The Messianic Path—Lectionary Reflection for Pentecost (Mark 7)
Mark 8:27-38 New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi, and on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” 28 And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29 He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he 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. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
34 He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, “If any wish to come after me, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 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. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.”
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The
question people asked during Jesus' ministry is the same question many ask
today. That is, who is Jesus? The Nicene Creed, which will celebrate its 1700th
anniversary next year, declared that Jesus is “the only Son of God, eternally
begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God,
begotten not made, of one being with the Father; through whom all things were
made.” It goes on to speak of his role in our salvation, being incarnate of the
Holy Spirit and the Virgin Mary, and more. That was the answer given in the
fourth century as Christianity moved from an illegal religion to a tolerated
one and finally to the primary religion of the Roman Empire. Creeds and
confessions continued to be developed as more questions emerged. Even today
people debate whether Jesus is divine, human, both human and divine.
In Mark
8 Jesus, who had traveled to Tyre and then to the Decapolis, returns to Galilee
where he feeds the 4000, debates with the Pharisees, and cures a man who is
blind. In other words, Jesus gets back to work. We pick up the story in verse
27 with Jesus taking his disciples to the region of Caesarea Philippi, which
lies twenty-five miles north of the Sea of Galilee at the foot of Mount Hermon.
It is the location of springs that feed the Sea of Galilee and the home to
significant pagan sacred sites. It was also the center of worship of the Roman
emperors, first of Augustine under Herod, and then of Tiberius under Philip the
Tetrarch, after whom the city was named. It seems to be a rather strange place
for Jesus to go, and yet as is possible with his trip to Tyre, he simply needed
to get away from the religious authorities and the crowds.
While
Mark doesn’t reveal the reason for this trip, the questions Jesus asks his
disciples seem to be appropriate when it comes to the location of his
conversation with the disciples. Here they are in a region where political
leaders and deities other than the God of Israel are being worshipped. It’s in
this geographical context that Jesus first asks the disciples who the people
thought he was. He wanted to know who the people said he was. They
answered—John the Baptist, Elijah, or maybe one of the prophets. That’s pretty
good company for an itinerant preacher from Galilee. After they make their
report, Jesus asks them, but who do you say that I am? In asking this question
Jesus asking for more than an opinion. He’s inviting a confession of faith. Peter
is the one who stands up and declares: “You are the Christ” (or Messiah). You
are the one we’ve been waiting for, the one who will restore Israel and the
throne of David. In other words, you aren’t a pretender to Israel’s throne like
Herod and his heirs who were tools of Rome. This passage has a parallel in
Matthew 16, where Peter not only confesses that Jesus is the Messiah, but he
also declares that Jesus is “the son of the living God” (Matt 16:16). Now the
question is, even with the Matthean confession, would Peter have understood
this confession in terms of the Nicene Creed? The answer is, probably not. It’s
going to take a while before the Nicene faith takes hold, even if the seeds were
planted in the first century.
Once again,
the “Messianic Secret’ appears. After Peter makes his confession, Jesus tells
the disciples not to tell anyone about his messianic calling. Why is that?
Perhaps it’s because the disciples might understand that Jesus is the Messiah
but not understand what Jesus means by his messianic calling. Therefore, after Peter
made his confession of faith, Jesus began teaching them about how he defined
his calling to be the Christ or Messiah.
Jesus’ definition of what it means
to be the Messiah didn’t fit with what Peter or his colleagues imagined it to
be. Instead of gathering up an army and running the Romans and their lackeys
(the Herodians) out of town, Jesus tells them that the “Son of Man” will
undergo great suffering, be rejected by the religious leaders, and then he will
die. That doesn’t sound like the typical job description of a messiah. Although
Jesus does throw in a word of hope, it isn’t a word the disciples are ready to
hear or understand. The word of hope involves the resurrection. Jesus tells his
disciples that while he will die, death won’t be the final word. That is
because after three days he will rise from the dead. This is the first time in
Mark’s Gospel that Jesus reveals what is going to happen soon. He’ll do this
two more times, but even by the third time they don’t seem to get it (Mk. 9:31; 10:33-34). William Placher points out that while Jesus wanted to keep his
messiahship secret, he was “quite open” in teaching “about suffering and death.
Jesus could not allow himself to be proclaimed Messiah, Wolfhart Pannenberg
explains, until the term had been redefined” [Belief: Mark p. 116].
When Jesus told his disciples that
he would suffer and die, Peter was indignant. This isn’t the way he understood
the path of messiahship. So, he rebuked Jesus. How could Jesus say these things?
You can imagine that Peter was feeling a bit betrayed. Peter had just
proclaimed Jesus the Messiah and now Jesus is telling them that he’s the kind
of messiah who suffers and dies. That’s not what they signed up for when they
gave up their livelihood to follow Jesus. Jesus responded to Peter’s rebuke with his own
rebuke of Peter. It was pretty harsh. Jesus told Peter “Get behind me Satan.” It
appears that Jesus saw Peter taking on the role of the tempter and he wasn’t
going give in to that temptation. They were heading to Jerusalem even if that
meant suffering and death.
It's easy to give Peter a bad time,
but would we be any different? When we think of the location of this
conversation, with Temples dedicated to the Roman Emperors in the neighborhood,
you can understand how a bit of nationalism played into Peter’s confession. It’s
the human thing to do. Besides, the path of glory is always more attractive than
the path of martyrdom.
We talk as Christians about the
importance of the cross of Christ, but are we really comfortable with it? After
Jesus rebuked Peter, because Peter rejected Jesus’ definition of his
messiahship, Jesus pushed his vision further to include not only himself but
his followers. Jesus tells his followers “If any wish to come after me,
let them deny themselves and take up their cross and 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” (Mk. 8:34-35). When
it comes to the cross, we prefer that Jesus substitute for us rather than
having to pick it up ourselves. We honor the martyrs, calling them saints of
God, grateful that they stood firm so we can remain comfortable. We affirm Dietrich
Bonhoeffer’s declaration that “when Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die,” and commend his commitment to living out that calling, but do we truly embrace
it for our own lives? I’m not so sure I’m ready to die for my faith, so like
Peter, I tend to see things from a human point of view.
So, how do we deal with Jesus’s declaration
that if we want to save our lives, we must lose them? How far are willing to
go? Jesus asks us in Mark 8 what profit we might get if we gained the entire
world and forfeit our lives, and by our lives, he speaks of eternal life. Even
if we don’t suffer death for faith, could we suffer embarrassment? Are we
willing to look foolish as we follow Jesus? It’s not a rhetorical question
because in our time we likely won’t face death, but we might feel embarrassed
by our confession of faith. Once, not that long ago, it was fashionable to be a
church person. If you wanted to succeed in life, you made sure you were a
member of a local congregation, preferably one that had social cachet. What is
interesting about this age we’re living in, at least in Europe and North
America, is that while there is less social benefit from being a Christian,
growing numbers of Christians have embraced forms of religious nationalism,
seeking to impose on the culture a particular form of Christianity while
complaining that they’re being persecuted. There is a tendency to embrace
authoritarian figures, like Putin, Orban, and Trump, who portray themselves as
protectors of the rights of Christians. But, in doing so, they offer a deformed
version of the gospel, one that can even lead to violence, as we see with Putin’s
invasion of Ukraine.
We
can create a form of Christianity that appeals to the “cultured despisers” but
is that the Christianity that Jesus embodied? That is the question we must ask
ourselves. Are we willing to be a fool for Christ? When I ask that question, I’m
not envisioning the kind of fool described in the lectionary reading from
Proverbs 1. I’m thinking of the kind of fool Paul spoke of in his first letter
to the Corinthian church concerning the foolishness of the cross:
18For the message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. 19 For it is written,
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise,and the discernment of the discerning I will thwart.”20 Where is the one who is wise? Where is the scholar? Where is the debater of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? 21 For since, in the wisdom of God, the world did not know God through wisdom, God decided, through the foolishness of the proclamation, to save those who believe. 22 For Jews ask for signs and Greeks desire wisdom, 23 but we proclaim Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to gentiles, 24 but to those who are the called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. 25 For God’s foolishness is wiser than human wisdom, and God’s weakness is stronger than human strength. (1 Cor. 1:18-25).
Jesus
presents us with a dilemma. That dilemma has to do with whether we are ready to
embrace his vision of discipleship. It can be costly. We don’t have to be doormats
or even martyrs, but it’s clear from this conversation between Jesus and his
disciples that takes place in the region of Caesarea Philippi, that the gospel
cannot be imposed from on high. It isn’t a political weapon to be waged by
so-called “defenders of the faith” whether Theodosius, Henry VIII, Vladimir Putin,
or for that matter Donald Trump. Instead, Jesus calls us to join him on a path
that involves taking up our cross and following him to Jerusalem. Perhaps,
Leanne Van Dyk offers us the word we need to hear in our own time and place:
This text is filled with hard and enigmatic words. The sharp rebuke to Peter is a warning to communities of faith that destructive notions of God damage communities and deform minds and hearts. Jesus’ exposition on taking up the cross makes clear that old, constructed patterns of power and privilege do not display true discipleship and will not be endorsed by God and the angels in the day of glory.” [Connections, p. 317].
Yes, to follow Jesus requires that we set aside our desire
to achieve power and privilege. It’s not easy, but it is the path Jesus invites
us to be trodden.
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