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The
Inconvenient Truth About Jesus
by Reverend Rich Smith
September 17, 2006
Mark 8:27-38
Last week, among all the news articles and stories
leading up to the fifth anniversary of 9/11, I was a bit surprised to
come across one featuring a former professor of mine, by the name of
David Griffin. I took a class from him about 15 years ago in California
when I was making a short-lived attempt at a Doctor of Ministry degree,
a course called “Green Theology”, a highly academic class I only passed
because I wrote a paper on something he knew nothing about, which took
some doing. Anyway, he has written a book, (The New Pearl Harbor) and
is going around the country promoting it and its contention that our
own government was behind the attacks of that day, backed by a recent
Scripps Howard/Ohio University poll which found that 36 percent suspect
the U.S. government promoted the attacks or intentionally sat on its
hands. Sixteen percent believe explosives brought down the towers.
Twelve percent believe a cruise missile hit the Pentagon. Griffin is
not surprised by that. There are just too many gaps in our knowledge,
too many things unexplained, which, he says, can only be accounted for
by a massive government conspiracy. And I guess given the way the truth
has been played fast and loose with, that’s not surprising, for
conspiracy theories always thrive in the absence of knowledge. They
have grown up around all the major events of our history – the
assassinations of Lincoln and JFK, our entry into the World Wars. And
as unlikely as it seems to me in this case, there have been enough
instances of cover-ups and secret operations that have later come to
light, that it’s difficult to dismiss all of this out of hand.... Time
will tell.
Now it should come as no surprise to realize that given the church’s
record down through the centuries in trying to control the truth, that
there have always been conspiracy theories about Jesus. While the Da
Vinci Code, for example, is a novel, meant to entertain, there are
plenty of people who take it seriously enough to ask, What if.... What
if it’s true that Jesus was married and has descendants living today,
and the church has covered it up? Earlier there was a novel entitled
The Passover Plot, suggesting that Jesus survived the crucifixion, and
went on to a new life in France. These things don’t really bother me,
in that I don’t think they have much to do with who Jesus really was or
what he was about, intriguing theories that ultimately don’t mean much
one way or the other. And they are hardly new – after the resurrection
there reportedly was a conspiracy theory going around that Jesus’ body
had actually been stolen.
And in today’s Gospel lesson we see evidence of rampant speculation
that was going on even while Jesus was alive. Even at the high point of
his ministry, people weren’t always sure what to make of him. And so
one day, Jesus asks his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” The
disciples have heard all the gossip going around. And so they could
report that some thought he was John the Baptist re-incarnated, or at
least escaped. Others thought he was the prophet Elijah, or perhaps one
of the other prophets, back for a second go-around. Interesting... So,
Jesus asks them, What about YOU – who do you think I am? And Peter,
always the first to open his mouth or jump out of the boat, replied,
“You are the Messiah, the Christ.”
Now, how Peter came to this conclusion is unknown. He might have been
inspired. He might have repeated what he heard from others. He might
have sensed it and seen it himself. It doesn’t matter, because instead
of saying to him, “Good answer! You pass!” Jesus tells Peter, and tells
him “sternly,” to keep quiet about that, don’t tell anyone. If Peter
had been with us in church this morning, he wouldn’t have been allowed
to sing, that hymn we just sang, “Ask Me What Great Thing I Know.” For
him it was, Ask, but don’t tell!
Maybe that’s because even though he had the words right, and could say
that Jesus was the Christ, he didn’t really get it, didn’t fully
understand what that meant. Jesus may be the messiah, just not the kind
of messiah they expected. And so he went on to explain that he would
undergo rejection and suffering and even be killed. For Peter, this
wasn’t what he had in mind. Messiah and cross just didn’t belong
together. And so there was rebuke and counter-rebuke, and then one of
Jesus’ most troubling teachings: “If any want to become my followers,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For
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.”
That is the inconvenient truth about Jesus, the counter-intuitive
truth. We may wish for a magician who makes our problems disappear, or
a super-hero who rescues us from trouble, or even a congenial soul who
makes us feel good and asks nothing of us, but that’s not who Jesus is,
not the kind of messiah he is. Peter eventually came to understand
that, after a number of false starts...the most famous of which was
denying three times that he even knew Jesus. But in the end, he got it.
His preaching recorded in the book of Acts inspired the early church,
and his own martyrdom showed he wasn’t afraid to take up the cross
himself. He finally understood the truth – the inconvenient truth, the
liberating truth, the saving truth – that there is a cost to
discipleship.
This year the Christian church has been observing the 100th birthday of
German pastor, and theolgian, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Before he was
arrested by Hitler's Gestapo and killed, the 60th anniversary of which
was last year, he wrote a book called THE COST OF DISCIPLESHIP. In it
he says, "The cross is laid on every Christian. The first
Christ-suffering which every person must experience is the call to
abandon the attachments of this world. It is that dying of the old
person which is the result of their encounter with Christ.... The cross
meets us at the beginning of our communion with Christ (not the end.)
When Christ calls a person, he bids them come and die. It may be a
death like that of the first disciples who had to leave home and work
to follow him, or it may be a death like Martin Luther's who had to
leave the monastery and go out into the world. But it is the same death
every time -- death in Jesus Christ..." (p. 89)
Now this was not just academic or theoretical for Bonhoeffer. As a
young Lutheran pastor in Hitler's Germany, he made the decision very
early on that Hitler and all he stood for must be opposed -- this evil
must be resisted. He could have easily gotten out of Germany and stayed
safely in the United States or England -- in fact friends had brought
him over to both places. But he went back. He knew he had to be among
his own people. He took up his cross and risked everything, even
plotted against Hitler, for which he ultimately paid with his life,
being hanged just days before the Allies liberated the concentration
camp.
But in truth, he "gave his life" long before that. He knew that there
were many things he had to relinquish -- like his safety and even his
fiancé -- if he were to really follow Christ's call to him, and
find the life that God intends.
Like Peter and the disciples, and like us, Bonhoeffer had to answer
Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” His answer made all the
difference in what kind of Christian he would be, what kind of person
he would be. It wasn’t just about believing in Jesus for the sake of
some heaven at a later date; it was about following Jesus now, for the
sake of the world that God so loves. For while Bonhoeffer was grappling
with this question, the church in Germany was confronted with the rise
of Nazism and the deliberate, systematic annihilation of not only Jews,
but also Gypsies, homosexuals, the mentally-disabled, and anyone else
who didn’t fit the vision of the Aryan future. And the church as a
whole failed what admittedly was a very demanding test of faithfulness.
There was, however, a small movement that was known as the “Confessing
Church.” While most of the German church-goers followed their leaders
who acquiesced to the government, there were some who simply refused.
They signed the Barmen Declaration of 1934, which said right up front
that “Jesus Christ....is the one Word of God which we have to hear and
which we have to trust and obey in life and in death.” They took a
stand, and paid a price; most did not live to see their stand
vindicated, as it eventually was.
For him it was all about Jesus, who Jesus was and is and what Jesus
asks of us. Had it been popular to wear today’s WWJD? bracelets,
Bonheoffer might have worn one, though for him it wouldn’t be so much
“What would Jesus do?” as “What would justice demand?”
And that, too, is the inconvenient truth about Jesus. However we answer
the question, “Who do you say that I am?”, however we experience Jesus,
as loving friend, gentle shepherd, human face of God’s presence,
purveyor of an alternative reality, we cannot escape the fact that
eventually he challenges us to stand up and challenge the injustices
and inequities of the world, especially the ones that we ourselves
benefit from. Receive Jesus' compassion, yes; let him touch you with
his healing power. Accept his word of forgiveness and rise to new life.
Sit like a disciple at his feet. See in his countenance the human face
of God. But.... do not become too cozy with him, for this Jesus, who
overturned the tables of the money changers and overturned the tables
of unjust social convention by opening his own table to outcasts and
sinners, this Jesus may very well upset some of the cherished notions
and conventions of your life and mine! He may ask us to love the
unlovable, to befriend someone who is not like ourselves. He may
contest our way of being religious, of being a church. He may disturb
our idea of what is holy. He may break down our boundaries. He may
challenge us to create a community that does not just tolerate
diversity, but embraces it: a community in which rich and poor, young
and old, black and white and brown, red and blue, gay and straight,
male and female, hawk and dove, American and Iraqi and North Korean....
are all welcomed, are all seated at table together. And that table, in
all its diversity and vitality, may be a manifestation of God's realm
among us!
So who do you say that he is? How you answer will make all the
difference for your life, your faith, your church, your world.
While I was traveling in Ireland last month, I though I should read
something by an Irishman. The book I took along was by John Dominic
Crossan, A Long Way from Tipperary, an autobiographical account of his
journey from Irish monk to a leading voice in the Jesus Seminar, about
his search for the historical Jesus and his answer to the
Who-do-you-say-that-I-am question. And ultimately it was about his
life-long quest for truth, however inconvenient that truth might turn
out to be, which in his case meant giving up his safe life as a priest.
Towards the end of the book he relates an imaginary conversation
between himself and Jesus, in which Jesus says, “I’ve read your (work),
Dominic, and it’s quite good. So now you’re ready to live by my vision
and join me in my program?”
“I don’t think I have the courage, Jesus, but I did describe it quite
well, didn’t I, and the method was especially good, wasn’t it?”
“Thank you, Dominic, for not falsifying my message to suit your own
incapacity. That is at least something.”
“Is it enough, Jesus?”
“No, Dominic, it is not.”
“If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take
up their cross and follow me. For 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.”
Who do YOU say that he is?
Last updated Wednesday, Februrary 29, 2008
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