September 14, 2003
|
|
|
|
You may have read in the current issue of the newsletter that
one of the actions taken by the Administrative Committee at its meeting in July
was to elect William Chris Hobgood to be the General Minister and President of
the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He will serve in that office for the
twenty-one months between the end of the General Assembly next month in
Charlotte, North Carolina and the end of the General Assembly in Portland,
Oregon in 2005. In his presentation to us, Chris talked about values and core
values. As he defines the terms, a
value is a belief we are willing to act on and broadcast. Those trips back to
class reunions and family reunions tell of the value we place on keeping up
those relationships and contacts. We value where we are from; my license plate
describes the value I place on being a Californian. There are values we hold
dear. Core values are those things, actions, and relationships that
we not only act on and broadcast, they also help to define who we are. Martin
Luther King, Jr. held equal rights and justice for all people as a value. He
acted on that value in word and deed, he spoke about it with clarity and
elegance. But what defines him is his core value of non-violence resistance to
the evils of racism, economic injustice, and the war in Vietnam. I know that one of our values is this building. We love its
architecture and we love the ministries and memories that have come from these
rooms. So many of you remember your weddings here, and for some of you the
weddings of your children and grandchildren too. Baptisms have happened here,
babies now grown to adulthood have been dedicated here. This is a place we value
and we want it to thrive and grow and prosper. But this building is not our core
value. It describes us, but it does not define us. What defines us is why we
come to this building. What brings us here is our faith in the One who to whom
1049 East Broad Street and the lives that are changed here is dedicated. Chris Hobgood shared five core values that define who he is.
As I listened, it seemed that he was describing my core values too. And I
believe they are also the core values of Broad Street Christian Church. The first of Hobgood’s core
values, you will hear about others over the next few weeks, is that Jesus Christ
is Lord. It is first because it is basic. It is on this confession of faith that
we stand and it is the foundation on which every other core value of our faith
is built. You may know that we Disciples do not demand adherence to a creed or
catechism as a condition for church membership. We are not asked to affirm a
creed, though they are quite stirring statements of faith, and there will be
membership classes here because we want people to know the values of the
congregation they have joined. We
do ask that people affirm the belief, the core value that Jesus Christ is Lord
of their lives, and that he in fact wants to be Lord of the world. It is that affirmation that holds us together. And it is
counter to one of the myths of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). The
myth is that we are so free that we can believe whatever we want and do whatever
we want, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.
We love to say that we are autonomous. We can do whatever we choose to
do. The reality is not quite that simple nor quite that lose. We do have
expectations of our pastors and leaders and they are held accountable when those
expectations are not met. Besides, I cannot believe that any of us wants to be part of
a church that asks nothing of us except to come in and continue on as if church
membership makes no difference to our lives at all. The truth is that we have some practices that distinguish us
such as baptism by immersion and communion every Sunday, we do fact order our
own life here. We own our buildings, create our own orders of worship, call our
pastors, develop our own budgets, write our own constitutions, and each of us is
free to understand God’s direction in our lives as the Holy Spirit leads us.
Be we are not autonomous. To be autonomous means to be a law unto ourselves. We
are instead a people in covenant, in sacred agreement with God and with each
other and that means we pray, plan, play, and work with each other and with
other partners to build up this part of the body of Christ.
We are in covenant because we believe as our statement of affirmation
declares: “As
members of the Christian Church, we believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
the living God, and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world. In Christ’s
name and by his grace we accept our mission of witness and service to all
people” (Preamble to the Design for the Christian Church (Disciples of
Christ). We read the word that Jesus Christ is Lord as Jesus and his
disciples are on their way to Jerusalem. They have left the place where his
ministry had good results to go back to the city where he will die. They are
near the villages of Caesarea Philippi. You can hear in the name of the region a
tribute to the emperor Caesar. It is the site of the temple to the god Pan.
It was a place that had much more Greek and Roman influence than Jewish
influence, but here is where they are (www.lectionary.org
, p.2). Sometimes when we are in an unfamiliar place, we want to
get to the heart of what matters to us. Looking out across the area, the
disciples around him, a crowd around them, Jesus asks two questions, and the
answers to those questions tell us three things. First we learn that to say who Jesus is becomes a matter of
his identity and ours. “Who do people say that I am?”
The question is not as ego driven as when we ask, what do people think of me?
Jesus wants to know if people understand who he is. Do they get that he God has
sent him into the world? At first
the disciples repeat what they have heard. Some say you are John the Baptist,
the martyred prophet come back to life. But other people think you are Elijah,
who stoop up for God and humiliated the prophets of Baal, others don’t quite
know, maybe you are one of the other prophets of God. The second question is more direct.
Who do you say that I am? Who do we say
Jesus is? Today some would answer that Jesus is a revered philosopher who shows
us how to use our minds and spirits in service to others. For others, he is a
compassionate teacher and leader who died an unfortunate death and whose most
fanatic believers claim he came back to life. But such a description ignores who
Jesus is and ignore his motivation, which was the spirit of God alive in him in
a way unlike any other moving in his life. We hear Peter say to Jesus, “you are the Messiah” and
many of us finished that sentence for him and thought to ourselves the words
found in Matthew (16.13-23) and repeated in the Disciples of Christ affirmation
of faith. Not only are you the Messiah, you are also “the son of the living
God”. For our church to be strong, for our witness to be its
greatest, the full meaning of Peter’s confession becomes ours, “you are the
Messiah”. You – the confession is
personal and directed at Jesus himself; Are – describes a state of
being, you are; The – a definite article,
there is only one, he is unique in his relationship to God; Messiah – the word which means
the same in other translations is Christ. You are the Messiah, the Christ, the
anointed one. As David was anointed by Samuel with oil, so Jesus has been
anointed by God with the very essence of God. In his being, he is God’s own
son. All that God has, all the love, all the hope, all the power, all the
authority. Jesus Christ is Lord is an identity statement about him, and it is an
identity statement about we who call ourselves Christians. Peter knows who Jesus is, but he does not know what his
knowledge means. The second thing Mark tells us is that having identified
Jesus, we begin to be instructed by him. What he teaches us belies our belief
that once we identify him, all will be well, and trouble will visit us no more.
Jesus knows that if we follow him, we follow him into his destiny. It is his destiny to face opponents and people who will seek
his life. It will be his destiny to suffer and to bear his burdens and the
burdens of others. He will teach that he will face opposition and rejection by
the elders, chief priests and scribes. These groups form the Sanhedrin who were
the religious and secular authority for the Jewish people. “Members of the
religious establishment are not the only ones who find Jesus’ teaching
unpalatable. So does Peter, and again he speaks for all of Jesus’ disciples”
(Interpretation
Series, Lamar Williamson, Jr. Mark. Atlanta:John Knox Press, 1983, p.152-153). “No” Peter says. We don’t have Peter’s exact words,
but they must have been something like, “stop, say no more, shut up! Look
Jesus. We have been doing something good here. People have been healed, lives
have been changed, people are walking with their backs straight and their heads
high because you have helped them know that they are beloved of God. What is all
this talk about death? We don’t need to hear this, think of the trouble you
will cause.” For just a moment, Peter is acting as if he is the teacher and
Jesus is the disciple. Peter is like the people around him who as one writer
describes, “think of Jesus not as the Messiah, but as a great man like one of
the great men of history. They have their own ideas about the Messiah and Jesus
does not fit the mold. They think of the Messiah as David’s successor who will
drive out the Roman garrison, re-establish Israel’s glory, and usher in a
golden age. To accomplish these goals, they expect the Messiah to use
traditional power – the ability to control people through military or economic
dominance. They expect the Messiah to be superman, a man like other men except
for his greater strength. Jesus re-defines power to mean drawing people to
himself through love. His love will be expressed in self-denial and
cross-bearing” (lectionary,
p.3). Jesus does not forget who is the disciple and who is the
teacher. He orders Peter to remember that the student does not get out in front
of the teacher and he says in the strongest terms, “get behind me Satan”.
Reminding us of the temptations story when Jesus faced down the devil, he uses
the term to tell the church that he will not be tempted away from him ministry
even if it takes him to a cross. He goes on to urge Peter to think beyond what
he knows so that he can learn that there is a price to pay for faithful
obedience to God in the world. Finally, Jesus is clear as we learn the third thing Mark
wants us to know. Turning his attention to the crowd, he reminds us all that
knowing the identity of Jesus and having a willingness to be instructed by him
means that we are invested in his ministry. His ministry becomes our ministry. The disciples, the early church, and all who want a
relationship with Jesus, including each of us is invited to make a three-fold
investment: take up our cross, deny ourselves, and follow Jesus. I like this
explanation of how we are invested in the ministry of Jesus. “Jesus says that discipleship involves self-denial and
cross-bearing. [The gospels were written after the events they describe as a way
of teaching the early church about Jesus Christ]. At the time in which this
Gospel was written, Christians were literally bearing crosses and losing their
lives. These words of Jesus speak very directly to their situation, and hold out
a great promise. ‘The end of the road of discipleship is not crucifixion; it
is resurrection…these words are not finally about losing one’s life,
forfeiting the world, and unashamedly joining the Son of Man’s rejection. It
is finally about saving one’s life, gaining one’s soul, and seeing the
kingdom’ (quoting
Timothy J Geddert in Believers Church Community Bible Commentary; Scottsdale PA:
Herald Press, 2001, p.211). The church is
always tempted to offer less costly discipleship in the hope of attracting more
people. A weak call, however produces weak disciples. A church may win people by
disguising the true meaning of discipleship. But it cannot do anything with them
after it gets them” (lectionary,
p.5). We want to do things with you here. We want all of us to get
that the truest meaning of discipleship, of being a follower of Jesus Christ,
who we name as Lord is this. It means to have high expectations for ourselves
and for what we can do in the church. It means learning and leading. It means
giving up everything that gets in the way of our relationship with him. It is to
commit ourselves to the good news Christ bears, and it is to be about hope,
healing, and life in all its abundance (John
10.10). Dr.
LaTaunya M. Bynum |
|
Broad
Street Christian Church
|
