this is what a preacher looks like

Worship/Preaching

Durso, ed.This Is W

hat a Preacher Looks Like

“This beautiful collection sings with the energy of thespirit. An important tribute to the power women bringto the word. Amen, sisters!”

—Susan SparksPastor, Madison Avenue Baptist Church, New York

“A powerful reminder that God does what the Bible says God does; pour out the Spiritof proclamation on sons and daughters with no regard for whether they happen to besons or daughters.”

—Chuck PoolePastor, Northminster Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi

ContributorsMary Yangsook AhnRobin Bolen AndersonPatricia A. BancroftFaithe BeamBonnie Oliver BrandonKatrina Stipe BrooksAmy ButlerEileen Campbell-ReedDorisanne CooperLynn DandridgeIsabel N. DocampoElizabeth Rickert Dowdy

Pamela R. DursoKristy EggertF. Sue FitzgeraldTammy Jackson GillElizabeth Evans HaganAmber C. Inscore EssickLeAnn Gunter JohnsAndrea Dellinger JonesMartha Dixon KearseJulie Merritt LeeJewel M. LondonNora O. Lozano

Molly T. MarshallAmy MearsRobin NorsworthySuzii PaynterJulie Pennington-RussellSuzanah RaffieldNancy Hastings SehestedSarah Jackson SheltonAmy Shorner-JohnsonSarah StewartLisa L. ThompsonJoy Yee

Pamela R. Durso is executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry in Atlanta, Georgia, and is anadjunct professor at McAfee School of Theology.

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Our Good ShepherdPsalm 23

JuliePennington-

Russell.

A friend of mine in California received a phone call early one morning, thekind every parent dreads. Her daughter, who was in her mid-thirties and asuccessful executive living in Tennessee, had been battling anorexia for sev-eral years. She had been hospitalized and was close to death. My friendimmediately flew to Nashville and stayed with her daughter around the clockwhile she fought for her life. Happily, the young woman recovered. She nowhas moved back to San Francisco to be near her family and is doing prettywell, actually. But during those dark weeks in that Nashville hospital, wethought she might not survive.

One morning, during the worst part of the ordeal, the girl’s mother wasclose to despair. Having sat awake the night before by her daughter’s bedside,my friend was exhausted and terrified. She decided to take a walk to clear herhead. She meandered through the hospital corridor and ended up in a littlechapel not far from the cafeteria, a quiet space that opened into a lovelygarden. At that time my friend did not consider herself at all religious, and infact, she referred to herself as a “functioning agnostic.” But her boat wasgoing down in that dark sea, and she was grabbing for whatever lifeline shecould find.

The little chapel was an interfaith one. On a large table lit with candles,among a scattering of sacred books, was a large, ornate King James Bible. Myfriend was biblically illiterate, did not know Genesis from Jell-o, but sherecalled a text from somewhere in her past. So she traced a finger down thetable of contents, not remembering if the Psalms were in the Old Testamentor the New.

Finding the text for which she was looking, she read that psalm and readit again and again. Read it silently. Read it aloud. Wept over it. And later my


friend told me, “The words of the Twenty-third Psalm performed CPR onmy broken heart that day. It felt to me as if they were pounding on my chest,blowing oxygen into my lungs. It was the first time in my life that I actuallyperceived God holding me, and I thought, ‘This is what it feels like to becared for by God.’”

I have no doubt that it was the spirit of God hovering over my friendthat day. But I have also found myself wondering—what, specifically, in theTwenty-third Psalm spoke to her in that desperate hour? It may have beenthat these words come from someone who appears to have walked throughfire and made it to the other side. Perhaps my friend was able to trace herown silhouette in the lines of the psalm. Psalm 23 expresses such a simple,almost childlike, faith. But it is faith on the far side of some real pain, whichmakes it a faith worth paying attention to.

Or maybe my friend was overtaken by the image of God presented inthe psalm: God as my shepherd. Of course, if God is a shepherd, guess whatthat makes us? Baa.

This shepherd makes us lie down in green pastures. Some of us really doneed someone to make us lie down and rest. This good shepherd cares for usin our exhaustion. And he leads us beside still waters. Some of us lead suchfragmented lives; we need to be guided into a way of being that is not sosplintered, but is integrated and whole. Sometimes I feel like the woman inMargaret Atwood’s poem:

Most hearts say, I want, I want, I want, I want.My heart is more duplicitous . . .It says, I want, I don’t want, I want . . .How can one live with such a heart?1

When our family lived in San Francisco, sometimes we would go downto Fisherman’s Wharf to watch the street artists perform all sorts of out-landish acts. I remember one juggler who could keep five or six bowling pinsup in the air at once while riding a unicycle across a tightrope. That streetjuggler reminds me of me sometimes—trying to remain balanced whilekeeping all of my priorities airborne. Toss this pin up for God, this one forfamily, this one for church, this one for my friends. No wonder I feel dizzyand split apart so much of the time!

This psalm comes along and immediately wants to knock down ourpins. You and I will never sit beside still waters until we come to understandthat God refuses to be one of our priorities—not even the first priority. God

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is the entire ground beneath our feet and the gathering sky under which ourpriorities have any hope of making sense at all. Until we get clear about that,we are still stuck in “I want, I don’t want. . . . I want, I don’t want.” Thegood shepherd cares for us in our agitation.

When we have rested in green pastures and drunk from still waters andit is time to hit the road again, our shepherd leads us down a good one. Evenwhen we do not realize what the shepherd is up to, there he is—preparingthe ground, scouting ahead, and scanning for wolves and thickets and scaryravines. I can give a word of witness about that. Today is my father’s birth-day. Dad died nine years ago of cancer, but today he would have beenseventy-four years old. Because I have been thinking about my father andthis psalm all week, I have found myself mulling over a warm memory frommy childhood. Part of my story has to do with a particular piece of God’sprovidence at work in my life, even before I was born.

I come from a family of coal miners. Both my mother’s father and myfather’s father mined coal in Alabama for Republic Iron & Steel. One terribleday in August 1943, both of my grandfathers were burned to death when aseries of explosions ripped through the Sayreton mines near Birmingham. Inall, thirty mine workers died, including William Pennington and StaplesBailey, my grandfathers. My mother was four years old at that time, and myfather was eight.

Dad’s family was desperately poor, poorer than my mother’s family,largely because there were so many of them to feed. My father was one ofeleven Pennington children, and the only one who finished high school.Some years later, in 1956, four years before I was born, my father realizedthat he was not going to be able to go to college because he needed to workto help support the family. Dad was faced with a decision: work in the samemine where his father had died or go downtown to the Air Force recruiter’soffice and sign up. Dad’s decision to enlist pretty much changed my life,although I was not even yet born. His decision took our family out ofAlabama. I do not have a thing in the world against Alabama; it was a greatgrowing-up place for my parents. But Birmingham in the 1960s was, as youknow, a broken city. And so while my cousins were growing up in that placewith the fire hoses, bombings, and segregation, my brother and I were out inCalifornia, living in base housing next door to the Schwartzes, who wereJewish, and the Washingtons, who were African American. We shared acourtyard with the Awohis, who were native Hawaiians. Their children weremy playmates, and I loved them.

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That experience shaped my life in powerful ways. Besides the broadenedracial perspective, I also perceived a delicious freedom in California from alot of the gender stereotypes that I had observed in the South. In those days,Helen Reddy was singing, “I am woman, hear me roar,” and in my youngheart a seed was planted. The years we spent in the San Joaquin Valley ofCalifornia when I was in junior high and high school were some of the mostformative of my life. Memories of that time later drew me back to the WestCoast when I decided to go to seminary. Somehow God took that colossaldisappointment for my father, the closed door to college, and used some ofthe broken pieces of his dream to make a path for me that to this day feelsbeautiful beneath my feet. “He leads me in right paths.”

Sometimes, however, a season comes when the path does not feel right atall. You receive a call from the doctor: “Your tests have come back, and thereis some cause for concern.” The jungle drums start beating in the back ofyour head. Or your spouse says the words you never imagined you wouldhear: “I am not sure that I love you anymore.” Or your children fall intosome terrible hole. You cannot reach them, cannot rescue them, and the ceil-ing presses in. Life has never seemed darker.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow.” Where is thegreen pasture now? Where is the still water? And, for that matter, where theheck is the shepherd? Such a place is where David, our psalmist, finds him-self, and what does he do? He does what a child would do. He reaches ahand into the darkness, desperate to find a hand reaching back, and what doyou know, the hand of the good shepherd is there. “I will fear no evil . . . youare with me.” And it’s enough.

For hapless and harried sheep that are lost and afraid, the shepherd’snearness gives us courage enough to keep walking. And if we do—if we trustthe one who is walking just ahead, beating back the thorns with his staff—intime, we will find ourselves emerging into the light. Not the same old light,mind you, but a brand new light. When David finally steps out of theshadow, he gets a brand new way of looking at God and a new way of seeinghimself as well. At the beginning of this psalm, the writer sees himself as asheep with the shepherd. But now, on the far side of despair, what does hesee? A table. A cup. Sweet oil for his head. Suddenly this barnyard sheep hasbeen promoted to honored guest at the Lord’s own table, and God the shep-herd has become the welcoming host.

So can you say it yet? “My cup runneth over.” Some of you can. Some ofyou have a cup like a Florentine fountain these days. You need a manager



just to keep track of all the goodness. Some of you cannot say it now becauseyou are walking through a season of shadows. But keep walking. Keep lean-ing in with faith. Keep praying, “You are with me. You are with me.”

Listen to God’s own promise: There is a cup with your name on it onthe far side of this valley, a cup deep and full of joy for you. There is a tableof welcome for you. There is a home in God’s own house for you. The cup,the table, and the home are ahead of you as you trust the shepherd in theshadow as well as in the meadow.

What does this kind of trust look like? It is probably different for everylife, but here is what it looks like for me: Once I was in such a particularlydark valley that I needed to go away for a time in order to find my footingagain. I went to what had become a place of renewal for me, a Catholicretreat center about forty miles from Waco, Texas. Before leaving on retreat,I got an e-mail from a good friend and mentor, a woman who is a spiritualdirector for many. She wrote,

Julie, so glad that you are going on retreat. I hope that the time with Jesusin nature will break down big chunks of the devil’s scare tactics so that youcan see that really, you are riding on Jesus’ shoulders, and he is knockingthe problems out of the park for you because he is big and you are small.Remember, he loves for you to be part of what he’s doing, but he neverwould leave the load of these problems on your slender shoulders. Take inlove and deep rest, dear friend.

Maybe your soul is completely restored these days, and if so, that is won-derful. Celebrate it. But if your life feels frantic and frayed and seriouslyunmanageable, know that there is a shepherd who loves you and wants noth-ing more than to swing you up on his shoulders and carry you to a safe placeof rest and peace.

All thanks and praise to our good shepherd, who has the power to leadus—even through the dark valley of death—because he has been there, andhe knows his way out. And since that day, there has not been a grave thatcould keep holding any of God’s children. Talk about good news.

Note1. Margaret Atwood, “The Woman Who Could Not Live with Her Faulty Heart,” Two-

Headed Poems (Oxford University Press, 1978) 14.

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The Seed in Your HeartMatthew 13:24-29

Amy Shorner-Johnson

I once had a friend sitting by me in class who said, “Parables are ordinarystories, turned upside down to improve the hearer’s eyesight.” In the case ofkingdom parables, I think he might be right. The Gospel writer Matthewseems particularly interested in the ones that have mysterious sightings of thedivine. Jesus tells a good number of them, and to do so, he spends a lot oftime observing gardeners, farmers, seeds, plants, food, and the people whospend their time around such things. They are the star characters in anumber of Jesus’ teachings: the farmer with an amazingly wide range of soilsin his own backyard, a man who trades all he has for the miracles found inone field, a mustard seed with faith to become a huge tree, and a little yeastthat turns ordinary dough into delicious golden bread.

Each of the parables I mentioned is in Matthew 13, and a few of themeven have explanations for those who have ears to hear. Matthew was aninsider in the life of Jesus, a former tax collector turned disciple when heheard Jesus calling. So when we read a parable in this Gospel and hear itssecret explanation, we can remember that Matthew was one of the insiders—who is not too far removed to remember having been an outsider, havingseen the good, the bad, and the ugly parts of life.

Matthew is the only Gospel writer who writes with such fury about theend of the world, with clear signs as to the different outcomes for those whoare evil and those who are good, and Matthew 13 is not the only place inwhich those conversations show up. His Gospel also contains the parables ofthe sheep and goats and the wise and foolish maidens, and both those stories


end with lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth. According to Matthew, Jesushas made it clear that there are two ways for a human to live, and after hear-ing his stories most people knew on which side they wanted to end up.

In this particular chapter, Matthew 13, the writer focuses on the topic ofthe kingdom of God and the way it tends to grow around us in our world. Itmay seem like a strange place for such a fiery parable, but here it is, growingalong with the others that surround it, in surprising and mischievous ways.We pick up in the middle of the chapter (Matt 13:24) with what seems to bean everyday wheat farmer who encounters a common problem. Weeds!

While I know there are some excellent gardeners who can even identifyplants by their Latin names, most of us could probably name the basic thingsit take to grow a plant: a seed, good soil, sunlight, and water. Weeds are notin that mix. As the parable of the four soils taught us, weeds tend to chokeout the things we intend to grow and leave no room for the good seeds togrow. Weeds steal water, take up good soil, and sometimes shade perfectlygood plants from sunlight. If you are still having trouble coming up with animage, think kudzu!

But not all weeds are as easy to identify. In looking up the distinctionbetween a weed and a plant, I found a few quotes during an ordinary com-puter search that preach for themselves:

• “A weed is a plant someone wishes were not in that spot.”• “The difference between a flower and a weed is love and hate.”• “A weed is the undesirable, the unwanted.”• And then one surrounded by lots of exclamations points—“My lawn may

be full of weeds to some, but to me it is full of lovely flowers! Dandelionsare flowers!”

• “What is a weed? A plant whose virtues have never been discovered.”—Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sometimes telling the difference between a weed and a plant is not allthat easy. Perhaps you have had the same experience as I have—mistakingthe two in someone else’s yard. Once while I was in high school, I was work-ing in the back of someone else’s yard in the name of missions and loving myneighbor. I was pulling up a lot of tangled vines and prickly patches, which Iconfess all looked the same to me. If it had thorns and was not a rose, Iassumed it was supposed to be gone; after all, it was damaging the environ-ment, mainly me! Most of the greenery in that yard was overgrown, making



it difficult to see anything that looked “beautiful” in my book. But abouthalfway through, I found that I was a bit too good at my job, having pulledup the owner’s favorite plant. Sometimes, in our haste, sometimes even inour desire for good and perhaps even growth, we move a little too quicklyand end up pulling out the good with the bad.

That lesson is a major point in this parable. The weed that this farmerhad encountered was a tare, possibly also known as “darnel.” Darnel is actu-ally related to wheat. It resembles wheat, and it lives vibrantly among wheatstalks. But darnel is not only a choking hazard; it is also dangerous for thosewho confuse it with wheat, for it sometimes causing blindness, even death, ifenough of it mixes in with the real stuff.

According to our parable, the wheat in this particular field had alreadygrown tall before the servants realized that something was not quite right.The weeds came up as a surprise and a shock, as weeds do for most of us.The farmer did not set out to grow weeds in his field, but real life tells usthat bad things can grow in our fields even when we work hard to sow seedsof good. Sometimes that is just how life goes, and we have to deal with what-ever is growing in our backyard.

Having already sweated over this field, the servants go back to theowner, figuring that no matter who is the culprit, they have their work cutout for them. They come in for a meeting with the owner to get the truth ofthe situation straightened out. Knowing that it was not the intention of thefarmer to put weeds into the ground, especially dangerous ones, the servantscome with their hoes and their Round Up ready and in hand, prepared to dowhatever it takes to be able to harvest some wheat in the coming days.

But in a twist of the unusual, the servants encounter another surprise,one that to them seems to be the opposite of what the owner of the fieldwould want. The owner tells his servants to leave the wheat and the tares sideby side until the harvest. Side by side, growing together. This response maysound a little eccentric to some. Understanding this farmer’s goals is hard,but he does not seem fixated on perfection, beauty, or efficiency. He cer-tainly does not seem to be worried about making a profit! Allowing a weedto grow alongside a staple crop seems risky, but apparently taking that risk isthe only way the farmer thinks he will get a satisfactory result.

What do we do with this crazy farmer? And even more so, what do wedo when this parable is supposed to be about the kingdom of God, explod-ing here on earth? I do not know about you, but all the other parables aboutthe kingdom in Matthew 13 seem to be a little more comforting than this

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one. The other parables seem to be about good things—bread rising, treesgrowing, and hidden treasures that are worth all other possessions combined.Most people do not get that excited about sharing the good news about afield prone to weeds. If this is God’s kingdom showing up, well, it looks alittle more like reality than I would like it to.

Perhaps this parable is a glimpse of the reality of the kingdom at its verycore, and Jesus is telling us the way it really is. The kingdom is hidden awayin the weeds, only visible to those willing to spend some time looking for it.Most people would not look around and say they see God’s kingdom break-ing out, at least, not most of the people one sees every day on the street. Thecommon everyday person I meet is busy being worried about where theworld is headed and recites stories about things falling apart and always get-ting worse. We have enough evil things that hide the stories of good in ourworld: crime, war, hatred, poverty, death, homes that are broken into, homesthat are broken apart, and people who are out to get us.

Some people spend their entire lives trying to avoid such things, pur-posefully seeking out only places surrounded by good. And such avoidance iscommon even for people who are disciples. We prefer to separate out theclean and the unclean, the good and the bad, so that when Jesus comes backto make some decisions, we will not be easily confused in the mix. There willbe a clear line between the weed row and the wheat row.

The thing is, real life is never that easy, and sometimes the weeds creepup in unexpected places. Inside and outside the church, we find that thingsare not as perfect as we thought they would be, even as they were supposedto be. Although we have avoided the wrong crowds, never driven in the badparts of town, and moved away from the perils of dangerous places, evil stillseems to slither into our midst. We cannot completely escape it. Sometimes,evil even finds its way into our own hearts, and all our running away doesnothing to stop it from growing.

The truth, however, is that even when we ask for evil to be removed, thesower of the seed seems to have left us to live with it, at least for a while. Fornow, we have to deal with the fact that we are living with weeds, and thesower is not about to let us escape from those weeds or destroy them for fearthat their destruction might do some damage, more damage than the weedsthemselves. But much like real life, when danger lurks in front of us, the eas-iest way out is the one we usually take. But our great God knows somethingthat we do not easily remember: sometimes we run so far to escape all thingsevil that we completely forget that removing the evil from the equation will



also uproot the sustenance for the good. Jesus and the farmer in his storyseem to have more faith in the wheat than we often do. I saw a quote lastweek from a teacher at the University of Nairobi in Kenya. He wrote, “Jesussowed his seed in our hearts, then off he went. . . . He knew things wouldnot be ideal. There were the birds and the droughts, the weeds and theinsects, the parasites and the blights. But there was also the power of the seeditself.”1

Sometimes it is not so easy to trust the power of God in us, the power ofGod that works through us, and to let the kingdom of God live in us even inthe midst of what seem like defeating circumstances. We prefer to act like theharvesters, or the one who owns the field, and control our own field anddestroy any evil that gets in the way of a good harvest, but sometimes follow-ing our preference means doing more damage than good. We too easilyforget that we are the wheat in this parable, and not the servants, not thefarmer. We are the seeds full of power to grow, power to feed and provide,and power to nourish.

I am increasingly convinced that this is why Jesus explains the parable tothe disciples. You may not agree, but my observation has been that when wesee something wrong or even risky, we either want to stop it dead in its tracksor forget it, or even bury it deep. But we never want to work with it. Weoften find ourselves anxious to do something about the problem, and we donot take time to look at the whole picture. In our haste, instead of getting tothe root of the problem, we take out the whole garden, weed and wheatalike. That is much easier than having to sort through the weeds and thewheat and figure out which is which. I know I am guilty of this. Running toa safer place is easier. Protecting ourselves with fences, scarecrows, andbarbed wire so that nothing will get to us is easier. I feel safer when I am notjust one of the mix. Singling out a scapegoat and resolving a problem bymaking it someone else’s fault is easier for me. Burying my own faults deepinside me and moving on is not as hard. If the kingdom did not have somany weeds, I would be happier. Instead, I hide the weeds or try to ridmyself of them, but they keep growing back.

Perhaps we can find comfort in the fact that the perfect kingdom thatGod is calling us to live in is the one we actually live in. God is calling us tolive in a world that is surrounded by bad things, scary things, and evil things,and the kingdom of God is among even those things we would rather avoid.But in the midst of the weeds, we find good, and that good is worth workingwith, worth living in, and even worth investing ourselves in. We know



because we have found some good in ourselves, legitimate good despite thedark secrets we keep to ourselves. We can find comfort in that we are not theones in charge of having to decide even which is which, which is the wheatand which is the weed. Because I wonder, if it were up to us, would anyonestill be standing?

Our purpose is to remember which part of the story we are. We are thecrop, most likely, wheat and weed alike. We are seeds with the power togrow, to nourish, to fall, and to cause more seeds to grow where we have leftoff. Not only that, but we are the seeds with power to grow even in whatseems to be the worst of all situations. Jesus had a lot of faith in the power ofa seed, and he invites us to have the courage to grow in the midst of adversityeven when it seems we are surrounded by things intent on destroying us.Jesus believes we have a chance even when we feel like giving up and throw-ing it all away. And in Jesus we find hope and our calling, a calling that needsto be more than just something we talk about. Our God believes that thisfield is worth working with, and God will not stop until wheat and weedalike are fat with potential. Our job is to seek out the good, to lift it up, andto live it out as best we can until our God comes for the harvest.

A Christian reformer from India named Pandita Ramabai wrote, “Peoplemust not only hear about the kingdom of God, but must see it in actualoperation, on a small scale perhaps and in imperfect form, but a real demon-stration nevertheless.”2

So I ask you, what might it mean for us to believe that the power of thekingdom is here, and to take hold of that, to believe it even when it seemsthat it is imperfect? What would it take for you to believe that there is stillsome good left in the wheat field and to believe that all the work is not invain? What would it mean for us to live as though there are pieces of thekingdom of God so worth saving that we start working right here with whatwe have so that all can share in the bounty of the crop? What would make itsound like good news to you, so maybe, just maybe, you would be excited totell about it?

Maybe it sounds too optimistic for your ears, but if we say we believe inthe power of God, if we believe the message that the kingdom of God isamong us, then perhaps we can also believe that God’s power to work allthings together for the good of those who love him is true too, weeds and all.

The kingdom of God is here, even among the weeds. It is time to believethe good news that it is breaking out among us, and there is nothing we cando to stop it! But we can help other see it! Open your eyes and believe!


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Notes1. “Voice of the Day: Joseph G. Donders,” God’s Politics: A Blog by Jim Wallis and

Friends, 15 July 2008, http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/07/voice-of-the-day-joseph-g-dond.html (accessed 16 November 2009).

2. “Voice of the Day: Pandita Ramabai,” God’s Politics blog, 16 July 2008,http://blog.beliefnet.com/godspolitics/2008/07/voice-of-the-day-pandita-ramab.html(accessed 16 November 2009).



The Mountain MattersMark 9:2-9

Andrea Dellinger Jones

Several years ago I took a course on ancient iconography. In this class, welearned to paint and appreciate Christian icons from the Byzantine era. Itwas a continuing education course for me and also my first real art lesson. Iclearly never quit my day job, and there is good reason for that. But I tookthe class seriously. I had to be serious about it if I wanted to do well, becausethat was the tone our instructor set for the course. My professor was a GreekOrthodox priest and a talented iconographer. For him, painting icons was aspiritual discipline, not simply a hobby or a second job. This priest was kind,but too committed to iconography to allow his students to approach thecourse casually.

One day a fellow student brought some of her own icons to our session.She had taken a course in iconography before and had been painting a littleon her own. While the rest of us were absorbed in our work, she paused fora minute to show our instructor how well she had been doing on her owntime. As she laid out her icons, the woman stopped at an image of the HolyTrinity and politely apologized. In the original icon, the one she had copiedfrom the Byzantine era, three objects stood in the background. On the leftside was a church. In the center was a tree, which often suggests the cross ofChrist in Byzantine icons. And in the back right corner a tall mountain roseup steeply. The woman explained that she had run out of room for themountain. She asked if it was fine to finish the icon without it.

The priest had an uneasy look on his face. To this point, he hadapplauded her work, but now he seemed stern again. He pulled his punch a

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little, but he still got across his concern. “Well,” he said, “your paintingmight be fine without the mountain, but your theology will not be.”

The woman giggled with a little embarrassment. It was an awkwardmoment. I just stared back down at my own paper and kept fluffing St. Savas’s beard. But I have been mulling over that comment ever since. Shehad painted the church, and she had painted the tree, but she had left outthe mountain. Somehow, without that mountain, the gospel was incomplete.

Well, this woman was not the first disciple to paint an incomplete imageof the gospel. In our Scripture today, Jesus’ disciples thought he was talkingcrazy again. He told them he was going to suffer greatly, endure widespreadrejection, die at the hands of murderers, and be resurrected to live again. The disciples glanced around at each other, confused. But Jesus had said it in plain Aramaic. Everybody heard it. So their confusion quickly turned toconcern.

As usual, Peter spoke up first. He pulled Jesus aside and began to rebukehim. By the way, how would you like to have that on your record, to be thefirst and only disciple to publicly rebuke God’s own son? If you are keepinga record of wrongs, you might as well keep Peter’s file open.

Part of Peter’s problem was the high-water mark he had hit in his ownspiritual journey. Seconds earlier, Jesus had asked the disciples point-blank,“Who do you say that I am?” Peter beat everybody else to the buzzer. “Youare the Messiah,” he said. At that, Jesus warned everybody not to tell anyoneyet, and in Mark’s Gospel, that warning is the sure sign that you have hit thenail on the head. Matthew’s Gospel tells us even more here. In his retelling ofthe encounter, Jesus renames Peter “the Rock,” and Jesus then says this rockwill serve as the foundation for the church. Peter was not positive what thismeant, and the exact meaning of Jesus’ statement has been contested eversince (Mark 8:27-30; Matt 16:18).1

Nevertheless, with this affirmation, Peter was confident and overeager.Who better than him to halt all this crazy talk? When Jesus said he wouldsuffer, Peter stepped up to demonstrate that his first right answer was not justdumb luck. He rebuked Jesus. About what exactly, Mark does not say. ButMatthew does. Peter said he would never stand for the Messiah to suffer(Matt 16:22). And that is when Jesus rebuked him back, “Get behind me,Satan! You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things”(Mark 8:33).

I told you to keep Peter’s file open. The first and only disciple to scoldGod’s own son was now the only disciple Jesus ever called Satan. One



minute Peter was the stone foundation of the church, and the next minutehe was the voice of Satan. Peter’s experience is a stern warning for the churchand a good reason to get the gospel right.

But here is the dilemma in which Jesus found himself. On the one hand,most people were not positive he was the Messiah. Surprisingly, Jesus mayhave been comfortable with that reality, at least for now. Nobody had seenthe full Jesus, anyway. They had seen healings and exorcisms, a little powerfrom on high, but they had not seen the Son of God suffer, not really. Andyou will never really know God, or fully understand God’s character, untilyou have seen divinity trampled by permission.

On the other hand, Jesus was facing the frustrating truth about his clos-est disciples. These were the men who knew him more intimately thananybody else, and yet this disciple, the stone foundation of the church, wasnow so confident that he pulled Jesus aside to scold him. Peter appeared tobe missing the message about suffering. How many of the others had missedit? God help a disciple who never truly gets this part of the gospel, the partabout the efficacy of suffering for ushering in the kingdom of God. Godhelp us when our own images of the Trinity include the church but leave outthe tree or mountain!

In time, Jesus would remedy his dilemma. But if he meant to get startedon that, his next little lesson is not what you would expect. Less than a weeklater, Jesus took three of the disciples for a hike: John, James, and—youguessed it—Peter, the voice of Satan, the one who had his mind set onearthly things, the stone foundation of the church. Clearly, we give up on thechurch much more quickly than Jesus did.

Mark says the disciples followed Jesus “up a high mountain apart, bythemselves.” The terrain was probably rocky. I imagine it was chilly. Theclimb probably took the wind out of them a bit. But what they saw at thetop was completely breathtaking, and I am not talking about the view. Jesuswas literally “transfigured” before them. His clothes dazzled white, brighterthan any bleach could ever get them. This was a blinding shimmer. On topof that, Jesus met Moses and Elijah there on the summit, two icons ofHebrew history. According to Jewish tradition, these two had been taken upto heaven without ever really dying. That is why nobody had ever foundMoses’ grave. They never found Elijah’s, either, because a sweet chariotswung low for him, and he jumped it. This was indeed a moment to behold,or not! The disciples diverted their eyes. They knew better than to staredown a theophany.

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Of course, even in this holy moment, Peter spoke right up. Maybe hewas trying to redeem himself. “Rabbi!” he said, with his face tucked into hisarm. “It is good for us to be here. Let us make three dwellings, one for you,one for Moses, and one for Elijah!” Mark seems a little embarrassed for Peter,like we should forgive him for saying something so silly. Peter did not knowwhat to say. He and the others were “terrified”!

But in the very next instant, a cloud came over everyone, maybe toshield the light. Out of that cloud came a voice. I do not know if the disci-ples had heard this voice before, but we have. We heard it at Christ’sbaptism, and it sounds similar here. “This is my Son, the Beloved. Listen tohim!” At that sound, the disciples dared to look up. But as soon as they did,everyone vanished—Elijah, Moses, and the voice of God. Jesus was stillthere, though, and he would have to suffice, for them and for us, as earthlyevidence of the glory of God.

But for a moment, just briefly, all of the other signs had been there.These disciples had seen all the majesty of heaven: a bright, shining light; thecloud; the mysterious, booming voice; Moses and Elijah alive! And thenthere was the mountain, the one Jesus and the three disciples had all climbedtogether. That was where Moses and Elijah had their closest encounters withGod, on a “high mountain apart, by themselves.” Now these disciples hadbeen to the mountaintop, too. That’s where humans had always come closestto heaven.

What a peculiar first lesson for disciples who did not understand suffer-ing, to hike them up a high mountain, where they would see Christ glorifiedand hear the very voice of God. Was Peter really ready for that? Was any-body? Wasn’t that the problem, that Peter and the disciples envisioned glorywithout the humility of the cross?

Yes, but Jesus’ strong words for Peter are a warning for us. We cannotexpect to understand earthly things in their heavenly light until we set ourminds on things divine. The experiences of this life find their significance inthe next. When it comes to suffering, this is our saving grace. What isChrist’s crucifixion without his glorification? What is our own sufferingwithout our own glorification, without our own spiritual ascent? It is mean-ingless. Without the promise of glorification, it is just suffering. It is thelabor of the church, and the agony of the tree, without the high mountain ofholy transcendence.

Soon we will move into the Lenten season. Your fasting during this timewill tie you down to this earth. At least initially, it will remind you that you



are human, that humans suffer, and that Christ suffered with us. But evenduring this sacred season, Christians do not fast on Sundays, because Sundayis the day of resurrection. Sundays are when we stare at the summit, the onethat makes earthly things divine. Good Sunday worship should leave yougazing at this mountain, and at the peak of spiritual ascent, our earthly suf-fering mean something. On Sundays we keep the mountain in view.

So set your mind on that mountain. The mountain is a heavenly thingand is important to your theology. No, not just important. If the priest wasright, that mountain of transcendence, that mount of transfiguration, isessential. Your image of Christ, and the gospel you live, is simply incompletewithout it.

Note1. In the third century, some Christians began to use Jesus’ affirmation of Peter as a

rationale for the papacy, despite protests by prominent figures like Origen and Augustine.Protestants later argued that Jesus was referring to Peter’s confession, rather than to Peterhimself, as the foundation of the church, but this interpretation is also problematic. For abrief explanation of the use of this passage in church history, see Leander Keck et al., eds.The New Interpreter’s Bible, vol. 8 (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1995) 345–360.

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Worship/Preaching

Durso, ed.This Is W

hat a Preacher Looks Like

“This beautiful collection sings with the energy of thespirit. An important tribute to the power women bringto the word. Amen, sisters!”

—Susan SparksPastor, Madison Avenue Baptist Church, New York

“A powerful reminder that God does what the Bible says God does; pour out the Spiritof proclamation on sons and daughters with no regard for whether they happen to besons or daughters.”

—Chuck PoolePastor, Northminster Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi

ContributorsMary Yangsook AhnRobin Bolen AndersonPatricia A. BancroftFaithe BeamBonnie Oliver BrandonKatrina Stipe BrooksAmy ButlerEileen Campbell-ReedDorisanne CooperLynn DandridgeIsabel N. DocampoElizabeth Rickert Dowdy

Pamela R. DursoKristy EggertF. Sue FitzgeraldTammy Jackson GillElizabeth Evans HaganAmber C. Inscore EssickLeAnn Gunter JohnsAndrea Dellinger JonesMartha Dixon KearseJulie Merritt LeeJewel M. LondonNora O. Lozano

Molly T. MarshallAmy MearsRobin NorsworthySuzii PaynterJulie Pennington-RussellSuzanah RaffieldNancy Hastings SehestedSarah Jackson SheltonAmy Shorner-JohnsonSarah StewartLisa L. ThompsonJoy Yee

Pamela R. Durso is executive director of Baptist Women in Ministry in Atlanta, Georgia, and is anadjunct professor at McAfee School of Theology.

this is what a preacher looks like

Documents

northminster baptist

daughters bedside

pm page

nashville hospital

madison avenue baptist

new york

large table

dark weeks