The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 16 September 2018,
Austwick, Clapham
I’ve been sermonising lately about how we can find our Christian voices in an era where so much of our public conversation amounts to little more than name-calling. Today’s bible readings invite us to contemplate the power we have to call people names, and the effect this has on others. James expresses the potential in our tongue to bless or to curse. In Mark’s gospel we hear an exchange between Jesus and Peter with some very strong name-calling indeed.
The conflict between Jesus and Peter was all about the name Peter was calling Jesus. First, Peter dramatically named Jesus the ‘Messiah’; but in reply, Jesus called himself the ‘Son of Man’, the Suffering One, and when Peter rebuked him about this Jesus called Peter ‘Satan’. ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’ It’s probably not the response you’d expect. It certainly wasn’t what Peter expected.
For Peter was a man of his place and time: Israel, then an occupied territory subjected to Rome, whose people, as one person, were hoping for a Messiah who would rise with force against the oppressor, using all the military and political power he could muster. A people longing for someone to enforce the restoration of Israel. So when Peter called Jesus ‘Messiah’ it was him joyfully expressing the lightbulb moment he’d had, confessing his realisation that Jesus was The One with the power to save the people.
But Jesus was quick to silence such talk and to present the quite different way he saw himself. Not as an avenging Messiah: he was a Son of Man, in other words a mortal just like Peter. Jesus remonstrated that he wouldn’t be saving the people through a show of aggression, but that his saving power would be revealed through his suffering at the hands of the powerful ones; that his glory would be shown through his dying and, after three days, his rising again. The power of this Suffering One was of a different kind altogether - the power of life over death.
But why did Jesus call Peter ‘Satan’? That’s extreme language to use against the faithful friend and follower who had just expressed such profound belief and confidence in him.
Well, elsewhere Jesus describes Satan as ‘the father of lies’, ‘a murderer from the beginning [who] does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.’ [2] And, Jesus rebuking Peter, teaches that it is a lie that there is no alternative to the powers of the world, its military, political, economic systems and forces; that it is a lie that all we Sons and Daughters of Men are entrapped in the endless battle for position and status and temporal power which is the way of the world. Peter was so caught up in this lie that his eyes were closed to the possibility of their being any other sort of power available.
By rejecting the name of Messiah and calling himself The Son of Man, a Suffering One, Jesus placed himself alongside all the powerless ones in his society, those without rights, suppressed by a self-serving state. [3] But Jesus didn’t stop there. He was introducing something unheard of, remarkable, and world-changing: teaching that the suffering of those who follow his way was nothing compared to the life to be found in sharing his resurrection.
‘For those who want to save their life will lose it’: and sure enough, any glance at the world’s history will show how our Messiahs always let us down. How those who rise as saviours of their nations soon fall into the role of despots; how those who build great empires became the exploiters of countless slaves; how those who power the industrial economic system become the destroyers of the earth’s finite resources and the champions of yawning human inequality.
The name of the One who keeps the world in death through merciless force, through its messiahs and its CEOs and its kings, is the Father of Lies, Satan. The name of the One who keeps the world in life through compassionate love, through the loving obedience of his faithful disciples, is the Suffering One, Jesus. So it's important for us to ask ourselves: from our own experience and understanding, what name would we give to God? For that name expresses what we expect God to be doing in the world, and how He (or She) will go about it.
One name we Anglicans call Jesus, is ‘King’. But why? When he never called himself a king? Is it because our church was founded by a King who wanted to shape religious observance in this country his way; and we have unquestionably followed?
Why call Jesus names he never used of himself? Kings, and Messiahs, and Lords are people distant from us, with whom we have little common ground. But the Son of Man is a Human One who suffers with everyone else who suffers; his divine power works totally unlike and in opposition to the ways of Kings, Messiahs, and Lords, the worldly structures and powers of death.
The way of the Son of Man is the way of the tradition in Christianity which stands up against injustice in all its forms, refusing to use any form of righteous violence, a Christianity which stands with those who society scapegoats in opposition to the bully, which shows care for the earth and compassion for its poorest people.
John’s gospel records Jesus calling himself a few different names; as you listen to them, think of the kind of character, and manner of living they express:
"I am the bread of life"
"I am the light of the world"
"I am the door of the sheep"
"I am the good shepherd"
"I am the resurrection, and the life"
"I am the way, the truth, and the life"
"I am the true vine” [4]
You have the power to give a name to God. And it is a very great power indeed. Peter learned this lesson the hard way. I wonder, today, listening to your heart, what name would you care to give to God?
Notes
[1] Based on sermons previously preached in Devon in 2012 and Somerset, 2015.
[2] John 8.44
[3] Hengel, Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, p.86f in Ched Myers: Man: A Political Reading of Mark's Story of Jesus, p.245
[4] Henry M. Morris, Ph.D, The "I Am's" Of Christ. Acts & Facts. 32 (4), 2003, quoting John 6:35,48,51, John 8:12, John 10:7,9, John 10:11,14, John 11:25, John 14:6, John 15:1,5.
Comments