Who is Jesus? Who are we?

Isaiah 50:4-9a 

The Lord GOD has given me the tongue of a teacher, that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word. Morning by morning he wakens - wakens my ear to listen as those who are taught. The Lord GOD has opened my ear, and I was not rebellious, I did not turn backward. I gave my back to those who struck me, and my checks to those who pulled out the beard; I did not hide my face from insult and spitting. The Lord GOD helps me; therefore I have not been disgraced; therefore I have set my face like flint, and I know that I shall not be put to shame; he who vindicates me is near. Who will contend with me? Let us stand up together. Who are my adversaries? Let them confront me. It is the Lord GOD who helps me; who will declare me guilty?

Psalm 116:1-9

I love the LORD, who has heard my voice, and listened to my supplication, for the LORD has given ear to me whenever I called. The cords of death entangled me; the anguish of the grave came upon me; I came to grief and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I pray to you, save my life.” Gracious is the LORD and righteous; our God is full of compassion. The LORD watches over the innocent; I was brought low, and God saved me. Turn again to your rest, O my soul, for the LORD has dealt well with you. For you have rescued my life from death, my eyes from tears, and my feet from stumbling; I will walk in the presence of the LORD in the land of the living.

James 3:1-12

Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters, for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness. For all of us make many mistakes. Anyone who makes no mistakes in speaking is perfect, able to keep the whole body in check with a bridle. If we put bits into the mouths of horses to make them obey us, we guide their whole bodies. Or look at ships: though they are so large that it takes strong winds to drive them, yet they are guided by a very small rudder wherever the will of the pilot directs. So also the tongue is a small member, yet it boasts of great exploits. How great a forest is set ablaze by a small fire! And the tongue is a fire. The tongue is placed among our members as a world of iniquity; it stains the whole body, sets on fire the cycle of nature, an dis itself set on fire by hell. For every species of beast and bird, of reptile and sea creature, can be tamed and has been tamed by the human species, but no one can tame the tongue - a restless evil, full of deadly poison. With it we bless the Lord and Father, and with it we curse those who are made in the likeness of God. from the same mouth come blessing and cursing. My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so. Does a spring pour forth from the same opening both fresh and brackish water? Can a fig tree, my brothers and sisters, yield olives, or a grapevine figs? No more can salt water yield fresh.

Mark 8:27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then 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. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “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. For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”

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Addi May and Ella Jayn, you have been joined to Christ today in a way that we have been celebrating for generations. People of God, we have promised today to live that life of faith together in a way that we have been promising for generations. We will spend the rest of our lives together learning what Jesus means in today’s Gospel reading: how to take up our cross and follow. How to save our lives by losing them. How to trust that Jesus is in fact the anointed one of God. Not an easy task, by all accounts. Anyone who has lived will tell you that life can be a mess sometimes, with moments of high victory and moments of deep tragedy. We try awfully hard to stay in those high and happy places, far from the madding crowd, but life doesn’t let us, as much as we strive to avoid suffering. 

So Jesus is talking with his disciples about his reputation. He has healed many sick, fed lots and lots of people, walked on water, already gotten into a few confrontations with the religious authorities, and he wants to know what the people are saying about all of this. One of the prophets, maybe? The prophets were always going on about justice and care of the poor. John the Baptist, maybe? That baptizer got into a lot of trouble for his preaching. But the disciples who have been walking most closely with Jesus, who do they think he is? Well, the Messiah, the anointed one. Any day now going to take back the kingdom of Israel from those Roman oppressors.

Well, they’re only half right, then. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, or the word we use more often is “Christ.” But, no, the baggage attached to that claim is not the work Jesus is about. Ultimate power does not lay in destroying one’s enemies, but in building reconciling community with them so we are enemies no longer. This work of Jesus will lead to his being arrested and killed by the people he loves, and he knows that. The world so full of fear does not know how to reconcile itself to being loved so deeply, and Jesus knows that those striking out in anger and violence will make him their target. Yes, Peter, Jesus is the Messiah of God, but that does not mean what you think it means. It does not mean an end to the suffering of this life.

Because Jesus doesn’t save us from the sorrow of this life. Jesus saves us in all of this life.

Some would say that Baptism has become for most people nothing more than a crude form of ‘fire insurance’, protecting folks from the fires of hell after death. As though a dip in the pond and the right magic words will protect our eternal souls from eternal separation from God and the torment of just punishments for sin. As though this means if we just believe hard enough everything will turn out alright and life will forever be good and comfortable. As though we have made a choice to devote our souls to heaven and forget about what that means for our day to day life because, well, “at least I know I’m not going to hell.”

And they’d be right, but only half right. 

Baptism is a once and done thing. Even if you switch denominations, you’re baptized in the triune name of God, not in the name of the presiding bishop of your church, so you never need be baptized again. And, yes, you are able to point to your baptism as the sign that God has saved you and you will not be spending eternity in the fires of some hell we’ve been told might await those who remain unrepentant. Luther often called on the witness of his Baptism when he felt the devil tormenting him with his unworthiness to be saved. Because it was God’s action to claim him, to claim all of us, in the first place, not Luther’s own choice to sign up. But this is not some magic we can manipulate and control. And it is not disconnected from the rest of this life here and now and in the days to come. It does not mean life will forever be grand, or that we have to pretend it is.

The beloved community of God, into which you Addi May and Ella Jayn, have been Baptized, celebrates together and suffers together. To be a Christian means that we carry each other and allow one another into our lives of ups and downs. It means we are joined together as a people across the world with lives of every stripe and sort. When we are sealed by that Holy Spirit and marked with the cross of Christ forever, it is our constant reminder of the love that first carried the cross for us. That Jesus the anointed one, Jesus the Christ, loves this world with such a fierce and unending love that we didn’t know how to deal with it, so we put him to death, but he didn’t let even that stop him from loving us. This is the promise which claims us, that the love of God will never stop chasing us, never stop calling us, never stop moving us deeper into community with the world God so loves.

Baptized, we live. We will watch these two girls grow. They will help us grow. We will together burrow deeper into the love of God for the world, and that love will draw us into the world, where we will celebrate and weep and ache for one another. Grounded in the deep and abiding and suffering love of Jesus, we will never be alone in our suffering. We will be called, again and again, into the suffering of others through the compassion of Christ. Tomorrow we will open our doors again and reach out to the community of God’s beloved, especially those who happen to be addicts and the ones who love them. We will not fix them, we will not be the answer they are looking for, we will simply be with them, offering what we have and listening as they share. Because the love of Jesus carries us all together.

Jesus does not save us from this life, but in life and for life. Life together with God in the here and now, just as much as life after resurrection. It is given freely, it is not something we earn, it is for the whole world, without reservation. It is the very life of God, given that you might live.