Who is Jesus?

Mark 8:27-38

September 17, 2006

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

Jesus is very big business these days. All a publisher or filmmaker has to do is ask “Who do people say that Jesus is?” and the profits come pouring in. From Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ to The Da Vinci Code and the hundreds of books spinning off in every direction from that one; from the Left Behind books envisioning Jesus coming anytime now as righteous flaming judge to Marcus Borg and the Jesus Seminar trying to cut out what they see as accrued traditions to get to the “real” Jesus, everybody’s got an opinion. I even found a website that summed it up nicely by the title, “Who is Jesus? Legend, Lunatic, Liar or Lord?” If Jesus came today and asked the question “Who do people say that I am,” he would need several days and strong coffee to deal with all the answers thrown at him.

A little over a year ago I was assigned to a committee at the UCC General Synod dealing with one of the resolutions that got much less publicity than the one in support of same gender marriage. The resolution sought the Synod’s affirmation that “Jesus is Lord.” Fifty plus people sat in a committee room re-creating in many ways that day near Cesarea Philippi with Jesus, the disciples and the crowd. Some people spoke with passion about how using the word “Lord” was problematic: one man shared with great emotion how the word Lord reminded him of the term “Master” that Africans taken in slavery were required to use of all white men. Because of that, he told us, “Lord” was a word he could not use for Jesus. Other folk told of how important it was to them to acknowledge Jesus as Lord because of its royal connotations, implying Jesus ruling in their lives. They wanted to proclaim that Jesus rules and is the only one to whom they owe allegiance. They urgently wanted the UCC, which already affirms Jesus as Lord and Savior in our constitution and worship books, to reaffirm this as central doctrine.

In the end, I and four other people (all of us imagining headlines that said, “UCC supports gay marriage and denies lordship of Jesus”) crafted this statement: “Therefore be it resolved that the 25^th General Synod of the United Church of Christ….celebrates and reaffirms our Church’s faith in Jesus Christ, the Head of the Church, whose true humanity and divinity are declared in our Constitution, our liturgies, our hymnals and our ecumenical commitments.”

What that experience taught me is that people are still fighting over the answer to Jesus’ question “Who do people say that I am?” And that people use affirmation of who they say Jesus is very often to give legitimacy to their own political or social agenda. A very funny song by one of my favorite groups, The Austin Lounge Lizards, came to mind often during that meeting. The refrain of the song goes, “Jesus loves me but he can’t stand you.” I also had cause to remember that elsewhere in the gospels, Jesus is recorded as having said, “Not everyone who calls me, ‘Lord, Lord!’ will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

And lots of very faithful people at Synod kept saying, “what difference does it make what we call Jesus, as long as we do what he said we should be doing!” One of my friends suggested we respond to this resolution by getting Nike T-shirts that said, “Just do it.” In fact, we added an ending to that Synod resolution that reads like this, “Be it finally resolved that the 25^th General Synod encourages all who proclaim the sovereignty of Jesus in their words to discern the implications of that proclamation for the way they live their lives.” Our long-winded way of saying, “Just do it!”

So what difference does it make what we call Jesus? Why did Jesus ask that question in the first place? Well, it does make a difference, and Peter found out the hard way what kind of difference it makes. You see when Jesus asked the disciples who they said he was, Peter got it right! He said Jesus was Messiah, the Christ, the Savior! And then Jesus told him to shut up! What’s that all about? Shouldn’t the disciples have shouted it from the mountaintops? Why ask the question if the right answer isn’t rewarded?

Maybe it’s because Jesus saw those stars in Peter’s eyes when he said those words. Messiah! Peter said, and the vision of a great throne with twelve chairs set up close by for the Friends of Messiah filled his eyes. Triumph and glory filled his head.

Jesus stopped Peter because that’s not what Messiah meant for Jesus, and he knew that Peter didn’t get that yet. Actually I worry about the word “Lord” for the same reason, although you will have experienced me using it. I like to call Jesus Lord because it holds me accountable for my actions to think of Jesus as the one who rules me, and because I am so grateful that there is a ruler who is all that every earthly ruler I have ever experienced or read about in history books is not. But Lord also holds images of pomp and circumstance, men in bad wigs and fancy clothes.

Jesus says, no. That’s not who I am, no matter what people say. This is who I am. I am the one who suffers.

Listen again. I am the one who suffers. After two thousand years we still haven’t come up with a handy title to go with that reality. Lord, Prophet, Teacher, Healer, Savior, Bread, Shepherd, yes, to all of them, and Jesus used some of them to refer to himself. But Sufferer is not one that has made it regularly into our worship and prayer language.

And it’s not just “sufferer,” but “one who suffers for and with others.” Bearing a cross does not mean putting up with a wayward child or a serious illness, as often popular culture calls those things, “our cross to bear.” Bearing a cross means suffering for others. For whom would Jesus suffer? Why for those twelve guys with stars in their eyes. For Judas who took the money and betrayed Jesus. For the disciples who ran away when the going got tough for Jesus. For dear Peter, who got amnesia around a courtyard fire and told the folk there he did not know the one whom he had proclaimed as Messiah. Jesus didn’t just suffer for the nice folk, the righteous folk, those who had no need of healing or saving. Jesus suffered for the women who wept at the bottom of the cross and for the thieves on either side of him and for the Roman soldiers gambling over his garments and for the children he had bounced on his knees and for the lepers and the prostitutes and tax collectors. Jesus suffered to bring justice and healing and life, to reconcile us all with the God who will not abandon us.

So when Jesus makes as clear as he can at that point in time to Peter that Jesus’ identity is that of one who suffers, he also makes it clear to the disciples and the others who followed him like groupies, waiting on his every word, that if they really wanted to follow him, they also needed to be willing to suffer for and with others. So the “just do it” isn’t only about feeding and clothing those who need it, though it is about that. It’s not just about healing the sick or calling sinners to turn their lives around, though it is about that. It isn’t just about speaking truth to power and standing up for the powerless, though it is about that. It’s about being ready to suffer for the people for whom Jesus suffered. It’s about suffering together with them and with each other, and in that suffering, finding occasion for new visions and new understandings of just who God is, beyond all the labels over which we wrangle endlessly.

The great theologian Henri Nouwen once reminded us that Jesus comes “not after all our misery has passed, but in the middle of it, not in another place, but right here where we are standing.” He tells a story from Jewish tradition of a rabbi speaking to the prophet Elijah and asking when the Messiah will come. Elijah tells the rabbi to ask the Messiah. “Where is he?” the rabbi asks. Elijah says, “Sitting at the gates of the city.” “But how shall I know him?” “He is sitting among the poor, covered with wounds. The others unbind all their wounds at the same time and then bind them up again. But the Messiah unbinds one at a time and binds it up again, saying, ‘Perhaps I shall be needed: if so I must always be ready so as not to delay for a moment.’” (The Wounded Healer, p. 82).

The One Who Suffers With and For the Suffering, the Sinner, the Saint calls to us all today, “Who do you say that I am?” Amen.