“Who Do People Say
That I Am”
Mark
8:27-38
September 13, 2009
When strangers meet, there
is a fairly standard ritual followed as they seek to get acquainted. It begins with names; then follows a variety of
questions: Where are you from? What’s do
you do? What are your hobbies? A stranger turns into an acquaintance and we get a
sense of who the other person is when we gain a context.
But if the relationship
develops, there is more to learn: like our acquaintances’ values and vision of the
world; their ability to be trusted; their willingness to listen with an open heart and
mind. Thus an acquaintance becomes a friend
and with further experience a friend may turn into a life-long companion. Our morning’s New Testament passage plumbs the
depth of our relationship to Jesus Christ and one another.
Please listen for how the
Spirit of God is speaking through God’s word found on page 41 of the New Testament
section of your pew Bibles from the Gospel of Mark chapter eight verses twenty-seven
through thirty-eight….
27Jesus 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?” 28And they answered him,
“John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” 29He
asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are
the Messiah.” 30And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31Then 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. 32He
said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But
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.”
34He called the crowd with his
disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny
themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35For 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. 36For what will it profit them to gain the whole
world and forfeit their life? 37Indeed, what can they give in return for their
life? 38Those 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.”
This
is God’s word to us…
How well do we know Jesus? How willing are we to talk to others about our
relationship with Jesus? How well do we know
one another as brothers and sisters of Jesus, our Brother our Savior?
To help us understand how we
might think about such questions Sydney Bergen and Kerm Leir are going to read through a
dialogue written by Ann Weems, titled “You—Sitting in the Pew Next to Me.” This dialogue takes place between two people
sitting in church. They do not look at each
other, but look out over the congregation, for the dialogue happens only in their own
thoughts—until the very end.
--“You Sitting in the
Pew Next to Me”—
How well can we ever know
someone? This question plagues a lot of our
relationships. It is also a question that
comes out in our morning’s New Testament passage from the Gospel of Mark. By this time in Mark’s story the disciples and
Jesus would have spent a lot of time with one another.
The disciples had heard Jesus teach, seen him heal, observed his miracles;
listened to him challenge the religious elite, they had eaten meals together, endured
storms both literal and figurative. In a
nutshell, you would think that by this time in their relationship that Jesus and his most
trusted followers would know each other quite well.
And so, as they headed on
the road once again, Jesus turned to his disciples and asked them, “Who do people say
that I am?” I often wonder if Jesus didn’t
ask this question of his disciples to gage how well they had been paying attention. In other words, were they just going along for the
ride? Or were they actually listening to what
he said and watching what he did?
This question of Jesus’
“Who do people say that I am?” sounds like how we go about getting to know
people, of moving from being strangers to acquaintances.
First we find out about the external things that make up their identity:
where are they from, what do they do for a living, what hobbies or activities are they
engaged in? The responses we receive to
questions like these are easily shared in our circle of acquaintances.
In a similar way those who
saw Jesus teaching, healing and leading others to a new way of life could have easily
latched onto some titles that would have identified where Jesus had come from and what he
did. And so when the disciples reply to Jesus’
first question by saying; “John the Baptist, Elijah, and one of the prophets” we
are given a sense of how the community as a whole viewed Jesus on a more superficial
level.
After all, Jesus was indeed
a cousin of John the Baptist which would have given people an idea of where Jesus was from
or at least his family identity. And when
people saw Jesus as Elijah they would have remembered that like Elijah, Jesus performed
miraculous deeds and had a strong connection to God. And
those who saw Jesus as a prophet were thinking about how his teaching and preaching
contained both power and truth.
We see this kind of
identification going on in the life of the church. When
Sydney said of Kerm, “I don’t know you; oh, I know your background. I know you’re here about every Sunday. I know you’re very big around here—Elder,
Choir member, someone with a ready smile” what she was pointing out is how easy it is
for all of us to label one another and make a set of assumptions from those labels about
the person we’re talking about. The same
thing seemed to be going on in Jesus’ conversation with his disciples.
Even though the disciples
correctly identified how Jesus was understood at the level of an acquaintance it wasn’t
enough for Jesus and so he pushed them further by asking, “But who do you say that I
am?” With this question Jesus wants to
know how deeply his closest friends knew him; to which Peter answered, “You are the
Messiah.”
Now for many of us who have
been so heavily “churched” we might hear Peter’s answer as nothing more
than another titled used by an acquaintance of Jesus.
But that Jesus in effect shuts down any further reply from his disciples
should alert us that this title “Messiah,” speaks to some deeper truth of Jesus’
identity. Whereas for many of us, this word
“Messiah” has become domesticated, for a first century Palestinian Jew, the word
“Messiah” carried rich and ripe meaning.
The most simple and direct
definition of “Messiah” is “anointed one,” that is, one who is set
apart by God to lead God’s people. And
for Jesus’ disciples as well as the for all those living in first century Roman
occupied Israel, the word “Messiah” would have been heard within the context of
the Hebrew Scriptures. Throughout what we call
the Old Testament there are people whom God set apart for leadership, leaders who would
have been as familiar to first century Jews, as Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, and
Thomas Jefferson are to us.
This list includes, Saul who
was the first king of Israel. After
generations of begging God for a king, God finally relents and through the prophet Samuel
Saul is anointed to lead God’s people. Later
on, after the shepherd boy David kills Goliath with his sling, again Samuel acting on God’s
command anoints David future king of Israel. Later
still, Solomon, David’s son, is anointed king by the prophet Nathan and under his
Reign the Temple of God is built along with many other wonders.
And more importantly, for
first century Jews living under Roman occupation, in the book of Isaiah the Persian King
Cyrus was anointed by God to free the Israelites from bondage in Babylon. So for first century Palestinian Jews, for them to
hear Peter confess that Jesus was the Messiah would have raised a set of expectations, a
set of preconceived notions of who and what the anointed one of God would be.
So, you see, when Jesus told
Peter and the disciples to be quiet what was going on was that Jesus did not want them
making assumptions. Jesus was not going to be
the kind of Messiah like the first kings of Israel; he was not going to be like Saul or
David or Solomon. Neither was he going to be
the kind of Messiah like Cyrus was, liberating the Israelites from the hand of their
oppressors. No, Jesus the Messiah was going to
suffer and die and rise again; in order to lead God’s people into a new way of life.
Having Jesus the Messiah in
our life means that we are going to live differently.
It means that we are going to approach people differently. It means we are going to move beyond the “hi,
how are you, nice weather we’re having” part of those with whom we worship.
Having Jesus the Messiah in our lives means we’re
going to deny ourselves and really find out what is going on in the heart and mind of
those with whom we spend our Sunday mornings. It
means we’re not only going to know where they’ve come from and what they do for
a living and what they do for fun on the weekends, but also and more importantly if they
are lonely or if they’re scared or if they are struggling with what it means to have
Jesus in their life then we are going to stop what we are doing and really listen and
really get to know them.
May we all take the time to not only get to
know the person sitting next to us in the pew, but may we as well take the time to get to
know Jesus, our Brother our Savior. May we get
to know him so well that we fully understand what it means to lay down our life, to lay
down our self-importance, to lay down our egos and enter into life with Jesus who wants us
to share him with the person sitting next to us here in this room and wherever we are.
Amen.
