Mark
8:27-38
Who
Do You Say That We Are?
James
Sledge September
16, 2012
Years
ago I read an article on studying the Bible.
Noting the obvious fact that people can read the Bible and get nothing
from it, the writer said, “The Bible is a book for earnest seekers.” I totally agree. Casual readers of the Bible often get little
from it other than some trivial information that might be useful when a
biblical category comes up on Jeopardy.
But for the Bible to speak to us, to become God’s word to us, we must
inquire of it. We must ask it deep and
probing questions.
Of
course people sometimes ask the Bible questions it has no real interest in
answering, such as science or history questions which I think rather trivial
compared to the big questions the text does want to answer. But you don’t need to be creationists to ask
the Bible questions that it cares little about.
I you’re looking for directions to heaven, that’s not really of great
concern to the Bible. And if you’re
hoping the Bible will help you discover a bit of a spiritual boost, you may
also be disappointed.
The
Bible has plenty of rules and teachings and proverbs, and it contains a fair
amount of history. But all of this is in service to bigger interests. The Bible’s real concerns are with
fundamental issues about God and about us.
My all-time favorite quote from John Calvin, a line members of this
church may know by heart by the time my tenure here ends, speaks directly to
this. In the opening of Calvin’s Institutes
of the Christian Religion he writes, “Nearly all the wisdom we possess,
that is to say, true and sound wisdom, consists of two parts: the knowledge of
God and of ourselves.”[1]
Who
is God, and what is God like? What does
it mean to be human, and what does that have to do with God? These are the fundamental questions Scripture
deals with, and the answers are embedded in the stories of other people’s
encounter with God, and in the stories of communities that seek to live in
relation to God. And our gospel reading
deals with just such fundamental issues.
Jesus
asks his followers a very basic question.
“Who do people say that I am?” After
they respond, Jesus turns the question directly to them. “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answers for the group, “You
are the Messiah.” The Greek word
for messiah is Christos. Christ is not a
name as some folks presume; it’s a title.
Peter says Jesus is the anointed one, the one people have been waiting
for, a new king for the throne of David, the hope for a new day.
__________________________________________________________________________
Who
am I? Who are you? And what information is it that answers such
questions? Am I who I say I am or think
I am? Or does my identity come from
somewhere else? How about you? Where does your identity come from? What makes you who you really are? Or to borrow from John Calvin, how much do
you know about yourself?
When
Jesus asks his disciples who other people say he is, they respond, John the
Baptist, Elijah, or one of the prophets.
All of these answers speak to the impressive things that Jesus is
doing. They identify him as someone
called and empowered by God. They see
God at work in Jesus and identify him according to that, although they don’t
quite reach the same conclusion that Peter does when he says, “You’re the one!”
Peter
gets the right answer. He makes the leap
that others haven’t. Jesus isn’t just a
prophet, and he’s something even bigger than Elijah returned. He is God’s anointed one whom the people of
Israel have been awaiting for centuries.
It clearly is the correct answer.
The only problem is that Peter doesn’t understand what this means.
That
becomes abundantly clear as Jesus starts to teach his followers what he is
called to do as Messiah. “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.” But Peter objects in the
strongest terms. He pulls Jesus off to
the side and says, “No, Jesus, that’s not right. You cannot allow that to happen. We cannot allow that to happen.”
For
his efforts to straighten Jesus out on his messianic identity, Peter gets told
in no uncertain terms that he doesn’t understand who he is as a disciple. “Get behind me, Satan! And Jesus
begins to help his followers understand who they are called to be. “If any want to become my followers
(literally, if any want to follow behind 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.”
Who
am I? Who are you? Many of us here today identify ourselves, at
least in part, as Christians, as followers of Jesus. Peter did not yet know of the term Christian,
but he identified himself as a follower, a disciple of Jesus. But Jesus identified him as Satan. At least he is Satan until he gets behind
Jesus and embraces the path of self-denial and willingness to suffer for others
that Jesus walks, the very path that upsets Peter so.
Who
am I? Who are you? There are many answers to such questions. I’m male. I’m a pastor, I’m a husband and father. I’m an American. I’m from North Carolina. Even though my body is less and less
cooperative as I get older, I like to think of myself as an athlete. If I sit down on an airline and the person
next to me says hello, what usually follows is, “So what do you do?” And I have to say I’m a pastor even though I would
rather not because people often look at me like I’m some sort of oddity. Who knows what they think it means for me to
be a pastor. And I really don’t want to
spend a great deal of time explaining to a complete stranger that “No, I’m not
against science. Yes, I do believe in
evolution, and I kind of like the idea of separation of church and state.”
But
who am I really? Who are you
really? I may not be who others say or
think that I am, but who does Jesus say that I am? That’s the question Jesus answers for us
today. If we are to be his followers, if
we are to be truly and fully human, if we are to be who God intends us to be,
we have to get behind Jesus and follow where he leads.
__________________________________________________________________________
One
of the basic tenants of Christian faith, one that I think a lot of us struggle
with, is the notion that on our own, we misunderstand who we are and who God is. The very concepts of Jesus as God Incarnate
and of Scripture as divine revelation are about this. That Scripture is
revelation has nothing to do with it being inerrant or historically and
scientifically accurate. Rather it is
about Scripture telling us what we would not know otherwise. In Christian faith, and in other faith
traditions, revelation is something that could not have been known were it not
revealed to us. Without it, our
“knowledge of God and of ourselves” is faulty and incomplete.
A
fundamental problem with faith in our day, a big reason that faith is
unfulfilling of unappealing to more and more people, is that we have come at it
from the same place Peter does in our Scripture. We have asked faith to conform to our
preexisting understandings of God and ourselves. We want benefits from faith or spirituality
without letting them define us or tell us who we are or who God is.
Like
Peter, we want to be in front and have Jesus come along with us. But Jesus insists that this will not work. “Get behind me, Satan! Stop opposing God and rejecting your true
identity. Discover true life with God
and others by moving around behind me and letting me show you who God is and
who you are.”
Who
am I? Who are you? Jesus, in your infinite grace and mercy, help
us see who we truly are, and show us the way of true life in all its fullness.
[1]
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian
Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles, (Philadelphia:
The Westminster Press, 1960) 1.1.1
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