Let us pray: “God, you have called us to walk this way of faith with you. You spoke to us, reached out to us, and we followed. Sometimes the journey is difficult. Sometimes our walk with you is great joy. Your journey has led you to a cross. We wonder if our journey with you might lead to a cross as well. Walk with us, God; stay with us as evening approaches. Be for us bread for the journey, water in the wilderness. Be patient with our unwillingness to walk as you would have us walk. Do not walk so far ahead of us that we lose sight of you. Walk with us, God. AMEN

Our gospel reading for this morning forms the heart of Mark’s gospel. Prior to this passage, we hear about the many miracles that Jesus performed. He fed the 5000, healed the deaf, blind and mute, walked on water and exorcised demons. The disciples must have been energized by the wonder of all of this…and excited to be a part of it. They must have said to one another: “We are well on the way to success!” Consequently, when Jesus asked them who they said he was, they answered with names of those who symbolized success: John the Baptist, Elijah and the prophets. When Jesus turned to Peter to ask him: “Who do YOU say that I am?” Peter answered: “You are the Christ” or "you are Messiah."

Christ is a title, not a name, and, for Peter and the others it would have meant that Jesus was the long-awaited Messiah promised in the Hebrew Scriptures. That Messiah was predicted to be a powerful king who would bring peace and rule over God’s people. I suspect the disciples might have hoped that they would be the close knit group surrounding that wondrous leader sent by God who would bring comfort and earthly power to the Jewish nation.

We can understand that. Today, with religion much in the news and in the politics of our nation, there is an implicit if not explicit understanding that to confess Jesus Christ, to claim the faith of the church, will bring comfort, power and fame. Jesus quickly disabused them and us of this notion. 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.” This was horrifying to his followers for it was in direct opposition to their expectations!

It is easy for us to say the creeds, to confess Jesus Christ, and to leave it there. It is easy to sidestep the cross, if you will, as we sit comfortably (or uncomfortably, depending upon the quality of our seating) in our pews. It has been said: “The simple truth is that we cannot confess Christ with any credibility and remain committed to our own comfort…so we understand, as church members, that we must suffer if our confession is to be complete?” (copied, Synthesis 9/17/06; p. 2) Just as Jesus rebuked Peter, so this notion of “comfort” needs to be rebuked. The truth is, if anyone, any group of people anywhere is suffering, there should be no comfort for Christ’s people. Wherever the least are suffering – in Umtata, in Proteccion, in our own city where homelessness is rampant – there can be no comfort, no ease that follows our confession. Like Peter, we need to be disabused of our grandiose notions and shown Christ’s suffering that must be ours. It has been said that “suffering confirms confession” (copied). In other words, there can be no real faithfulness to the gospel without actively moving into our suffering world.

This leads us to the third major point of the gospel where Jesus says: “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…” Notice Jesus did not tell them to accept the crosses they have been given, to bear physical, emotional or other burdens. Those are givens. No, he challenged them and us to “take up our cross” to enter into the human condition, to accept the burden that goes with claiming that we are his. Walter Gower has said: “Accepting our cross doesn’t mean taking responsibility for what we are…that’s arrogance. God made us what we are; God gave us our circumstances…it means taking responsibility for what we are doing with what we are.”

With all apologies to Walter Gowen, before we can either, like Peter, say who Christ is for us, let alone follow him by picking up our own crosses, we must know who we are at the deepest part of us, and that calls for making choices. Do we put the world at our center, or do we put God at our center.

I read where, several years ago “Rabbi Jan Goldstein had the opportunity to meet Jihan Sadat, widow of the former Egyptian president, Anwar Sadat. In the beginning of Sadat’s presidency, he had championed war against Israel. He was part of the destructive cycle of hatred and bloodshed that has stalked the Middle East for decades. But then one day, Sadat determined to become a peacemaker. He wanted to break down the walls of violence and misunderstanding between the Egyptians and the Israelis. He knew that members of his own political party would try to kill him to stop the peace process. Mrs. Sadat recalled the day that Anwar told her he was going to Jerusalem to negotiate a peace settlement. She protested that his enemies would kill him. He replied, “Then I would have died for peace.” His trip to Jerusalem was an historic moment, and it opened President Sadat’s eyes to the possibilities of a peaceful future between the two countries. Mrs. Sadat reported that he came back from the trip energized, full of joy. Not long afterwards, he was assassinated.” (Dynamic Preaching, Vol. XXI, No. 3, 9/17/06))

The source continued: “The work of reconciliation requires sacrifice. That is true when we are speaking of reconciliation between nations; that is true when we speak of reconciliation between humanity and God. A sacrifice must be made, and it is God who made the sacrifice. If you do not understand this, you do not grasp the heart of Christian faith. Without the cross, Christianity is just another pleasant philosophy urging people to be nicer to one another…This is the Good News. This is the dividing line between an insipid Christianity that motivates no real devotion, and a life-changing Christianity that causes people to give their lives in the work of reconciliation.”

I many have told you before a story I heard at General Convention in 1997 about “an old man who lived on the edge of town who was wise. However he was often teased by local children. The oldest boy in the group tended to incite the others. One day he knocked on the old man’s door, hands behind his back, and said: “I have a bird in one hand. If you pick the right hand I will set it free. If you pick the wrong hand I will strangle it. (The child really had both hands on the bird, so there was no way the old man could choose correctly.) The wise old man regarded the young boy steadily and said: ‘I will not choose – the answer is in your hands.” (remembered & copied)

No one else can choose for us – as individuals or as a congregation. The decision is in our hands. Will we have the wisdom to know that only in shouldering the suffering of the cross will we find true life? The decision in our hands. AMEN