September 15, 2024

Jesus asks his disciples two questions in the first verses of today’s Gospel reading: “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” I thought about having you ask each other these two questions but then it occurred to me that answering either, or both, might make us too uncomfortable. Most of us are culturally averse to revealing too much about ourselves in public forums. Moreover, we may not know what to say, what we really think about who Jesus is with enough certainty to be ready with an answer.

Now, I’ll bet none of you would answer the first question the way the disciples did: “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” In fact, you might be puzzled by that answer. After all, John the Baptist had just been executed, why would anyone think Jesus was him? The other two answers point to the apocalyptic speculation that was common in Jesus’ day, that one of the great prophets like Elijah would return to earth.

Before we get to the second question, I want to talk again about geography. We’re told that Jesus is in the region of Caesarea Philippi. It’s an interest setting for Jesus to ask these questions. Once again, he’s outside of his homeland, Galilee, where most of his public ministry had taken place up to this point.

It too was gentile territory, but more importantly perhaps, its name proclaims its significance.

Caesarea Philippi was originally built by Herod the Great, and dedicated to Herod’s patron, Caesar Augustus. Philip, his son and successor in this territory, continued his father’s practice of building Caesarea as a symbol of his connection with Roman power. Both used their spending in this city as a way of currying favor with Rome, demonstrating their commitment to Roman power. Herod the Great had built Roman temples, for example.

So Caesarea stood as a symbol of the Roman Empire, of its power and wealth. That Jesus asked precisely the question of his disciples that we hear him asking seems not to have been coincidental. In the shadow of Roman imperial power, Jesus queried his disciples about his identity.

But there’s one more thing I want to bring up. One of the curious things about the Gospel of Mark is what scholars have called “the Messianic Secret” in the Gospel. Throughout the gospel, especially in the early chapters, after a healing, for example, the gospel writer will add, “and he sternly warned them not to tell anyone. In last week’s gospel, the verse reads: “Then Jesus ordered them to tell no one; but the more he ordered them, the more zealously they proclaimed it.”

This messianic secret is something of a puzzle. Why would Jesus tell people not to tell anyone, and why would they disobey him and tell anyways? To complicate things, Peter’s response is the first time a human being would proclaim Jesus to be the gospel, and it would be the only time, until the centurion did it at his crucifixion.

This should clue us in that that Mark has some very interesting things to say about what “Messiah” is and means. Most importantly, Jesus is not obviously the Messiah—he doesn’t fit into people’s expectations of what the Messiah is and does. In fact, in many ways, Jesus is just the opposite of people’s expectations: instead of the one who conquers and defeats Rome, his Messiah-ship becomes apparent as he dies on the cross. Mark writes that: “Now when the centurion, who stood facing him, saw that in this way he breathed his last, he said, ‘Truly this man was God’s Son’!”

Even as Messiah-ship in Mark challenges expectations, so too does the meaning of what it means to confess Jesus as the Messiah, to follow him. With this gospel reading we arrive at the heart of what Mark wants his readers to understand about the nature of the commitment they are called to: “f any want to become my followers, 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.”

These are hard words. And we have sanitized them, spiritualized them over the centuries, so that taking up one’s cross has become little more than a personal struggle against some difficulty in life—whether it be a personal relationship, a health problem, some other challenge that affects us. But for Jesus and his followers, to take up one’s cross was not just personal or spiritual, it was real.

Remember that crucifixion was the form of capital punishment reserved by Rome for its most notorious criminals and especially for rebels and revolutionaries. It was a brutal form of execution, execution by torture, if you will. And the upright beams on which people were crucified were on permanent display outside of cities, Rome, and Jerusalem, the bodies of the crucified left to rot and to be eaten by scavenger birds, a stark reminder to passers-by of the consequences of resisting Rome.

“Taking up the cross” came to have another meaning, one I’m reminded of every time I drive up Monroe St. and see “Crusaders” emblazoned on Edgewood High School’s athletic field. The crusaders took up the cross, sewed crosses on their clothing as they proceeded through Europe in their effort to rid the Holy Land of its Muslim inhabitants. But the first victims of the crusades were not Muslims in far-off Palestine, but the Jewish communities of the Rhineland cities of Worms, Mainz, and Speyer. We can see echoes of that in events much closer to us in time and space, in Charlottesville a few years ago, in the rise of Christian Nationalism, in the fascism that is running rampant around us today, even in the attacks on Haitians that are taking place, drawing on ancient tropes that were used against Jews and other religious and ethnic minorities across the centuries.

 I wonder what our Jewish and Muslim neighbors think when they see that word emblazoned in the endzone. Do they even bother thinking about? So accustomed they are to micro-aggressions of this sort on a daily basis?

But we should be able to see how such imagery and symbolism is weaponized in our contemporary culture, drawing on deep rivers of hatred and history that have brought us to this point in our national and global life. It’s not just the US of course. Recent victories for the far-right party in the German states of Saxony and Thuringia are all too reminiscent of the events of less than a century ago: of hatred and holocaust.

Coincidentally, yesterday was the Feast of the Holy Crosss—the commemoration of the legend that St. Helena, the Emperor Constantine’s mother, discovered the true cross in Jerusalem. One of the Episcopal Bishops I follow on social media posted a link to his reflection for the day. He had titled it “In this sign, I will conquer”—an allusion to another legend, that of Constantine himself who had a vision before a battle, converted to Christianity, and subsequently won the victory, became emperor, and legalized Christianity. Among his early acts was to outlaw crucifixion as a form of capital punishment.

I wonder sometimes given the history, and its weaponization in contemporary discourse, I wonder whether the cross is salvageable as a symbol of Christianity. Can it be life-giving? Can it be a symbol of Christ’s love for the world when it has been used in so many evil and violent ways?

Can we embrace the cross as a symbol of our identity and self-giving love when others see it differently and have used it, or experienced it, as a symbol of division and hate? Can we take up the cross, now weighing ever more heavily because of that history and carry it to Calvary, with Jesus in love, humility, and service?