Standing Under the Scriptures
March 15, 2009

Dear Fellow Voyagers,

Our readings for this Sunday are:

I Corinthians 1.18-25: Paul in ringing terms challenges the wisdom and the power of this world.

John 2.13-22: Jesus’ cleansing of the temple, in John at the beginning rather than the end of his ministry, highlights two of our themes: his contest with the religious establishment and Scripture as our framework for understanding.

Last Sunday we took our first reading (Genesis 17.1-8) to be concerned primarily with the concept of covenant. As we saw, in the passage God promised heirless Abram, now to be known as Abraham, an abundance of descendants and also a land for their possession, the land in which he was then sojourning. (Both these elements were required for the continuation of the story which the previous Sunday we saw as beginning with Abraham and extending all the way to the New Testament.) At the same time Abraham, as his counterpart, was expected to “walk before God” and “be blameless.”

We tend to think of Sinai’s as the covenant. But in the order of telling Sinai’s was preceded not only by this one but by the one following the emergence of Noah (Hebrew: Noach) from the ark, as we saw the previous Sunday. And we could see a progression here: these two covenants leading up to the one at Sinai. The Noachian covenant was unilateral, without conditions. In it God simply proclaimed to Noah and his sons that he would never again destroy the earth by flood, or presumably by other means either. For a sign it had the rainbow in the clouds. But this was to remind not people but God of it. The Abrahamic covenant had a condition, albeit implicit, as we have seen. Thus it was bilateral, with Abraham, and had as its sign circumcision. The Sinai covenant in its turn was with a whole people. It spelled out what was expected of them, as in the Ten Commandments. Further, it contained not only a promise (“I will be the Lord your God”) but also a harking back to what God had already done for them, as also a basis for their obedience. The Ten Commandments are prefaced by “I am the Lord your God who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.” Of course, the Sinai covenant is not the end of the line but itself points forward to the final one, the New Covenant in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. (The Greek word for testament in “New Testament” is diatheke, which means covenant.)

It is with the elaboration of this New Covenant, and the culmination of the story that begins with Abraham, that our second reading, Mark 8.27-38, is concerned. (We extended it back to include Peter’s Confession, so as not to lose the tension with Jesus’ rebuke of him, immediately following.) The passage begins with Jesus asking the disciples, apparently casually, “Who do men say that I am?” And they report to him, similarly casually, what they are hearing: (a revived) John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets. But then Jesus turns up the temperature, turns it up all the way, reminding us of how the divine can visit us amid seemingly ordinary circumstances. (“The Son of man is coming at an hour you do not expect.”) For next he asks, “But who do you say that I am?” And on their answer to this question everything depends, just as on our answer to it everything depends. For what we answer, and how we mean our answer, eventually determines what we think, say, and do.

This time Peter, as first among the disciples or else out of his seemingly characteristic impetuousness, takes it on himself to answer: “You are the Christ.” In Matthew’s version Jesus ratifies this answer, speaking of Peter, or Peter’ faith, as the rock upon which he will build his church and giving him the keys of the kingdom. In Mark’s, after enjoining silence about his identity (our old friend the messianic secret), Jesus proceeds to set out what is involved in being the Christ: “The Son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes [the religious establishment], and be killed---and after three days rise again.” Jesus’ concept of the Christ tallies with the picture of the Suffering Servant in second Isaiah. But Peter evidently had a different concept in mind, perhaps as a Davidic king who would restore Israel’s military and political fortunes. And all this was too much for him. So he rebukes Jesus saying, as Matthew has it, “God forbid, Lord. This shall never happen to you.” But Jesus in turn rebukes him, stingingly: “Get behind me, Satan. For you are not on the side God but of men.”

The starkness of Jesus’ judgment on Peter, and Peter’s abrupt decline from exaltation to abasement, call for comment. He was involved essentially in telling the Christ how to be Christ, indeed telling God how to be God. (Are we not involved in this, at least unconsciously, ourselves? Are we not accustomed to projecting our own ideas onto God instead of deriving them from his word in Scripture?) And Jesus had to reprove what Peter was doing, for Peter’s own sake. For if his substitution of his own concept was allowed, he would cut himself off from his only salvation. (Of course, we are liable so to cut ourselves off too.)

Actually, Jesus’ condemnation of Peter may be not quite so harsh as it seems. He may be taken to use the term Satan in its basic sense of adversary. And he goes on to say how Peter, in viewing things from a human standpoint rather than God’s is setting himself in opposition to God. (The underlying Greek term here, phronein, refers essentially to one’s mind-set.)

In the rest of the passage Jesus sets forth the conditions of discipleship, which can be seen to be determined by those of Christhood. Following him means denying oneself and taking up one’s cross, as he did. And daunting as this may seem, it turns out to be the only real option. For whoever saves his life will lose it. And gaining the whole world will avail nothing if in so doing one loses one’s life. But although it may appear otherwise, the message is one of hope rather than despair, hope for the disciple as for the Christ. For just as the Christ will rise again, so the disciple, by losing his life for the Christ’s sake and the gospel, will save it, opening the way to his eternal life.

Still we remain under judgment in our time, like that of Jesus an adulterous and sinful time. For if we are ashamed of the Son of man in it, he will be ashamed of us when he comes again in his glory.

Faithfully, Fr. Ted