Introduction

This is the sermon I preached at Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Beatrice, Neb., on Saturday and Sunday, Sept. 12-13, 2009, the weekend of the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.

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Readings

Isaiah 50:4-9
Psalm 116:1-9
James 3:1-12
Mark 8:27-38

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Prayer

“Let the words of my mouth and the meditation[s] of [our] heart[s]
be acceptable to you,
O LORD, [our] rock and [our] redeemer.” Amen. (Psalm 19:14, NRSV)

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Message

Frank Oz, the master muppeteer,
lent his hands and voice to bring to life
Yoda, the Jedi Master and Teacher
in George Lucas’s Star Wars movies.

One of Yoda’s most famous sayings
comes from The Phantom Menace,
where he states:

“Always two there are; a master and an apprentice.”

We think of masters and apprentices
perfecting their art and craft
as stonemasons and woodcarvers
or, perhaps, shipbuilders and silversmiths.

But for the most part,
we don’t talk much in today’s world
about masters and apprentices.

But we do talk about teachers and students.
And there is something
to the bond between them that reminds us
of the connections binding apprentices to their master.

Teachers are educated, skilled, and seasoned,
like fountains that flow with the information and techniques
of a particular field of knowledge.
Students have a thirst for drinking from that fountain,
for soaking in that expertise and experience.
And so the pairing of teachers and students is a natural one,
as natural as slaking one’s thirst with cool water.

We, as people of faith,
serve one another in similar roles.
But for us, it’s probably better
to speak of teachers and disciples.

This helps us to remember
that Jesus was a teacher himself
and his followers were disciples.

He taught them through parables and stories,
by giving them sayings, passing on wisdom,
by letting them see him work his wonders,
healing the sick, forgiving the broken,
comforting the bereaved, and enlightening those in darkness.

But in the end,
all of his teachings and miracles
pointed to his mission,
the task his Father had given him.

Mark’s gospel tells us how Jesus, teacher and rabbi,
instructed his followers, his disciples and students, saying:

“Then Jesus began 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.” (Mark 8:31, NRSV)

This is a hard lesson,
a difficult one for us to hear.
But imagine the shock and the fear
it must have brought to Jesus’ companions, his disciples.

It’s easy to envision how we would have acted just like Peter,
pulling Jesus off to the side,
and telling him why this just couldn’t be.

This was Peter, who had only minutes before,
in his own way, passed the test of discipleship.
He’d just responded to Jesus’ question,
“But who do you say that I am?”
by answering, “You are the Messiah.” (Mark 8:29, NRSV)
That means the Chosen One, the Anointed One, the Christ.

And then he tried to convince Jesus
to redefine the terms,
to rewrite the rules,
to reimagine what a Messiah might be,
to change how he should carry out God’s will.

Peter’s Messiah need not suffer, be rejected, be killed, and then raised.

But Jesus, the master,
is himself the servant who carries out perfectly the will of his Father.
And so Peter’s attempt to replace God’s will with human desire
is, for Jesus, a temptation that he rejects.

That’s why he says to Peter,

“Get behind me, Satan!
For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
(Mark 8:33, NRSV)

This is the hardest lesson of all.
Peter and you and I learn from Jesus
that living as his disciple
is both a blessing and a discipline.

We are blessed because Jesus invites us
to accompany him on his journey.
He welcomes us into the company of his disciples.
He empowers us to walk with him,
to learn from his example how to live,
to practice lives devoted to his Father’s will.

This is how we live together as disciples of Jesus, our teacher.
In a way, we are all apprentices,
practicing the art of holy living
under the guidance of our one Master.

We learn by listening.
We can listen because our baptism
blesses each of us with a disciple’s ear
so that we may hear and obey
what comes to us from the Teacher’s tongue.

An it’s through the writings of the Scriptures
that our Teacher’s words speak to us.

The first lesson for today is a passage
from Isaiah that many count
as one of that prophet’s Servant Songs.
It is traditional to listen to these words
and to hear the voice of Jesus, God’s Messiah,
speaking along with Isaiah.

Let’s listen to the passage again:

“The Lord GOD has given me
the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain
the weary with a word.
Morning by morning he wakens—
wakens my ear
to listen as those who are taught.
The Lord GOD has opened my ear,
and I was not rebellious,
I did not turn backward.
I gave my back to those who struck me,
and my cheeks to those who pulled out the beard;
I did not hide my face from insult and spitting.” (Isaiah 50:4-6, NRSV)

We can hear Jesus’ voice,
the echoes of how he undergoes great suffering and rejection
on the way to his death and resurrection. (Mark 8:31, NRSV)
This witness, his message
comes from the teacher’s tongue to the disciple’s ear.

By virtue of our faith,
we have the ear to hear this Word from God,
to receive this lesson in discipleship.

And like faithful disciples,
like good apprentices,
we can, through that same faith,
listen to our teacher,
and follow our master in obedience,
even when it means
we must each shoulder a cross
and walk the path that leads to death.

But this message, this call to discipleship,
this invitation to be apprentices
does not end with us.
We have no greater challenge,
no more profound honor,
no more significant task
than to pass on this message and call to others.

Those in our congregation
who will stand before us tomorrow/today
to commit publicly to serve
in our ministry of education
are asking for us all to pray
that God will bless each of them
with a faithful and attentive disciple’s ear,
attuned to the teacher’s tongue.

And by the grace of the Holy Spirit,
God our Father will bless them in the name of Jesus.
With this gift, they will then pass on what we receive:
this message of Christ’s suffering, death, and resurrection
and the invitation to become his disciples,
to face our own suffering and death for his sake.
We can know and trust with confidence
that as we undergo those trials,
we await a life renewed, restored, and with death behind it,
when our days as disciples reach their end. Amen.