Who Do You Say that I Am?

Mark 8:27-38

Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked them, “Who do people say that I am?” And they answered him, “John the Baptist; and others Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” He asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Messiah.” And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.

Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter, saying, “Get behind me, Satan!  For you are setting your mind not on divine things, but on human things.”

He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, “If any want to become my disciples, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For 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. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world and forfeit their life? Indeed, what can anyone give in return for their life? Those 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.”

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I didn’t have too much time yesterday to wonder about and wallow in my memories of 9/11 on the twentieth anniversary of that tragic, life-changing, earth-shattering, world-turning day. But I did see Bruce Springsteen sing in New York in the morning. And I caught a replay of George W. Bush’s speech at the memorial in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, which is very much worth 10 minutes of your time, if you can find it. I watched the replay of that 9/11 documentary that has become a perennial staple of the day’s anniversary, too.

But one of the most moving, tear-jerking, heart-breaking recollections from that day, which showed up in my Facebook feed more than once, was the transcript of Todd Beamer’s call for help from the back of the plane, as a passenger on United Airlines Flight 93.

Todd Beamer, a 32 year-old computer software executive, snuck into the plane’s back pantry while the hijackers were perpetrating their evil in the cock-pit and near the front of the plane. And that’s where he called for help and information about what was going on.

The short of the long is that Todd Beamer, along with Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham, Tom Burnett and a handful of other passengers, were the ones who learned that they were on a hijacked plane, probably headed for Washington, D.C., to be crashed into the Capitol Building or the White House. After telling the operator what had happened on his plane, and learning from her what had already gone down at the World Trade Centers in New York and at the Pentagon, in D.C., Todd gave the operator his home number, told her about his wife and kids – that he had two boys and a baby on the way – and asked her to call them so they would know how much he loved them and how proud he was of them all.

Of course, he wanted them to know this because of the plan he and the others had hatched to overtake the hijackers and crash the plane before it could make it to D.C. And we know how that story of heroism, sacrifice, love, and bravery ends.

Which is why it seems relevant and meaningful on this weekend, in particular, and in connection to this morning’s Gospel.

During what feels like some sort of field trip to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asks his disciples, his most devoted followers, “Who do people say that I am?” “What’s the word on the street?” “What’s the news around town?” And Jesus wants – not only to ask the question – but to have a serious conversation about the answers, too.

And the answers he receives are all over the place. Some were saying Elijah. Others thought he might be John the Baptist. Others were guessing Jesus was just another prophet, like the ones they’d read about in Scripture. But none of that really mattered so much, it seems. Jesus doesn’t seem to be all that surprised by what the rest of the world was saying. He doesn’t seem to dwell for very long on the fact that so many were getting it so wrong when it came to understanding who he was.

None of that really seems to concern Jesus at the moment. What seems to matter most – what’s really at the heart of his questioning comes when he says – in the midst of all the world’s speculation, in spite of all the misconceptions about his identity – “But, who do you say that I am?” 

And it’s the question Jesus asks us still.

“Who do you say that I am?” Not your neighbor. Not your children. Not your Pastor. Not your husband, your wife, your boss or that sinner down the street. But who do you say that I am? Jesus wants to know. Who do you say God is in the midst of everything that competes for your attention and time and worship on a day-to-day basis in this life?

Who do you say that God is at Cross of Grace Lutheran Church – and why do you choose to come here to look for answers to that question?

Who do you say that God is at work or in school? And how does that show up, through you, in those places?

Who do you say that God is with your checkbook, your credit cards, your investments? And how do those things reflect your answer?

Who do you say that God is where your family is concerned – to your kids, to your parents? And do they know how you might answer that question?

See, the question isn’t just “Who do you say that I am?”  It’s “Who do you say that I am – and where are your priorities? Who do you say that I am and what does that look like in your daily life? Where do you devote most of your time? Where do you invest your greatest energy, your deepest hope, your most significant resources? Who do you say that I am and what difference does that make for you and for the world around you?

When we consider Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?”, he means for our answer, something like Peter’s – that he is the Messiah, the son of the living God – to change the way we experience life and impact this world. When we know Jesus as the one who lived and died and lives again, we can forgive and receive forgiveness with abundance. When Jesus is the Messiah, we can share love more generously. When Jesus is the living God, come down live, move, breathe, suffer, die, and be raised for our sake and for the sake of the world, we can put our most shameful sins and our deepest hopes and our greatest fears into God’s lap and live, move and breathe differently because of it, ourselves.

On September 11, 2001, before Todd Beamer got off the phone with that operator from the doomed United Airlines Flight 93, he asked Lisa, the operator who happened to have the same name as his wife, if she’d do one last thing with him … could they pray together? And so they did – The Lord’s Prayer and the 23rd Psalm. In that moment of sheer terror and uncertainty, just before those most heroic acts of bravery, courage, sacrifice, and love, he set his heart and mind on some divine things in the midst of an utterly human tragedy, and he answered Jesus’ question, it seems to me…

Who do you say that I am? “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.”

Who do you say that I am? Giver of daily bread… forgiver of trespasses… deliverer from evil…

Who do you say that I am? The Lord is my shepherd…

Who do you say that I am? You make me lie down in green pastures… you lead me beside still waters… you restore my soul…

Who do you say that I am? Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, for you are with me…

Who do you say that I am? Your rod and your staff they comfort me…

Who do you say that I am? You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…

Who do you say that I am? You anoint my head with oil, my cup overflows…

Who do you say that I am? Your goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…

Amen

Hebrew Lives Matter

Mark 7:24-37

From there [Jesus] set out and went away to the region of Tyre. He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there. Yet he could not escape notice, but a woman whose little daughter had an unclean spirit immediately heard about him, and she came and bowed down at his feet. Now the woman was a Gentile, of Syrophoenecian origin. She begged him to cast the demon out of her daughter.

He said to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” But she answered him, “Sir, even the dogs under the table eat the children’s crumbs.” Then he said to her, “For saying that, you may go – the demon has left your daughter.” So she went home, found the child lying on the bed, and the demon gone.

Then he returned from the region of Tyre, and went by way of Sidon towards the Sea of Galilee, in the region of the Decapolis. They brought to him a deaf man who had an impediment in his speech; and they begged him to lay his hands on him.  He took him aside in private, away from the crowd, and he put his fingers into his ears, and he spat and touched his tongue. Then looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to him, “Ephphatha,” that is “Be opened.” And immediately his ears were opened, his tongue was released, and he spoke plainly.

Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.  They were astounded beyond measure, saying, “He has done everything well; he even makes the deaf to hear and the mute to speak.” 

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I want to talk more about the first episode in this Gospel reading today than the second. The fingers in the ears and the spitting and the tongue-touching are very fascinating and little bit gross, but I learned recently a new way to think about that moment between Jesus and the woman who comes looking for help for her daughter. That one has always been a difficult one to square for me – and maybe for you, too – this story where Jesus treats this desperate mother with a sick child so coldly, so callously, so harshly in her time of deep deed.

She approaches Jesus, asks for his help, and he basically calls her a dog. Since she’s not a Jew – one of the chosen ones for whom Jesus was sent, it seems – he says to her, “Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.” In other words, “Let the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – God’s chosen ones – get what’s theirs. I came, first, for the Jews, not the Gentiles. Wait your turn.”

“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Now, bear with me if this is as hard for you to imagine as it used to be for me, but I think Jesus might have been saying something like, “Hebrew Lives Matter.”

“Let the children be fed first, for it is not fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs.”

Again, I get it, this can be a hard word to hear from and about Jesus. It’s a difficult thing to imagine he would think or say or do. But, like I said, I recently learned to wonder differently about this woman who suffers this harshness at the hands of Jesus this morning – and the circumstances that brought them together.

First, it’s meaningful to know that Jesus is in the region of Tyre, which was a port city on the Mediterranean coast. Tyre was a place of wealth and prestige that’s mentioned several times throughout Scripture – all the way back in the Old Testament. It’s a place that’s repeatedly being called out for wickedness, for excess, for idolatory, and the like. And Jesus is there, looking very specifically NOT to be bothered. “He entered a house and did not want anyone to know he was there,” so the story goes. But in walks… in strolls… in waltzes… in barges, perhaps, this woman, interrupting whatever else Jesus may have been up to.

So, she wasn’t just any woman – she was local to that region of Tyre – a Greek-speaking, Syrophoenician-flavored woman – maybe of the wealthy, upper-class, more highly-esteemed sort who had heard about this Jesus and pushed her way into his presence with all of her privilege and presumption, because she wanted his help. She needed his help for her sick daughter. (Mark’s Gospel never gives her a name. But, with all due respect to my Aunt Karen and the other Karens I know and love, had he written his Gospel in the 21st Century, this woman might have fit the stereotype.)

And with all of that history and context (if the story said that this “Karen” from Beverly Hills had interrupted Jesus) it’s easier to see and to understand where Jesus might be coming from and why he responds the way that he does. And I love him for it. See, my bias and inclination is to err on the side of sympathy for the way women are portrayed in Scripture, because their status in the first century was pretty grim, generally speaking. But, relatively speaking, that wasn’t always necessarily the case.

What if the woman in this morning’s story was more like this lady who takes the foul ball from a kid at a major league baseball game?

Or what if she was like those rich folks who, in the earlier days of this pandemic, made “vaccine tourism” a thing, using their wealth to charter planes and fly wherever they wanted to get their hands on the vaccine long before it was their turn as far as the age requirements and guidelines had been laid out by the CDC.

Or like one of those Hollywood moms who committed all of that fraud in the college admissions scandal a couple of years ago?

What if she was just like any one of the too many people in a 21st Century viral video who have so naively, ignorantly, arrogantly asserted their privilege – racial privilege, economic privilege, social capital, whatever – to get their way at the expense of somebody else?

When we consider this story in that kind of light, Jesus is just doing what he always does – standing up for the last and the least; standing up TO the powers that be; questioning authority; challenging the status quo; lifting up the lowly; scattering the proud in the thoughts of their hearts; sending the rich away empty, and all the rest. All the things the prophets promised and all the things his own mother sung about and hoped for the first time she learned about him.

And he was doing all the things we’re called to do and to be if we want to follow him more closely.

And I think we’re called, too, to recognize if, when, and how, we might be more like that woman than we can always, see. And that’s hard to admit. In all of this, I think God is calling us to humility, to recognize, like that woman from Tyre, that each of us requires the grace and mercy that comes from Jesus; that none of us is any more or less deserving of the loving forgiveness we receive at the hands of our savior.

And it seems to me that Jesus acknowledges her humanity by knocking her down a peg or two and helping her to see it for herself. Once she sees her own humble, hungry need for the grace that comes from Jesus, she’s able to fully receive it – and then she is blessed and better because of it – and so is her daughter.

See, it’s true that “Hebrew Lives Mattered” for Jesus – as one of those Hebrews himself – those who were always the ones being persecuted, displaced, disenfranchised, and more. It’s true, too, that Jesus showed up for the sake of the world.

But Jesus knew that, in order to save the real-time suffering of the poor and the persecuted, the displaced and the disenfranchised in his midst, he needed to change the real-time hearts and lives of those in power, those with privilege, and certainly those who were doing the persecuting. He spent his days calling them to humility, calling them to generosity, calling them to repentance, calling them to change and to be changed, and calling them to do their part – to do differently – to transform the world and bring the Kingdom, to earth here and now, as it is in heaven.

And he’s calling each of us to do the same.

Amen