A Sermon by Sydney V. (Skip) Jackson — June 14, 2009
Indianola Presbyterian Church, Columbus, Ohio
Texts:  Exodus 3:1-15;  Mark 8:27-33

God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” — Ex. 3:14a

[Jesus] rebuked Peter and said,

“Get behind me, Satan!” — Mark 8:33b

“Once upon a time, in the mud at the bottom of a tidal pool, there lived an oyster.”  So begins a fable that Robert Farrar Capon wrote 35 years ago as an introduction to a little book on the language of theology.¹  This oyster had a good life, with lots of clean water and food.  Even better, nearby was a rock that let the oyster feel superior.  (Who doesn’t like feeling superior?)  The oyster would talk to the rock—who rarely talked back—bragging about how even though the two looked a lot alike the rock was merely mineral.  Oysters may be mineral on the outside, but on the inside they were bona fide members of the animal kingdom.

One day the rock had enough.  “Rock do have some advantages,” he retorted. “Fewer enemies, for one.  Starfish, after all, could care less about rocks, but they’re death to oysters.  What’s more, starfish love to insult you oysters.  ‘Nothing more than a rock with a stomach,’ they call you.”  It turns out that what passes for humor among starfish is rather like Polish jokes, except the punch line is always about how stupid it is to be an animal and not be able to move about.  Well, this threw the oyster into a profound depression.  Everything he was so proud of had suddenly become the butt of underwater ethnic wisecracks.  Life, he concluded, was nothing but a cruel joke, and he lost his faith and stopped saying his prayers.

For a time, the oyster enjoyed his righteous indignation over losing religion.  But as summer wore on into fall and the water took on a chill, the oyster became merely sour—angry at the universe, but even more angry with himself for becoming a grouch.  Finally, in desperation, he decided to pray again, but this time there would be no more old pieties.  He saw himself as a Job among oysters.  He opened his shell and cursed his day, praying, “Let the day perish wherein I was spawned, and the night in which it was said ‘A seed oyster has appeared.’  Why is light given to him that is in misery, and life to the bitter in soul?  Why do I live my days in doubt and darkness?  O, that one would hear me, and tell me openly of the glories above.  Behold, my desire is that the Almighty would answer me.”

To his utter astonishment, a voice responds, “Oh, all right.  But I have to make it short.  It’s Friday afternoon, almost the Sabbath.”  The voice continues, “It’s all true.  There are things you oysters never dreamed of—all kinds of stuff.  Moves you couldn’t imagine if you tried.  In fact, that’s just your problem.  There you sit, near the bottom of the evolutionary scale, between a rock and a starfish.  Your field of vision is severely limited.”  The voice goes on to describe some of the moves unimaginable to oyster minds.  Like basketball players—whose moves are so flashy they make you laugh for not believing the guy could make the shot.  And squirrels darting through the trees—why, the last time a squirrel missed its footing was May 3rd, 1438.  (The voice keeps track of such things.)  “And right at the top,” says the voice, “are my absolute favorites for loveliness—prima ballerinas.  Ballerinas have moves so graceful they almost break your heart.  Why, it’s like Michael Jordan, Marcel Marceau, and Squirrel Nutkin all rolled into one.”

Finally the voice concludes, “As I said, your basic problem is your point of view.  There are all these great moves, but you oysters know so little about motion.  If you’re going into business as the world’s first oyster philosopher/theologian, that’s great.  But just so you shouldn’t get it all wrong, here’s my advice:  Think very carefully.  Remember that all this stuff really does exist, but it cannot possibly be the way you think.  In other words:  The way you think about things will never ever be exactly the way they are.  But enough.  I really must go.  Masel tov.”

So the oyster is left alone with his thoughts.  He feels both humbler and more elated than ever before.  He resolves to philosophize despite any difficulties; but to be as methodical as possible, in order to make best use of the voice’s advice.

At this point, Capon offers several humorous transcripts of the oyster’s philosophical and theological musings—speculations about such things as differing types of motion and the fundamental nature of prima ballerinas.  For example, since both starfish and ballerinas move and starfish are deadly to oysters, the oyster wonders if starfish are also deadly to ballerinas.  (Unlikely, he concludes, since a ballerina’s motion is clearly superior to a starfish’s.)  More importantly: Are ballerinas deadly to oysters?  (The oyster decides probably not, since loveliness and deadliness seem incompatible; although he concedes deadliness could perhaps proceed out of the ballerina’s nature just as the starfish’s does.  One wonders what the oyster would have thought if he could have seen a ballerina sitting down to a platter of oysters Rockefeller.)  The transcripts all poke fun at the oyster’s limited perspective and understanding.  In closing, Capon notes that there is nothing to prevent the oyster from writing the definitive treatise on prima ballerinas and proving conclusively that ballerinas have five feet and glide along the sea bottom at four miles per hour.

Capon’s point, of course, is that we are oysters too, at least whenever we try to speak of God.  Indeed, our theological speculations and efforts at understanding God are likely to be just as strange as an oyster’s musings about ballerinas… and just as far off the mark.  For we are unutterably farther from God than oysters are from ballerinas.  So we must think very carefully.  Nevertheless, like that oyster, we humans long to encounter God, to receive a word directly from the Almighty.

Consider Moses keeping watch over a flock of sheep at Horeb.  God calls out to him, and this “oyster” named Moses takes off his sandals and begins conversing with a voice from a burning bush.  God wants to send him on an errand to Pharaoh.  Moses resists.  Still, he wants to know more about this God.  “What is your name?” he asks.  Moses knows that a name is the first step toward knowledge and then control, or at least a sense of having control.  A doctor names my illness and my fears are eased.  Name a problem and you’re on your way to a solution.  Know the name of a god and you have religious power, the ability to call that god by name.  So this oyster named Moses wants to know the very name of God Almighty.

God’s answer (IN Hebrew) is ‘ehyeh ‘asher ‘ehyeh—“I AM WHO I AM.”  An equally valid translation is “I WILL BE WHO I WILL BE.”  Or even, “I WILL BE WITH YOU AS I WILL BE WITH YOU.” This is God’s way of saying, “Think very carefully.  Yes, I AM, but I AM never precisely who or what you will think I AM.”  God is always something more than we can ever describe, know, or understand.  Moses cannot have the comfort of knowing God’s name.  Neither can we.  But he (and we) can take comfort and assurance that promise God made to Moses—a promise echoed in Jesus’ words at the end of Matthew—“I will be with you.”

Now consider Simon Peter.  I’m not sure Simon Peter even qualifies as an oyster.  He’s more of a rock.  After all, Jesus did name him Peter, from the Greek word petros for “Rock.”  This “oyster” named Rock has spent a lot of “quality time” with Jesus, ever since Jesus stopped by his fishing camp one day and said, “Follow me.”  They’ve walked and camped out together, sharing both meals and miracles.  And “Rock” knows something special about this Jesus, something he must have heard God whisper in his ear.  One day he turns to Jesus and says it right out loud—“You are the Messiah.”  In Matthew he adds, “the Son of the living God.”  Rock knows this.  What’s more, he knows that he knows this.  The problem is that he has little or no idea what this means.  To Rock, the titles “Messiah” and “Son of the living God” signify honor and glory and power.

So when Jesus speaks of suffering and dying in Jerusalem, it makes no sense at all to Rock.  He gets a little lost.  No more following; he tries to be the leader.  He rebukes Jesus.  Mark doesn’t tell us what he said, but according to Matthew his words were, “God forbid it, Lord!  This must never happen to you.”  Jesus’ response to Rock is well known:  “Get behind me, Satan.  For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”  We usually hear this as harsh rejection—“Get away from me, you Devil!”  But Jesus knows Peter is only a rock, with the limited perspective and understanding of a rock.  So don’t hear Jesus’ words as a dismissal.  Re-hear them instead as Jesus calling Peter to return to his proper position as a follower, as a disciple.

This re-hearing begins with the command, “Get behind me.”  The very same word for “behind”—opiso—is used both here and in the story of the original call of Peter and Andrew in Mark 1.  “Follow me,” says Jesus—“Opiso me”—“and I will make you fish for people.”  Next, we need to take a closer look at the meaning of the word translated “Satan.”  The usual rendering as a proper name is far too influenced by much later ideas about the devil and hell—ideas we get from Dante and Milton.  The Greek word here is satanas—in Hebrew satan.  In both languages these words were not yet a proper name.  They mean the very same thing—“adversary, opponent, one who stands in the way.”  Peter is a rock standing in Jesus’ way.  And when a rock stands in the way, it becomes a stumbling block, which is exactly what Jesus calls Peter in Matthew.  With all this in mind, what we can hear Jesus saying to Peter is something rather like, “Stop being a rock in the road ahead of me.  Get out from under foot and back behind me as my follower.”

Both stories—of Moses and of Peter—demonstrate that complete knowledge and understanding are not required for responding to God’s call.  This is vital for us to know, for each one of us is called to follow Christ and serve God—doing so by loving God with all our heart, soul, mind, and strength, and by loving our neighbors as ourselves.  Our faith as Christians is expressed far more clearly by what we do than what we say we believe.  Faith is about putting our trust in God’s promise to be with us, rather than adhering to any creed, doctrine, or dogma.  At times, however, we are tempted to seek certainty.  We put our trust in all those absolute truths we claim to know, and theological disputes get in the way and distract us from God’s call.  When this happens, we need to remember that in matters of religious knowledge and understanding we are like Capon’s oyster speculating about prima ballerinas.

There’s a famous poem from Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass that tells just what can happen to oysters that allow themselves to become distracted.  The title characters in “The Walrus and the Carpenter,” lure a number of fat, juicy oysters out of the sea for a walk on the beach.  Stopping to rest on a low rock, the Walrus begins a conversation with the oysters:
    ‘The time has come,’ the Walrus said,
        ‘To talk of many things;
    Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
        Of cabbages—and kings—
    And why the sea is boiling hot—
        And whether pigs have wings.’
Distracted by the speculative babbling of the Walrus, the oysters end up as lunch. 

As a moral for his fable about the oyster, Robert Farrar Capon offers a Chinese proverb:  “He who hammers at things over his head easily hits nail right on thumb.”  I think I prefer a moral suggested by the Walrus and the Carpenter sitting down for lunch:  “Either we remember we are oysters too, or we might end up as oyster stew.”  Amen and amen.

 

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¹ Robert Farrar Capon, Hunting the Divine Fox [Minneapolis: Seabury, 1974, rev. 1985] pp. 1-6; republished as one of 3 books included in The Romance of the Word: One Man’s Love Affair with Theology [Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 1995] pp. 243-47.