Who Do You Say that I Am?

A sermon for the 17th Sunday after Pentecost: Proper 19
Preached September 15, 2024 at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Hot Springs

Readings: Mark 8:27-38

“Who do you say that I am?” In today’s gospel, Jesus poses that question to the disciples, and by extension to us. If someone asked you that today, what would you say? Peter speaks up today on behalf of the group. “You are the Messiah,” he says. Messiah is a political term. Peter is saying the revolution is here and Jesus is leading it. The Messiah will restore the nation and will sit on the earthly throne of David his ancestor. For a people yearning to breathe free under the yoke of Roman oppression, the promise of Messiah lit a fire in the belly. Peter’s hope is a political hope. Peter’s hope is too small, his vision too limited, just like mine sometimes.

We believe that Christ has come to defeat the cosmic powers of sin and death, to rip us from our graves of despair, to reconcile us to the God who made us. Immediately Peter’s ideas about the Messiah are dashed. Jesus starts talking about the cross, about suffering and death. Not only that but Jesus tells us, his disciples, that following him means we will have crosses to bear, too. His Messiahship is not swords and war; it’s a cross. 

That’s not what we want. We don’t want the cross, the suffering, the pain. We don’t want Calvary, the place of the skull outside the city. We don’t want to walk through rejection and humiliation and sorrow. That is not our idea of the Messiah, the redeemer, the Christ, the anointed one. 

We want a Messiah to spare us from rejection and humiliation, pain and anguish, sorrow and grief, but Jesus walks straight into it. We want a Messiah with a golden crown, but Jesus wears a crown of thorns. We want a Messiah with a magnificent throne, but Jesus is lifted on a cross. We want to hear the victor’s shout, but all we hear is Eli Eli lama sabachthani, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? We want the coronation, the parade through the city–and we get a parade alright. But at the end of it we find God strung up on a cross, dead as a doornail, and all for us. 

Is that the Messiah we want? Who do you say that I am, Jesus asks? Sometimes our hope is too small, our vision too limited. Maybe that is not the Messiah we want, but it’s the Messiah we need. It’s the Messiah–God in the flesh–who comes with the real cure for our separation, our sin, our death. And the cure is not what we can do to save ourselves; it’s the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. By his grace, goodness, obedience to the Father, and love alone we are made whole, reconciled to God. And because Christ has shared completely in our humanity, even in our death, there is nothing–not even death–that can separate us from him. 

My friends: this is Good News. We serve a God who sees the mess we get ourselves into and does not flinch or draw back. We serve a God who peers into the depth of our despair and dives in after us. We serve a God who observes our suffering and decides to share it. We serve a God who mourns our sin, our separation, the way we turn away from love and toward aggression and greed–our God sees that and takes it all upon himself, a pure and perfect offering. We serve a God who sees our death and shares it completely to yank us from our graves. We serve a God that says there is nowhere we can go–not to the ends of the earth, not to the depths of hell, not to a Roman cross–where we are unreachable and forsaken. And even when, like Christ himself, we feel completely abandoned, even when we cry out why have you forsaken me, even when we cannot feel God’s presence because of the impenetrable darkness that consumes us–even then we can rest assured that we serve a God who is right there beside us because he has already carried a cross up that hill and he has come out the other side risen indeed. 

Who do you say Jesus Christ is? Sometimes our hope is too small, our vision too limited. Jesus Christ is the Son of God who has come to redeem all–you, and me, and every atom that has ever coursed through the universe. Through his life, death, and resurrection, he has brought us back to our true selves, to our true life, to our true purpose: to nothing less than friendship with God. So don’t be afraid to lose your life in him, even when you, too, must carry a cross up a hill. For in him, the Love of God Incarnate hanging on a tree–in him is true life, now and forever.