Wondering

September 13, 2015

Mark 8:27-38

My mind has been on Godly Play a lot this week.  That is St. Aidan's Sunday School program for the pre-k through 3rd graders. We hosted an all day teacher training yesterday and I’ve been organizing the schedule and preparing my story for our first gathering this morning.

If you’ve been here long, you know that I love Godly Play - the generous and open theology, the beauty and simplicity of the materials, the structure of the sessions that follows what we do in here in such a comfortable and welcoming way.  But I think what I love most about Godly Play is its invitation to children to claim the stories and faith for themselves.

After we gather and get ourselves ready to listen, the storyteller tells the story for the day and then the circle of children wonders about the story.  For most stories, there are four questions at the end: I wonder what is your favorite part of this story? I wonder what is the most important part of this story?  I wonder where you are in this story, or what part of this story is about you?  I wonder what could we leave out of this story and still have all the story we need?  These are wonderfully open questions that work for almost any Bible story, and I recommend them to adults too.  The kids sometimes answer with what might seem obvious, but often they have incredibly insightful thoughts and new ways of looking at the stories that show them trying to make sense out of what they see in their world.  

Godly Play cautions the adult leaders again and again that there are no right answers to these wondering questions.  If the kids are answering from their heart, then their answer is right for them where they are at that moment.  And their answers are a part of how they walk along their journey of faith.  But, as you might imagine, that philosophy does not always sit well with the adults in the room, and it can even be hard sometimes for kids who are more used to a world of order and structure.

I see that struggle especially in conjunction with our Wednesday morning Day School chapel.  In chapel, John teaches the kids wonderful, joyful songs and I present stories.  Several times a month, I invite one of the fours or fives classes to help me tell the story by acting it out.  But first, the class comes into our Godly Play room and I present the story and invite them to wonder about it.  You can see the sparkle in the kids’ eyes as they share with joy the piece of the story that matters most to them, or the piece they struggle with and wish they could leave out.  You can see their imaginations brewing as they put themselves into the story.  But every once in a while, their teacher — used to school, and probably religion, being about right and wrong answers, things being black and white - can’t resist interrupting the wondering questions to instruct the kids about the “right” answer.  You can see the kids’ eyes lose that sparkle.  You can feel a cloud descend in the room as they begin to doubt themselves and close themselves off.

I think today Peter is like one of those teachers who thinks there is a right answer to a wondering question.

Jesus has the disciples gathered together and he asks them “Who do people say that I am?”  They report back all kinds of answers: John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets.  The expected answers.  Answers that lump Jesus in as just a different version of what has come before.  A rabble-rouser, a teacher, a prophet.  Something that is known and makes sense to them and falls into a category they understand

And then Jesus asks them, “But who do you say that I am?”  You can tell from the start of that sentence — “But” — that Jesus doesn’t want them to rest with the obvious, to recite the answer that makes the most sense, to show off their knowledge.  Jesus is really calling them to wonder.  To think for themselves.  Jesus wants to know what he means to them, personally and deeply.

And (of course, we all could have predicted it) here comes Peter, head-of-the-class, hand raised first, reading ahead Peter, all ready with the “right” answer.  “You are the Messiah!” he proclaims triumphantly, as if that ends the discussion.  As a faithful Jew, Peter has been brought up waiting for the Messiah - “the anointed one” - who would be a great political, religious and military leader and would triumphantly rebuild Jerusalem, free the people of Israel from tyranny, and bring a return of the exiles, and an end to sorrow and suffering.  This is the biggest and best title Peter can think of, and he bestows it like a crown upon Jesus’ head.  And then Peter waits expectantly for his pat on the back, his gold star, but instead Jesus sternly orders them not to tell anyone about him.

I’ve always wondered about the bouts of secrecy that we see in some of the Gospels.  But today I think part of the reason Jesus wants to keep Peter quiet about this “Messiah” business is the same reason teachers aren’t supposed to jump in with a “right” answer in Godly Play.  It quashes the conversation.  It ends the wondering.  It kills the imagination and dulls the sparkle in the eye.  Jesus wants each one of us to wrestle with who he is to us and what it means for each one of us to follow him.  Jesus is less concerned with our knowing about him, and more interested in us knowing him.

I think that is why I tense up sometimes when we say the Creed.  It is fine, I think, if we see it as a starting place from which to jump off into an experience of God, but it sometimes feels more like a box we draw around God with permanent marker, expecting God to fit neatly within our parameters and expectations.

Of course, another reason Jesus wants Peter to keep his newfound title for Jesus to himself is that that Peter himself has no idea what he’s talking about.  Peter isn’t sharing a personal insight, he’s reciting something he’s been taught.  As it turns out, understanding Jesus’ identity is not about getting the right title.  Peter has these high expectations of Jesus coming in power and triumph and turning everything around in tangible, earthly ways.  So when Jesus starts talking about how he will be rejected and suffer and die, Peter can’t believe his ears.  That is not at all what he had in mind for his Messiah; that doesn’t fit in at all with Peter’s plan.

It only takes a glance at the papers to see that we are in the same boat as Peter.  We’ve all got our permanent markers out, ready to set the parameters for Jesus, where it is okay for him to enter into our personal life or our politics or our economics, and where we’d really rather he keep out.  I had to laugh when I saw Jeb Bush respond to the Pope’s recent encyclical about climate change by saying: “I think religion ought to be about making us better as people and less about things that end up in the political realm,” as if God had no interest in stewardship of the earth or other so-called “political” issues.  But my laughing stopped when I saw Hungary’s prime minister arguing that he has to fight to secure his nation’s borders from Muslim refugees in order to “keep Europe Christian,” forgetting that welcoming the outsider and taking care of the hurting forms the basis for most of Jesus’ teaching.

But, laugh or cry, I know that I am right there with them in my own way, drawing different lines, maybe, but still grasping tightly to my permanent marker.  Inviting God into this aspect of my life but not that one.  Offering up “right” answers whether or not I am living them.  Citing Jesus as supportive of whatever my particular agenda might be.  Blending Jesus into my life in a way that smoothly and easily and un-offensively works for me.

The truth is, who Jesus is and what that means for how each one of us follow him, is daunting and challenging.  Jesus was ridiculed and tortured and killed as a direct result of the way he lived — refusing to follow social, religious and political norms, running afoul of those in power, reaching out to people on the outside.  And the implications for us if we follow his lead could be far from what we want or expect.  Jesus says, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.”

Much to Peter’s chagrin, and ours, the cross is part of the story that Jesus doesn’t let us gloss over.  The God that Jesus incarnates is not a guarantee of strength and security and ease and success.  Jesus’ God is a vulnerable God who meets us even in the midst of suffering and despair.  Denying ourselves and taking up our cross to follow has little to do with our knowledge of theology or our ability to make pronouncements about Jesus, and everything to do with commitment and relationship.

Peter might have had the “right” answer when he shouted out “You are the Messiah!”  But Jesus completely redefined what it was to be Messiah by how he lived.  And when he asks us to follow, he invites us to redefine ourselves in relationship to the Kingdom of God that he ushered in.

And so I wonder … who do you say Jesus is?

And I wonder … who might Jesus be calling you to become?