September 15 2024 at Saint Peter the Apostle Church in Naples, FL
Isaiah 50: 4-9 + Psalm 116 + James 2: 14-18 + Mark 8: 27-35
Mark has no pity when it comes to Peter, and I have always thought that the tradition suggesting that Peter is Mark’s primary source might well be true. Peter never seems to sugar-coat anything, and he has no trouble sharing his struggles with understanding, loyalty, and faith. He gets it wrong today as he often does. He has the right word, but the wrong definition. He says: “Christ,” but he has no idea what that means. It is much the same for all of us. We may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one, the Messiah and Savior, but we may be even more confused than Peter about what that actually means.
So, Mark sets this up at Caesarea Philippi. It was a circus of worship places and temples with altars set up to every concept of divinity from the gods of the Greeks to the god-head Caesar. In that setting, Jesus asks the Twelve that question about what people are saying and what they have to say about his identity. Up to this point of Mark’s Gospel Jesus has been reluctant to have people believe in him because of miracles, and for the first time in this Gospel he speaks about dark things ahead, rejection, suffering, death and resurrection. These are all things the Twelve are unable to grasp.
Peter speaks up for everyone confessing his faith in Jesus as the Messiah using the word: Christos. In his mind this is the Messiah of victory and salvation. But when Jesus begins to speak of a Messiah who will suffer rejection and death, Peter objects. His objection is not hard to understand because we often do the same thing.
Everyone prefers a popular, happy, Jesus who heals and comforts. Peter wants to write a job description for Jesus, and we do too. Jesus gets fashioned according to a prosperity gospel that turns him into the dispenser of a comfortable, trouble-free life of prosperity, easy to like.
Jesus get fashioned according to a psychotherapeutic gospel who makes us feel good with kind of “I’m OK and You’re OK” so let’s just skip along avoiding challenges that might suggest I need help.
No matter, we cannot make Jesus be what we want and do what we want. We cannot have the kind of Savior who is going to pop up and fix everything that bothers us. That is, what I like to call, a new kind of idolatry. That is a false God of my own creation. The practice of fashioning a god that does what we want goes on all the time. I once read that John Calvin claimed that man’s nature, so to speak, is a perpetual factory of idols.
There is stern warning in this Gospel ordering disciples away from that kind of thinking because they will not understand what it means to confess Jesus as the Christ, the Messiah, until they have stood beneath the cross. The temptation to look for someone of power; one who claims the earth, rules it with strength, and will drive off anything that frightens or hurts us is great and dangerous. It is always easier to believe in a distant God of power than in the Suffering Servant of Isaiah who cries out in pain on the crosses of the world and suffers in humanity. It’s easy to believe in Jesus when we feel good. It’s not so easy when he does not stop our hurt.
The life of a disciple has both joy and sorrow. A life of joy with no sorrow becomes like the earth with only sunshine and no rain; a barren desert. Both suffering and joy, are always part of life for a real disciple.