Sermon Archive

Is That Your Final Answer?

(Rutgers, March 19, 2000; 2nd Sunday in Lent, Year B)

Genesis 17:1–7, 15–16 (OT, p. 14); Mark 8:27–31 (NT, pp. 44–45)

Good old Regis and Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?!

They’ve really gotten inside my head!

Imagine, for instance, that in the middle of a night’s sleep

I hear a voice very much like Regis’s saying to me:

“Byron, here’s your question for $250,000: ‘Where would the

ABC Television Network be without this program?

a) at the top of the ratings;

b) at the bottom of the ratings;

c) second in the ratings, behind only NBC;

d) third in the ratings, behind both NBC and CBS,

but ahead of Fox.’”

“Uh, Regis, I’ll say ‘c) second in the ratings.’”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Umm, maybe not! … I believe it’s actually

‘d) third in the ratings.’”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Yes, yes it is!”

“You’re right, for $250,000.”

“And now, Byron, here’s your question for $500,000:

‘What were the names of Abraham and Sarah before God made

a covenant with them promising them land and offspring?

a) Abram and Sarai;

b) Abram and Sarah;

c) Abraham and Sarai;

d) Abraham and Sarah.’”

“Oh, Regis, I know that one: ‘a) Abram and Sarai.”

“Your final answer?”

“Yes, ‘a) Abram and Sarai!’”

“You’re right, for $500,000!”

“And now, Byron, you’re going for $1,000,000. Ready?”
“Yes, Regis, I guess I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”

“OK, then, here it is:

‘Who do you say that Jesus was?

a) John the Baptist;

b) Elijah;

c) one of the prophets;

d) the Messiah.’”

“Regis, I think I know this one: … ‘d) the Messiah.’”

“Is that your final answer?”

“Umm… Well, let me think a minute…”

Then suddenly, in my dream, I hear a second voice,

different from Regis’s, whispering into my ear and saying:

“Hey, Byron.

Before answering, take some time to think that one through!

There’s much more at stake here than just $1,000,000.

The course of your whole life is at stake.”

This voice startles and frightens me. The course of my whole life?

I can feel myself beginning to breathe heavily and irregularly.

In the face of needing to answer this question correctly,

I am experiencing a mild kind of panic attack.

It is just then that I sense an elbow wedging itself

between the 9th and 10th ribs on my left side, and a third voice,

very much like Margaret’s, half-whispering, half-shouting at me:

“Byron, roll over. You’re snoring!”

Thus ends my dream, and so begins this sermon, for, of course,

I have to figure out for myself where my dream has been heading.

Why would the course of my whole life depend on the answer

I’d give to that question, “Who do you say that Jesus was?”

By the light of day, and after re-reading the gospel text in Mark 8,

things now seem clearer. So let me try to put my thoughts

about this morning’s Second Lesson into words.

As Mark portrays things, the disciple Peter

is the very first person who professes Jesus as the Messiah,

rather than as simply another prophet or rabbi.

But, according to Mark,

Peter gives his right answer with the wrong attitude,

an attitude that will ill equip him to prove faithful

through thick and thin, an attitude that will

lead first, to Peter’s threefold denial of Jesus

on the night of his arrest,

and second, to Peter’s stunning absence

during Jesus’s crucifixion on Golgotha.

Peter proclaims Jesus to be the Messiah, that is, the Christ.

But, as I said, he gives his right answer with a wrong attitude.

For he understands the mission of God’s Messiah, of the Christ,

to be the vanquishing of evil through might and majesty,

not through the risking of death in humility and love.

Now, Jesus knows he’ll not be using military might in his ministry,

and he’s already anticipating that he’ll be put to death.

So Jesus seeks to explain to his closest disciples that the path

he’s walking is one that entails a high risk of suffering.

Jesus talks of the likelihood of his death.

He talks about this quite openly, and in plain language.

But Peter rejects Jesus's plain speaking.

Indeed, he pulls Jesus aside and angrily rebukes him.

I can just hear Peter saying,

"You're wrong, Jesus. You're the Messiah, the Christ!

You’ll never suffer. You and we—we’ll be victorious."

But, shaking free from Peter's grasp, Jesus replies,

"Get behind me, Satan! For your mind is set on the false

assumption that fulfilling God's love entails no earthly cost.

Get behind me, Satan!"

Jesus insists that Peter has to accept the fact that following him

on the pathway of God’s love entails far more risk than glory.

Having rebuked and admonished Peter, Jesus now turns

to continue his plain speaking to a wider audience,

an audience not only of his closest disciples but also

of the many other people who now make their appearance.

Jesus says to this crowd:

"If any want to profess me as the Messiah, the Christ,

and to become my followers,

let them deny themselves, and take up their cross,

and follow me."

We, of course, are numbered among those in Jesus’s wider audience.

And throughout Lent we’re reminded that the path of liberating

love that Jesus followed led to Golgotha, to Calvary.

And there the cross reveals, for all the world to see, the heart of God.

For in Christ Crucified we see the true character of God;

there we encounter the love, the humility, the meekness,

the willingness to turn the other cheek

and to share human sorrow

that are intrinsic to God’s own nature.

You see, Christ is the perfect image of God,

the image that humankind was made to be,

the image that each of us is asked to become.

So as we ponder, throughout this season of Lent, the question,

“Who do you say that Jesus was?”

and as we consider whether “the Messiah, the Christ”

will be our final answer,

we need to weigh seriously the implications that such an

answer will have for the rest of our lives;

for to follow Jesus is more risk than glory..

If we call Jesus “Messiah, Christ”

and if we undertake to imitate his life,

then our life, too, will be a road not of might and majesty

but rather a path of hearts opened in humility and love,

of arms outstretched in welcome and compassion,

of deeds that provoke a response of rejection, and of

imposed suffering, and sometimes even of death.

If we undertake to imitate the life of Christ, we will be called upon

to intervene on behalf of the homeless in our city,

to take up the cause of communities oppressed by the police,

to oppose the corporate greed that feeds on sweatshops,

to share our wealth with the victims of natural disasters,

to preserve the beauty + integrity of the natural world,

to put our bodies on the line in the pursuit of peace,

to forgive the debt of the world's poorest nations.

To follow the way of Christ is to pursue a path that’s more risk

than glory, a path that leads to sweat, and tears, and often blood;

for in a world so profoundly alienated from its Creator as ours,

the cost of love is often suffering, and sometimes death,

as it was for Jesus himself, & for countless martyrs since.

“…sweat, and tears, and often blood.”

This phrase reminds me of the song we’ve been singing in Lent:

“Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet,

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.

There’s one thing I know, for he loves me so:

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.”

This is a song that comes to us from the lips of a homeless man,

and our congregation has been singing it during Lent

for several years now.

Several people have spoken to me saying they don’t like to sing about

Jesus’s blood,

and one person has suggested that we change the words

to “Jesus’s love never failed me yet.”

This suggestion, I believe, has the virtue of correctly understanding

that it was Jesus’s life of love that liberated the oppressed

of his time and place and

that it is the lives of love of modern-day disciples of Christ

that have the power to liberate the oppressed

of our own time and place, including the homeless man

who bequeathed us his song.

But I believe it is imperative for followers of Christ to acknowledge

that a love that liberates, a love like Jesus’s, can be costly,

that the love Jesus lived led, in fact, to the spilling of his blood.

So I suggest we continue to join with the homeless man in singing:

“Jesus’ blood never failed me yet, never failed me yet.

There’s one thing I know, for he loves me so:

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.”

When we join in singing those words, I understand us

to be acknowledging that the life Jesus lived,

a life of love for the oppressed and the marginalized,

both liberated persons and led to his death.

I also understand us to be acknowledging

that Jesus’s death on the cross continues

to be a liberating force in our world as we who

are Jesus’s disciples pick up his cross in our

own lives—that is, as we who are

disciples of Christ also choose

to live lives of liberating love,

even at the risk of death.

“There’s one thing I know, for he loves me so:

Jesus’ blood never failed me yet.”

Jesus was put to death; his blood

was shed because of the life of liberating love that he lived;

and we need to be reminded of that fact as we point toward

our observance of Good Friday.

After this sermon, the choir will sing for us

a hymn that the whole congregation will sing on Good Friday,

another song that expresses this theology of the blood of Christ

that I have sought to explain in this sermon.

The text of this hymn by Isaac Watts also speaks of the cost,

in our sin-filled world, of living a life of liberating love,

a cost that Jesus asks us to be willing to risk:

“See from His head, His hands, His feet,

Sorrow and love flow mingled down;

Did e’er such love and sorrow meet,

Or thorns compose so rich a crown?

“Were the whole realm of nature mine,

That were a present far too small;

Love so amazing, so divine,

Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Isaac Watts, from “When I Survey the Wondrous Cross,” 1707

“Now, here’s your final question. Be careful; you have a lot to risk!

‘Who do you say that Jesus was?’”

“… I say, the Messiah, the Christ.”

… “Is that your final answer?”

Let us pray:

O God, what you ask of us is awesome—to liberate the oppressed and the marginalized at the risk of our own well-being, or even the risk of death. It is only by Your grace that we can make Christ our final answer. Grant us that gift, we pray. Amen.

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