September 13, 2009
The Twenty-fourth Sunday in Ordinary Time

WHO DOES HE SAY WE ARE?
Mark 8:27-38

I have a good and long-time friend who is a research scientist. Over the years we have had countless conversations about his work, and it is an inspiration to me to see the excitement and dedication with which he talks about his theories, insights, and breakthroughs. He positively glows when he talks about the discovery of keys that unlock the workings of the human body, and that open the way to new ways to heal.

It was just that kind of discovery for Peter and the other disciples that day on the Jerusalem road. They had been traveling with Jesus throughout Galilee, listening to him preach and teach, watching him care for people, heal them, and offer them hope. They talked with others about him, with one another, and they had their own questions and embryonic convictions about him.

But here, at the beginning of that final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus asked them what others were saying about him; and, even more disturbing, he asked them what they thought!

The answer came from Simon Peter -- impetuous, misguided Peter -- and his answer is often put forward as the great apostolic confession of faith. But the way Mark tells the story, Jesus took Peter’s answer and, without affirming it, subtly but significantly changed it. Peter had affirmed Jesus as the Christ, as Messiah -- but Jesus changed the term to “Son of Man.”

That’s hard for us to understand, at least in the same way the disciples would have understood it. “Christ” is a word with which we feel very familiar. “Son of Man” sounds vague and unfamiliar.
What Jesus was rejecting, and what he told his disciples to be quiet about, was this notion that he was the Messiah so many people were expecting -- the Messiah who would be a political and national deliverer, who would restore Israel to her rightful place as Queen among all the nations, who would drive the hated Romans into the sea, and triumphantly ascend the throne of his ancestor, David.

But Jesus redefined all that by choosing to refer to himself as “Son of Man.” He presented to the disciples a picture of the great Deliverer as someone who would give himself through suffering and death for the sake of the world. They had a hard time hearing that.

And that’s not so hard to understand. You may remember that, in the liturgical calendar of the church, Palm Sunday is now referred to, somewhat awkwardly, as Palm/Passion Sunday. In many churches on that Sunday, there is both a triumphal procession and a reading of the passion story.

Dr. Charles Rice of Drew University tells of sitting in a church on Palm/Passion Sunday. The children had come through waving their palm branches and the music had been festal; then the long Gospel was read --from Gethsemane to the last word. Dr. Rice heard one of his neighbors comment, “Well, that wasn’t very cheerful!” His thought: “Indeed not, Peter. It is still very hard for us to take.”

But if we are going to follow this Jesus, if we are going to speak of him in worship and Sunday School, on our jobs and in our homes, then we must understand who he is. And we must understand who he is because we are faced with yet another question. In addition to the disturbing question, “Who do you say that I am?” there is added a second question: “Who does he say that we are?” Who he is, and who he calls us to be, must determine who we are as the body of Christ, the church.

This exchange between Jesus and his disciples is followed by his telling them what discipleship is all about. It’s about getting yourself out of the center of your life and giving of yourself to and for others. It’s about getting your priorities straight and letting go of your life and your possessions a little bit. It’s about finding yourself in a community of faith, acceptance, caring, service, and inquiry called the Church, and finding a deep longing satisfied there.

And how do we know this is what discipleship is all about? Because we are a part of that great cloud of witnesses, that great body of people, who unashamedly look to Jesus Christ as the key to the mystery of life, as the bridge that links the here and the beyond, as the profound reality of God intertwined in our human existence.

Oh, we’re still tempted, just like Peter and the other disciples, to have the mystery solved in a way that won’t upset our own little apple carts, our version of what God ought to be and do, our opinion of what is right and proper and sensible.

But the key to the mystery won’t quite fit that easily. It is a strange, cross-shaped key, and it opens the way to sacrifice and hope, to giving and receiving, to challenge and comfort, to sorrow and joy. It is discipleship, in all its glory and shame, its triumphs and its failures. It is what binds us together as Christ’s people, and what sends us out into God’s future.

In 1944, W. H. Auden wrote a poem, and this poem’s haunting imagery goes well with what I am trying to say this morning:

He is the Way.
Follow him through the Land of Unlikeness;
You will see rare beasts, and have unique adventures.

He is the Truth.
Seek him in the Kingdom of Anxiety;
You will come to a great city that has expected your return
for years.

He is the Life.
Love him in the World of the Flesh;
And at your marriage all its occasions shall dance for joy.

He is the Key. Let us join him in the great adventure.