The Rev. Keri T. Aubert  Proverbs 1:20-33

All Saints Episcopal Church, South Burlington, Vermont Psalm 19

September 13, 2009 James 3:1-12

Proper 19, Year B, RCL     Mark 8:27-38

In my seminary chapel a few years ago, we had a special evening prayer service based on the tradition of the Feast of Fools. Popular during the Middle Ages, Feast of Fools celebrations inverted the usual order of things. On that day, for example, a beggar might be “king” or a boy might be “bishop.” This provided a rare chance for lay people to poke fun at a church that was closely and sometimes cruelly controlled by the clerical hierarchy. But this fun was often in the form of satire, and as you know, the true effectiveness of satire arises from its kernel of truth.

For our seminary liturgy, we had a girl bishop: my daughter Morgan at age ten, dressed up in a real pinned-up cope and a fake cardboard miter. Her duties included rolling giant rubber dice to determine the gospel reading. The service was hilarious but also at times unsettling. For me the most telling part was the “participatory Nicene Creed.” The presider—a seminarian garbed in tuxedo and jester’s hat—gave us the instructions: “Please stand for those portions of the Creed that you affirm and sit for those portions that you do not affirm.”

We began standing but didn’t stay that way for long. “We believe in one God,” we said in unison. So far, so good. But then we got to “the Father.” Instantly a majority of the congregation plunked down onto their seats, causing quite a racket. Then, almost immediately, came “the Almighty,” and everyone stood again. The chapel was arranged in monastic style seating, with rows of pews facing one another. While making decisions on the fly about when to sit, we could also spy on what others were doing. Down and up, down and up, during the Creed the congregation looked like a pond of bobbing ducks. There was much snickering throughout, but it was laughter of the nervous type. The exercise was perhaps too honest and too public for comfort.

Though we say it every Sunday, I’m probably not the only person here who has at times found the Nicene Creed to be, well, challenging. After all, those of us who believe that our supreme being transcends human notions of gender only make it to the seventh word before conflict arises. But I suspect that there are other problems with the Creed: I’m not sure how connected to it we all feel; I’m not sure it means very much to us. Even if we’re indifferent, Christians in both the eastern and western churches have been saying the Nicene Creed for a long time. The Nicene Creed as we know it was formulated in the fifth century, after passionate and sometimes violent controversies over the nature of Christ. You might say that it was written in order to resolve theological questions about just who Jesus was. You might say that it was written in response to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?”

The Nicene Creed is a particularly important answer to that question, but thousands of other creeds have been written, by people around the world.[i] One compelling and beautiful example is the “Maasai Creed,” which was composed around 1960 by Western Christian missionaries for the indigenous African tribe. This creed “attempts to express the essentials of the Christian faith within the Maasai culture.” It goes like this:

We believe in the one High God, who out of love created the beautiful world and everything good in it. He created man and wanted man to be happy in the world. God loves the world and every nation and tribe on the earth. We have known this High God in the darkness, and now we know him in the light. God promised in the book of his word, the Bible, that he would save the world and all nations and tribes.

We believe that God made good his promise by sending his son, Jesus Christ, a man in the flesh, a Jew by tribe, born poor in a little village, who left his home and was always on safari doing good, curing people by the power of God, teaching about God and man, showing that the meaning of religion is love. He was rejected by his people, tortured and nailed hands and feet to a cross, and died. He was buried in the grave, but the hyenas did not touch him, and on the third day, he rose from that grave. He ascended to the skies. He is the Lord.

We believe that all our sins are forgiven through him. All who have faith in him must be sorry for their sins, be baptized in the Holy Spirit of God, live the rules of love, and share the bread together in love, to announce the good news to others until Jesus comes again. We are waiting for him. He is alive. He lives. This we believe. Amen.[ii]

Jesus asked his disciples the question, “Who do you say that I am,” and he keeps asking that question of every generation in every place. He’s asking us, too, Who do we say that Jesus is? The answer will always depend on who we are. Jesus invites us to make our true statement of faith from our own cultural location.

But I think there’s more to be said about this. As we answer the question “Who do you say that I am?” it’s important not to divorce the question as posed in scripture from the text that follows. In today’s reading from the Gospel of Mark, this question is the spark that prompts Peter’s confession, “You are the Messiah.” We as readers might reasonably expect this exchange to be followed by fireworks—or at least a heavenly chorus of alleluias. Peter might reasonably have expected that the arrival of the messiah would immediately bring the life of peace and plenty that the ancient prophets promised. But instead of starting a party, Jesus gives Peter and the other disciples a warning—a warning that what comes next is suffering by Jesus and sacrifice by the disciples.

This doesn’t sound like a very good strategy for evangelism. Mark’s picture of what it means to follow Jesus is not pretty. But it’s important to remember that Mark was written by and for a community of people who were already facing legal persecution and physical punishment for their discipleship. We can’t possibly hear Mark’s message in the same way they did. The only persecution we are likely to face is the disdain of those who say they feel no need for church. Then again, that’s a pretty powerful roadblock to own ability to talk about our faith and also to our own possibilities for evangelism. The era of Christendom, when everyone could be counted on to be a Christian, is gone. In terms of the Christian populace, our culture is more similar to the first century, when the followers of Jesus were in the minority. Being a Christian in a secular society is at times a large cross to bear.

I admit that I don’t favor the language of taking up crosses and suffering, partly because it has been used to excuse burdens that the church itself has placed on its adherents. I think the key lesson to be found in this text is the knowledge that, whoever we say Jesus is, we have to do some following, and we have to be willing to follow despite the fact that it might not always be easy. Whoever we say Jesus is, we have to set aside a life without Jesus for a life in Jesus, whatever that brings in the time at place that we occupy. In the original text, the word used for life is the Greek word psyche. In ancient Greek, psyche is generally used to mean the breath or the soul.[iii] It sounds a bit different to say that we lose our psyche to Jesus in order to save it. It’s a reminder that we’re talking about our most vital self.

For me, questioning the Nicene Creed increased my peace with it. Incorporated into the Eucharistic liturgy in the fifth century,[iv] the Creed brings with it sixteen hundred years of tradition. Standing in solidarity with all those Christians who rose before me to say the words, today I’m comfortable affirming all of it—but only because I know it’s not the whole story. I also remember acutely that it doesn’t say everything, and I’m glad that Jesus keeps questioning us. The tradition must always be made new, in every generation.

On this first Sunday of the new church year, a year that is likely to bring yet more change and challenge to this community, it’s a good time to be thinking about who we are, who Jesus is, and what we’re going to do about it. For the Creed today, I won’t ask you to stand for those portions that you affirm and to sit for those portions that you do not affirm. But I will invite you to listen to the words as if you might pop up and down, to ponder your own statement of faith, and to manifest that faith in the world.