Sermon — September 15, 2024
The Rev. Greg Johnston
“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers and sisters,
for you know that we who teach will be judged with greater strictness.” (James 3:1) Amen.
James’s warning seems both funny and appropriate today, as we plan to bless our students and educators, to offer prayers for those who learn and, perhaps especially, for those who teach. Classes, after all, have begun, from kindergarten all the way through college. Our Sunday School classes will begin next week. Our Thursday-morning group is already underway. We’re making plans for possible confirmations later this spring. And of course, every Sunday includes a moment of teaching right here, during the sermon.
James may be writing mostly about the kind of teaching we encounter in church. He’s warning his readers about the dangers of the preacher’s untameable tongue, about the higher bar that’s set for theological ramblings from the pulpit than casual conversation among friends. We entrust clergy with an uninterrupted fifteen minutes a week, and we have the power to do great good and/or great evil, depending on what we say, to be sure. But teaching isn’t just something I do, or something teachers do. It’s something we all do.
Every day of all our lives, every one of us is demonstrating something to the people around us. Every word we say models what is it to live a kind and loving life to the people around us. Or it doesn’t. And if what James has to say is true for all of us, because we are all subject to the power of the tongue.
The bit in a horse’s mouth is tiny, James say, compared to the huge body of the horse; (3:3) a rudder is small, and yet it can turn the whole ship. (3:4) A small flame can start a forest fire, he says, and you better believe that the tongue is a fire. (3:5-6)
You may already know this to be true. If you’ve ever hurt the feelings of someone you love by saying something you shouldn’t—has this ever happened to you?—then you know what James means when he says, “From the same mouth come blessing and cursing.” And you can probably agree when he says, “My brothers and sisters, this ought not to be so!” (3:10)
And yet, as James says, “All of us make many mistakes.” (3:2)
Our Gospel reading proves the point. It’s incredibly easy to say something wrong, even if most of what you say is right.
Jesus is walking with his disciples through the villages near Caesarea Philippi, thirty miles or so north of their home base in Galilee. And he asks the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” They tell him there’s a rumor going around that Jesus is John the Baptist, returned from the dead to take vengeance on Herod and finish the work of repentance he began. Others say something even grander, that Jesus is Elijah, who had been taken up into heaven in a chariot of fire a thousand years before, and who was supposed to return before the Messiah came. Others are little more down to earth: he’s a prophet, and that’s reason enough to follow him.
“But who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks. And the disciples are silent. Maybe they’ve been listening to James. Maybe they’re afraid to make a mistake. All of the disciples are silent except one. Peter answers him, simply, “You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8:29) And while Jesus warns them not to tell anyone, (8:30) Peter is right. For now.
And Jesus begins to explain what being the Messiah means. What he says might seem familiar to us, because we already know how the story unfolds. But it’s shocking to them. Yes, Jesus is the Messiah, the anointed one of God. But he hasn’t come to resurrect the royal line of David and set up a new kingdom here on earth. He’s here for something else. This Messiah is going to suffer, and be rejected, and be killed, and after three days rise again. And I get the sense that Peter is so outraged by the first half of all that that he doesn’t even hear the end. He’s so upset about the failure and suffering of Christ that he doesn’t even hear the part about the resurrection. Peter takes Jesus aside and starts to rebuke him: Bad, Jesus! No! (8:32) But Jesus turns it right back around: “Get behind me, Satan!” (8:33)
Poor Peter. This is why nobody else wanted to raise their hand in class.
Of course, Jesus isn’t rebuking Peter because his answer was wrong. Jesus is the Messiah. He’s rebuking the temptation that Peter offers. And this makes sense based on who “Satan” is in the Bible: Satan is the accuser, the tempter, the one who afflicted Job to see if he would curse God, the who enticed Jesus with food during his wilderness to tempt him during his fast. Here, Peter is the tempter, the one who tries to lure Jesus away from the hard road toward the easy path. Surely, if he’s the Messiah, he doesn’t need to suffer. Surely he doesn’t need to die. But Peter’s temptation doesn’t undermine Jesus’ courage. It doesn’t turn him away from sacrificing himself to save us all. He rebukes Peter for his mistake, and then he explains: If you want to follow me, don’t try to tempt me away from a difficult life. If you want to follow me, then follow me along that same road. Take up your cross, he says. Make your own choice to sacrifice something for the good of someone else.
Words matter. But actions matter even more. Following Jesus isn’t just going to be a matter of saying, “You are the Messiah.” It’s going to take a willingness to give something up for love.
I wonder what that might mean for you. I wonder what it might mean to “take up your cross.” It doesn’t mean what it meant for Jesus. It doesn’t mean that you need to endure violence or pain at the hands of another person. You don’t, and you shouldn’t. But it means something. It means that if you want to follow Jesus—if you want to walk in love, as he loved us—You’re going to need to give up whatever is hindering your ability to love. And I can’t tell you what that is, for you. But there’s a chance that you already know, and it’s just that taking up your cross is hard.
And that’s the bad news, or the challenging invitation, for today.
But there’s good news, too, and it’s as much a part of this letter and this story as the rest. “All of us make many mistakes,” says James, the Brother of Jesus, Bishop of Jerusalem. Not “all of you,” but “all of us,” who teach. And yet his very words, his very teachings, still stand, two thousand years later, a part of the Bible’s canonical text. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” Peter seems to say to Jesus, the Son of God. “You’re wrong about what the Messiah is supposed to do,” he tells the Messiah. This isn’t the high priest or the Roman governor, a Pharisee or Sadducee—this is Peter, who used to be Simon except that Jesus named him Peter, which means “Rock” in Greek, because he is the rock on whom Jesus will build the church. I love to point out from time to time how wrong or foolish Peter can be. Not because I want to put him down, but because it’s an incredible symbol of God’s forgiveness and grace that a person who is so imperfect, a person who makes so many mistakes, can still become the chosen and beloved instrument of God’s work in the world.
And so can you, you beloved, imperfect, child of God. Unless you are, as James says, a perfect person, you have made and you will make many mistakes in this life, including and especially with your tongue, with the words that come out of your mouth. But mistakes are not forever. Mistakes can be forgiven. The bit that turns the horse one way, can turn it back the other. The rudder can turn the ship to starboard as easily as to port. Mistakes can be forgiven, and mistakes can be corrected. And in a life which sometimes feels like it’s full of tests—whether we’re in school or out of it—it’s good news to remember that the one who’s grading you loves you so much that he took up his cross and laid his life for you. Amen.