Pledging allegiance to Jesus is an admirable oath, but even more important is figuring out what it means to follow the Messiah., just as pledging allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and then discerning what it means to be a citizen of this great country.
It was Inauguration Day, January 20, 2009.
Homiletics, a religious magazine, contributor and preacher Henry Brinton was standing on the Mall in Washington, D.C., as stiff and cold as an ice sculpture. He had been shivering there for four hours, along with about 2 million fellow Americans, anxious for the main event to begin.
Finally, the enormous video screen in front of the Smithsonian showed Barack Obama raising his right hand to take the oath of office. The crowd went wild.
John Roberts, Chief Justice of the United States, laid out the oath: "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will execute the office of President faithfully."
Problem was, the oath was supposed to read: "I, Barack Hussein Obama, do solemnly swear that I will faithfully execute the office of President." The word faithfully had somehow flipped out of place, landing at the end of the phrase.
Barack Obama seemed confused. He followed the Chief Justice's lead for a few words and then stopped. The justice gave it another shot. They tried together to get back on track, and then the ceremony concluded.
Along with millions of Americans, Henry Brinton wondered what in the world had just happened. Four long hours in the cold, only to witness a botched oath of office.
All kinds of political chatter immediately erupted. Because Sen. Obama had voted against John Roberts' Supreme Court appointment, some people said the mix-up was intentional. Others claimed that Obama would not and could not become president until he said the oath of office correctly.
Just to be safe, Obama and Roberts repeated the oath the next day, in private.
Now you can probably expect that historians will be examining this little incident for years. Initial assessments seem to be that the fault lies with Chief Justice Roberts because he fed the lines to the president-elect incorrectly. But here's the bigger question: What does it matter? The phrase "execute the office of President faithfully" has the same meaning as "faithfully execute the office of President."
It's a distinction without a difference.
Besides, do some research and you will find that the 20th Amendment to the Constitution states that the terms of the outgoing president and vice president shall end at noon on the 20th day of January, and the terms of their successors shall then begin. There is absolutely no mention of an oath of office that must take place.
In the eighth chapter of Mark, Jesus asks his disciples who he is, and Peter answers, "You are the Messiah" (v. 29). He's exactly right in what he says and doesn't mess up any of the words of this particular pledge of allegiance. And yet, getting the words right isn't all there is to being a faithful disciple. Peter doesn't fully comprehend the import of what he's saying -- for instance, he's quick to confront Jesus just two verses later, when Jesus begins to teach his followers that he "must undergo great suffering ...... and be killed" (v. 31).
Peter nails the oath but not the office. He does a great job pledging his allegiance to Jesus, but he doesn't grasp what the job of following the Messiah is all about.
This passage challenges us to move away from an obsession with oaths and focus instead on the specifics of two particular offices: Messiah and Follower. It's only when we understand these roles that we will be able to faithfully execute the office of disciple of Jesus Christ.
Messiah
Jesus is on the road with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asks his followers, "Who do people say that I am?" What's the word on the street? What are people saying about me? (v. 27).
The disciples answer, "Some say that you are John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets" (v. 28).
Then Jesus makes it personal, and asks, "But who do you say that I am?"
Peter answers him, "You are the Messiah," a term which means "anointed one," the divinely chosen leader of the people.
This answer is perfect, and Peter is to be commended for knowing the correct words of the oath. But Jesus is keenly aware that many people are looking for a military Messiah -- God's Commander in Chief -- to drive the Romans out of Jerusalem and restore the kingdom to Israel. So Jesus sternly orders the disciples not to tell anyone about him (v. 30).
In the case of Jesus the Messiah, an oath is not enough. More important is the nature of the office. And that's why Jesus begins to teach them that the Son of Man "must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again" (v. 31). To be the true Messiah, Jesus has to undergo suffering, death and resurrection -- there's just no way around it. It's only at the end of Jesus' extraordinary journey that he can be seen clearly as a divinely chosen leader. No one of his day would have understood that or accepted it, but Jesus was sure that the disciples would, so he told them and said to keep it hush, hush.
So the office of Messiah requires a cross before a crown. Until he completes these duties, Jesus doesn't want people talking about him. But, in accepting the Messiah and fulfilling the oath, one must be a follower.
Follower
This is hard for Jesus' disciples, which is why we also need to look at the office of Follower. When Jesus talks openly about his suffering and death, Peter takes him aside and begins to rebuke him. It's inconceivable to Peter that God's anointed leader would have to suffer a humiliating death. But Jesus quickly turns the tables and rebukes Peter, saying, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things" (vv. 32-35). And, folks, that is what is wrong with the world today, and is the very weakness of Christianity. We have lost our focus and we have backed away from being the follower that God commands.
The primary task of faithfully executing the office of disciple of Jesus Christ is this: setting your mind on divine things, not human things. But what does this mean? Spending all your time in private prayer? Performing a searching moral inventory? Cleansing yourself of all evil?
Not exactly. Jesus calls together the crowd with his disciples and says to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me" (v. 34). That's the key to executing the office of disciple: following Jesus. And this, unfortunately, is something the church hasn't done a very good job of teaching people to do.
"A good church upbringing will do many marvelous things for you," write Michael Frost and Alan Hirsch in their new book ReJesus. But one of the unfortunate things it does is "convince you that Jesus is to be worshiped but not followed."
Think about that. The church does a better job teaching us to worship Jesus than to follow him. The church is better on oaths than on offices. But when you read the gospel of Mark, you discover that Jesus is less concerned about people pledging allegiance to him than he is about people following him. According to Todd A. Spencer, Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, in an address to Yale University medical students (November 2005), said: "You know, Jesus never once said, ?Worship me.' He said, ?Follow me.' One of the cleverest ways to avoid following someone is to worship him. It really works; it's very clever. You just put him on a pedestal, you make God out of him and you pay all kinds of homage to this God figure, and then you don't have to do what he did."
Alan Kimber, senior minister of First United Methodist Church in Lodi, California, disagrees: "If the church truly worshiped, I don't think following would be a problem. The problem is that we seem to have defined Messiah narrowly as ?personal savior.' In other words, it's all about what Jesus can do for me. We have also defined follower as ?religious consumer,' not as disciple of Christ. The sadness is that when we approach worship with these understandings, then worship usually misses the mark, even though we may not even realize it."
Deny yourself, says Jesus. Take up your cross. Follow me. "For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it" (v. 35). The office of Follower of Jesus absolutely has to include acts of sacrifice for the sake of Jesus and the gospel. Are we ready to do that? Is that our mission, our goal, our commitment?
How can we call ourselves Christian unless what we're doing is built squarely on the rock of Jesus? How can we call ourselves Christian unless we take our job description from him? Some one said "We need to pickle ourselves in the gospels. They must become our primary stories and reference point. There is no truer way to encounter Jesus afresh than prayerfully cycling through the gospels and asking God to give us fresh insight into the remarkable person we find there."
Choices at the Cross
Deny yourself. Take up your cross. Follow Jesus. That's what it means to faithfully execute the office of disciple of Jesus Christ. For each of us, the particular choices we make are going to be different, but they're all going to be choices that are made at the foot of the cross.
Here's an example: A couple of months after he froze at Obama's inauguration, Reverend Henry Brinton got a letter in the mail, along with a money order for $26.30, made out to his church. The letter said,
"Dear Rev. Brinton ? I read a sermon of yours in The Washington Post ? You spoke of not playing it safe. Not to punt when it is a fourth-and-one situation and to keep striving. To keep striving -- that really spoke to a need in my heart. It encouraged me, and the Lord spoke to me through your words."
"I was laid off from my job at the end of October. There are many needs in my life, or so it seems. But what I desperately need more than anything is a closer walk with God."
"About two months ago, the Lord told me to write and send the tithe on my unemployment check. It's taken that long to obey and stop listening to the voice in my head telling me how pathetic I am, and obey the one in my heart telling me to obey."
The money order for $26.30 was a tithe on an unemployment check. A down payment on a closer walk with God. A sacrifice, an act of self-denial, a response to the invitation of Jesus to take up the cross, and follow him. That's what it means to faithfully execute the office of disciple of Jesus Christ: take a closer walk with God, make a sacrificial act of self-denial as a response to the invitation ofJesus topick up your cross and follow him. Have you made a down payment on your walk with God?
That's what the writer said she was doing, at the end of her letter.
Let us pray....... Sources:
Frost, Michael, and Alan Hirsch. ReJesus: A Wild Messiah for a Missional Church. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson Publishers, 2009.
Kimber, Alan. E-mail correspondence with Homiletics.
Orr, Jimmy. "Who botched the oath of office -- Obama or Justice Roberts?" The Christian Science Monitor, January 20, 2009. http://features.csmonitor.com.
Spencer, Todd A. E-mail correspondence with Homiletics.
