Who Do We Say That We Are?

I can still see the test question as I sat in Professor John Koenig’s New Testament final exam: The Gospel of Mark: Masterpiece or a Mess? Choose one and defend your choice with the text. To this day I stand by my choice: Masterpiece. Hands down. Despite the peculiarities of the endless use of “kai” – Greek for“and” – and the peculiar narrative device some call “The Messianic Secret” – the fact that everyone and every demon knows exactly who Jesus is except for the seemingly hapless disciples are always depicted as scratching their heads. Like the time after he fed the 5,000 with three loaves, and then the 4,000 with seven loaves, and then they all get in a boat to go “to the other side,” and the text suddenly reads, “Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread.” Says Jesus, “Do you still not understand?”

I had noticed, even back then, without being told, that the unknown author of Mark has a unique “sandwich” technique to his narrative. Like the time Jesus is off to heal the daughter of a very important man in the community, which narrative is “interrupted” by the woman who fights through the crowd as he is going to the man’s house. She has been dealing with a flow of blood that would not stop for 12 years (the number of disciples, the number of tribes of Israel, the age, we learn later, of the dying girl). She reaches just to touch the hem of his garment when it happens: Jesus feels the power going out of him, she feels as if she has been struck by lightening and is healed. They exchange glances and perhaps a few words. Then it is on to the very important man’s house to restore life to the girl who has been presumed to be dead.

For years, for decades, those arbiters of what we hear read in church had bracketed out the story of the woman with the flow of blood to make the narrative about the very important man and his daughter smoother, more continuous. As if to say, “What sloppy narrative technique by Mark to insert this story of a poor, unclean woman!” into this story about this very important man and his daughter. Revisions to the Sunday Lectionary have now restored her story to its rightful place  because in the narrative sandwich, hers is THE STORY. Mark makes it the central story. She is a woman of great hope and faith against all odds. She does not ask for much. In fact, she asks for nothing but simply touches the hem of his garment. Her story is the central story of this part of Mark’s narrative. I think of all our prayers and demands when we pray to Jesus and I try to remember her story, asking nothing for herself. She is like that other woman for whom just the crumbs under the table are enough. When we pray, how much is enough?

Now, in chapter eight (8:27-38), dead center in a gospel that begins with the answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” And a gospel that ends with women fleeing an empty tomb telling no one what they saw out of fear and trembling. That is the macro sandwich if you will. For those of us who may be lucky enough to be utterly unlike the disciples and have been paying attention to Mark’s narrative arc, when you get to the end of Mark’s story, and the women are too frightened to say anything – or at the very least Mark gives us nothing but an empty tomb – I believe we are meant to have the question at the center of Mark’s story ringing in our ears: Who do you say that I am? Mark leaves it for us to answer for ourselves.

The brilliant thing of it is, that Mark’s answer is the very first sentence in the whole story: “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ/Messiah, the son of God.” This is not the way whodunits are meant to work. Who besides Law and Order Criminal Intent tells you whodunit at the beginning. Yet, there is a power in how Mark leaves it at the end. The listener, the reader, is left like Peter and the disciples in chapter eight to answer for his or herself the question that stands at the very center of the Mark-Sandwich: Who do you say that I am? You have heard all the evidence. You have heard what the demons and the Scribes and the Pharisees and Pilate and all the others have had to say. Now it is up to you. Who do you say that I am? Which question in the end is really, “Who am I? Who are we?” Socrates would have been very proud of Mark’s narrative genius! Know thyself, indeed!

We do well to note how tricky answering this fundamental question really is when we see Peter answer correctly, “You are the Christ – the Anointed, the Messiah.” Jesus orders the disciples to tell no one Odd, isn’t it? Until we realize that as Jesus outlines what being the Christ really means: he will undergo great suffering, be rejected by the scribes, the chief priests and the elders, and killed, and then rise again on the third day. Then Peter objects.

This is not what Peter expected at all. People were looking for a king or warrior messiah to rid Israel of the Roman Military Occupation. Or, at least a judge who would banish the enemies forever. Not a suffering messiah who gets crucified on a Roman cross. Just when Peter and we think we know who Jesus is, Jesus glances at us and Peter and declares, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are putting your mind on human things and not on divine things.” Then to double down on this he says to all who are within hearing distance, “If you want to become one of my followers, deny yourself, pick up your cross, and follow me!”

Get behind me, Satan! We misunderstand if we think it applies only to Peter. Peter is a stand-in for all of us who claim to be followers of Jesus – those who walk in his way. He looks at all of us and is saying, do not object, do not stand in my way – get behind me and follow in my way. Which is to say, to join him in his radical mission of tikkun olam. To rescue, heal and repair the world will mean to challenge and even overthrow many human views and values that hold us captive to Satan and to the demonic in this world. Besides, had we read the first verse of the entire gospel, we would know that Jesus does not need our protection from all that he says is going to happen, and does – it is we who need him and his protection.

A great misunderstanding in all of this, and the Church has encouraged such thinking, is that we think we need to pick up His cross. Whereas he says you are to pick up “your cross.” Much damage has been done when the Church urges us to share in his sufferings when in fact all four gospels declare that he comes to share in ours. He is with us in our sufferings. This is the good news. Which is why the question, “Who do you say that I am?” is so important for us each to ponder, because our answer to his question tells us everything we need to know about ourselves.

I am forever grateful to a young girl named Eleanor for helping me to grasp that my cross, the cross we are asked to pick up and embrace, is the cross that is traced on our forehead in Holy Baptism sealing us and marking us as Christ’s own forever. Eleanor, who was a young girl when baptized, would ask me several times, “Can you still see the cross on myforehead?” Finally, it struck me, like a 2x4 right between the eyes: that is the question for all of us. Can the people we meet still see the cross on our foreheads that says we will love our neighbor as ourselves, and seek justice and peace for all people, while respecting the dignity of every human being? Will we get behind Jesus and join in his radical challenge and overthrow of human views and values that hold us captive to the demonic in this world so that we can get on with the work he calls us to do: to repair and heal a broken and sinful world? Who do we say that we are?