Mistaken identity
Commentary
Object:
Appearances can be deceiving. John Wayne, for instance, acted the part of a genuine cowboy in dozens of motion pictures and fired make-believe rifles and revolvers hundreds of times. Even his last starring role in The Shootist had him portray an aging western gunslinger. Yet here is what Wayne had to say about his skills with a firearm: "I couldn't hit a wall with a six-gun, but I can twirl one. It looks good!"
Sometimes appearances can even change the way we think about things, and "deceive" us into a whole new attitude. Consider, for example, the report of Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a former New York cosmetic surgeon, who tells of a magazine contest to find the ugliest young woman in the United States. Cruel as such a competition may seem, the magazine editors actually hoped to change the life of this unfortunate person for the better.
Photos poured in from all over North America. The editors selected a young woman with poor features, terrible grooming, and appalling clothes as the "Ugliest Girl in America." For her prize, she won a plane ticket to New York City. There a team of specialists went to work on her. Dr. Maltz reshaped her nose and built up her chin. Others gave her a new hairstyle, an elaborate wardrobe of the latest fashions, and grooming instructions. In a modern Cinderella story, the "ugliest" became quite beautiful almost overnight. Within a few months she was married.
In fact, says Dr. Maltz, the young woman's whole attitude toward life changed. Before the cosmetic transformation she had been shy and inhibited. She felt foolish and ignorant and out of place in almost any company. But once she had tasted what she could become, her personality exploded with new possibilities. She became confident and poised, articulate and informed. She attracted people to herself in any crowd.
Appearances can be deceiving. But who among us would be able to say which appearance was the deceptive one -- the young woman whose photos won the "Ugliest Girl" contest, or the young woman who waltzed in beauty?
Today's lectionary readings are about deceptive appearances. The Pharaoh of Egypt did not recognize in either Israel or Moses true powerhouses he would be forced to contend with. Paul says to the Romans that size and appearance matters little when one is transformed by the renewing of mind from within. And those who bandied about thoughts on who this Jesus of Nazareth might be were sorely mistaken -- their estimates came in way low! Who are we? Who are we, really?! It is time again to find out and to stand up to all our divine potential!
Exodus 1:8--2:10
Exodus opens with the nasty relationship that has developed between the Pharaoh of Egypt and the Israelites. An editorial note declares that "Joseph" has been forgotten, and this small reference forms the bridge that later draws Genesis into an even more broadly extended historical prologue to the Sinai covenant. We will find out, by reading backward, that Joseph was the critical link between the Egyptians and this other ethnic community living within its borders. When the good that Joseph did for both races was forgotten, the dominant culture attempted to dehumanize and then destroy these Israelite aliens.
The deadly solution proposed by the Pharaoh in dealing with the rising population of his slave community may sound harsh, but it was likely a very modest and welcomed political maneuver in ancient Egypt. Because there is virtually no rain in Egypt, with most of its territory lying in or on the edge of the great Sahara desert, the Nile is and was the critical source of water that sustained life in the region. The Nile "miraculously" ebbed and flowed annually, responding to the rains of central Africa thousands of miles away. Far removed from Egypt's farmlands and cities, this process was attributed to the gods that nurtured Egyptian civilization. Thus it was fitting for the people to pay homage to these gods, especially by giving appropriate sacrifices to the power of the Nile. In that manner, having the boy babies of the Hebrews tossed into the Nile's currents would not have been considered genocide, but instead it would be deemed a suitable civic and cultural responsibility. Such a practice provided the Nile god with fittingly dear tribute, and at the same time allowed the bulk of the Egyptian population to save its own babies by using those of this surrogate vassal people living within their borders.
Moses' own name ties him to the royal family of Egypt and its influence (note the frequent occurrence of the letters MSS in the names of ancient Pharaohs -- Thutmoses, Ramses, etc.), and his training in the palace schools would provide him with skills that set him apart from the rest of the Israelites in preparation for his unique leadership responsibilities. Moses' time in the wilderness, on the other hand, made him familiar with Bedouin life and similarly fortified his ability to stand at the head of a wandering community once Israel was released from slavery. But more important than these was his primary identity learned from his deeply devoted family. He was a son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was part of the greatest divine enterprise afoot. And while his true character might be hidden from him and from the Pharaoh for a time, eventually the call of God would bring it alive.
Romans 12:1-8
Paul may well have had to wrestle his way through that problem of divine election (Romans 9-11) at least in part because of the mixed Jewish-Gentile makeup of the Roman congregation. This possible tension seems to reassert itself again in Paul's applications of Christian behavior in the chapters that follow. First, Paul urges a lifestyle of service rooted in sacrifice to Jesus, shaped by spiritual giftedness, and energized by love (Romans 12). Then Paul makes this servant behavior specific by nodding to its public expressions (Romans 13). Finally, Paul revisits the issues surrounding the matter of the purchase and consumption of meat offered to idols (Romans 14:1--15:13), just as he had probed it in 1 Corinthians 8:1--11:1. Here, though, the overt tensions between legalistic and licentious extremes of Christian behavior seem less consuming than they did when Paul wrote to the Galatians and the Corinthians. Instead, his instructions flow more gently out of his social ethic of love and service.
It is, after all, rooted in the amazing exhortations of today's lectionary reading. The Transformers movie series has brought this idea back into public vogue. Things (and people) are not always what they first seem. Their darker powers might be cloaked in the guise of innocent stuff, as happens all too often in the Transformers story lines. But the internal strength of those who are connected rightly to love, hope, kindness, justice, and mercy, is just as easily overlooked. Here Paul brings acts of "worship" to displays of "worthship" in social engagements as we mine the inner resources that transform us from self-absorbed sinners to Christ-minded saints.
Matthew 16:13-20
Faith is a matter of appearances as well. It is important that we understand who Jesus is, not just in our sometimes mistaken notions of who we would like him to be, but who he is by his own testimony and actions. That seems to be why Jesus challenges his disciples to read the appearances well as they walk one day in the north country of Palestine. "Who do people say I am?" he asked them.
The setting was quite appropriate for such a question, even if it does not immediately strike us that way from our first reading of the text. They were wandering in the region of Caesarea Philippi, we are told. This was a relatively new city built near the site of an ancient gathering place of spiritual significance on the slopes of Mount Hermon.
The place held more than just pleasant park-like settings. Because the waters bubbled and gurgled up from caves at the base of the mountain, area residents had long believed this to be the doorway into the underworld. Here, they thought, the spirits of the deep tried to communicate with creatures on the surface. Sometimes sulfuric gases were emitted, and these only confirmed the presence of other-worldly voices and the breath of Hades.
Over the centuries a variety of religious sects had used the place as a cultic shrine. They cut niches in the rock walls of the mountain just above the burbling caves and set up statues of gods they thought might be resident there. They even gave the place a spiritual name. They called it "The Gates of Hades." Here, they believed, was the doorway between the realm of the living and the abode of the dead. Those with keen faculties would be able to hear the whispers of the departed and the voice of the underworld gods. It was considered to be a very holy place.
But appearances can be deceiving, so Jesus comes with his disciples to test their perceptions. "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
We ought not read too much into Jesus' self-identification here. Some think he is making a divine claim already in the question that he asks his disciples. But it is more likely that Jesus is using the term "Son of Man" in a manner similar to that found in the prophecy of Ezekiel. According to Ezekiel, when he was approached by heavenly messengers to form a link in the communication process between God and God's people, the angels called him "Son of Man." The designation was more of a representational term than anything else. In effect it was an acknowledgment that Ezekiel was truly human, but that he was being used in these settings as the conduit between the celestial and the terrestrial.
The "Son of Man," thus, was someone who had no unusual powers in himself, but who had been entrusted with a special revelation that was now supposed to be passed along to others. If Jesus used the term in this manner, he was merely asking his disciples what people thought about him, now that he had become a point of contact between them and God.
Yet Jesus knew better than anyone else that he was neither John nor Elijah, neither Jeremiah nor another of the prophets come back to life. So he put the matter squarely to those who shared his meals and his daily dusty walks "But who do you think I am?"
It was Peter, of course, who answered. The rest of the disciples don't really know what to say. Can they call Jesus a miracle worker? Should they say he speaks with a prophet's voice? Dare they admit they think he might be Messiah?
All their fears of communication faux pas are put to rest when Peter jumps too quickly into the embarrassing silence and blurts out that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. There is no satisfaction here, for the answer is more troubling than the question. As long as Jesus was merely interested in public opinion this discussion was a pleasant way to pass time and share a place in the spotlight of success. Now that Jesus has demanded clarification from them, they cannot hide behind other skirts.
What should they say? How do you live with someone in the intimacy of the kind of relationship they have had with Jesus and yet linger on the fringes of mistaken identity?
Somehow Peter had learned enough during his time as a student in Jesus' rabbinical school to get the answer right on the oral exam. Somehow he managed to sift through the files of mistaken identities and come up with the declaration that Jesus is more than a prophet, more than a religious curiosity, more than a spiritual guru superstar. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus brought heaven to earth and earth to heaven. Jesus is the link between imminent and transcendent, and all of us need to know that if we are to get firm footing on the Rock that really matters.
Application
Even though the disciples lived and worked and walked and talked with Jesus, they did not really understand him. It is a bit like the song put it some years ago:
The greatest man I never knew lived just down the hall.
And every day we said hello but never touched at all.
He was in his paper, I was in my room.
How was I to know he thought I hung the moon?
The greatest man I never knew came home late every night.
He never had too much to say; too much was on his mind.
I never really knew him, and now it seems so sad.
Everything he gave to us took all he had.
Jesus is their familiar stranger. He is the man who lives down the hall, yet remains an enigma. The disciples know they don't really know him, yet they are willing to live with the tension as long as nobody has to name it. We are not that different from them.
One of the college courses I often teach is called "Which Jesus?" In it I take my students through Jaroslav Pelikan's book Jesus through the Centuries (Yale, 1999) and the writings of the New Testament, and reflect on the variety of ways in which people think about Jesus. Each time I teach this course I ask my students to write a paper requiring that they talk with their parents about how Mom and Dad view Jesus. Invariably I get some papers still wet with tears from students who never before knew the Jesus of their parents' religious devotions. Too long they had passed by one another snickering at the religious folly of others while never having to face the question of Jesus' identity themselves. Only when this tender moment of forced query was ordered did the light of faith break through, and relations of mystery become bonds of grace.
Alternative Application
Matthew 16:13-20. The variety of answers the disciples gave to Jesus' question "Who do people say that I am?" is interesting. "Some say John the Baptist," they told him. This was Herod's favorite and fearful line. Herod had long been fascinated with Jesus' cousin John, a wild man who lived outside the system. John's public indignation against Herod, especially after Herod stole his brother's wife, was more than the king could tolerate. Herodias, too, disliked the man. She was at least as cunning as her new husband and would not dismiss John quietly like some quack or minor irritation. Together they had John put in prison. Even there, however, the prophet refused to be silenced. Herod himself made many secret trips to see the man now that he was so close at hand. And others who claimed to be John's disciples had ongoing access to their leader through sympathetic guards. The martyr-like John in prison was almost more powerful than was the former wild man of the Jordan valley. His mystique only grew larger.
So Herodias devised a plan to push Herod into the executioner's chair. Using her daughter's beguiling dancing as a lure, she created a scenario where Herod had to buckle. At a heads-of-states banquet where Herod hosted his powerful friends, Herodias got her daughter to serve as entertainment, and then coaxed out of Herod a drunken public promise to reward her seductive whirling in any way she wished. Too late Herod realized his wife's part in the plot when it was John the Baptist's head the young woman demanded as payment (Matthew 14:1-12).
Herod followed through on the recompense, for he had made a kingly vow. But since that time he had not slept well, believing that John would come back to haunt him. One may connive and kill others in the royal household because that is the price of playing with power and living in its vortex. But John was an innocent from outside the system, and there would surely be divine retribution stalking Herod until blood was satisfied with other blood.
So when Jesus showed up looking like John, sounding like John, and running an itinerant school of prophets like John, Herod was sure John had come back to do him in. This new John was probably even more powerful than his previous incarnation -- hence the many miracles Herod had heard about -- and was probably building a broad base of support to take Herod down in a very painful and public way. Herod believed Jesus was John reborn and had great reason to fear.
Jesus wasn't John, and the disciples knew it. They had seen John and Jesus together and knew the one from the other.
There were other rumors about Jesus' identity floating around, of course. "Elijah" was a favorite among the scribes. They copied scripture and knew it well. Since every manuscript was a handwritten, labor-intensive work of faith, the scribes were committed to knowing every detail of the holy books and transcribing them accurately.
Among the many prophetic notes they painstakingly reproduced was the one left by Malachi. Five hundred years before, when some of the Jews returned from Babylonian exile, Malachi interacted with the crowds of Jerusalem and what emerged was a dialogue in which God accused, the people responded with rhetorical questions, and God preached sermons of indignation against them. One of the questions the people asked of God was why God did not return to this temple they had rebuilt. After all, when Solomon created the temple that used to stand here, God showed up at the dedication service and flooded the place with God's own Shekinah glory presence. It was obvious that God had come to live in the temple.
Malachi boomed the opinion of God that the people did not really want God in the neighborhood. God would show up when the people were really ready to have God around. As a sign of God's good intentions, intoned Malachi, God would send another messenger to prepare the way. God would raise up Elijah of old, the first of the great prophets, and he would make things ready. Elijah would appear with stern speeches and mighty miracles. The people should get ready, for when Elijah came, God would follow quickly on his heels.
That is why some people thought Jesus was Elijah. Especially among the scribes who copied the prophetic writings this idea took hold. Jesus spoke with divine authority. He performed miraculous healings, just like Elijah had done. Maybe this was the occasion for God to fulfill Malachi's prophecies. If so, Jesus was the new Elijah.
But Jesus' closest disciples knew that was another case of mistaken identity. After all, Jesus had recently spoken clearly about the matter (11:14). He said emphatically that John the Baptist was the person that Malachi had written about. John was the new Elijah.
So who then was Jesus? They would have to find a better answer. So do we.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 124
"If it had not been the Lord who had been on our side...."
Everyone chooses allies. From the elementary school hallway to nations bristling with arms, people choose who it is that will be on their side. When the struggle comes, that ally stands firm and joins the fight. Of course, some allies are better than others. There are the allies who are great as long as there is no struggle. These are the ones who are somehow always absent when the going gets rough. There are allies who are well-intentioned but incompetent and out of step. These are the ones who wander off after the wrong enemy or get lost on the way to the battlefield. There are also allies who just aren't that strong. They get cut down in the struggle and are unable to go the distance.
There are allies, however, who do not grow weary in battle. There are allies who will not run away in fear. There are allies who are strong and capable. Our God is an ally such as this, and this psalm tells it like it is.
"If it had not been the Lord who had been on our side...."
Through life's struggles, this ally will not go away. Whether it's the front line of the battle for justice and equity, or the personal challenges of life, God stands with us. This psalm understands the power and presence of this ally in a deep way and motivates the old spiritual that uses these words.
"If it had not been the Lord who had been on our side... then where would I be tell me, where would I be...."
When enemies attack and floodwaters rage, God is on our side. When death surrounds us and we feel swallowed up in grief, God is on our side. When we are exhausted and cannot walk another step, God lifts us up because God is on our side.
This is not the song of ones who use an alliance of God to assert domination or bring others to submission. No. This is a song of liberation and hope. It is a symphony to the One who will not abandon us, no matter what.
So it is that we freely choose this holy ally as our own. We give ourselves in partnership and service; we offer ourselves in hope and joy. For "our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
Sometimes appearances can even change the way we think about things, and "deceive" us into a whole new attitude. Consider, for example, the report of Dr. Maxwell Maltz, a former New York cosmetic surgeon, who tells of a magazine contest to find the ugliest young woman in the United States. Cruel as such a competition may seem, the magazine editors actually hoped to change the life of this unfortunate person for the better.
Photos poured in from all over North America. The editors selected a young woman with poor features, terrible grooming, and appalling clothes as the "Ugliest Girl in America." For her prize, she won a plane ticket to New York City. There a team of specialists went to work on her. Dr. Maltz reshaped her nose and built up her chin. Others gave her a new hairstyle, an elaborate wardrobe of the latest fashions, and grooming instructions. In a modern Cinderella story, the "ugliest" became quite beautiful almost overnight. Within a few months she was married.
In fact, says Dr. Maltz, the young woman's whole attitude toward life changed. Before the cosmetic transformation she had been shy and inhibited. She felt foolish and ignorant and out of place in almost any company. But once she had tasted what she could become, her personality exploded with new possibilities. She became confident and poised, articulate and informed. She attracted people to herself in any crowd.
Appearances can be deceiving. But who among us would be able to say which appearance was the deceptive one -- the young woman whose photos won the "Ugliest Girl" contest, or the young woman who waltzed in beauty?
Today's lectionary readings are about deceptive appearances. The Pharaoh of Egypt did not recognize in either Israel or Moses true powerhouses he would be forced to contend with. Paul says to the Romans that size and appearance matters little when one is transformed by the renewing of mind from within. And those who bandied about thoughts on who this Jesus of Nazareth might be were sorely mistaken -- their estimates came in way low! Who are we? Who are we, really?! It is time again to find out and to stand up to all our divine potential!
Exodus 1:8--2:10
Exodus opens with the nasty relationship that has developed between the Pharaoh of Egypt and the Israelites. An editorial note declares that "Joseph" has been forgotten, and this small reference forms the bridge that later draws Genesis into an even more broadly extended historical prologue to the Sinai covenant. We will find out, by reading backward, that Joseph was the critical link between the Egyptians and this other ethnic community living within its borders. When the good that Joseph did for both races was forgotten, the dominant culture attempted to dehumanize and then destroy these Israelite aliens.
The deadly solution proposed by the Pharaoh in dealing with the rising population of his slave community may sound harsh, but it was likely a very modest and welcomed political maneuver in ancient Egypt. Because there is virtually no rain in Egypt, with most of its territory lying in or on the edge of the great Sahara desert, the Nile is and was the critical source of water that sustained life in the region. The Nile "miraculously" ebbed and flowed annually, responding to the rains of central Africa thousands of miles away. Far removed from Egypt's farmlands and cities, this process was attributed to the gods that nurtured Egyptian civilization. Thus it was fitting for the people to pay homage to these gods, especially by giving appropriate sacrifices to the power of the Nile. In that manner, having the boy babies of the Hebrews tossed into the Nile's currents would not have been considered genocide, but instead it would be deemed a suitable civic and cultural responsibility. Such a practice provided the Nile god with fittingly dear tribute, and at the same time allowed the bulk of the Egyptian population to save its own babies by using those of this surrogate vassal people living within their borders.
Moses' own name ties him to the royal family of Egypt and its influence (note the frequent occurrence of the letters MSS in the names of ancient Pharaohs -- Thutmoses, Ramses, etc.), and his training in the palace schools would provide him with skills that set him apart from the rest of the Israelites in preparation for his unique leadership responsibilities. Moses' time in the wilderness, on the other hand, made him familiar with Bedouin life and similarly fortified his ability to stand at the head of a wandering community once Israel was released from slavery. But more important than these was his primary identity learned from his deeply devoted family. He was a son of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He was part of the greatest divine enterprise afoot. And while his true character might be hidden from him and from the Pharaoh for a time, eventually the call of God would bring it alive.
Romans 12:1-8
Paul may well have had to wrestle his way through that problem of divine election (Romans 9-11) at least in part because of the mixed Jewish-Gentile makeup of the Roman congregation. This possible tension seems to reassert itself again in Paul's applications of Christian behavior in the chapters that follow. First, Paul urges a lifestyle of service rooted in sacrifice to Jesus, shaped by spiritual giftedness, and energized by love (Romans 12). Then Paul makes this servant behavior specific by nodding to its public expressions (Romans 13). Finally, Paul revisits the issues surrounding the matter of the purchase and consumption of meat offered to idols (Romans 14:1--15:13), just as he had probed it in 1 Corinthians 8:1--11:1. Here, though, the overt tensions between legalistic and licentious extremes of Christian behavior seem less consuming than they did when Paul wrote to the Galatians and the Corinthians. Instead, his instructions flow more gently out of his social ethic of love and service.
It is, after all, rooted in the amazing exhortations of today's lectionary reading. The Transformers movie series has brought this idea back into public vogue. Things (and people) are not always what they first seem. Their darker powers might be cloaked in the guise of innocent stuff, as happens all too often in the Transformers story lines. But the internal strength of those who are connected rightly to love, hope, kindness, justice, and mercy, is just as easily overlooked. Here Paul brings acts of "worship" to displays of "worthship" in social engagements as we mine the inner resources that transform us from self-absorbed sinners to Christ-minded saints.
Matthew 16:13-20
Faith is a matter of appearances as well. It is important that we understand who Jesus is, not just in our sometimes mistaken notions of who we would like him to be, but who he is by his own testimony and actions. That seems to be why Jesus challenges his disciples to read the appearances well as they walk one day in the north country of Palestine. "Who do people say I am?" he asked them.
The setting was quite appropriate for such a question, even if it does not immediately strike us that way from our first reading of the text. They were wandering in the region of Caesarea Philippi, we are told. This was a relatively new city built near the site of an ancient gathering place of spiritual significance on the slopes of Mount Hermon.
The place held more than just pleasant park-like settings. Because the waters bubbled and gurgled up from caves at the base of the mountain, area residents had long believed this to be the doorway into the underworld. Here, they thought, the spirits of the deep tried to communicate with creatures on the surface. Sometimes sulfuric gases were emitted, and these only confirmed the presence of other-worldly voices and the breath of Hades.
Over the centuries a variety of religious sects had used the place as a cultic shrine. They cut niches in the rock walls of the mountain just above the burbling caves and set up statues of gods they thought might be resident there. They even gave the place a spiritual name. They called it "The Gates of Hades." Here, they believed, was the doorway between the realm of the living and the abode of the dead. Those with keen faculties would be able to hear the whispers of the departed and the voice of the underworld gods. It was considered to be a very holy place.
But appearances can be deceiving, so Jesus comes with his disciples to test their perceptions. "Who do people say the Son of Man is?"
We ought not read too much into Jesus' self-identification here. Some think he is making a divine claim already in the question that he asks his disciples. But it is more likely that Jesus is using the term "Son of Man" in a manner similar to that found in the prophecy of Ezekiel. According to Ezekiel, when he was approached by heavenly messengers to form a link in the communication process between God and God's people, the angels called him "Son of Man." The designation was more of a representational term than anything else. In effect it was an acknowledgment that Ezekiel was truly human, but that he was being used in these settings as the conduit between the celestial and the terrestrial.
The "Son of Man," thus, was someone who had no unusual powers in himself, but who had been entrusted with a special revelation that was now supposed to be passed along to others. If Jesus used the term in this manner, he was merely asking his disciples what people thought about him, now that he had become a point of contact between them and God.
Yet Jesus knew better than anyone else that he was neither John nor Elijah, neither Jeremiah nor another of the prophets come back to life. So he put the matter squarely to those who shared his meals and his daily dusty walks "But who do you think I am?"
It was Peter, of course, who answered. The rest of the disciples don't really know what to say. Can they call Jesus a miracle worker? Should they say he speaks with a prophet's voice? Dare they admit they think he might be Messiah?
All their fears of communication faux pas are put to rest when Peter jumps too quickly into the embarrassing silence and blurts out that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. There is no satisfaction here, for the answer is more troubling than the question. As long as Jesus was merely interested in public opinion this discussion was a pleasant way to pass time and share a place in the spotlight of success. Now that Jesus has demanded clarification from them, they cannot hide behind other skirts.
What should they say? How do you live with someone in the intimacy of the kind of relationship they have had with Jesus and yet linger on the fringes of mistaken identity?
Somehow Peter had learned enough during his time as a student in Jesus' rabbinical school to get the answer right on the oral exam. Somehow he managed to sift through the files of mistaken identities and come up with the declaration that Jesus is more than a prophet, more than a religious curiosity, more than a spiritual guru superstar. Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. Jesus brought heaven to earth and earth to heaven. Jesus is the link between imminent and transcendent, and all of us need to know that if we are to get firm footing on the Rock that really matters.
Application
Even though the disciples lived and worked and walked and talked with Jesus, they did not really understand him. It is a bit like the song put it some years ago:
The greatest man I never knew lived just down the hall.
And every day we said hello but never touched at all.
He was in his paper, I was in my room.
How was I to know he thought I hung the moon?
The greatest man I never knew came home late every night.
He never had too much to say; too much was on his mind.
I never really knew him, and now it seems so sad.
Everything he gave to us took all he had.
Jesus is their familiar stranger. He is the man who lives down the hall, yet remains an enigma. The disciples know they don't really know him, yet they are willing to live with the tension as long as nobody has to name it. We are not that different from them.
One of the college courses I often teach is called "Which Jesus?" In it I take my students through Jaroslav Pelikan's book Jesus through the Centuries (Yale, 1999) and the writings of the New Testament, and reflect on the variety of ways in which people think about Jesus. Each time I teach this course I ask my students to write a paper requiring that they talk with their parents about how Mom and Dad view Jesus. Invariably I get some papers still wet with tears from students who never before knew the Jesus of their parents' religious devotions. Too long they had passed by one another snickering at the religious folly of others while never having to face the question of Jesus' identity themselves. Only when this tender moment of forced query was ordered did the light of faith break through, and relations of mystery become bonds of grace.
Alternative Application
Matthew 16:13-20. The variety of answers the disciples gave to Jesus' question "Who do people say that I am?" is interesting. "Some say John the Baptist," they told him. This was Herod's favorite and fearful line. Herod had long been fascinated with Jesus' cousin John, a wild man who lived outside the system. John's public indignation against Herod, especially after Herod stole his brother's wife, was more than the king could tolerate. Herodias, too, disliked the man. She was at least as cunning as her new husband and would not dismiss John quietly like some quack or minor irritation. Together they had John put in prison. Even there, however, the prophet refused to be silenced. Herod himself made many secret trips to see the man now that he was so close at hand. And others who claimed to be John's disciples had ongoing access to their leader through sympathetic guards. The martyr-like John in prison was almost more powerful than was the former wild man of the Jordan valley. His mystique only grew larger.
So Herodias devised a plan to push Herod into the executioner's chair. Using her daughter's beguiling dancing as a lure, she created a scenario where Herod had to buckle. At a heads-of-states banquet where Herod hosted his powerful friends, Herodias got her daughter to serve as entertainment, and then coaxed out of Herod a drunken public promise to reward her seductive whirling in any way she wished. Too late Herod realized his wife's part in the plot when it was John the Baptist's head the young woman demanded as payment (Matthew 14:1-12).
Herod followed through on the recompense, for he had made a kingly vow. But since that time he had not slept well, believing that John would come back to haunt him. One may connive and kill others in the royal household because that is the price of playing with power and living in its vortex. But John was an innocent from outside the system, and there would surely be divine retribution stalking Herod until blood was satisfied with other blood.
So when Jesus showed up looking like John, sounding like John, and running an itinerant school of prophets like John, Herod was sure John had come back to do him in. This new John was probably even more powerful than his previous incarnation -- hence the many miracles Herod had heard about -- and was probably building a broad base of support to take Herod down in a very painful and public way. Herod believed Jesus was John reborn and had great reason to fear.
Jesus wasn't John, and the disciples knew it. They had seen John and Jesus together and knew the one from the other.
There were other rumors about Jesus' identity floating around, of course. "Elijah" was a favorite among the scribes. They copied scripture and knew it well. Since every manuscript was a handwritten, labor-intensive work of faith, the scribes were committed to knowing every detail of the holy books and transcribing them accurately.
Among the many prophetic notes they painstakingly reproduced was the one left by Malachi. Five hundred years before, when some of the Jews returned from Babylonian exile, Malachi interacted with the crowds of Jerusalem and what emerged was a dialogue in which God accused, the people responded with rhetorical questions, and God preached sermons of indignation against them. One of the questions the people asked of God was why God did not return to this temple they had rebuilt. After all, when Solomon created the temple that used to stand here, God showed up at the dedication service and flooded the place with God's own Shekinah glory presence. It was obvious that God had come to live in the temple.
Malachi boomed the opinion of God that the people did not really want God in the neighborhood. God would show up when the people were really ready to have God around. As a sign of God's good intentions, intoned Malachi, God would send another messenger to prepare the way. God would raise up Elijah of old, the first of the great prophets, and he would make things ready. Elijah would appear with stern speeches and mighty miracles. The people should get ready, for when Elijah came, God would follow quickly on his heels.
That is why some people thought Jesus was Elijah. Especially among the scribes who copied the prophetic writings this idea took hold. Jesus spoke with divine authority. He performed miraculous healings, just like Elijah had done. Maybe this was the occasion for God to fulfill Malachi's prophecies. If so, Jesus was the new Elijah.
But Jesus' closest disciples knew that was another case of mistaken identity. After all, Jesus had recently spoken clearly about the matter (11:14). He said emphatically that John the Baptist was the person that Malachi had written about. John was the new Elijah.
So who then was Jesus? They would have to find a better answer. So do we.
Preaching the Psalm
Schuyler Rhodes
Psalm 124
"If it had not been the Lord who had been on our side...."
Everyone chooses allies. From the elementary school hallway to nations bristling with arms, people choose who it is that will be on their side. When the struggle comes, that ally stands firm and joins the fight. Of course, some allies are better than others. There are the allies who are great as long as there is no struggle. These are the ones who are somehow always absent when the going gets rough. There are allies who are well-intentioned but incompetent and out of step. These are the ones who wander off after the wrong enemy or get lost on the way to the battlefield. There are also allies who just aren't that strong. They get cut down in the struggle and are unable to go the distance.
There are allies, however, who do not grow weary in battle. There are allies who will not run away in fear. There are allies who are strong and capable. Our God is an ally such as this, and this psalm tells it like it is.
"If it had not been the Lord who had been on our side...."
Through life's struggles, this ally will not go away. Whether it's the front line of the battle for justice and equity, or the personal challenges of life, God stands with us. This psalm understands the power and presence of this ally in a deep way and motivates the old spiritual that uses these words.
"If it had not been the Lord who had been on our side... then where would I be tell me, where would I be...."
When enemies attack and floodwaters rage, God is on our side. When death surrounds us and we feel swallowed up in grief, God is on our side. When we are exhausted and cannot walk another step, God lifts us up because God is on our side.
This is not the song of ones who use an alliance of God to assert domination or bring others to submission. No. This is a song of liberation and hope. It is a symphony to the One who will not abandon us, no matter what.
So it is that we freely choose this holy ally as our own. We give ourselves in partnership and service; we offer ourselves in hope and joy. For "our help is in the name of the Lord, who made heaven and earth."
