Who do you say that I am? (Mark 8)

 

  “Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do men/people say that I am?’” From the Gospel according to Mark, chapter 8, verse 27.

     In the Name etc..

     A list of the teachings, miracles, healings, and events of the Gospel, preceding the declaration of Peter in today’s Gospel, is a stunning array of revelations and occurrences, challenges and dangers. The disciples frequently question Jesus about the meaning of what he is doing, since they evidently don’t really understand fully, and can’t reach what, to Jesus, would be the obvious meaning. Jesus, in this chapter, reaches a point in  his work in which he must make it clear who he is and what he is doing, since the disciples are evidently not able to put it together themselves. Let us look at what has just preceded Jesus’s question, and Peter’s answer. 

     At the beginning of the chapter, we have the Feeding of the Four Thousand, which is essentially a repeat of the Feeding of the Five Thousand in chapter 6. It is as though Jesus really has to hammer the point home, that his compassion, and their compassion even, make the feeding possible, that there is no limit to what they can do when they free themselves from their fear of scarcity, from their everyday sense of limitation and commonsense understanding of how the world works. This event is a prelude, a precondition almost, to Jesus’s question and Peter’s declaration. It is part of Jesus’s long preparation of the disciples, to pry them loose from traditional understandings and to open them up to his, and their, real nature and vocation.

     Right after this event, the Pharisees ask Jesus for a sign from Heaven. The Pharisees, at this moment, really show us how to miss the point, how not to see what is right in front of us. They don’t see a sign from Heaven in the Feeding of the Four Thousand. If that isn't a sign from Heaven, what is? What’s it going to take? Jesus says, “no sign will be given to this generation”. Not true, actually. This whole chapter, indeed the whole Gospel, is about the sign he will give to “this generation” and every generation. Jesus tells his disciples to “beware the leaven of the Pharisees” (as the old translation says); that is, beware the desire, conscious or unconscious, to avoid a real answer to our questions, to avoid an answer that leads us beyond what we expect, an answer outside our comforting routines, a sign, indeed, from Heaven.

     Jesus, just after the Feeding of the Four Thousand, asks the disciples more questions: Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you...fail to see? Do you...fail to hear? Do you not remember? Do you not yet understand? The point of these questions is not to elicit literal, yes or no, factual statements, like answers to a pop quiz. Rather, Jesus is shaking the disciples loose from the routines of conventional thinking and habit that lead them, and us, away from reality. He is preparing them, and us, for the two-part  question to which he has been leading them all along; the first of which is, as the old translation says, “Who do men say that I am?” Jesus has prepared them for this question, and he perceives that they are ready for Part 2 of the question, and to hear an answer, to experience reality in greater depth and openness. The rest of the Gospel turns on answers to this two-part question.

     “And they answered him, ‘John the Baptist, and others, Elijah, and still others, one of the prophets.’” This is the answer, the first answer, that Jesus expects. Only when the disciples get to this level, are they ready for the next question, Part 2: “But who do you say that I am?” The striking thing about this question is, only Peter answers him. “You are the Messiah.” According to the Gospel at least, no one else says a word. Perhaps there was more to the conversation. Apparently the disciples are in agreement with Peter, that Jesus is more than John the Baptist, more than Elijah, more than the prophets. 

     Now, as we remember, the people of the time thought that the Messiah would restore an earthly kingdom to Israel, that the messianic, Davidic king would drive the Romans from their land. As we hear, this is the expectation that Peter has, and likely the other disciples too. But Jesus wastes no time in saying to Peter that there is more to the Messiah, to the Son of Man as our reading titles him, than a mere earthly king. He must suffer, and be rejected, and killed, and rise again. Peter is appalled, and says so. So are we appalled, when we are honest with ourselves. Suffering, rejection, death, these are not things that are attractive to us. But Jesus says to Peter and to us, “you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.” Jesus goes on to spell out what this can mean: “take up your cross and follow me”, “lose [your] life for my sake” and so on. Teachings like these remind me of what C S Lewis said, “I didn’t go to religion to make me happy. I always knew a bottle of Port would do that. If you want a religion to make you feel really comfortable, I certainly don’t recommend Christianity.” 

     Jesus is talking like this to shock his disciples, and us, into awareness. We know that many Christians are called to physical suffering, even martyrdom, if we are called to it. But since suffering in one form or another comes to all of us, we may understand it as an opportunity to let go of our desire for comfort, safety, an easy life, and to open ourselves to identify physically as well as spiritually with God in Christ. I realize that it is easy to say this, and hard to live it. But Our Lord’s Messiahship is about this, about experiencing his life in ours, and our lives in his. As Paul the Apostle says, “Not I live, but Christ lives in me.” And our suffering is a gateway to that living experience. When the priest is preparing the chalice at the offertory, as he pours a little water into the chalice he prays, “By the mystery of this water and wine, may we come to share in the divinity of Christ, who humbled himself to share in our humanity.” That is what the Messiahship of Jesus is about, our participation in his divinity, his participation in our humanity, his bringing us to awareness of his, and our, true nature. That is what the kingdom of the Messiah is. 

     “[Jesus] asked them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered him ‘You are the Messiah’”.

     In the Name etc..

 

     

A propet without honor (Mark 6)

 

     “A prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own house.” Mark 6:4.

      In Nomine, etc..

     What a scene it must have been! Jesus has returned home, with a reputation as a healer, a wonderworker, a teacher of  wisdom! Not only that, he had a following, his disciples, and the Twelve. When the sabbath came, “he began to teach in the synagogue!” But “many who heard him were astonished!” Who did he think he was? Who gave him the right to teach? It appeared that Jesus took his right to teach for granted. Since when? Reputation or no reputation, the locals, who knew Jesus and his family, refused to be impressed. He was  a carpenter, no more. Now a carpenter was a respected, important skilled worker, close to a contractor in our terms, but not necessarily a scholar of the Torah, after all. And there was nothing distinguished about his relations. All in all, he was speaking to a skeptical, not very receptive audience. They couldn’t imagine him learning wisdom in their community, in his family, of all people,  and the “mighty deeds...wrought by his hands” could not possibly have happened in the environment that they knew. “And they took offense at him.”

      At this point in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus was practising what amounted to a continuation of the ministry of John the Baptist. John proclaimed a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins; Jesus came to John for baptism, to make himself part of the work that John was doing. We remember that Jesus and John were cousins, so there is a suggestion here of what we may call a ‘family vocation’ of prophecy and proclamation. “After John had been arrested,” Jesus took on John’s preaching of repentance, and added to it a proclamation of the nearness of the Kingdom of God. After this, he called his first disciples, cured many of sickness, cleansed a leper, healed a paralytic, and so on. He selected from among his disciples Twelve, “whom he also named apostles” and gave them authority to preach and to drive out demons.

     So, with all that and more as background and preparation, he returned to his home, Nazareth, and brought his followers with him. Perhaps he intended to make Nazareth his base, his headquarters, from which he and his disciples would continue their work. Perhaps he expected understanding, respect, support, from his relatives and neighbors, who would accept his teaching and even help him in the work. Not an unreasonable hope, perhaps, but one that turned out not to be realistic.

     So Jesus said, “a prophet is not without honor except in his native place and among his own kin and in his own  house.” This remark is interesting for a few reasons. First, Jesus identifies with the prophets, and calls himself one. Second, he owns property and feels at home in it, in his “native place”. And third, it’s a version of the old saying, “you can’t go home again!” Accomplishments, reputation, talent, have perhaps created distance between Jesus and his neighbors and relations, and they can’t accept them. After all, who wants a prophet in the family, or in the neighborhood? This was probably something Jesus needed to learn, to experience. 

      “So he was not able to perform any mighty deed there, apart from curing a few sick people by laying his hands on them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.”

      Do we perhaps feel something like this? Do we  imagine ourselves among Jesus’s disciples as he returns home? Are we as surprised as he is to discover that he, and we, can’t make any headway among our neighbors, our relations, in the place where people know us best, where we feel we belong, where we are supposed to be, where we are at home? Are we surprised that we can’t do much,”apart from curing a few sick people,”  especially in this time of pandemic, when the need, in world terms, is so great?   Are we amazed at the lack of faith, that we see and hear and encounter every single day, at home or not?  Well, if even Jesus was amazed, then we are allowed to be amazed as well. The question then becomes, what do we do next? We can learn from what Jesus and the Twelve did next.

      What did Jesus do next? He didn’t spend any time wallowing in amazement, or stewing in disappointment, or yearning for the comforts of home. “He went around to the villages in the vicinity teaching.”  In other words, he did not give up. He did not allow himself to be distracted. He got on with it. He did not look for approbation, for approval from his neighbors and relatives. “He summoned the Twelve and began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over unclean spirits.” This  is a way of saying that “unclean spirits”, all the obstacles and situations that get in the way of the Gospel are in the end no obstacles at all,  that in the end the Kingdom of God will overcome them. The authority of the Twelve, which is our authority, is the confidence that we have in the teaching of Jesus. That is all the authority we need.

      “He instructed them to take nothing for the journey but a walking stick.” In other words, no props, no security, no shortcut to gratifying their needs, nothing but their authority, their confidence, their faith. Leave the standard comforts of home behind, food, money, more clothes than we really need. 

      And what did the Twelve do? “So they went off and preached repentance. They drove out many demons, and they anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them.” In other words, by remaining true to the commission that they were given, by being willing to leave behind comfort and safety, they were free to do the work that Jesus, and John the Baptist before him, had given them. May we always maintain the faith, the confidence, the trust, of the Apostles and the disciples, in the Gospel of the Kingdom.

     In Nomine.