Opening Collect: “Lord of all power and might, the author and giver of all good things: Graft in our hearts the love of your Name; increase in us true religion; nourish us with all goodness; and bring forth in us the fruit of good works; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God forever and ever. Amen.”

Who do you say that I am?  Says the Wild God. “It starts with the heart, with the heart, with the heart…” Who do you say that I am?

[Musical excerpt, “Wild God” by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds 2024]

What does it mean to be religious? What are its marks? These questions of identity and mission dwell at the heart of this week’s lesson, returning us to the transfiguring seat of confrontation with a wild God as approach the Cross. 

You might be surprised to learn that Australian musician Nick Cave self-identifies as a religious person who composes religious music. His claim of this marker, got me thinking, what does it mean to identity as religious? On August 30th of this year, Nick Cave and his band, the Bad Seeds, released their newest record, Wild God, an album at once searching and devotional that raises questions about who God is and what constitutes religious confession. In a recent interview with Ann Powers on NPR about the new record, Cave describes himself as a religious person committed to the art of religious music because he is first and foremost “the process of conversion…Not converted, but on the way.” To be religious is to be in the conversion process.

 I began with Cave’s music this morning because I resonate with how he depicts conversion as a process. This feels true, doesn’t it? Even if we were converted in one instant, conversion opens up a new realm of relationship. The conversion moment ushers us into a new reality that refuses to be contained by a word or a singular moment. Conversion is about relationship; it asks us to consider things like: from what we are being converted, by whom, and for what purposes? This week’s text from the Gospel of Mark asks us if we are willing to be converted from holding fast to to images of God as Messaih to communion with the person of Christ as Messaih, who performs differently than we expect. This Wild God who startles us into a life of justice, mercy, and love does so through surprising tactics: by accepting suffering, death, and confrontation with imperial power and all its instruments of torture. Jesus keeps converting us as we walk with him, and his methods are not what we, or his disciples, would have anticipated. So we confront our expectations and Jesus’s demonstrations of religious faithfulness. We are left facing Jesus and realizing that we cannot pick up the cross of religious faithfulness without him. It seems, instead, that it is only through repeated, relational encounters with the person of Christ as God that we are converted to Christians who bear witness to God.

We are converted to image-bearers of Christ only as we walk the path of the cruciform life with Christ. However much we we might wish for it, conversion cannot be stitched up in one neat intellectual discourse. Peter attempts to do this and it doesn’t bode well for him. The way of the cross can only be known by living it in communion with God, the earth, and one another. How do we know we are witnessing Christ and witnessing to his Messiahship truly and not just intellectually shoring up our beliefs for our comfort? What does this witness to the Messiah as the person of Christ cost? These are haunting, perennial questions indicative of the wrestling at the root of a life of faith. Wrestling is the point because Jesus himself wrestling with the weight of his call. Like us, he longs to be witnessed in his struggle to confess to the good news of the kingdom and bear its consequences. 

Before we get too deep into the lenticels of conversion and the cruciform life set some context. In Mark, we meet Jesus and company on the way; they are moving from the homeland to the heartland. They are traveling from places of origin (the safe), towards towards Jerusalem (the dangerous): a site that will transfigure Christ and them.  We meet the disciples on the way to conversion, where Jesus is showing them who he is and what it means to imitate his way of life, the way of the Cross. Physically and psychospiritually, they are moving from Caesarea Philippi in the north to Capernaum beside the Sea of Galilee to Jerusalem. This walking journey punctuated by audacious miracles and contentious side conversations is all formation for the Passion to come. As Jesus shows his disciples what it looks like to be faithful witnesses to God incarnate– to the kingdom– he is demonstrating to us, too, that Christ on the cross and risen again in us, is at the heart of true religion. The heart of religious faithfulness is to be willing to lay down one’s life and all one’s tired convictions for everyone whom God calls a friend.  Today’s Gospel is about the process of being converted through confrontation with a Wild God who refuses to conform to our visions. We might imagine this lesson as the turn from preparation to conversion. So it makes sense that at this fork, Jesus poses a question of great significance: “Who do you say that I am?” He moves from who do they say that I am to who do you say I am?

Peter’s answer initiates confrontation. 

On a first hearing Jesus’s rebuke of Peter seems harsh. Afterall, Peter identifies him rightly “You are the Messiah!” But, in rehearsing the familiar answer, Messiahship in Jesus. And Jesus knows he is missing this. Jesus doesn’t care that Peter gave the right answer, he’s upset by Peter’s presumption to know what Messiahship means without locating it in his relationship with Christ. 

As I’ve been sitting with the text this week, I’ve begun to wonder if this heated exchange with Peter and Jesus on their journey to Jerusalem represents Peter’s conversion (and by proxy, our own as fellow disciples of Christ) from spectator of Christ to friends of Christ. Spectators in the crowd can celebrate and refute, but their observations do not have an impact; their remarks land as hot air would: without substance. Friendship, however, does have substance. In a relationship, there are stakes attached. When Jesus invites us to pick up his cross and follow him, he invites us into an intimate, trying, ever-changing relationship. Friendship requires risk, accountability, communication, and apology when miss-see or misunderstand a beloved’s identity or mission. I’m reminded here of the Garden of Gethsemane when Jesus asks his friends to stay awake and is devastated when they fail to keep this commitment. Friendship asks we accept that when we are touched by a Wild God ourselves nothing remains the same; this is the conversion process– our perceptions of ourselves and the Holy are upturned in confrontation with the person of God in Christ. 

Reading this text as an invitation to the process of conversion might help us understand the intensity of the exchange between Jesus and Peter. What is going on here?  When Peter confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, God’s anointed one, it is significant because it is the first time the word “Messiah” or “Christ” has been used to speak of Jesus since the opening of Mark’s Gospel (1:1). When Jesus rebukes Peter he does so because Peter misses the scope of the struggle inherent to a life of being converted.  He gets the word ‘Messiah’ right, but he has no idea what it means or what it will cost. This upsets Jesus because Peter is supposedly his friend.  Jesus doesn’t want Peter to say “You are the Messiah,” even a stranger can see that; he longs for him to confess, “Rabbi, you are my friend whom I love. My life is bound up with your life. My death is bound up with your death.”

It’s difficult to parse through exactly what is at stake in this linchpin affront between Peter and Jesus. Theologian Dawn Ottoni-Wilhelm helps shed some light on some of the power dynamics that may be at work here.  In her imaginative retelling of the exchange she reflects, “Peter pulls Jesus aside and tries to rebuke him. He cannot bear the idea that Jesus, the Christ, will suffer and die. But Jesus turns to all the disciples as he rebukes Peter in the most strident terms possible, ordering him, “Get behind me, Satan!” He will not have Peter tempt him to turn away from his calling.” She then draws upon another scholar, Susan Garrett, who further contends that,

“The severity of Jesus’ rebuke of Peter in Mark 8:33 corresponds to the [gravity] of Jesus’ temptation here: the rebuke is sharp because the temptation is profound. Although Jesus knows where God’s path for him leads—through suffering, rejection, death, and resurrection . . . he is sorely tempted to follow Peter in departing from this path.”

 Together, Ottoni-Wilhelm and Susan Garrett sheds light on an important and often overlooked dimension of this dialgoue with Peter and Jesus: even Jesus is afraid to bear the shape of the cruciform life. It is costly and he needs support to bear the weight. It’s as if he is pulling Peter close saying “Understand this, I need you. The way of the cross is the real deal. You need me and I need you. Don’t miss what I am saying to you.”

What does Jesus want us, his disciples, to know about the way of the cross? About walking with him? About the nature of true religion as discipleship? That conversion is an ongoing, demanding, relational process that is not possible without the Spirit. It’s true, living religiously with Christ is hard and scary. Even Jesus doesn’t want to take up this cross, and neither does Peter! Look at their exchange. It is intense. It is fierce because the stakes demand it.  Jesus did not want to suffer, but he was willing to suffer to draw us into communion with the wild God at the heart of true religion. This is discipleship: the willingness to suffer with Christ for justice, mercy, and life-affirming love.  Let us remember that transfiguration follows these predictions of suffering, death, and ressurection in Mark’s Gospel. It is not crucifixion that is the end, but transfiguration. 

Again, theologian Dawn offers insight: “To take up the cross is to be willing to suffer the consequences of faithful living; to follow him is to travel to unknown destinations that promise to be both dangerous and life-giving. The all-encompassing nature of this call is both frightening and demanding. No wonder we would rather withhold some part of ourselves. Thomas Troeger’s hymn expresses well our ambivalence: “If all you want, Lord, is my heart, my heart is yours alone—providing I may set apart my mind to be my own”  (Ottoni-Wilhelm, Preaching the Gospel of Mark, 156).

What does Jesus ask us to convert to? Jesus asks us to yield to the touch of a Wild God who is Love, who is Christ. And the region of conversion is a site of struggle and sacrifice; you cannot pass over it unchanged.  And God goes with the creature into these struggles in the art of wonderous, clamorous, merciful, dying and resurrecting life. Correction is crucial for conversion because it can only occur authentically and reciprocally inside the context of trust.  A full frontal embrace with a beloved’s confrontation will transfigure, especially when the Beloved is God–even when it stings. Jesus’s encounter with the Syrophoneciean woman last week demonstrates he too is in the process of being converted through correction. He asks that our hearts be that open as we walk with him and enter his questions: “Who do you say that I am?” The lesson of the exchange with Jesus and Peter for us is that Jesus won’t accept less than our whole selves. True religion can only be known by whom we embrace. 

Conversion begins and ends with the heart, with the heart, with the heart face to face with a wild God.

May we be reminded that we are always being converted through relationship. May we be so courageous as to embrace our feral God as a friend, knowing we will not leave unchanged. And may we remember that the heart of true religion to be transfigured into Love through the way of the Cross. 

Take my life and let it be consecrated oh to Thee. Take myself and I will be ever only all for Thee. “Take my Life and Let it Be,” Frances Ridley Havergal (1874). 

Amen.