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Mark 8:27-37
Peter’s Confession of Christ
27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”
29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”
30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.
Jesus Predicts His Death
31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again. 32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of people.”
34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “If anyone would come after me, they must first deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. 35 For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. 36 What good is it for a person to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? 37 Or what can a person give in exchange for their soul? 38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”
It seems to me that for those of us who consider ourselves followers of Jesus, there’s nothing more important for us to reflect on than our own personal Christology – what we believe about Jesus and his role in the past, present and future of God’s relationship with humankind. Today’s reading tells us about what some others believed about him, and it provides us with some direction for settling our own beliefs.
Our reading begins with a question from Jesus to his first disciples: Who do people think he is? The disciples answer that some think he’s John the Baptist. (It’s not clear to me whether people knew that John the Baptist had been killed and believed that he had come back to life as Jesus, or whether they just confused Jesus and John the Baptist in their minds. Both seem like possibilities.) The disciples also reported that some people thought Jesus was Elijah or one of the other Old Testament prophets.
It seems significant that all these answers indicate that people understood Jesus to be an important prophet. And just to remind ourselves, the term prophet didn’t necessarily mean someone who could foretell the future, but rather someone who spoke with the authority of God.
Then Jesus asks the disciples who they think he is. And Peter answers that he is the Christ – that is, the Messiah. (Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew word Messiah. Both words mean ‘anointed one.’) That’s why this reading is so important to the matter of Christology – it recounts the first time that any of the disciples actually identified Jesus as the Messiah. In the gospels, Peter seems to be the spokesman for the disciples as a group, so our reading probably tells us that they’ve all come to this conclusion. Or maybe a better way to put it is that this is the first time the truth has been revealed to the disciples by the Holy Spirit.
But there’s another important Christological concept here – Jesus tells the disciples what it actually means that he’s the Messiah. He says that it means he will be killed at the insistence of the leaders of his own people, and then would rise again. If the disciples were going to know him as the Messiah, they needed to know that his death was part of the deal.
That came as a great shock, of course. Nobody in the ancient Hebrew world expected the Messiah to be killed by the nation’s leaders. The Jewish people expected the Messiah to be a military and political leader who would drive out the gentiles and lead the country to a renewal of the golden age it had experienced under King David a thousand years before. Dying for the sins of the world wasn’t something anyone expected of the Messiah.
Since what Jesus said was so different from their expectation, it’s probably no surprise that Peter would express great shock and alarm. Or that he would take Jesus aside to “rebuke him” for this talk about being murdered by the leadership.
That’s when Jesus speaks the famous words, “Get behind me, Satan!” It seems to me that Jesus heard in Peter’s rebuke the same temptation he had heard in the desert from Satan – the temptation to skip the suffering of the cross and take a shortcut to being the ‘King of Kings.’ Jesus says that Peter is speaking from a human perspective – from a patriotic Jewish perspective – and not from the perspective of God’s plan for the salvation of the world.
That brings us to the third critical Christological idea in the passage: Not only was it Jesus’ duty as the Messiah to lay down his life and go to the cross, but also it’s the duty of those who follow him to be willing to lay down their own lives and take up a cross, too. Taking up the new life of a committed follower of Jesus means first putting down the old life committed to the things of this world.
Crucifixion was the most painful and humiliating death the Roman Empire could inflict on someone. But Jesus was not ashamed to subject himself to that death, because he understood it was the plan for rescuing us from our sins. And now he calls all those who want to be his disciples not to be ashamed to follow him – the crucified one. Because those who are willing to share in his suffering and in his mission can also live in confident hope that they will also share in their Messiah’s heavenly glory.
Let’s pray. Lord, we thank you for faithfully fulfilling the prophesies about the promised Messiah, even though those prophesies failed to communicate the full truth about his coming. And we pray that you will give us the strength and commitment to follow him, sacrificing ourselves to serve those in need and to bear witness to your love. Amen.
Grace and Peace,
Henry
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