17th Sunday After Pentecost: James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38
The Rev'd Cameron Partridge
September 15, 2024
Good morning, St. Aidan’s. This morning we have heard one of the most iconic passages of Mark’s Gospel and of the wider story of Jesus: the moment in which, walking along the way to Caesarian Philippi with his disciples, Jesus asks “who do people say that I am?” The interchange back and forth in response to this question, as well as the implications for the disciples of this question and its answer for any who might become his disciples, are profound. What is the fundamental shape of your life, the life to which God in Jesus Christ calls you? What is the shape of our collective life as part of the wider community of those who follow Jesus, the collective Body of Christ? But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.
Jesus and his disciples are making their way toward Caesarea Philippi, a city named after Philip the Tetrarch, brother of Herod Antipas who was a key part of the terrible story we heard in July surrounding the execution of John the Baptist (Mark 6:14-29). This city was an important seat of Roman imperial power, including the worship of its emperors. And so, when Jesus asks his disciples “who do people say that I am?” imperial power is very much in the air. The first reply, “some say John the Baptist,” again evokes the story we heard about John’s death, recalling how Herod had reacted to rumors of Jesus’ activities by wondering if he was John resurrected (Mark 6:16).[1] Other suggested responses to this question, that Jesus might be Elijah or another of the prophets, point to how Jesus’ ministry had recognizably prophetic qualities. Having heard what others are saying, Jesus then sharpens his question: who do you say that I am? You who don’t simply hear about me but who watch me day in, day out, you who walk with me along these roads, share meals with me. Peter responds very simply and directly: “you are the Christos,” the Christ, the Greek word that our translation renders in its Hebrew form, the Messiah.[2] God love Peter, he gets it right on the money. Jesus’ immediate reply, telling the group not to convey this information to anyone, is striking. Why would he do this?
The interchange that follows suggests an answer: because of the disciples’ (and others’) likely assumptions about the shape of a Messianic life. The Messiah was not a worldly king, not an imperial type figure to whom one should offer worship, as was associated with the city toward which they walked. The Messiah was also not a war-like leader who would restore lost stature.[3] But Jesus did not make these points directly. He did not own the word Messiah in reply. Instead, he explained what would happen to him, what the shape of his life would be: he would undergo great suffering; he would be rejected and killed; and then he would rise again after three days. Unlike the Messiah declaration, this he said quite openly, Mark underlines. Peter cannot handle it. None of them could. None of us likely could.
There’s a saying that gets featured in various parenting books: don’t react, respond. When faced with an unexpected, highly upsetting statement from your interlocutor (child, friend, colleague, sibling, parent), don’t launch into a tirade or lecture, don’t be reactive. Instead, maybe ask a question: can you help me understand why you are so certain of this catastrophic scenario? I truly do not get it. But Peter is too shocked. The verb for the action he takes, his rebuke, is the same word used for the casting out of demons. Which then prompts Jesus to react and say, essentially, stand down.[4] Get back. You are not seeing me aright. You are setting your mind not on the things of God but on the things of human beings, all of our treacherous fiefdoms. The shape of this life is not triumphal in the sense that humans conceive through our models of power. This life would be cruciform, cross-shaped.
To say that Jesus’ life and ministry was cruciform is not to collapse his liberative teaching, his restorative healing, his open table fellowship, into his death, as if none of it happened, as if all we need talk about is cross and resurrection. Rather, it is to recognize, as theologian Kelly Brown Douglas has, that Jesus directed his energy, centered his ministry, gave his life to the “crucified class,” those most marginalized, most oppressed in this world. “There is no doubt that the cross reflects the depth and scope of human violence,” Douglas writes in Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God. “The cross in this respect represents the consuming violence of the world. It points to a world that is saturated with violence.” Importantly, she continues, “This violence includes not simply the physical brutality meant to harm bodies, but also the systems, structures, narratives, and constructs that do harm. Anything that would devalue the life of another is violent.”[5] Rhetoric can be deeply violent. As the letter of James underscores, it is “a restless evil, full of deadly poison” (James 3:8). In a week where we have heard a candidate for President of the United States use horrific racist imagery to demean Haitian immigrants, and by extension all immigrants to this country, we must be clear that Jesus stood against such violent rhetoric.[6] Further, as Douglas continues, in Christ, “God enters into this world of violence, yet God does not take it into God’s self…. Instead, God responds in a way that negates and denounces the violence that perverts and demeans the integrity of human creation.” In and through the resurrection, on and after the third day, as Jesus’ words in our gospel passage emphasize, “God responds to the violence of the cross – the violence of the world – in a nonviolent but forceful manner.”[7] In a life of profound divine solidarity, he joined those who experienced humanity at its worst in order to challenge and transform the death-dealing structures of our world, and finally to bring liberating life.
Having now unpacked a cruciform life, Jesus implicitly applies to the disciples the question he had originally asked of himself: who do people say that you are? And if the answer is “Jesus’ disciples,” those who follow and learn from him, then here is what such an identity leads to, what it means: “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.” It needs to be said that many of us have heard this passage interpreted in ways that encourage unhealthy self-denial. It is a sign of systemic evil that this very passage has been used to reinforce internalized self-hatred, or to undermine resistance to violence, as the phrase “that must be your cross to bear” has all too often been applied, especially for those of us who experience marginalization in some way.[8] But that is not what this passage means. Rather, it invites us expansively to follow the example and be infused with the life-giving Spirit of the one who lived a cruciform life. Which means contesting in our various contexts the death-dealing structures of our world. It means following the teachings and taking up the restorative work of the Christ who centered those most marginalized in and by our world. It means living lives that seek to release that which oppressively upholds our status, to whatever extent we may have it. It means opening ourselves to being transformed and joining one another, and others we do not yet know, in transforming this world, step by step, knowing that God is with us, energizing us with divine fire, grounding us in hope.
Who do people say that we are? A few weeks ago, I was walking in my neighborhood when I ran into a neighbor, someone whose name I seldom remember but with a tiny skittish dog named Ella and a cat named Greykitty. Ella doesn’t like men, but I am honored that she seems to like me. Greykitty on the other hand, was not so picky. Gregarious and cuddly, a true neighborhood cat with long-term coyote-escaping powers. But on this day our neighbor said, “I have sad news. Greykitty is sick.” He had an illness that was uncurable and he was not long for this world, my neighbor explained. Before I could stop myself, I found myself saying something like, “you know, when the time comes, I have created sacred space for people to say goodbye to their companion animals…” That’s been a facet of my ministry here inspired in many ways by the Companion Animal memorial that Betty, Margaret and others have led here. “Are you a minister?” the man asked. I replied, yes, that I’m an Episcopal priest serving here. “Oh, my wife is an Episcopalian!” he replied, much to my surprise. We chatted a bit more but then as we were parting, he paused and asked me, how did I feel about the changes in access to reproductive health and bodily autonomy which Christians have so visibly supported in this country? I told him I was very upset about this. As he asked other questions I realized he was asking me what kind of Christian I was, and more specifically about Christian Nationalism. Even knowing I was an Episcopalian, we should note, he wanted to make sure. Who do we say that we are, we Christians?
In this moment, to live a cruciform life means contesting Christian Nationalism.[9] It means relinquishing power and privilege that upholds the status of some at the horrifying expense of others. It means coming together to ground ourselves anew in the loving, life-giving, liberating ministry of Jesus the Christ, as our Presiding Bishop Michael Curry says. Taking up our cross and following Jesus is a collective life of active listening for God’s call to us in this moment, as we did in our deanery meeting yesterday and as we are doing in our diocese right now.[10] It is to open ourselves to compassionate connection in the porous boundaries of our life here at St. Aidan’s, embedded in a wider San Francisco and Bay Area community. It is to allow ourselves to be fed, to be nurtured, to be transformed by the experience of being a follower of Jesus Christ. It means being willing to be transformed such that the shape of our lives takes on the form of the cross, the Paschal Mystery itself – death into resurrection life – the transformation of our hearts, our bodies, our lives, linked to all creation. May we have the strength, the courage, the hope, the heart, to respond to that call together.
[1] William C. Placher, Mark: A Theological Commentary (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 115.
[2] Placher, 115
[3] Placher, 116
[4] Placher, 116
[5] Kelly Brown Douglas, Stand Your Ground: Black Bodies and the Justice of God (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2015), 184.
[6] Jazmine Ulloa, “'They’re Eating the Cats’: Trump Repeats False Claim About Immigrants,” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/10/us/politics/trump-debate-immigrants-pets.html, The New York Times, September 10, 2024. The NY Times Daily Podcast, “The Story Behind ‘They’re Eating the Pets’” https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/13/podcasts/the-daily/ohio-immigrants-pets.html, September 13, 2024. See also, David Paulson, “After Trump, Vance ‘create stories’ demonizing migrants, Ohio city feels brunt of bigotry, threats of violence,” https://episcopalnewsservice.org/2024/09/16/after-trump-vance-create-stories-demonizing-migrants-ohio-city-feels-brunt-of-bigotry-threats-of-violence/, Episcopal News Service, September 16, 2024
[7] Douglas, 184
[8] Placher, 117, citing Rebecca Parker and Joanne Carlson Brown, “For God So Loved the World,” in Christianity, Patriarchy, and Abuse: A Feminist Critique (New York: Pilgrim Press, 1992), 2.
[9] This is a topic we explored at length in our 2024 Lent series, reading Carter Heyward's The Seven Deadly Sins of White Christian Nationalism: A Call to Action (Rowman and Littlefield, 2022). At our upcoming convention the Diocese of California is considering a resolution addressing precisely this topic: https://www.diocalconvention.org/175-convention/2024resolutions/christian-nationalism/
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