Mark 8:27-38
27 Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that I am?" 28 And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." 29 He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." 30 And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
31 Then he began to teach them that 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. 32 He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33 But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, "Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.
34 He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 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. 36 For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? 37 Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? 38 Those who are ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of them the Son of Man will also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.
"What's It Worth?"
"Who do you say that I am?" That's a pretty good question. Who is Jesus? Who do you think he is? The Christ? The Messiah? The Son of God? The Son of Man? The Son of David? The Savior? The Lord? Who is he? That's a pretty important question. A lot of people have expended a lot of time and thought trying to figure it out.
You are the Christ; the Messiah," says Peter. A very simple and straight forward answer, it would seem. Peter's response is certainly orthodox. It's theologically correct. He would get 100 on the theology exam. But there's something about it all that leaves me cold.
I remember when I was teaching Bible to freshmen and sophomores at PC, one of the most frustrating things was when a quiz paper would come back with all of the "right" answers, but with no evidence that the student really understood anything.
Definitions may be quite necessary, but most of them leave me quite cold. The Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Confession of Faith, part of the constitution of our church, has a question which asks, "What is God?" The answer is "God is a spirit, infinite, eternal, and unchangeable, in his being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Well, wonderful! But so what? It makes sense. But I think most of us crave to have more than just logic and precision in matters that are critical to our lives.
There's a story that Paul Tillich, the great theologian, died and was met by Jesus at the pearly gates and Jesus asked him, "Who do you say that I am?" Tillich replied,"ontologically speaking you are the ground of my being and existentially speaking, you are my ultimate concern." Jesus looked at him and said, "Huh?" So what? That's what I want to ask Tillich. That's also what I want to ask Peter. So what? Fortunately, I don't think Jesus was asking Peter for a theological definition, not as we usually think of theology. That kind of speculation was completely foreign to the Jewish way of thinking. He was not asking Peter to define his inmost being, or his nature. The Jews thought more in active terms, doing, rather than being. Jesus was really asking Peter, "What do you expect me to do? How would you want me to behave? What are you looking for me to accomplish?" To put it in even more personal terms, Jesus was asking Peter, "What would you like me to do for you"? for the Jewish people, for the world?"
Jesus still asks the same question of you and me. "Who do you say that I am?" And we can come up with all the orthodox answers: Jesus is both God and man, God's representative to us and our representative to God. He is the Son of God, the Christ, the Messiah. But so what? What have we said?;
I want to suggest that if we really want to know who Jesus is for you and for me, -we must answer this question: "What do I expect Jesus to do for me? If I had one wish, one prayer that could be answered, what would it be? What one thing would I most like for God to do? for me? for my family? for the world? Now that begins to get at what theology is all about. Not some abstract, intellectual gymnastics. But something
very personal, very concrete; not a matter of the brain, but of the gut. And that's what theology really is. What would you most like God to do for you? I mean, other than keeping your tax return from being audited? What do you most expect out of God in your life?
Let me mention several things that I really crave for from time to time. They may be some of the same things you long for too.
(1) One is, please let me have more of the good things of this world. Preferably more than the rest of my contemporaries. And whatever please increase my standard of living, don't let my standard of living go down, at least keep it where it is. Have you ever considered what the phrase "standard of living" means? Earl Brill, writing in a book entitled THE FUTURE OF THE AMERICAN PAST, suggests that the phrase says much more about us
than we intend. A standard is a norm, a yardstick, a barometer by which we measure the value of things.Brill says "the standard of life might conceivably refer to an index of virtue, or justice, or righteousness. But for us, the phrase has meant the level at which we consume economic goods and services. How much do you spend? What do you buy? What do you own? The phrase makes it clear that we have adopted an economic, interpretation of the meaning and value of our lives.
It's nice to live confortably; not to have to worry about a roof over our heads or food on the table. But I don't like that part of me that always wants more. That resents people who live better than I do, even if they wind up like Howard Hughes with two billion dollars, but afraid to ever leave his hotel room.
I like being towards the top of the heap and don't want to be reminded that somewhere in the heap below me are people of underdeveloped nations who provide many of the raw materials for things I enjoy, and yet who themselves are paid almost slave wages and whose families often live in poverty, and whose children sometimes suffer from disease and malnutrition.
I want more. And I want God to make sure I don't suffer economically; but I don't want to think of what my standard of living does to others in terms of human values; or to future generations; or to myself in terms of my own system of values.
(2) Another thing I would like God to do for me is to make me a winner. There is hardly anything worse than being a loser - whether in a golf match or in not letting the job I want get away. There's a book out entitled SPORTS PSYCHING. I can't remember the name of the author. But the book is an analysis of -the influence of our culture on sports and of sports on our culture. The author suggests that in all of life, as in sports, Vince Lombardi was right: Winning isn't the main thing; it's the only thing. How one wins isn't too important. That one wins is what really counts. Lying to the voters is ok - as long as you get elected. Wrapping up the sale is what really matters, not what one has to do to get it. Ethical questions are ok - but don’t raise the wrong question to the wrong person at the wrong time quotes John H. Quillen of Lockheed. Well you win some and you lose some and for every winner there are lots of losers. And today's winner will probably be tomorrow's loser. How many people who won the 1970 Super Bowl or the World Series that year are winners today?
One of the most tragic things I know is the person
who is promoted to vice-president at 40, but who at 60 feels like a failure because he has never reached the top.
I want God to open the doors for me, to help me move up the ladder; but I'm not sure what it will do to me or to other people.
(3) Another thing I want God to do for me is to help me straighten out my personal life. I want people to love me, to care about me, to take me seriously as a person, maybe to be even a little afraid of me. I want to be liked, to be respected. I want other people to do what I want them to do; to have some control over their lives, rather than their having control over mine. I don't want to be dependent on them for my happiness; But it would be nice to have them need me for their happiness. My family, my friends, the people I work with - I want to have good relations with all of them - as long as they don't infringe on my freedom or affect my style of life.
Perhaps so close to our recent Mother's Day is not the most appropriate time to mention this, but Ann Landers took a survey. She asked her readers if they had it to do over again, would they have children. Not all of her readers replied. But of those who did, 70% said, "No." Let me repeat that. Of those who replied to the survey, 70% said they would not have children if they had it to do over again.
Does that shake you? Maybe it doesn't shake those of you who have been through the experience. But it shakes me. I would read you some of the replies she got, but they're too depressing. Obviously, those who are dissatisfied are more likely to respond to such a survey. But still, those 70% represent quite a substantial number of people.
Now I'm not sure what the response has to say about
what's happening to families in our society. But I think one thing it says is that increasing numbers of people resent the demands involved in the commitment to rearing children; the financial demands, the emotional demands, the demands on time and energy. The demands of such love are just too great, especially when there is no guarantee that the children will turn out just the way the parents planned. There may be "50 ways to leave your lover, "but getting rid of the kids ain't that easy".
There seems to be an awful lot of personal tragedy around these days - with marriage, and family, and careers, and personal adjustments of one kind of another. And we want urgently for God to help us straighten out our personal lives. I know that I would welcome his help.
(4) Let me mention one more prayer that I make from time to time. Please help me to be satisfied and content with what I have and with who I am. I suppose some people would say that such a prayer is the request of a loser, of one who has given up hoping and working to improve his situation, because to want to maintain the status quo is to live defensively.
And yet there is something quite appealing about being satisfied and content. It would be rather nice to have one's level of anxiety significantly reduced: to eliminate one's apprehension of what the future might bring; to be able to roll with the punches; to take in stride whatever life has to offer. If we could only psyche ourselves out so that our desires and expectations were inline with our abilities to achieve, life would certainly be more simple, more peaceful, more enjoyable. Lord, help me to be content with who I am and with what I've got.
You probably have some things you would really like for
God to do that I haven't mentioned. And there's probably something good about all our requests and expectations. But when I look at the whole configuration, I begin to discover some things about myself. I discover that I want God to do a lot for me - as long as he doesn't really change me. A new suit of clothes – yes, but a new set of values - no: help me to be successful in my own eyes and in the eyes of those around me - but don't change my idea of what success is. Make me loveable and attractive and appealing. But don't make me vulnerable or open to be rejected or unpopular.
Give me justice and mercy and grace - as long as it doesn't cost me anything. And as long as it doesn't cost me too much, let other people have some justice and mercy and grace, too just don't make me appear to be out of step with everyone else. Turn the world upside down but don't turn me upside down. What I really want - in theological terms - is cheap grace.
Not only does this say something about me, but it says a lot about who I believe God to be and a lot about what he was doing in Jesus. It says that God is the God of prosperity; the one who deals out the resources of the world to those whom he favors. It says that God determines who wins and who lose, and that his decisions are in line with what I want him to do. And it says that the way the world is right now is the way God wants it to be, because he is the God of the status quo. God is around primarily to help and to serve me.
I don't know if that is what Peter meant when he confessed that Jesus is the Christ. The gospel writer doesn't give us any indication of what Peter meant, and Jesus didn't give Peter the opportunity of explaining himself. Rather, Jesus tells Peter and the other desciples what being the Christ means. He tells them that he will suffer, and be rejected, and be killed.
That never ceases to amaze me. It makes no sense at all that God's annointed, his chosen instrument in he world, the very Son of God, is hated, and humiliated, and hung on a cross like a common criminal. He is to be rejected and killed not just because in the ordinary course of events people oppose him. But because in the name of God, he opposes them - their self-seeking, their power-seeking, their attempts to control the world and secure their own lives.
That the Christ must die makes no sense at all. I never quite get used to that fact. Peter rebelled against it - and so do we. The cross is a contradiction of our best wisdom. It's a threat to our basic instincts. For we too struggle to save our lives or to find some savior who will do it for us.
The cross turns our whole value system upside down. It serves as a rejection of the cheap grace which would by-pass the agony of Good Friday on the way from the hosannahs of
Palm Sunday to the rejoicing of the empty tomb. It pronounces the judgment of God on our seeking of prosperity, and power, and personal comfort as ends in themselves.
The cross also serves as an affirmation: an affirmation of the costly grace that goes with Jesus on Monday and Tuesday of Holy week as he challenges the dishonest establishment and cries out for justice. That accompanies him on Wednesday
when he enters the house of a leper; which weeps with him on Thursday, and bears the weight of the cross on Friday.
Resurrection doesn't come easy. But when it does come, we know that God has given the final stamp of approval to Jesus' way as the authentic, constantly valid way of life. To lose one's life in love, and service, and concern for justice is to get it back again- brand new.
Finally, the cross stands as an invitation: an invitation to take up the cross and follow him. "When Christ calls a man," wrote Detrich Bonhoeffer, he bids him come and die. For whoever would save his life, will lose it. And whoever loses his life for my sake will find it." Resurrection comes but not without the cross. Our lives will be returned - but only after we have given them up - in the service of Jesus.
So perhaps the question for us to answer now is, "How
much is your life worth"? Is it worth losing your life in order to find it? God says, "It is".
In the resurrection of Jesus Christ, God say's it is!