The Confession

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Mark 8:27-38:

For those who study the literary structure of scripture, some have argued that the gospel of Mark is circular. Not that he is making a circular argument but that the stories that happen at the beginning of Mark are paralleled at the end, so that there are rings to the story. If you accept that argument then the center of the gospel can also be found, the story around which everything else centers. But, even if you don’t accept that theory, and I’m not arguing either for it or against it, in Mark there is a clear center of the story. A clear place in which everything leads up to it, and then everything leads away from it, and that is the story we heard this morning of Peter’s proclamation of faith and the first passion prediction that Jesus makes. It also happens to be conveniently enough, basically right in the center of the gospel as well. There are 16 chapters in Mark and the story is found in chapter 8. It also represents a break in time. There are three years of Jesus’ ministry encapsulated up to this point, and he begins making his way to Jerusalem with 3 passion predictions in the next two chapters, and then the remaining five chapters tell the last week of Jesus’ life. That delineation is why Mark has sometimes been referred to as a passion narrative with an extended introduction. And it is this passage that begins that passion narrative especially with Jesus’ passion prediction. I’ve already talked a little about how Mark structures the story around grouping stories or common themes. And this chunk of text is also bracketed by two healing stories, that also happen to be the healing of blind men, and we’ll come back to why that is important.

But Jesus and the disciples have left Galilee and are traveling to the cities, or the area of Caesarea Philippi. Now this is a town named for two Roman rules, first for Caesar Augustus, and then for Herod Phillip, Herod the Great’s son who is the ruler, the tetrarch, of the area. And so there is a clear roman presence and political importance to this town. Additionally, depending on when Mark was written, and we’ll address that in a few weeks, Vespasian, before he becomes Emperor, rested his troops in the city before going forth to crush the Jewish resistance in Galilee during the Jewish Revolt, and his son Titus, before he too becomes emperor, celebrated his victory over Jerusalem in the city by executing captives and holding a victory games. So there is a lot of significance to where this is taking place for those who first heard Mark’s story. But, Jesus is not in the city, he is on the way there. Instead he is in that in-between that is so important in Mark; he is in the wilderness. And he asks the disciples “who do people say that I am?”

Jesus the Prophet

Here is my sermon from Sunday. The text was Luke 4:14-24:

Today we begin a new sermon series that will take us through the next three weeks seeking to answer the question who is Jesus? We are doing this because I received several questions about Jesus when I asked for recommendations for sermon topics, but my caveat is that I am not going to be able to entirely encapsulate who Jesus is in only three weeks. In fact, it might be said that every single worship service we are seeking to understand a different element of Jesus and who he is for us, what he means for us, and how we are to live differently because of that. But I decided to try and tackle answering the question of who is Jesus by looking at the three different offices, or roles, that Jesus is said to hold, and those are prophet, priest and king. These are historic roles that have been assigned to Christ going all the way back to the earliest days of the church as they sought to understand Jesus and to give some context to his ministry and message. This is not about Jesus’ nature, but about his functions, and these are not hard and fast offices as there is overlap between the three, but we are going to take each office in kind and today we are going to look at Jesus as prophet.

Now of the three offices, prophet is probably the one that is least covered and perhaps even the least understood. Rev. Richard Rohr, is a Franciscan priest who although known around the world lives here in Albuquerque, says that he has seen lots of statues and stained glass to Christ the King and even Christ the Priest, as well as accompanying celebrations, and we will celebrate Christ the King Sunday, which is the last Sunday of the Christian year before Advent begins, in three weeks. But, he said, he has never seen a celebration or a statue or a stained-glass window to Christ the Prophet, and that, he says, means something’s out of balance. This was even true of John Wesley, the founder of Methodism who, although he said that his preachers should preach Jesus in all his offices, prophet, priest and King, but actually said very little about Jesus as a Prophet. But when we don’t see Jesus as a prophet, it means not only are we not hearing Jesus’ words, or understanding his message with the weight of prophecy, but it also means that we are missing an extremely crucial piece of information about how the early church understood Jesus and his ministry, which was as that of a prophet, but not just any prophet, but of the prophet, and I’ll explain what that means in just a moment.