He sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
-Matthew 16:13-20
As I pondered this admonition, I was reading some ancient
Zen poetry on the beach. I ran across this by the real or imagined Lao Tzu who
begins his opus, the Dao De Jing like this:
“Dao defined is not the constant
Dao;
No name names the Eternal Name.
The un-named is the origin of
heaven and earth.
Named it is the Mother of Ten
Thousand Things!”
It has been suggested that although the Greek word for “sin” in the New Testament is borrowed from the ancient world of archery, and means “to miss the mark,” “to miss the target,” that too easily makes us think it is all about behavior, rules, ethics, a quantified way of being – such as the Ten Commandments, which many in the historic Jewish community call The Ten Suggestions!
Rather, the mark that is most often being missed, and appears to be the singular concern of one Jesus of Nazareth in Galilee, which may be summed up in his words: we are to love God with all our mind, heart and all our love, and to love our neighbors as ourselves. Sometime later he adds, “in your spare time, love your enemies and pray for those who hate you – and try to be perfect as God is perfect.”
When he asks his disciples who people think he is, they name all the things he is not: he is not John the Baptist; he is not one of the prophets; he is not Elijah. Even when Simon Peter, he who stepped out of the boat, walked on the water toward Jesus, lost his faith and his nerve and begin to sink beneath the surf; even when Peter says, “You are the Christos,” which means anointed, which is “messiah” or “maschiach,” in Hebrew, Jesus tells them all not to say this to anyone. Of course this is tantamount to saying, “I know you are all going to blab this around town even though I am telling you not to. This will cause much trouble for us all.” And those of us who know the rest of the story know very well, that is exactly what happens.
It's as if Jesus knew what Lao T’zu had warned some four hundred years or so prior to this little pow-wow outside of a town called Caesaria – which, by its very name, itself foreshadows the dangers that lie ahead once that which cannot be named is named. Almost immediately, after his prohibition not to say a thing, the cat is out of the bag, and all sorts of characters, most especially Caesar’s Empire of Brutality and Violence, wants him dead and buried.
The New Revised Standard Version Bible and the BCP 1979 have changed all references to “Christos,” or “Christ,” to “messiah,” and the mischief persists – as if Jesus, God or the Dao can somehow or other in any way be the sole possession of any single religion, world view or ideology without causing endless problems – problems which Jesus means to avoid at all costs.
The change in our Bibles and our Prayer Book flies in the face of his prohibition. It causes similar kinds of mischief as it did way back then. Back then people expected very specific kinds of messiahs: a warrior to drive out the Romans; a judge to sort out the good from the bad; an apocalyptic character to end the current age and begin the world all over again, to name but a few.
Then there is the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Since Jesus fits no prior notion of what a messiah, God’s anointed, is to be like, it is difficult, if not impossible, for the Jewish world to agree that he is. The Church’s response to this is, “Well, he is a different kind of Messiah.” While many, if not most Jews, who are waiting for messiah to come, say, “When messiah comes, and it turns out to be Jesus, we will gladly get on board!” Others have said, “Well, the world looks about the same before and after Jesus, so how could he be The Messiah?”
Jesus appears to have some idea that if this notion of Peter’s gets out, it will take all the focus off of his primary program: to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves. And we know his definition of “neighbor” knows no bounds, no limits. As the familiar hymn says it, “All are neighbors for us and you.”
That is, Jesus, who does not want to be identified as “messiah,” similarly, does not want to divide people up into good vs bad, healthy vs sick, abled vs disabled, native vs foreigner, straight vs LGBTQ+, male vs female, poor vs rich, us vs them. It is the very naming, categorizing, and labeling of others that causes us to become fearful and afraid of what we might call, for lack of a better name, “otherness.” Fear of “otherness” is our problem, not the other persons problem. Fear of “otherness” is the Mother of Ten Thousand Thousand problems in this world.
All of which can change if, as we say in our Baptismal Covenant, we vow to “seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbor as ourself.” It’s always the pesky word “all” that trips us up. Not most, not many, most certainly not a few, but “all persons.”
How might we learn to seek, see and serve the Christ, the Jesus, the God, the Dao that is in everyone and everything? It has been suggested that we give up any and all notions that “I am a self.” When we allow ourselves to drop whatever mask, whatever notions, that somehow I am not like everybody else, we might just begin to see, seek and serve the Christos in others as we would like to be seen, sought and served by others. It’s worth a try.
As Mike Royko, a Chicago Daily News columnist I grew up
reading, often put it, “I may be wrong, but I doubt it!”
