boldness that Peter did then the world labels us extremist and fundamentalist, and this of course is nothing but sin and the devil attacking the church built upon Christ Jesus.
But again our Lord Jesus promises that not even the gates of hell will prevail against His church. And so we can listen boldly to the words of the apostle Paul in the lesson from Romans where our Lord tells us not to conform to the ways of a world that rejects the truth of Christ Jesus as the One and only Savior and redeemer, which of course is nothing but sin and the devil attacking the church built upon Christ Jesus.
It is true that we live in a culture that is hostile to the Christian witness, but there are many confessors of the faith who have worse it than us, and certainly the disciples and apostles faced rejection the likes of which we couldn’t imagine. This does not mean that the reality of a culture hostile to the Christian witness should not be taken seriously. Of course it should and we can look to how our Lord has sustained those bold confessors who came before us all through the years and those who are with us today proclaiming the Christian witness in lands where doing so in places where doing so is not only rejected but could have you killed.
But Paul reminds us that we are all one body, those of us here today, those who have gone before us and those who will come after us. And the same renewing of minds in our Lord’s Word that sustained the disciples and early-church fathers, even in the face of death sustains us in the face of those who would label us extremist and fundamentalist.
Amen
posted by Steve at 10:05 PM
1 Comments:
This is such an awesome sermon. It has to be one of the best I've read. I mean, there are so many quotes that really hit it home. These are just a few:
"For you see the question of who Jesus is is one that ultimately we can’t answer on our own. Left to our own devices we are not able to see Christ Jesus for who He really is."
"It is miraculous because it is a confession that human, sinful minds could never declare without the Holy Spirit."
"And it is for that reason that our Lord saw fit to send His Son Christ Jesus the Word incarnate, to live the perfect life, death, and resurrection for us. In Christ Jesus our Lord does not just tell us who He is, He shows us who He is, and that He loves us so much that He would take our sin upon Himself and die for our sin so that we might be forgiven, and be raised so that we might receive eternal life. And through the Holy Spirit coming to us in Word and sacrament, we are called to believe this and confess this."
"The Rock He is referring to is not Peter himself but the truth that Peter had just confessed; the truth that Christ Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God. In other words, the church is built upon the disciples of Christ, past, present, and future, so this includes you, boldly preaching, teaching and confessing the name of Christ. And He continually comes to you in Word and sacrament to fill you with the faith do just this in the face of the attacks of sin and the devil."
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