Well. I got this blog up and running again, and had every intention of regularly updating it. We all know the path that good intentions build. So at least, I thought I'd better put something here so that my reader has an item to look at! This is my sermon for tomorrow. It's really only half a sermon, but it's long enough as it is.
It's also rather late to be of any use to someone preaching tomorrow, but then, other people's sermons are rarely useful for preaching...
Mark 8.31-38
31Jesus began to teach his disciples that the Son of Man 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. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, 'Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.'
34He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, 'If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.'
Former President Donald Trump is a man who is widely regarded as compulsively narcissistic, of very lax personal morals and whose relationship to the truth is only on a hearsay basis. None of this, you might think, would endear him to Christians, whose Lord has told them that truth is fundamental to salvation, that personal holiness is an unachievable but nonetheless vital aspiration, and that one should care at least as much for others as for oneself.
Yet, even after his rather narrow election defeat, Trump remains a darling of many, probably most, evangelical Christians in the United States. Prominent evangelical leaders proclaimed him as God's chosen one, declared that he had not sinned since taking office, and saw him as the saviour of their nation's Christian heritage.
If there is anyone here who shares that view, see me after the service.
Christians, of course, hold a huge diversity of opinions on all sorts of issues, moral, theological and political. There is very little on which there is a definitive Christian position. I remember a very devout and good Christian woman telling me (long ago, in the Thatcher era) that she could not understand how anyone could be a Christian and not vote Conservative. Since I tended (and still tend) towards the view that socialism of some sort or another meshes almost intrinsically with Christian values, we decided to agree to differ.
At present, the CofE is locked in debate over issues of sexuality and gender, and a new set of discussion resources has been launched, commended to every parish, as we continue to look at what it means to live in love and faith with one another. Whether this will ultimately make much difference to the various entrenched views is questionable - the Bishop of Blackburn, for instance, has declared that the discussion is a good thing, as long as it results in a consensus which agrees with his conservative position....
So, yes, there is room for a good degree of debate about what, if anything, is the Christian view of x, for a given value of x.
But we can't just leave it at that, can we, or you'd complain that you're not getting your money's worth out of the sermon (though, come to think, of it, the sermon is free...)
Pundits who have discussed Mr Trump's popularity with a certain brand of Christian suggest that ultimately, he is popular because he promised power to a group which sees itself as increasingly on the margins. The majority are white, and are threatened by the increasing numbers of not quite so white hispanic americans. They speak english and are threatened by the projection that Spanish will soon become the majority language in the USA. They have been a major force in politics and have seen that shift to the urban, and urbane, cities of the east and west coasts. They have strong views on abortion, sexuality and gender (none of which are mentioned by Jesus, or indeed the Bible in general) and have been promised that these will once again be made majority views through legislation and education. Which is sirely what God wants.
He is God's chosen because he promises God's people what they want. And that is surely something that God wants too. Pretty much by definition, no?
A similar case could be made for my other couple of examples. My Thatcherite friend ultimatly saw the Conservative government of the day as defending traditional "British values" and upholding the Protestant work ethic. Work or starve seemed (with some softening) a good Biblical principle. And Biblical principles matter. And those in the church who seek to uphold traditional views of sexuality etc. see themselves as preserving a set of values which has worked well (as long as you're not gay or trans) for a Christian country, and long to see that Christian country return. As it may, they argue, if only we hold fast to what we've always held. As long as we are faithful to Biblical teaching.
OK, that's all rather sweeping, and it doesn't apply to lots of people who find themselves in any of these camps. But then, this is a sermon, not a PhD thesis. If you don't like the examples, that's fine, but bear with me anyway.
Because what I'm suggesting, even if you don't like the details, is that in many cases, Christians - real, devout Christians - espouse somewhat questionable positions because they offer what they want. Of course, they see that as being very much in line with God's will. It's there in the Bible, and in their tradition, and needs to be defended.
(Does that apply to me as well? Of course it does. It's an almost universal temptation, this desire to get what we want, and to colour it with God. I'm sure God is a liberal, all embracing good guy, because that's what I want. And I'm sure it's in the Bible....)
So let's look at our gospel reading. We have to go back to the bit before our selection, in order to understand what is going on.
Jesus takes his disciples away from Galilee into the Gentile area near Caesarea Philippi. And he asks what people are saying about him - "Some say you're Elijah come back, or a prophet, or John the Baptist brought back to life!"
"And what do you say," he asks. And Peter takes the plunge: "You'e the Messiah, God's chosen one!"
And he tells them to keep quiet about it.
Then he goes on to say, "The Messiah must suffer and die."
"No way," says Peter - and earns Jesus' strongest rebuke: Peter is Satan!
Why is Peter so upset? It's not just because Jesus thinks he will come to a bad end, upsetting though that might be. It's because the Messiah - which he's admitted to being - doesn't do that. The chosen one of God is going to give power to the people of God. He is going to make them the top nation, he is going to affirm the values of the Law of Moses and show them to the whole world. He is going to chuck out the oppressors and bring freedom. Everyone will sit under their own fig tree and the Gentiles will flock to the people of God, and say, "Show me your God." It's all there in the Bible. Jesus has lost the plot for a moment and needs reminding.
And this is why Peter speaks for Satan - he is setting out the temptation Matthew and Luke describe in their accounts of the forty days in the wilderness- to be a Messiah of bread and circuses, of conquest and war. But Jesus is redefining Messiah. That's why he doesn't want the disciples to use the term in public. Everyone, including Peter, knows what Messiah means. But it doesn't. It doesn't mean the conquering King, the giver of a new Law, the purifier of the Temple's worship - all things that crowded around the term Messiah- and clouded the minds of those who knew so well what the Bible said. No, Jesus is not the Messiah in those terms. Rather, the Messiah is Jesus. Do you want to know what it is to be God's anointed, his chosen? Then look at Jesus and see the suffering servant.
Peter is trying to fit Jesus into the mental box he has prepared with the label, Messiah. And Jesus won't fit.
I think we tend to do the same. In some cases that can lead to odd results - like Donald Trump in the White House.
The trick is to let Jesus speak. To let God, as the theologians say, be God. He is the one in charge. He is the one who sets the agenda. It's up to us to listen, in prayer and reflection, to hear the voice which teaches us what God is actually up to. That that can be pretty surprising.
Of course, you will say (I hope!) that if we can't trust what the Bible says (Peter, after all, knew what the Bible said) then how can we ever hear anything other than our own dreams and desires?
The answer, I think, is not that the scriptures are wrong, but that the way we read them needs to be questioned. Jesus was entirely in line with the Bible. He just read it rather differently. In Jesus, God was doing a new thing., and Peter needed to be able to recognise it. So do we.
Do you remember that refrain from the Old Testment : "Sing to the Lord a new song"? Why was a new song needed? Because God had done a new thing, and the old songs didn't do it justice.
We too need to be able to recognise God doing something unexpected, to to be prepared to sing a new song, even if it celebrates something that moves us from where we are comfortable, even - perhaps especially- if it opens up new and challenging possibilities.
It is not enough simply to say, "You are the Messiah." We need to be able to see what it is that the Messiah does - and demands.
