Messiah?

"Who do you say that I am?" - Mark 8:29a

Mark's gospel, in the way he writes it and presents it, reveals much about his faith community thirty years after Jesus when he wrote his gospel.  The conversation that Mark describes Jesus having with his disciples is a reflection of a similar conversation that Mark's faith community was having.   

"Who do you say that I am?" asked Jesus of his disciples.  Mark's faith community 30 years later was also discussing that question and wrestling with the identity and meaning of Jesus for their lives.  "Who was Jesus?"  "How does he, or does he not, fit into the Jewish scheme of things?"  "What does Jesus mean for our lives and our living?" 

Like them, we too, wrestle with the meaning of Jesus for our day, our time and our living. “Who do you say that I am?"  That's also the question upon which our conversation focuses.

There is much packed into the twelve verses of this gospel for today - more than I can cover in a few short minutes.  But, I will try to unpack some it briefly, and then hopefully suggest some directions it  might take us as 21st century followers of Jesus.

The primary reason that Mark's community wrestled with their questions about Jesus was because Jesus didn't fit (mesh, jive) with the popular notions of the expected messiah.  One popular and dominating notion of the expected messiah was that messiah would be a kind of heavenly deliverer who would arrive with awesome power and glory, and the oppressive rulers of the world would be judged, defeated and destroyed; Israel would be restored, and God (Yahweh) would rule the earth forever.  This was an expectation clearly articulated in Jewish writings of the time.[1]

Just that little tidbit of background gives us greater insight into Jesus' encounter with Peter and the ongoing conversation in Mark's community.  "Who do you say that I am?" asked Jesus.   Peter, never short on spontaneity and impetuosity, blurts out, "You are the Messiah!"  “Jesus, you are the one for whom we have been waiting for so long!”   Score one for Peter, and everything was hunky-dory until Jesus began to explain that the "Son of Man" (a technical term for this expected heavenly deliverer/messiah) must "suffer... be rejected and killed", and Peter went ballistic!   Of course he went ballistic because Jesus’ words were a reprehensible departure from their sacred messianic expectations.  The messiah was not supposed to die and be killed!  The messiah was supposed to win victories over oppression and rule victoriously and gloriously over Israel's enemies, not "suffer... be rejected and killed."

"Who do you say that I am?" asked Jesus of the disciples.  And like a child in a schoolroom who can't help but excitedly wave his hand and blurt out an answer to the teacher's question when the child thinks he's got it right, Peter blurts, "You are the messiah."

But was he, the messiah that is?  Jesus didn't say.  All he said was that he was going to "suffer... be rejected and killed."   Was he then, the messiah?  One understandable and legitimate response is, "Of course not!  Not even close!  He can't be!  He doesn't fit our expectations. Suffer, be rejected and killed?  I don’t think so!”  And that’s the conclusion many came to at the time of Jesus.  He didn’t look like the expected messiah, so how could he be?  Many just said “no.” 

But then we have this gift of Mark's gospel which is a testimony to the fact that 30 years later his community was still wrestling with the identity of Jesus.   Even though Jesus did not fulfill their popular expectations of the messiah, nevertheless there was something so compelling, something so gripping, something so engaging about him that they could not let him go.  And then of course, even though it was decades later many of them continued to experience him as an ongoing living presence.  We call it resurrection - and it was so real to them that they could feel it the depths of their beings and could not let him go.

The bottom line for them was that if he was the messiah, then he was whole different kind of messiah than what they were expecting.  What Mark’s little community was experiencing was a process of letting go of old messianic expectations, and they were beginning to embrace who they understood Jesus to be and the Jesus they experienced - and they were trying to sort out and discern the differences.

Mark's community was in a process of letting go of old ideas about God and messiah - and embracing new ideas as defined by the life of Jesus in whose grip they were now living.  And let's face it, letting go is hard.  Letting go is so very hard.  Letting go of old expectations and old ways of thinking is sometimes painful, agonizing and even threatening.  But that’s what they were doing.

They were letting go of the popular notion of a messiah who would arrive on the clouds and violently destroy their enemies - and they were beginning to embrace this One who had taught them to love their enemies and pray for those who persecute them.

They were letting go of the popular notion of a messiah who would establish peace through violence and conquest - and they were beginning to embrace this One who taught them that true peace could only come about through God's kingdom of social justice, compassion and servant-hood.

They were letting go of the popular notion of a messiah who would do everything for them, bring in God's kingdom without them - and they were beginning to embrace this One who invited them into a partnership of discipleship and sacrificial love alongside of him. 

They were letting go of the popular notion of a messiah who ruled with coercive power thereby legitimizing it - and they were beginning to embrace this One who taught them about the paradoxical power of suffering love.

Mark’s little faith community was a community in transformation and redefinition, their messianic expectations being turned inside-out.  They were beginning to embrace the paradoxical and contradictory truth they experienced in Jesus, that the authentic power of God is found and experienced in taking up the cross of servant-hood and self-giving love. 

Søren Kierkegaard, the great Danish theologian wrote this,   “Christianity has taken a great stride into the absurd.  Remove from Christianity its ability to shock with the absurd, and it is altogether destroyed.  It then becomes but a superficial and irrelevant thing.”

“Sell all you have and give to the poor.”  “Love your enemies.”  “Take up your cross.”  “Lose your life... in order to save it.”  It is absurd, but it is what the power of God looks like in a human life - the life of Jesus.  The question is what will he look like in us?   Will our lives take on some of the absurdity of Jesus' life?  Or will we domesticate him to look more like us?  Will we dress him up in our expectations and put the clothes of our self-indulgence on him, hence relegating him to superficiality and irrelevancy?   Can we trust (you trust; I trust) that God is found in absurdity – the absurdity of self-giving love – revealed in the life of Jesus?     

T.S. Eliot's 1949 play, The Cocktail Party, explores the empty lives of people living out the delusions of the good life. These people spend their lives in pursuit of pleasure going from relationship to relationship, happy hour to happy hour, therapist to therapist.  Then one young woman from their social group discovers the self-emptying life of Jesus, and she begins serving others. She disappears from the social scene, and after two years the word comes back that she has died. She was killed in a far-a-way place where she had been ministering nursing to poor and diseased peoples. Her friends sip their martinis and murmur, "What a waste!" 

Was it – a waste?   How about Jesus’ life?  Was it - a waste? 

Mark’s community in the end decided that his life was not a waste.  They decided he was their long-awaited messiah, but not like they had long-expected, but rather one who led them into the absurdity of taking up their cross.

To take up the cross in self-giving, self-emptying love is to embrace the power of God. It doesn't make any sense; it's foolish; it’s absurd—unless you see it from the eyes of faith, from the perspective of the transformed heart.   For Mark’s young community of faith it was the very power of God that transformed their lives.  What will it be for us?  I pray it will be for this community as well.