Loading...I’ve been thinking all week about how I would answer Jesus’s question: “But who do you say that I am?”
And I’ve wondered how any of you would answer that same question.
I am curious what it would take for any of us to come up with a list of words, expressions, attitudes, behaviors, experiences, etc., that would truly describe who Jesus is. Then. Now. As we knew Jesus when we were younger, and how we have come to know who Jesus is as we age.
If I were hard pressed to respond succinctly and confidently, do I have a prepared elevator speech response? Do you?
I think that I might be more prepared to answer when someone asks me about the collar around my neck and the cross necklace that can regularly be found resting on my collarbone.
As a woman, I sometimes must defend my role as a priest, or teach that I’m not Catholic (and no, the Catholic have not changed their rules about ordination), but that it is okay and appropriate for me, a woman, to be ordained and called to lead a parish. You see, people are still curious about how a woman can hold this role.
Then there’s explaining what an Episcopalian is, and that we truly are Christians.
But the cross isn’t something that needs explanation, since so many people wear or display them announcing their belief in Jesus.
Yet, wearing a cross does not answer the question, “who do you say that I am?”
But that’s not where the Gospel begins today. Rather, it begins with Jesus asking the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”
The disciples quoted what they had heard…John the Baptist. Elijah. A prophet. I expect that this list was longer than just these three names and that they may have added “healer,” “Mary’s son,” “miracle worker,” “teacher,” and any number of other words to describe their encounters with this man. I suspect that the responses might be based on what had been heard about Jesus and could have also been based on personal experiences with Jesus. But in this Gospel, we only get three possible answers.
I’ll take “who do people say Jesus is?” for $1000, Ken.
Then, he turns the question to them. “Who do you say that I am?” And we only get Peter’s response: “You are the Messiah.” And then Jesus telling them all to shush.
The point of the shushing was likely more about the use of the word “Messiah” than it was about Jesus blushing because of all the nice things they were saying about him.
You see, “Messiah,” according to Richard Swanson, was a word that implied a person could be “expected to lead Israel in battle and rule forever in the peaceful aftermath. Alternatively,” [he continues] “messiah could be expected to teach Torah to Israel and to the entire creation.”[1]
Neither of these definitions would be welcomed in secular company, especially in this place and time. This place, Caesarea Phillipi, was a Roman settlement located near a temple built by Herod the Great, dedicated to both Rome and the Emperor Augustus. And Augustus, the first Emperor of the Roman Empire added to his title the phrase Divi Filius, “Son of the Divine.”[2]
It would be very dangerous for anyone else to call themselves or be called “Messiah” or “Son of God” at this time. It could bring authorities to your door, with swords and shackles, ready to drag you into court to be tried, beaten, and crucified.
And yet, people defied Jesus all the time, spreading the news about the healings and miracles, the teaching and the forgiveness, placing Jesus and the disciples, and all those following, assisting, financing, and feeding Jesus, putting them all at great risk.
It is at this time when Jesus gets real with all of them. He understands their excitement and their desire to bring more and more people to Jesus to receive the gifts Jesus has to offer, but there is a cost for speaking out, and Jesus is recognizing the signs. It’s time for them all to understand that this road they are on, teaching and sharing the love of God, is going to be the death of him.
Peter, of course it’s Peter, pulls Jesus aside and tells him what they all are feeling, but no one wants to admit: “Don’t talk like this. You are God’s son. You can move mountains, call armies of angels, raise the dead. You are scaring us. We don’t want to consider life without you. WE NEED YOU.”
And Jesus, looks over Peter’s shoulder to address a satan, telling them to get out of his way.
It might be helpful to know that, according to Richard Swanson, “A ‘satan’ has the job of testing God’s creation to see if it holds solid. A ‘satan’ checks to see if people are imagining things that break Creation rather than build it up.”[3]
To me, Jesus isn’t talking to Peter. He’s talking to what is making Peter test Jesus, as Jesus had been tested in the wilderness. Jesus is saying don’t distract me. Don’t interfere. Don’t even think about convincing me to change course. You tried that before, and it didn’t work. So, get behind me, Satan, because I have God’s work to do.
I’m not sure how Peter or the others responded. Like most gospel stories, we leap from scene to scene without much time to breathe, and so it goes again in this one. Somehow, a crowd has appeared, and Jesus addresses them, saying a lot about losing and saving their lives and following him, and picking up their own cross. About shame and profiting the world and forfeiting their lives. Lots of words that remind us that following Jesus is a complex and dangerous commitment that, in the end, will yield something beautiful with God.
Or that this is how it would be for those in that place and at that time, who were living in the time of Roman occupation—that to continue on this path, following Jesus from place to place, they, too, were at risk of persecution.
For us, here, in this time, when our lives can sometimes be precarious and we have so much more access to knowing what is happening across the world, the ways we follow Jesus seem safer. Being Jesus Followers in today’s world is generally not a life-threatening choice.
Our choice, our way to pick up our cross and follow Jesus, is so often physically expressed around our necks, on our keychains, and hanging on our walls. We surround ourselves with crosses to remind us of what Jesus taught and lived and that though he died a horrific death on this implement of torture, we use it to reverence and worship this humble God-made-man who taught us what it means to love God and to love one another as we love ourselves.
In three paragraphs we encounter Jesus wondering what people think of him; explaining how he will die and rise again; rebuking temptation; and telling people how difficult and risky this path they are choosing to walk will be, but that in the end, the risk will be worth it.
And here we are, in this place, because we want to know God better. We choose to be in a community of faith to learn from the ways of Jesus what it looks like to love God fully and love one another with integrity, humility, and honesty. We come here to let the Holy Spirit lead us as we tell the world about who and how our faith matters for and in our lives.
So, I ask you, knowing what you know, living through what you have lived through, being in relationship with the people you have encountered in your lifetime, studying what you have studied; singing, praying and worshiping to our triune God: “Who do you say that Jesus is?”
Amen.
[1] Swanson, Richard W., Provoking the Gospel of Mark; 2005, Pilgrim Press, p. 215. Teacher at Augustana University in Sioux Falls, SD. Director of the Provoking the Gospel Storytelling Project, and a member of the Network of Biblical Storytellers.
[2] https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2018/9/11/crossroads-salts-lectionary-commentary-for-seventeenth-week-after-pentecost Retrieved 9/14/2024 at 9:24 p.m.
[3] Swanson, Richard W. https://provokingthegospel.wordpress.com/2021/09/04/a-provocation-sixteenth-sunday-after-pentecost-proper-19-24-september-12-2021-mark-827-38/ retrieved 9/14/2024 at 9:43 p.m.
