Hilton Head Island, SC – April 3, 2022
The Chapel Without Walls
Mark 8:27-33; Matthew 16:13-23
A Sermon by John M. Miller
Text – And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he charged them to tell no one about him. – Mark 8:29-30
It was and is one of the most beautiful and scenic places in the entire Holy Land. It is the northern origin of one of the longest geologic fault lines in the world, called the Great Rift Valley. This immense crack in the earth’s crust stretches more than three thousand miles, from the southern flank of Mt. Hermon down the whole length of the Jordan River, beneath the Dead Sea, out under the Gulf of Akaba, diagonally across the Red Sea, and down through much of East Africa. It ends up under the waters of Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa. That huge lake is one of the headwaters of the Nile River, which flows north toward Sudan and Egypt, emptying into the Mediterranean, only a couple hundred miles from where the Great Rift Valley begins. That immense fault line is surely one of the Seven Geological Wonders of the World.
In the time of Jesus, the place had recently been named Caesarea Philippi, after Philip, one of the sons of King Herod. Before that it was called the Panias, after the Greek god Pan, the god of nature. Later it became known by the local Arabs and by everyone else as the Banias, because there is no letter “P” in the Arabic alphabet. It is at the southern foot of Mt. Hermon, as the Israelis say, or Mt. Hermon, as we say. Mt. Hermon is the tallest mountain in the Middle East. It is over nine thousand feet in altitude. Even though it is almost at the same latitude as Hilton Head Island, the mountain is snow-covered for many months, because it gets so much moisture off the Mediterranean. Now the location is one of the many Israeli national parks. For such a small country, Israel is dotted with numerous small national monuments, many of them memorializing biblical events that occurred there.
Somehow the waters from the summit of the mountain find their way through subterranean channels underground, and they come pouring up and out of the base of a high cliff. Caesarea Philippi is the headwater of the Jordan River. The place has always been a spectacular natural wonder. Therefore it is not surprising that Jesus led the twelve disciples to the Banias just a few weeks or months before they all started south toward Jerusalem, and Holy Week, and Jesus’ date with destiny on Golgatha. The Banias has powers to revive the soul when one is facing hard times ahead. It was outside Judea, and it gave Jesus one of the many resting places he needed during his short ministry.
In my mind’s eye, I visualize Jesus and the twelve sitting on the rocks beside the source of the rushing river. In that majestic spot, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” It was an unusual question. Had Jesus been wondering that himself about himself? If Jesus wasn’t sure of his true identity, did he wonder who others thought he might be? Was that the motivation behind this crucial question?
The word “crucial” comes from the word “cross.” Jesus was soon to end up crucified, and in that singular spot, not in Judea proper, but in the land of the Syrian Gentiles who lived all around it, was Jesus trying to get a handle on his own identity, and he was asking the disciples for assistance? “Who do people say that I am?”
They told him some of the answers they had heard: John the Baptist come back from the dead, or a second appearance of Elijah, considered the greatest of the Hebrew prophets who did not write his own prophetic book, or the return of Isaiah or Jeremiah or one of the other prophets. Then, perhaps with both fearful hesitation and heightened anticipation at the same time, Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter, the prince of apostles, who told the Jesus story to Mark, the writer of the first Gospel to be written, said, “You are the Christ.” You’re the Messiah, Jesus; you are the Anointed One of God, the man chosen by Adonoy to become the king of the Jews!
Peter was always impetuous. Regularly he blurted out whatever he was thinking. Had Peter been thinking that for some time, or did the words just suddenly erupt, like the waters of Hermon pouring out from the base of the cliff? And having said it, what would be Jesus’ response to Peter’s proclamation?
“And he charged them to tell no one about him.” They were sworn to secrecy! They must not tell a soul! But why? If Jesus was in fact the Messiah, why wouldn’t they tell the whole world, and why wouldn’t Jesus insist they do that?
It is probably a good thing that in order to be a Christian, no one is required to graduate from a modern-day Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, or especially Mainline Protestant seminary. If everyone had to spend three or four years in a 21st century theological school, many might give up Christianity altogether. There are so many things to absorb, so much conflicted literature to read and so many mind-stretching lectures about the Bible and theology and church history to jam into one’s cranium, that so many heads might explode and too many fiercely-held positions one had learned growing up would be so thoroughly scrutinized, that many would chuck out everything they had ever believed in a great upheaval of all of the things they had once held dear.
Sixty years ago when I was in seminary, an idea was presented which had been discussed by New Testament scholars for several previous decades. It was called “the Messianic Secret.” It was based on a number of verses in the Synoptic Gospels, but especially on the one in Mark and Matthew which follows Peter’s declaration that Jesus was the Messiah. When Peter blurted that out, Jesus told him and the other disciples never to say a word about that to anybody.
If Jesus thought any inclinations to call him the Messiah were never to be spoken out loud, why would he say that? If Jesus was the Messiah, if he is the Messiah, wouldn’t he want everyone to know it?
Here is a possible explanation for Jesus’ command to the disciples to remain silent if they thought he was the Messiah. He himself was not certain of that, and therefore he didn’t want anyone else claiming it to be true. Many of you may disagree with that idea, and I well understand why. But having thought long and hard about this issue for years, I am not convinced Jesus did perceive himself as the Anointed One of God, although I personally am convinced that is who he was and is. Mark probably believed Jesus was the Messiah, although he never said so, but Jesus may have been agnostic on that claim; he didn’t know whether or not it was true. It may have been a secret even to Jesus.
But we claim that Jesus is Mesheach, don’t we? Don’t all Christians believe Jesus was and is the Anointed One of God, the King of kings and the Lord of lords? Handel certainly thought so. He composed the most famous oratorio in musical history with that as his one-word title: Messiah. We say that Jesus is Jesus Christ, and Christos in Greek means the same thing as Mesheach in Hebrew. Christians believe that Jesus was the Messiah even if Jesus may not have been sure of it himself, although no one can ever be positive that Jesus intended to keep his potential messianic identity a secret. Nevertheless that is the type of thing one is taught in seminary. However, a careful study of the New Testament often results in more questions being prompted than answers being provided.
I suspect that almost none of you has ever wondered whether Jesus wondered if he was the Messiah. You assume he always assumed that.That is what the Church has always taught. However, the Synoptic Gospels indicate that either he wondered it or he denied it, and they say so in many places. On the other hand, they also hint that Jesus was the Messiah, and in the Gospel of John, that is the least of the claims made by the writer of that Gospel. He says that Jesus was “the Word made flesh,” (Ch. 1:1 ff), “Word” meaning God Himself, and that Jesus was one with God; “I and the Father are one” (John 10:30).
If we read the words of Jesus in the Gospels, or the words of the men who wrote the Gospels, we would have to admit that sometimes those particular words do not seem to mean what they ordinarily mean. Thus all of us are left to be “cherry pickers of verses,” people who choose passages we like in order to construct our own theology or Christology, and to reject other verses which say the opposite of what we think, or at least sound different from what we think.
The name Jesus in Greek means the same as Joshua (Yeshua in Hebrew), and it means “Savior.” Did Jesus see himself as the Savior of the world? Jesus has been considered the Savior for almost two millennia, but did he see himself in that light? Did he see himself as the Messiah, or the Son of God, or God Incarnate, the Word made flesh? At the Banias, it would appear he wanted to avoid anyone ever calling him the Messiah, let alone Savior, Son of God, or God incarnate.
Immediately after Peter declared his conviction that Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus told Peter and the others never to tell anyone that. Jesus added that, quoting Mark, “the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.” Did Jesus really say that? Did he know that, or did he only suspect it?
Whatever may be the answers to those questions, Mark says Peter “rebuked” Jesus. In response, Jesus let Peter have it, both barrels. “Get behind me, Satan! You are not on the side of God, but of men” (Mark 8:31 ff). Wow! Peter was just telling Jesus not to demean himself with such a gloomy prediction, and it says Jesus equated Peter with Satan. Did Jesus really say that? Did he really mean that?
Matthew takes much of the edge off what Mark says. Matthew records that after Peter makes his messianic proclamation about Jesus, Jesus said, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father, who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church….I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven” (Mt. 13:17-19). Then Matthew writes essentially what Mark wrote: “Then he strictly charged the disciples to tell no one” (v.20). It is after those memorable words that Matthew also places the “Get behind me, Satan!” episode.
Please indulge me while I make some comments about this Matthean addition to the Markan narrative. Those verses have always been among the most historically cherished by the Roman Catholic Church. The Greek name Petros means Rock, and Catholicism has made Peter the traditional human rock upon which the largest branch of Christendom is built. Also by tradition, Peter was the first pope. This was not historically possible, but it is ecclesiastically foundational. There was no Roman Catholic Church as early as the seventh decade of the first century CE, which is when Peter would have been crucified, if indeed that Catholic tradition has any basis in fact. But how do you square a pope being crucified, for heaven’s sake? (It is not only seminary biblical courses which can upset youthful beliefs; church history courses can also raise many unanswered questions. And by no means are those questions directed only to the Roman Catholic Church. Every Church of every stripe has more than a sufficient number of skeletons in its unseemly cluttered closet.)
In any event, from my standpoint, Simon Peter is not the rock on which the Church is built. The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord - period.
But how, exactly, does that happen? What enables it to happen? Jesus became and becomes the Messiah, the Son of man, the Son of God, and the Second Person of the Trinity by faith. Faith alone can provide the spiritual and mental insights necessary to support that ongoing understanding. The Gospels don’t guarantee it. The apostle Paul doesn’t do it. Faith alone can enable the Jesus of history to become the Christ of faith. Without doubt the Jesus of history existed, but an accurate historicity is forever irrecoverable. No one will ever know him as he was, but only as he is born within our hearts and minds. The Jesus of history exists now solely as the Christ of faith.
So - - - Who do you say that he is?