Who Do You Say I AM

Who Do You Say I AM!

Confession of St. Peter (01-20-08)

Rev. Steven D. Spencer – Pastor Messiah Lutheran Church

Mark 8:27-35

27 And Jesus went out, along with His disciples, to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them, "Who do people say that I am?" 28 And they told Him, saying, "John the Baptist; and others say Elijah; but others, one of the prophets." 29 And He continued by questioning them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered and said to Him, "Thou art the Christ." 30 And He warned them to tell no one about Him. 31 And He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 And He was stating the matter plainly. And Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. 33 But turning around and seeing His disciples, He rebuked Peter, and said, "Get behind Me, Satan; for you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's." 34 And He summoned the multitude with His disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. 35 "For whoever wishes to save his life shall lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel's shall save it.

Jesus asks His disciples, "Who do you say I am?" In St. Mark’s Gospel we hear Peter answering, "You are the Christ!" That’s all of it. Not, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God," as we have it in Matthew. Just, "You are the Christ." Most of us are familiar with Peter’s famous confession, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." So why then does Mark only record Peter saying, "You are the Christ?" Why doesn’t he give us the rest of it? Did Peter say, "Son of the living God," or didn’t He? Does Scripture contradict itself?

No, Scripture definitely doesn’t contradict itself. But there’s a reason that God gives us different accounts of the life of Christ through the four gospels. If we look at a building form only one side, we don’t really have a very good idea of what it looks like, or how it is built. But if we walk around it, and look at it from four different angles, we have a much better idea of how that building looks and its function. And so it is with the Gospels. Because Scripture lets us look at the life of Christ from four angles, we have a much clearer picture of who Jesus is and what He’s truly came to do.

At the very beginning of Mark’s Gospel of Christ's life, he tells us what angle he’s going to give. Mark 1:1: "The beginning of the gospel about Jesus Christ, the Son of God." Mark begins with Jesus Christ, Son of God. So when Matthew’s Gospel tells us that Peter says: Jesus was the Son of the living God, but Mark skips it, we ought to know that this is no accident. Mark did it on purpose. He’s trying to tell us something. More to the point, the Holy Spirit is telling us something through the omission of these words in Marks Gospel.

All through the Gospel of St. Mark, no human being ever calls Jesus the Son of God. Oh, the demons catch on right away, but the people didn’t. Not until Jesus is dead on the cross. Only then does someone . . . a Roman centurion in fact . . . only then does a human being finally call Jesus the Son of God. Yes, we know from Matthew that Peter called Jesus the Son of God. Yes, we know that it was God the Father who had blessed Peter by revealing this to him. But Peter still didn’t really get it. He had his own ideas about the Christ, and He wanted Jesus to fit those ideas.

Peter understood the person of Christ, but he didn’t understand His work. Jesus getting crucified wasn’t the work Peter dreamed of Jesus doing. Peter even rebukes Jesus for even considering such an idea and for this Jesus rebukes Peter, “Get behind me Satan”. Peter’s Christ and the real Christ meet head on. Our Lord knew that Peter’s Christ was not the Christ who would die on the cross. Peter’s Christ was not the one who could save Peter and the world from his sin. For the sake of Peter’s salvation, he couldn’t be allowed to continue believing in his own ideas about Christ. Unless you’re talking of "Son of God" on the cross (point to the processional cross), you’re not really talking "Son of God" at all.

It’s a funny thing. After all this time, there are still an awful lot of people around who believe in Peter’s Christ. One version of that goes something like this: If you just have enough faith, God will give you whatever you ask Him for. Just make sure you pray without doubting. Do you want a Rolls Royce? Pray for it. Clear a space in your garage for it. Promise to take your friends for rides in it. Pray for it, and then be, and act, confident that you will get it, and you will. The same thing goes for sickness. Do you know someone who has a terrible disease? If you really have faith, and you pray hard enough and with confidence, God will answer your prayer, and cure them. And by the way, if the cure doesn’t come, well, then not only do you have to grieve the sickness or the death of a loved one, but now you have to fret that your faith isn’t genuine as well! What a horrible, faith destroying doctrine that is!

This, by the way, is called that the "health and wealth" gospel. Just name it, and claim it. It’s nothing new; it’s the religion of the early St. Peter’s. The Puritans believed a more subtle form of this religion, and it is still believed by a good many Americans. They thought that if you were righteous, God would bless you with prosperity. If you were sinful, God would punish you with poverty. So you could pretty much tell where a person stood with God by how well off they were. That’s where the so-called “Puritan work ethic” came from: some of those folks worked awfully hard to make enough money to assure themselves that God loved them! It in fact, it gave Christians a reason to discriminate against the poor and to favor the rich. You see, that's a false gospel. The real Christ, Jesus, never promised you wealth. Instead, He came and lived among us as one of the poorest of the poor. He never promised you would get out of suffering and death by believing in Him. Instead, He suffered and died just like we do.

Another form of this false religion is what Lutherans have traditionally called Chiliasm (kill-i-asm). It’s more popular name is Millennialism. People who believe this say that when Christ comes back, He’s not going to take us to heaven right away. In fact, He’s going to personally take political control of this world, and set up a kingdom that will last a thousand years. But this isn’t the real Christ. This is Peter’s Christ. That’s exactly what Peter wanted: A Christ who would throw out the Romans and re-establish the kingdom of Israel. Pontius Pilate was concerned about Jesus’ political ambitions too. But Jesus told Pilate that His kingdom was not of this world. That very same day, Jesus was killed. And those kinds of people are still all over the world today, people who try to use the Christian faith to advance some worldly political agenda and the idea of creating a utopia on earth.

Jesus was not Peter’s Christ. Jesus was the real Christ. Jesus began His journey to the cross when He was Baptized; when God the Father declared, "This is my beloved Son." He finished that journey when He took all of the sin of the world, all of your sin, all of my sin, upon Himself, and took it to the cross and there died with it. And there (T), someone finally got it. There, that centurion recognized the real Christ, the Son of God, the Christ who came to die, the one that came to save. Christ didn’t come to beat the Romans at their game of force. Instead, He invited them, and invited us, to receive the gift of salvation.

As Christ identified Himself with our sinfulness and started down the road to the cross by being Baptized, so we are Baptized into Christ’s death. We are made co-heirs with Christ, the real Christ. There’s an awful lot that this does not guarantee. One of our couples are expecting a child. My wife and I have been blessed with two. I have a pretty good idea of the dreams that parents have for their children. We hope they will be healthy. We hope they will do well in school. We hope the suffering in their lives will be held to a minimum. We hope that when they grow up they’ll make something of themselves, get married, and have children of their own. We hope they make it to their 20th birthday. We saw one of our members who didn’t celebrate her 20^th birthday of earthly life in this world. We know painfully well that life comes with no such guarantees. Baptism doesn’t guarantee these things either.

There is one thing that Baptism does guarantee to all who receive it. It guarantees that Jesus, the real Christ, is our Savior. The very God of heaven and earth who became a man has borne our grief. He was poor, He never got married, He never had children. He knew what it was like to be hated, He suffered, He died. He knows what it’s like to live in the real world. He is the friend of sinners, real sinners, like us. He lived the perfect life that we sinners could not, and died to take our sins away. Our sins are gone. That’s the guarantee that we who believe in the real Christ, and are Baptized, have been given.

Our text says that Christ also explained that after He died, on the third day, He would rise again. What Peter’s ears apparently could not hear, let us hear loud and clear: Our Lord rose again, victorious over death! All of us who were buried with Christ in Baptism are raised to new life here on earth, and we shall also be raised to everlasting life with Him in heaven.

This is a wonderful promise. It seemingly doesn’t do much to change the world we live in. It doesn’t pay the bills or put the food on the table. It doesn’t give us disease free, worry free living. These crosses of suffering we must still take up and carry in this world. We don’t rebel against that; we don’t go looking for another lord who seems to work better for us, who gives us more breaks, who does a better job of meeting whatever we sinfully perceive our “felt needs” to be. By faith, we take from the Lord we have been given. But with Him, we receive also the promises of forgiveness, salvation, and everlasting life. As we carry on with our daily lives, we take up our cross and follow Him. And as our tickers run down, and eventually even run out, we who are the redeemed of the Lord can even receive that as a gift, and look forward to the life of the world without that is without end, without trials, without temptations, without the challenges of the flesh, which will be ours when that day comes.

Peter learned. It took some heartache. It took being rebuked. It took flunking his own personal glory test when he denied the Lord three times. And it took watching all of his misconceptions about Christ die with Him on the cross. But Jesus changed Peter. He learned to know his Lord as the Son of God, as the one who was always with him, even in the hard spots. According to tradition, Peter quite literally took up a cross and followed this real Christ that he had come to know. Peter considered himself unworthy to die in the same way as our Lord, so the Romans honored his final request, and crucified him upside down. So even as Peter came to know the real Christ, may God grant you His Holy Spirit that you might know Him in the same way: Not as the Christ who gets you out of your suffering, but as the One who is with you right in the thick of it, the One who will see you through all that this life throws at you, and the One who will see you safely into the eternal mansions that He has prepared for you, to the glory of God the Father. For you know who He is, Jesus the Christ, your risen Lord and Savior. In Jesus name, Amen and Amen!