Sunday's Sermon

The Unvarnished Jesus
Text: Mark 8:27-38
Rev. Dr. John E. Manzo
September 13, 2009

One of the ways we preserve wood an make it look better is to put varnish on it. And when it starts to look a little worn, we varnish it again. And then again. And then again. After a while, the wood is covered with varnish and we discover that we can no longer make out very much about what the wood is supposed to look like. And so we strip the wood to see what we were working with in the first place.

Jesus often gets varnished. This is not devious or evil, or deceptive. It’s just that, sometimes we like to put some varnish on Jesus to make Jesus a bit more appealing than the Gospels portray him.

Jesus is always kind and loving and gentle and wonderful in music, testimony, and sermons. Jesus is portrayed in a variety of ways in film and is usually always a picture of calm in the midst of chaos swirling around him. Popular portrayals of Jesus in the movies often makes it appear as if Jesus is just this smiling guy doing nice things for people.

The Gospels portrait of Jesus is a more unvarnished Jesus, however. Jesus isn’t always a very easy character in the Gospels. He is not always gentle, does not always appear to be very kind and nice. Mark’s portrait of Jesus here is actually rather interesting and not all together particularly delightful in this passage.

Jesus asks who people say that he is and Peter gives the right answer. The Messiah. Jesus goes on to speak about suffering, sacrifice, and rejection and Peter rebukes Jesus. Take note of this. Peter rebukes Jesus. This is not the typical thing we see, Peter rebuking Jesus.

We begin, however, to have an unvarnished look at Jesus and the first thing we take note of is Jesus’ honesty.

Jesus was totally honest.

We all profess that we want honesty. We demand honesty. If asked, most of us would say that we want one hundred percent honesty one hundred percent of the time. We all say it, but I am not sure we always mean it.

The other night the President gave a speech. I suspect many of us watched it with varying opinions that are not relevant to this sermon.

After the speech, I suspect, most of us listened to commentary from people we like explaining to us what we heard. Many used the fine art of ‘spin,’ spin we perhaps adapted.

‘Spin,’ is taking a piece of truth and adjusting it to a different perspective. It changes the facts a bit, and is, by its very nature, not truthful. But we love ‘spin,’ and listen to it and accept it despite the fact that it’s often not truthful.

We also have other issues with truth. Ponder these expressions.

We say that people lack tact.

We say that people lack diplomacy.

Generally, when we say these things we are saying that these people are too blunt or too honest for our tastes.

When I was growing up we moved and lived in an apartment while our house was being built. Our next door neighbors were really nice people and the woman loved to cook and was a wonderful cook and said that she loved to share food with her neighbors.

Her husband was a really skinny guy and that should have served as a warning to us...

She did cook and she did like to share food with us. She often time made and sent over dishes to our family. Some of them were okay, but some of her dishes were pretty awful. One night she made something and it was dreadful. The dog wouldn’t even eat it. If you’ve ever had a dog and the dog refused the food, you know how bad that food is.

After we disposed to the food and did the dishes, my Dad told me to take the dish next door and thank her for the delicious meal. I was about 12 and perplexed and told my Dad that telling her the food was delicious would be a lie. He said, “Well, it’s a good lie. Sometimes you have to use good lies to people.”

So I brought the dish over and lied through my teeth.

Here is the thing about Jesus, however. Jesus always told the truth. There was no tact, no diplomacy, no ‘good lies.’ He was flat out honest all the time. It made the apostles uncomfortable and drove the civil and religious authorities to want to kill him in the worst way.

To embrace Jesus is to embrace the honesty of Jesus and it’s not always easy to do that.

A second thing that stands out in this is this. Jesus delineates what discipleship is and is not. Jesus makes a point that discipleship is not about enhancing our lives in, in his words, “this adulterous and sinful generation.” Discipleship, Jesus is making a point, is not about personal gain, status, or anything else like that.

And here is where Peter enters the picture. Peter rebukes Jesus and Jesus rebukes Peter back. Often it seems like Peter does not understand what Jesus is saying. This is not the case. One of the great myths of the New Testament is that Peter was dumb and clueless and lacking in understanding to what Jesus is saying. But he is not dumb, he is not clueless, and the problem Peter has is that he does understand what Jesus is saying.

The theologian John Shea observes that people have a fantasy about Jesus and that Jesus spends a lot of time disappointing our fantasy by being real and unvarnished.

Peter, we have learned, was not a poor fisherman. He owned the boats. He was a smart and successful businessman and following Jesus was a position of status.

Jesus was a popular preacher and Peter liked to be standing right there, feeling the love of the crowd.

Jesus was a popular miracle worker and Peter liked to be standing right there, feeling the love.

Jesus was a celebrity and Peter was his close associate and friend. Peter thought of all the great things coming there way. Fame, fortune, status, and popularity were all there right in front of him.

And Jesus is talking about how faithfulness comes from sacrifice, suffering, and rejection. Jesus is not living up to Peter’s fantasy of what he wants Jesus to be.

Let’s be honest. We all have our fantasies of what Jesus will do for us.

Here is what I’d like from Jesus. An appearance on television stating that the United Church of Christ was the one true church and that people were going to hell unless they attended a United Church of Christ congregation and tithed.

I’d like Jesus to make it so that brussels sprouts were bad for you and chocolate chip cookies with milk were the healthiest things in the world to eat.

And, of course, I’d want Jesus to be a Giants’ fan....

Like most, I’d like Jesus to be a Messiah who fulfills what I want instead of having expectations of me.

But Jesus is not a Messiah who is here to fulfill our fantasies of how life can be great and what we can attain. Jesus instead speaks to us of service to God and to one another.

But there is one more thing.

This past Friday we recalled the 8th Anniversary of that terrible day, September 11th; a day that wounded our national psyche. The recent funeral of Ted Kennedy and the return to the grave of President John Kennedy reminded me of that day in Dallas, in 1963 as a day that wounded our national psyche. One event happened while I was an adult; the other as a child. I remember both vividly and both events cut into the heart of people in the nation in profound ways.
To me, part of the devastation of the tragedy of September 11th was that vivid reminder to us on how incredibly fragile human life is. People were speaking to loved ones on cell phones, and through the terrible all consuming fire and the collapse of the building, were never seen or heard of again. They were gone without a trace. So many people that day simply vanished never to be seen or heard from again.

These are events that remind us that there is more to life than what we see here around us. They remind us that there has to be one beyond our senses, a God who loves people and welcomes those, even gone from our sight, into another life with Him.

And it is this profound lesson, this profound truth, that Jesus is calling us to.

The unvarnished Jesus is not a Messiah of human fulfillment or status, or wealth or even popularity. The unvarnished Jesus is one who is totally honest in all things and who teaches us that discipleship is about sacrifice and service of others. It is not about us, but about others. It is not about us, it is about God. Ultimately the unvarnished Jesus reminds us that our hope is in what we might not really comprehend, but can only trust in God for our care.

The unvarnished Jesus is not always the Jesus we fantasize about; the unvarnished Jesus is the one, however, who is real and good and who provides us the hope we so need.