Holy and Confounding One

Proper 20

Sept. 15 2024

Mark 8:27-38

“There is One among us, whom we do not know;

Host of highest heaven, present here below.”

This is the text of a song, written by John Bell, which our congregation sings during Christmastide. The words are spare. The tempo is slow. It’s sung in a plaintive minor key. And while most other carols of the season are joyous and wonderfully familiar—about a Baby we welcome and adore—this song invites us into the strangeness of Christ’s coming. The One who comes from God is not someone to cradle and “contain,” as if it’s somehow our job to manage all that glory.  Yes, He bends towards us in unfathomable mercy, but He will not conform to human categories. As much as we would like Jesus to “make sense” according to our values, Jesus always confounds. He does not say what we wish He would say. He does not do what we think He should do. He refuses to be “familiar,” even towards those who we might expect to have some kind of prior claim on Him. For those who want a religion which gives them the comfort of certainty, this is unsettling. Jesus is always among us as One whom we do not know. 

Just ask Peter. In this week’s gospel text, Jesus asks the question we sense has been forming as we’ve traveled along with the disciples in Mark: “Who do you say that I am?” The disciples have seen Jesus heal and heard Him teach with authority. They’ve watched as He’s cast out demons and, with a word, put an end to a deadly storm. They’ve witnessed the growing tension with the religious authorities and have seen Jesus confront—not cozy up—to them. So, what’s going on for these followers of Jesus? Who is this One with whom they have cast their lot? 

We get the sense throughout this gospel, that the disciples are a rather “mixed bag” of belief and unbelief (like the rest of us). They misunderstand Jesus and find Him utterly baffling most of the time (like the rest of us). They’re like the blind man in Mark 8, whose partial healing allows them to see, but in distorted ways. They don’t have the full picture. They are not yet restored. This will be a long journey for the disciples with Jesus, marked by misunderstanding, failure, and just plain cluelessness on their part regarding the ways of God. To receive the full truth of who Jesus is, they will have to continuously “let go” of old understandings of what power is, who God is, who they are in the new Kingdom that is coming in Jesus. And that is extraordinarily hard to do.

Old expectations die hard. Regime change won’t come the way they assume it will come. Discipleship won’t be a series of theological tweaks in their understanding of how God works; rather it will be a process of absorbing one shocking truth about Jesus after another. Which is why we see an exasperated but still persistent Jesus throughout this gospel asking some form of this question to the disciples, “What more can I say to you?” Even Jesus struggles for words to help them take hold of the radical nature of this good news. It will happen, but not yet. At this point, the disciples can’t let go, or let change, their prior understanding of “Messiah” even though the Anointed One—the very personification of God’s “good news”—is walking and working right beside them. They don’t yet see the fullness of who Jesus is.

Rather than sitting the disciples down and laying it all out for them about who exactly He is, spelling it out in a creed or in a body of teaching, Jesus risks a question. Tell Me, disciples, how are you putting this all together? What picture of Me is forming for you? Who do you say that I am? 

We aren’t surprised that Peter is the first to respond and that he gets it right…sort of. “Messiah” is the correct answer, but it’s clear that “Messiah” for him is stuck in a certain, shall we say, “nostalgic” place. Peter reaches back and pictures a royal vindication over Israel’s enemies and a return of her lost glory and honor. Perhaps, the vision from the prophet Isaiah is reminding Peter of that anticipated time when “the mountain of the Lord’s house shall be established as the highest of the mountains… and all nations shall stream to it” (Isaiah 2). Israel, once again, on the ascent! Is this the time? Is this Jerusalem’s “moment”? So when Jesus says, “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,” Peter is beyond shocked. How can a crucified Messiah save us? Messiahs are supposed to do the crushing, not get crushed themselves. 

Perhaps the word we, like Peter, trip over is the word, “must.” The Son of Man must undergo great suffering. The costliness of this path is not an “accident”, the unfortunate, but avoidable result of a difficult calling; rather, it is integral to the Messianic vocation and for any who would follow after Him. For us, let’s admit it, this is a stumbling block. A literal “dead end.” But for Jesus, this is the “open secret” of the gospel, the mysterious path towards the new creation. It is the unveiling of God’s suffering heart and what that heart endures to bring about, not just “regime change”, but the deepest transformation, in us and in the world. Raw power could never bring this about.

See, if Jesus “ascends” anything, it is a Cross. The movement of the Incarnate God is always down. Christ descends, plunging all the way down into the deepest, most profound depths we humans could ever experience—suffering, rejection, violence—in complete solidarity with us. We are never alone in these troubling places; Christ has been there and is still there with us. And He is with us, not in judgment but compassion. Not with accusation, but with healing. Not with divine protection covering up His humanity, but as One who has experienced human vulnerability in every way, choosing against every temptation to surpass His creatureliness, and choosing instead to live in it—all of it—with steady trust in God. 

For all of us who are pretty sure that pursuing God has to do with ascending the heights, rising out of our humanity, and striving for spiritual greatness, maybe the invitation here is to let this picture of Christ descending utterly confound us. May we, in our bafflement, find the freedom to reach for the One who knows the way of the Cross and will lead us there. 

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