In the Name of God:  Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  Amen.

Well!  It’s been a while since I’ve stood here . . . I expect that it’s been a healthy break for you.  It’s always good to hear other voices.  But I AM glad to be back.  And, lest you have forgotten how I like to approach a Biblical text, I’m gonna look at today’s Gospel story in some detail to see what a close examination might reveal to us.  I should let you know up front that the scholarly information I’m gonna share with you is from a commentary on the Gospel of Mark by Eduard Schweizer.[1]

To begin, I want to give you a word to ponder:  ‘choice.’  I have a feeling that we’ll find that ‘choice’ – making a decision between one thing and another – will be a key to unlocking the meaning of the Gospel story for us today.

This occurred to me when I first began to read today’s story, which begins with this statement, “Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi . . . .“  Remember . . . details count.  Luke, telling the same story, doesn’t mention where it takes place; Mark has a reason for mentioning the location.  According to rabbinical statements of the period, Caesarea Philippi is on the border between the Holy Land and Gentile territory.  This borderland, this “edge” between two lands, is the place where Jesus must make a choice.  This is an important turning point in Mark’s Gospel – this is the place where Jesus must decide whether he will abandon Israel (and perhaps save his own life), or do the exact opposite . . . set out on the perilous journey to Jerusalem and his own death.  Life?  Death?  Quite a choice, eh?

The choice is made no easier for him, I’m sure, by the fact that he hasn’t been particularly successful in his ministry.  Writing this Gospel, Mark organized the story of Jesus’ life and work into great thematic blocks.  After Jesus’ baptism and temptation, the first great block of the story establishes Jesus authority . . . and the blindness of the Pharisees to this authority.  The next large portion of the story tells of Jesus’ ministry of parables and signs . . . and of the blindness of the world, especially of his fellow Jews, to Jesus’ identity and the meaning of his work.  The third part of the Gospel tells of Jesus’ ministry to the Gentiles . . . and of the continued blindness of even his closest friends, his disciples, to what’s going on right in front of them.

And so we reach today’s Gospel story.  Jesus and his disciples are in Caesarea Philippi, the border between the Holy Land and the land of the Gentiles.  In worldly terms Jesus could consider himself a failure . . . and he has a choice to make about his future.  To the left, lies the land of the Gentiles and freedom . . . at least freedom of sorts.  Yes, he’d have to deny his true identity; yes, he’d have to turn his back on his true calling; but at least he wouldn’t have to die . . . at least not right away.  And if he turns to his right, to the Holy Land, he knows that death – a hideous, painful, humiliating death – surely awaits him.  No wonder he asks for some help in making this decision.

He turns to his friends and he asks, “Who do people say I am?”  He listens to their answers thoughtfully.  And then he asks, “And who do YOU say I am?”  They may not know just HOW important their answer is to Jesus, but they know that this is a serious question.  And they know that they’re on the spot . . . each one of them, personally.  I imagine a moment or two of uncomfortable silence as they consider their answers.  And then Peter, gloriously impetuous Peter, blurts out, “You are the Messiah!”  Ah!  Just the answer that Jesus is hoping for . . . even though he knows that Peter and the rest of his friends haven’t a clue about what this REALLY means.  Jesus knows that he’s going to have to work hard to try to get them to understand what this term ‘Messiah’ defines and entails . . . but at least they’ve understood SOMETHING.

Why then would he tell them not to tell anyone who he truly is?  Well, I think the answer to this is pretty simple.  Even after all this time, his friends don’t truly understand him or his work . . . so if they start talking about him, they’re not gonna know what they’re talking about.  Right?  The disciples have so many pre-conceived – and WRONG – ideas about what the Messiah is gonna be like that Jesus needs to explain a LOT to them – and they’ll need to EXPERIENCE a lot – before they’ll be able to speak with understanding.  That’s pretty understandable, isn’t it?

Ya know, lots of people have ideas about what priests are supposed to be like.  And this can make it hard for them to really hear what a priest is saying, even when standing right in front of them.  I know this from personal experience.  Not long after we moved to West Hartford, a new friend invited us over for dinner to meet her husband and some of their friends.  Before we came over, our new friend asked me, “Would you mind not telling anyone that you’re a priest right away?  I think the evening will go better if they don’t know that first thing.”  I knew exactly what my new friend meant, and I was happy to comply.  When it finally came out that I’m a priest, it was lots of fun watching the wheels whir in the heads of my new acquaintances.  They were trying to put together their experience of me with what they thought a priest should be like . . . and it was a bit of a challenge.  (I think they thought I was kinda fun, and . . . priests . . . well . . . you know.)

This is what Jesus wants of his disciples:  He wants them to understand – and experience – what and who the Messiah really is, dropping their preconceived notions and encountering the truth in him.  He begins to teach them that he – the Son of Man – must undergo great suffering; be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes; and be killed . . . AND after three days, rise again.  But Peter especially cannot hear this.  His love of the man Jesus, and his understanding of the type of worldly king the Messiah is supposed to be, won’t allow Peter to hear what Jesus is saying.  I expect that Peter stopped listening long before Jesus ever got to the part about the resurrection.

OF COURSE, Jesus rebukes Peter harshly.  Jesus is fighting off temptation, the desire to slip away into Gentile territory and avoid what he knows awaits him in Jerusalem.  Jesus is trying to make the right choice – an infinitely difficult choice – but the RIGHT one . . . and Peter is fighting him.  Peter doesn’t realize what he’s doing . . . his love, his understanding, his own desires are all opposed to what Jesus is telling him.  All of Peter’s instincts are fighting the choice that Jesus is making.  Peter doesn’t mean to, but he is in fact taking the role of the tempter, of Satan, in opposing the choice that Jesus is making.  Peter is, after all, only human.

In what Jesus is teaching his disciples about his suffering and death to come, Jesus is – in a way – also teaching them that he IS God.  Jesus is God in that he can do what we humans cannot do:  he can allow himself to be rejected – to be lowly and insignificant, to be tortured and killed . . . all for our sake, the sake of the very lowly and insignificant people who torture and kill him.  We humans would rail against such a fate!  In our hearts we all want to be GREAT . . . NOT lowly and insignificant, and certainly not tortured and killed.  Yet Jesus is teaching us that it is only in understanding the suffering of the Son of Man that we can understand God.  Jesus is teaching us what it means to be a true disciple . . . which, just like Peter, runs against our understanding and desires.

In the famous verses that follow – those verses about denying ourselves and taking up our cross and following Jesus, about losing our life to save it – Jesus is teaching about discipleship.  And he is teaching about choice.  Yes, it is a choice enabled by grace, but it is choice, nevertheless.  He is urging us to make the choice of self-denial.  But NOT self-denial that is synonymous with self-destruction.  The self-denial that Jesus is talking about is a surrendering of self to God . . . of giving ourselves completely to God . . . and it is a self-denial that leads to life and freedom.

Discipleship to Jesus leads to a reversal of values.  To assert oneself leads to loss; to give oneself leads to life.  If Jesus turned away from Jerusalem to avoid physical death . . . he would have died to himself.  Turning toward the Jerusalem and the crucifixion . . . he found true and eternal life.  The term for life – both the Greek word ‘psyche’ and the corresponding Hebrew expression – can be translated as both ‘soul’ and ‘life.’  It’s important for us to understand that in Jewish tradition, physical and spiritual life cannot be separated easily.  So that what Jesus is saying is that REAL life – BOTH spiritual and earthly life – is found in the giving up of self.  Life as our creator meant it to be, is only found in giving our life back to God.  THIS is the only way to live a truly free life, open to both God and our neighbor.  And such a life cannot end in death because it already belongs to God, and God will stand by this life through every experience of death.  LIFE – in all its fullness, in all its physicality and spirituality – can only be found by following him who has given his life for all.  It is a life in which Jesus is so central, that we cannot be influenced by either fear of humiliation and failure, or by the desire for glory and exaltation.

As Jesus talks to his disciples in today’s story, it becomes clear through the way that he speaks to them that he has made his choice.  He is heading for Jerusalem.  We, too, must make a choice.  Every day . . . perhaps several times a day.  We stand in a border land on this earth . . . a boundary between death and life . . . will we follow Jesus, or will we turn and go the other way?  Jesus is asking each and every one of us the question . . . it’s personal; we’re on the spot.  Will we choose death . . . or life?

The choice is ours.

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