Jesus behaving strangely

This is one of those passages that I like to call, “Jesus behaving strangely.”  The familiarity of this passage, and passages like it, attenuates or even eliminates the weirdness the radicality of what Jesus is doing and saying.  

Make no mistake, our Christian faith has all the resources we need to begin to transform the world into the place we want to live in, a place of faith, hope, love, and justice, we just become complacent and familiarity dulls our ears.  

So let’s take a fresh look.  Pretending we are hearing for the first time.

First, Jesus is spending time praying alone with his disciples.  Nothing strange here...a good reminder, but not surprising.                                      

But then he stops praying and asks a question: “Who do the people say I am?” 

He doesn’t ask, “What are the people saying about my teachings.  Or, “What do the people think of my miracles?”  Or, “What are the people’s opinions of my ethical theory?”  He says, “Who do the people say I am?”

This is odd.  And striking.  Because the reality is that although Jesus did teach, he was not simply a teacher.  Although Jesus did perform miracles, he was not simply a miracle worker.  And although Jesus did preach about right conduct, he was not an ethical theorist who simply made an advance in human ethics.

To understand Jesus’ teachings, to lay claim to his ability to heal and forgive, to enter in to the way of living and loving that he gave us, is to be able to answer this question:  Who is he?  In Jesus’ words: Who do you say that I am?

In Luke’s account today Peter answers: “the Christ of God.”

And once this truth has been spoken, Jesus reveals more to them.

There is a reason that the first several hundred years of Christianity were a fight about who exactly Jesus is.  The creed is a testimony of the fight and struggle to understand who he is.  And our lives are just the same.  A struggle to understand who he is.

He is simultaneously God and man.  As God he reveals God to us as loving father and friend.  As man he reveals ourselves to ourselves.  He is not a mere teacher, or healer, or ethicist.  He reveals to us the path towards God…the path of love…the path of willing the good of the other as other.

And in today’s passage, after the disciples have indicated that they understood him to be the God-man, he says this very odd thing.

He has to suffer, and be rejected, and die…so that he can rise again.  And this is also true of us.

The path of love is one of suffering and rejection.   And anyone who wants to be a follower of Jesus, he has to willingly take up his cross and follow Jesus.    

(Aside:  Protestant tendency to say that "all you have to do is accept Jesus as your personal Lord and savior."  But "Lord" isn't merely a title, it is a relationship that determines everything else.  A lord governs you.)

Remember, Jesus gives this call to take up the cross and follow him before the crucifixion and resurrection.  Before the scandal and suffering of the cross was lost in gilding.  Before the cross was tamed through use.  Before anyone wore one on his or her neck as mere jewelry.  We forget how shocking this statement is.

Prompts the question:  Why does following Jesus, the person who was God and man, require suffering?  Why does the profession of the disciples that he is God and man, lead to this dark prediction? 

Because God became man to show us the way of love.  It is crucial to understand who Jesus is to understand that he didn’t just live a life and teach some nice things.  He lived the truly human life.  The fully human life.   The transformative life of love.  And he shows us that the way of love is a way of suffering.  It was, it is, and it always will be until we all stand together in heaven.  Accepting him as lord means living in this kind of love.

Examples, ranging in their degree of challenge.

1.     Love means loss.  Blessed are those who mourn.  We are mortal and eventually love always means loss.

2.     Love means sacrifice.  Laying down one’s life.  Family, children.

3.     Love means willing the good of others as other.  Avoiding and stopping gossip about others.  Leads to rejection.

4.     Love means standing up for the poor and marginalized.  It means actively resisting racism, sexism, homophobia...in our selves and in others.  It means refusing to play along with the sinful games that perpetuate the evils that judge, dismiss, or fear based on characteristics over which a person has no control—like gender, race, color, or sexual orientation.  It means rooting out these behaviors in ourselves and challenging them in others.

And I promise as surely as did Jesus.  Living this kind of love.  Will. bring. suffering.  Suffering as our own sin and self-protection and self-absorption cry out.  

Suffering as those around us cry out that we stop being naïve or holier than thou.  

Suffering of disappointment when a stereotype proves itself true, in someone, and we get hurt.

But this is what Jesus puts before us.  The way of love.  And we can only dare to follow it if we can truly answer his question with our soul.  “Who do you say that I am?”