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Mark 8:27-38; James 2:1-5, 8-10, 14-18 Susan J. Barnes
September 13, 2003 St. Matthew’s, Austin
The lesson from Mark we just read is a turning point.
It comes right in the middle of the gospel of Mark, and it is the start of a new relationship between Jesus and the disciples. Jesus is moving toward his date with the Cross and he has a lot he needs to teach the people whom he will leave behind to spread the gospel.
The first thing he has to teach them is who he—Jesus—really is. That’s today’s lesson, and it takes the pupil Peter on a rollercoaster ride with his teacher. Peter goes from the top of the class to the bottom, from the limelight to time out. In the process, Jesus gives Peter strong medicine, some painful words, and a tough lesson in boundaries.
Jesus has been traveling with his disciples for some time by now—healing, teaching, performing miracles. Suddenly he asks them what people in general think about him: "Who do people say that I am?" The disciples give him the different idle guesses that people have made. Then he puts them on the spot: "Who do you say that I am?" You who have been with me day in and day out, who have seen and heard it all: who do you say that I am?
Peter—here he’s at the top of the class—Peter has the revelation: "You are the Messiah." It’s a really important moment: the first time that any of the disciples has recognized Jesus and God’s anointed Son.
Within minutes, though, Peter has blown it. He’s in deep trouble with Jesus. Why? Because he couldn’t stand what Jesus said next. He doesn’t want to believe that Jesus will suffer and die; he won’t accept that. As a result, Peter steps way out of line. He contradicts Jesus, as if he knew better than Jesus what lay ahead.
Jesus fires back at Peter, insults and embarrasses him in front of all the disciples. Jesus puts Peter in his place. "Get behind me, Satan," Jesus says. "For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things."
Let’s look a bit more closely at this interaction, and what it is about. First off,
Peter got it right: Jesus is the Messiah. Then Peter got it wrong. What happened? The problem between Jesus and Peter is a problem of definition: the definition of what it meant to be the Messiah. For Peter, a faithful Jew, the Messiah was a figure of power and strength, a leader chosen by God—as King David had been—to unite and rule Israel. In Peter’s day, if the Messiah came, he would surely lead a rebellion against the Roman Empire, throw them out and restore Israel’s independence. Peter had a clear picture—a stereotype based on Hebrew scriptures--about who the Messiah was and what the Messiah would do. Suffering and dying didn’t fit in that picture, didn’t compute.
Jesus, who was the Messiah, knew that God had something else in mind for him. Jesus’ kingdom was not of this world. He would not rule a small backwater province of the Roman Empire for a short lifetime. He would rule the cosmos—all of creation--for all eternity. That’s why Jesus said that Peter was putting his mind on human things instead of divine things. Peter didn’t get it. Peter could only see his own little world. He could only think in terms of earthly power. He didn’t have a clue about Jesus’ place in God’s infinite, timeless domain.
Earlier I said that in this scripture, Jesus gave Peter a lesson in boundaries. It’s a really good lesson for us, too. Peter made a whole series of assumptions about Jesus—who he was and what he would do—based on Peter’s preconceived ideas about the Messiah. Peter had a stereotype that he projected onto Jesus.
I shudder to think how often I have done the same to people I see, or hear about. Am I alone? Has anybody else here done the same? I mean judging people based on one thing or another?—making assumptions about who they really are? Sharon Lowe shared a prayer with me last week that makes this point:
Heavenly Father, Help us remember that the jerk who cut us off in traffic last night is a single mother who worked nine hours that day and is rushing home to cook dinner, help with homework, do the laundry and spend a few precious minutes with her children—that the scary looking bum, begging for money in the same spot every day (who really ought to get a job!) is a slave to addictions that we can only imagine in our worst nightmares" The prayer goes on with other examples, but you get it. We can’t know what it’s like to walk in anybody else’s boots. And all of us have known people who seemed to have it all, and have it all together. Then, by chance, we find out that they have suffered some terrible loss. The lesson, of course, is to go gently with our judgments. Remember the royal law that James’ Epistle invokes "Love your neighbor as yourself." Remember your baptismal vow: "respect the dignity of every human being."
These presumptions we make are bad enough with strangers. I’ve also done—many times in my long life--what Peter did: make wrong assumptions about someone I know, even someone I know well. Bad boundaries. No matter how well we know someone, we cannot know how they feel about something, how they react to specific events and circumstances. We can’t know completely who they are. Only God knows the secrets of our hearts. Only God knows who we really are.
Jesus tells the crowd that if they want to be his followers they have to pick up their cross and follow him. For each of us that cross will be different. For each of us the journey of following Jesus will be different. For each of us the ministries will be different, they will evolve differently as each of us grows and changes in the unique way that God has created us. That’s why we have to listen to God day by day, pay attention minute by minute to what comes up, to the opportunities that God is giving us to grow in love. That’s what it means to be a faithful steward of your time. Pay attention to your own story. Don’t trespass on other people’s. Don’t prejudge, even for yourself, what God has in mind. None of us knows, even for ourselves, what God intends for our life. Remember, I was supposed to live out my life as an art museum professional!
Many times in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells people not to say anything about him, not to tell other people what he has done for them. He says that from the beginning, from the first time that he casts out a demon. He says it earlier in this chapter, chapter 8, when he heals the blind man from Bethsaida. And he says it in our reading, just after Peter declares that he is the Messiah. "He sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him." There are lots of theories about this distinctive feature in Mark’s gospel.
Today’s lesson helped me understand why Jesus might have done that. If his closest followers, like Peter, couldn’t understand who he was and what he was about, it’s safe to conclude that strangers wouldn’t either. Some people thought of him as a healer, others as a teacher, others as a servant-leader, others as a prophet and social critic, others as a heretic and trouble maker. He was some of those things and much more. No one word could sum him up, nor could hundreds.
What mattered about Jesus was not what people thought about who he was, not what they said about who he was. What mattered to Jesus was their experience of his presence, of God’s power working through him to transform their lives. What mattered to Jesus, as he says in this gospel, is that his disciples—that means each one of us—that his disciples recognize God’s call, that we let go of our prejudices and our plans and preoccupations, that we quit meddling in other people’s lives, and pick up our own cross our own life.
What mattered to Jesus was that each of us come to know God on our own, that through that relationship with God we come to know ourselves as God knows us, that we live into the wonderful life that God is calling us to, that we joyfully follow Jesus along the path of God’s life-giving love.
