Who Is He?

By

Reverend Litton Logan

March 12, 2006

Mark 8:27--38 (NRSV)

²⁷Jesus 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?”  ²⁸And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” ²⁹He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Jesus Foretells His Death and Resurrection

³¹Then 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. ³²He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³But 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.”

³⁴He 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. ³⁵For 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. ³⁶For what will it profit them to gain the whole world and forfeit their life? ³⁷Indeed, what can they give in return for their life? ³⁸Those 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.”

Sermon:

One sultry, summer, Saturday afternoon when I was working as an Air Operations Dispatcher in the Command Post at Donaldson AFB, SC, I received an inbound flight plan on a jet trainer.  The trainer was making a refueling stop at Donaldson and going on to Homestead AFB, Florida.  I posted the inbound with all the particulars on the big Plexiglas Air Traffic Movement Board; coordinated the inbound with Transient Services, and the Control Tower.  About an hour before the time the trainer was due to arrive, the Command Post Duty Officer looked over at my inbound board and asked, “Have you called the Wing Commander on that inbound T-33?”  I told him, “No, Sir, why should I?  The pilot is not a VIP, full Colonel or above.”  He said, “You don’t know who that pilot is?”  I looked at the board and back at the Duty Officer, “No, Sir,” I replied, “Who is he?”

          The Duty Officer and the Senior NCO Command Post Controller looked at me as if I had just landed from Mars or had been raised in Mississippi.  The Duty Officer said, “That is Lt. Col. “Chuck” Yeager.  He is a real aviation hero, the first man to fly faster than the speed of sound in the X-1 rocket plane.  He is accorded VIP status regardless of his rank where ever he goes.”

          Soon, we were all rushing around calling everyone and his brother on our VIP notification list telling them that Lt. Col. “Chuck” Yeager was inbound.  I was impressed, a real aviation her, wow!  I my mind’s eye I imagined Col Yeager as this six-foot super-model, hero--a rugged out-doors type with gleaming white teeth like the Marlboro Man.

          The aircraft arrived and I notified the Airdrome Officer, who went out in a staff-car to pick up Col. Yeager.  I anxiously awaited Colonel Yeager’s appearance.  Soon, a rather short, non-descript, middle-aged man walks up to the dispatch counter and closes out the first leg of his flight plan.  He announced that he would be leaving as soon as his plane was serviced, and he got a bite to eat at the Snack Bar—imagine that, the Snack Bar.  Not the Officer’s Club, the Base Commander’s or the Wing Commander’s house, but the Snack Bar across the street, which he was going to walk to.  Col. Yeager stood and chatted with the Duty Officer for a moment, who in turned introduced me to Colonel Yeager.  (He was intentionally correcting my ignorance.)  Colonel Yeager, seeing my one stripe and that I was new to the Air Force asked me where I was from and how I like the Air Force and my duty.  He was a regular kind of person; you know what I mean?  We had gone to all the trouble of welcoming him as a VIP and he just dismissed it all and wanted to know a little about me.

          Nevertheless, I was very disappointed.  This guy looked like someone’s dad.  I had expected more.  I was told later that he didn’t like all the VIP treatment and preferred to come and go without all the VIP fuss.

            Like we often do, I had taken stereotypes of heroes and constructed an imagine of what Colonel Yeager should look like.  When he didn’t measure up to my imaginations, I was disappointed.  However, over several more stops at Donaldson AFB, I came to appreciated him as a really nice person. 

This is not unlike the case today with Peter, the other disciples, and followers of Jesus, both ancient and modern.  In their imaginations, Jesus was something very different from who Jesus saw him self as, or how God saw Jesus.

            Of all the questions we can ask about Jesus of Nazareth, the most profound and most difficult question to answer, believe it or not, is, “Who is He?”  Who Jesus was and is, is not as clear as one might think among Christians across the ages.

          To call Jesus the Messiah is to invoke Jewish religious and political images of a divinely anointed, warrior-priest, and king, not unlike like King Josiah or King David. 

          Yet, for others to call him Son of God, conjurers up images of Greek gods, who frequently took on human form and sired children with human women, producing dual natured offspring.

          Still, others have seen Jesus as all these things with the additional attributes of the apocalyptic Son of Man of the Old Testament.  This Son of Man is one like a human, who is sent from God to judge and establish God’s rule and reign on earth by supernatural means in the later days of earth’s existence as we know it.

          Furthermore, many understand Jesus as a human being, who was adopted as God’s son and anointed at his baptism to be the latest and greatest divine-human prophet.  In this case Jesus is a divine-prophet, who confronts a perverse generations of Jews calling them to repentance and a return to their work of ushering in the true Kingdom of God on earth, which will bless all the nations.

          Many, would say, “Yes, Jesus is all these things.”  He is God, yet truly human.  Jesus was God in the flesh, who came to proclaim the Good News of salvation and became the expiation of fallen human nature.  He died and arose from the dead, ascended into the realm of God, and one day he is coming back to judge the living and the dead and establish God’s rule and reign on earth.  Eventually, this divine-earthly existence will give way and all the righteous will spend eternity in a place we call heaven with God, Christ, all the righteous, and the angels.

          However, truth be told, all these explanations and Christological understandings are but feeble human attempts—ancient and modern—to put into paradigms of common understandings something that most of us don’t understand any better to day than Peter and his generation, nor Mark and his church.

          Through out Mark’s Gospel there is this constant undercurrent of questionings.  Some of the questions that would have been going through the minds of people in Mark’s church would be:

·        Why did Jesus die?

·        Why must one die for one’s faith, especially faith in the Creator-Sustainer God of the whole universe?

·        What historical or other-worldly events led up to such a terrible, shameful death on the Cross?

Mark’s answers would have been:

Jesus died:

(a) because the Jewish religious leaders suspected [him of religious subversion and destabilization of the violence prone populace]* and hated him [for bringing them and their religion up short according to God’s will and word]*, (*Litton’s additions)

(b) because he himself chose to die, and give his life "for many”, and

(c) because it was the will of God, and had been so announced long before: dei' gene6sqai, it had to be!⁸

Mark's purpose was accordingly not historical or biographical, but it was intensely practical.  He was writing a book for the guidance and support of his fellow Christians in crisis.[1]

Therefore, who was Jesus for his generation and for his disciples?  Who was he for Mark’s audience as they anticipated further persecution at the hands of Nero?  Who was Jesus for the early church fathers?  Who was Jesus for Augustine, Thomas Aquinas, Martin Luther, Calvin, and Zwingli?  Who was Jesus for Alexander Campbell, Barton Stone, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Paul Tillich, Charles Hartshorne, and Richard and Reinhold Niebuhr?  Who was he for our parents, grand parents?  Who was Jesus for our beloved Sunday school teachers and ministers?  Who is Jesus for today’s theologians, scholars, and Christians?

But, the most important question of all times is “who is Jesus for you?”  Who do you say he is for your life and the life of your world? The answer to this question is what one must life with and die with.

          Is Jesus just some dying and rising savior of ancient thought, who ransomed us from St. Paul’s and St. Augustine’s notions of original sin?  Is he just this imaginary friend, who bails us out when we get into trouble?  Is he just a divine credit card to a heavenly candy store?  Is he only the latest and greatest of the prophets like Moses, Elijah, Jeremiah, or Isaiah?  Is he nothing more than some supernatural being who will come back and bring justice to all those who have been victims of injustice and reverse the order of things in favor of Christians?  Or, is he a living and dynamic presence in your life and my life, which empowers us to be the best possible people, who in turn are God’s stewards of creation, creature, and are truly our brother’s keeper?

          Across the ages each generation must answer the question, “Who do people say that I am?”  Some answers are shallow and reflect the selfish concerns of that generation in light of its threats and needs.  At other times, these collective answers, called Christologies, are so abstract that they avoid answering the question altogether.  Still other answers are cliché and formulaic answers—he is the Messiah, he is Son of God, Son of Man, Savior, and Redeemer.  All of these labels and names, I am sorry to say, betray the self-interests of the people that Jesus called a perverse and sinful generation.  All such answers tend to reflect people’s interests and needs and make little or no statement about them participating in God’s interests and will for our lives and the life of the world.

          As we hear Jesus move from a question about who do the people of his popularity say he is to the personal question to Peter, “Who do you say I am?”, each one us is paradoxically compelled to answer the question, “Who is Jesus for us; who is he for me?”

It is a fresh question with each human soul; with each generation.  For some Jesus is simply a means to their eternal ends.  Yet, for others he is a divine means through whom we learn how to participate in God’s will and ways of life for the whole universe.  Jesus was truly human and truly divine; but, all that Jesus was and can be, should not be limited by our collective imaginations, nor our personal answers to the question: “Who do you say I am?”

Defining Jesus according to our expectations and needs has a tendency to limit God’s work to just those definitions.  We are called to salvation—turn from life our wayto a life God’s way.  However, know this: inherent in the Gospel’s call to salvation is a call to the possibility of  crucifixion.  Whether that is a call to a physical death for our faith or death of self and selfishness.  Our relationship to God is not without its costs as well as rewards.

Given that, Peter didn’t have a clue to Jesus’ real nature or ministry, Jesus again tells him to be quiet.  He doesn’t want Peter spreading his misunderstandings of Jesus because Jesus has enough to deal with, without Peter’s faulty understandings. It is only after the crucifixion and resurrection does Peter, or any of us, begin to really see the nature of Jesus’ life and ministry. 

After this encounter with Peter, Jesus begins to talk about the horrible possibilities that lay ahead of him.  Peter pulls Jesus aside and scolds him for talking about his having to suffer and die.  Peter wants Jesus to stop this absurdity of his death and resurrection.  Jesus tells Peter; get behind me you perverter of Truth.  You are not of God.  You are not interest in God’s will but in your own imaginings and self-interest.

Jesus next lays out for his followers, then and now, the possible costs and rewards of discipleship.

          One more time, in hearing these scriptures in Mark’s Gospel, Jesus asks us by way of Peter, “Who do you say I am?”  Please, in this Lenten season, before we try to answer this question, let us stop and ask God to help us put aside self-interest and our notions of Jesus as some divine-super-hero.  Let us ask God to help us answer that question from within God’s interests as we, like Jesus, look toward the Cross.  The crosses of self-expenditure and self-sacrifice for God’s will for our lives, the life of this Church, and the world.  Let us not be ashamed of the words of Jesus and our discipleship least one day, like Peter, the following words come to haunt us and terrify us:

³⁸Those 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.”