After the last two Sundays’ emphasis on the imperatives of not exchanging God’s commandments for human traditions, and on being all ears to God’s word and open to praise and proclaim Him, Jesus directs attention to the real significance of the awaited Messiah and challenges us to think as God does (Mark 8:27-35).
The anointed suffering one
The question of the identity of Jesus was inevitable, as He went about teaching, healing and exorcising. The people and Jesus’ disciples themselves were filled with speculations, ideas that were right but not enough. In the spirit particularly of John the Baptizer and Elijah, He was ushering in the messianic age, even as He denounced the failures of the covenant relationship with God and urged the return to the ways of God. Peter took a step farther: Jesus is no less the awaited Messiah, the Anointed One of God. True, but a title that in the popular mind has assumed too restricted a meaning about might and glory, and so Jesus sternly ordered His disciples not to go talking about it.
Jesus elaborated on the true meaning of his messiahship. Its inner meaning is “Son of Man,” the enigmatic figure who lives in solidarity with God and others. It is the new humanity Jesus is bringing about from his own life. Admittedly something the religious elite with their own values could not welcome. In fact, they would try to suppress this new way of being human and make it suffer and kill it. But God’s power would be there to resurrect it—the measure of “three days” indicating too the limit of any power contrary to God. Suffering, death and resurrection put the messiahship of Jesus in its proper perspective. This is now the whole truth, and Jesus said “all this openly”—different from the worldly speculations that are better not shared.
Thinking of the things of God
Peter clearly had something different in mind when he spoke of Jesus as the Messiah—things that have to do with triumph and power in glory, as popularly fantasized. He rebuked Jesus. And Jesus literally turned and moved into the deeper level of consciousness and poured it on His followers. He rebuked back Peter and asserted His role, demanding that Peter return to following Him: “Get behind me.” And He made clear that rejecting the suffering Son of Man meaning of Messiah is tantamount to joining Satan, who subverts God’s design. The reason: Peter’s mind is wrongly set, oriented on human things, not on divine things.
The things of God are faith (Mark 2:5), doing good (3:1-5), courage (7:28), losing one’s life for the Good News (8:35), being least and being servant (9:35; 10:43). Human things are lack of faith (4:40), fear (5:36), saving one’s life (8:35), being great and lording it over people (9:35; 10:42). There is evident need to clear up what discipleship is and is not about. It is focusing oneself on what is most valuable, inspired by Jesus. Being concentrated, say, on saving one’s status and position in the world is inevitably to lose a larger life, to exclude other things more valuable. The larger, more valuable life for all is communion with God, our humanity in the embrace of divine love.
Alálaong bagá, honestly assessing where our mind dwells, on the things of God or the things of humans, we would probably find ourselves shoulder to shoulder with Peter. Our entrenched way of thinking human things can be frustrated with Jesus, because the Son of Man initiating us into the new humanity disappoints our expectations of being rich, respected, enjoying things we dream of, lording it over others, even as we fantasize about being spared from becoming sick, old and dying. Jesus points a radically different way to fulfilment to all who follow him: God’s way that seems to be the reverse of ours, denying ourselves and carrying our cross: those who lose their lives save them; the seed must die before it can bear fruit; Jesus will be killed but raised from the dead.
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