I
heard the voice of Jesus – Sermon – Trinity 16 – Mark 8:27-38
Who do you say I am?
Who do you say Jesus is? When you are alone, when all the
distractions have disappeared and you find yourself sitting alone in your
bedroom, or your living room, or that quiet corner of your garden; when the
smart phone has run out of battery and the omnibus of ‘Corrie’ is over, and the
North London Derby has been won or lost; in those quiet places and moments what
does God’s voice sound like to you?
Over the last week, I have had numerous opportunities to
ponder today’s Gospel.[1] When we read those words
of Jesus, and many of us will have heard them hundreds of times before, I
wonder, how does that voice sound?
‘Then he began
to teach them 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. He said all
this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter
and said, (read/recite with loud,
angry voice) ‘Get behind
me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’[2]
How often have we heard those
words in that kind of angry voice? How often when in the liturgy the Gospeller
has made it to the centre of the aisle, and whether or not the Gospeller has
employed that actual tone, how often is that the way we have heard it
nonetheless?
I wonder if there is another
way of hearing that voice?
‘Then he began
to teach them 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. He said all
this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter
and said, (read/recite
with a gentle, compassionate, understanding voice) ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine
things but on human things.’[3]
When you hear that voice of
God resonating with great velocity at the centre of your soul, when you are
sitting in that quiet corner of your garden lamenting the fact that your
favourite rose bush is wilting, which one of those two voices (angry or understanding,
loud or gentle) is most like the living God you think you know?
For many of us… well, I know
for me personally, I have picked up from a very young age that my God is an
angry God. I know as an adult that is not true, and yet there is tiny bit of me
that always goes back there – especially when I have done something wrong, or I
am feeling a little bit ashamed, or I can’t summon the energy to get out of bed
because I am feeling a little depressed or sorry for myself, it is too easy for
me to return to that notion of my God being angry with me.
You know, I have been thinking
about this an awful lot this week and I think some of this leads back to the
way we read (and hear) the Old Testament in the Bible. You see, we can read the
Old Testament in a simplistic superficial literalistic way, without context,
deeper understanding or much intellectual thought of what might be going on in
those pages, and then we can use that to inform how we interpret the New
Testament and our image of Jesus. Alternatively, we can discover the Jesus of
the Gospels and allow him to inform and add context to what we read in the rest
of Scripture.
The Old Testament clarifies
who Jesus is, it does not limit who Jesus is. We can find no truer
representation of God than in the incarnate Jesus, God as man, God in our
presence, real, alive. The Bible comes a good second in our search for God, but
it is a clear second. We do not worship the Bible, we worship Jesus. Jesus is
the living Word of God – the Bible leads us to him. Therefore, if our
interpretation of the Bible does not fit the person we know to be Jesus, we can
assume that we are interpreting that particular tiny part of the Bible
incorrectly. ‘I have not come to abolish the Law, but to fulfil it!’.[4] This
simple statement from Matthew 8 reveals that the Law of the Old Testament had
not achieved its purpose, humanity was still missing the point, something else
is needed in order to achieve what the Law set out to do. That something was
Jesus Christ and the uncompromising all-encompassing love we see in and through
him.
In other words, when we read
the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, we need to read it through the
lens of Jesus Christ. We need to hear all Scripture through the mouth of the
loving Saviour we know him to be.
You see, it makes no sense for
our living God to have given himself to us in such a way, if he were a vengeful
and angry God. The idea that God somehow brought Jesus into the world just so
that he could destroy him in order to satisfy his own vengeance, anger and
blood-lust, like something from a terrifying horror movie, makes a complete
mockery of the God of love. The only way the cross makes sense is when we
realise that our God is a loving, compassionate and empathetic God. A God who
is willing to give himself for us. A God who walks the way of the cross so that
he can stay in front of us as our shield paving the way, clearing the decks,
making our ways straight and our paths clear.
(Read/recite in a loving,
compassionate, soft voice) ‘Then he began to teach them 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. He
said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke
him. But 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.’[5]
Reflecting on this over this
past week has made me realise that I need to try much harder at some of this.
When I am alone in those quiet spaces, I need to remind myself that my God is a
loving, compassionate, empathetic God who gives everything for me… and
everything for you. And then I need to model my life on his life. He calls us
to ‘love one another as he has loved us’.[6] In
a world that is too much obsessed with hatred and division, it is that God who
brings the healing we all need.[7]
Amen.
R.T. Parker-McGee
2014
