James 3.1-12; Mark 8.27-end
‘You are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
When he has not been making the outlandish suggestion in presidential debates that migrants have been eating peoples’ pet dogs and cats, Donald Trump recently said in an interview that the only explanation for how he survived the recent assassination attempt on his life is God. God saved Trump because God loves America and wants to bring it back to greatness, so claimed “the Donald”.
But if that is how God works in the world, why did he not spare the victims of the latest school shooting in Apalachee, Georgia? Which goes to show that such superhero
ideas about God soon run into all kinds of moral and logical problems. Perhaps Donald Trump ought to have heeded the advice in our first reading before so confidently pronouncing upon the ways of God.
Thankfully, the Christian tradition has never officially entertained a superhero idea of God. Instead, it has adopted an attitude of humility, acknowledging the weakness of our intelligence, which is dazzled by even the most clear and intelligible things, like the owl is dazzled by the light of the sun. Christian thinkers have emphasised the ways in which God’s action in the world is always surprising and beyond our usual patterns of thought. For example, the great theologian of the sixth and seventh centuries, Maximus the Confessor, said, ‘By taking flesh God makes himself understood only by appearing still more incomprehensible. Even when manifest he is always the stranger.’
Jesus certainly appears to be acting quite strangely in the gospel today. When the disciples realize that he is not just another prophet, as the crowds had supposed, but the Messiah, the King of Israel, he sternly orders them not to tell anyone.
This is not the only instance of Jesus acting in this strangely secretive manner in Mark’s gospel: the demons know who he is, but Jesus silences them, so that they can’t tell anyone; he heals many people but orders them not to tell anyone about his healing power; his fame spreads throughout the land, but he constantly tries to escape from the crowds; he teaches in cryptic parables in public, but only reveals the secrets of the Kingdom to a very few in private. If Jesus were a parish priest in the Church of England, his bishop or archdeacon would probably send him on a leadership and management training course so that he could be more “effective”.
Jesus’ secrecy is especially strange if we cast our minds back to the beginning of Mark’s gospel. There we have the big fanfare, the announcement of the Good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. This is shortly followed by the arrival of John the Baptist crying out in the wilderness, preparing the way of the Lord. And then we have the first words of Jesus announcing that the time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is at hand and has come near.
This is pretty subversive political rhetoric. This is the first-century equivalent of announcing a new government, a regime change. So why the secrecy in today’s Gospel reading? Peter has made a correct confession that Jesus is the King. Why is he then ordered to keep it to himself? Surely the idea is that as many as possible discover this truth about Jesus.
But we have our minds set on human things and not divine things.
The truth is that Jesus is so secretive about his identity and his power because who he is, and what it means for him to be King, is so open to misinterpretation.
It is too easy for us to project onto Jesus our ideas of human power. It is all too easy, like the Roman soldiers at Golgotha, to dress up Jesus in the garments of our own ideologies and fantasies about power.
Yes, Jesus is the Messiah provocatively announced at the beginning of Mark’s gospel. But what it means for Jesus to be King is surprising and puzzling, because God is not a hugely inflated version of how we would run the world if we had the chance.
Peter has the right answer, but he has it for the wrong reasons. When Jesus immediately tells Peter that being the Messiah means that he will suffer, be rejected, and die, Peter cannot understand this. This is not what Kings do. This is not what God is like.
But Peter has his mind on human things, and not divine things.
Jesus has tried to teach his disciples what God’s kingdom is like in his parables. He has tried to teach them that God’s action in the world is not an external imposition of power from without. Not some kind of magical intervention that compels us into submission.
He has told them that God’s characteristic action is to work from within the heart of our being. He constantly turns to natural processes, like the steady growth of seed, to emphasise that God works slowly, and from within the very depths of our existence. The work of God invites us through its beauty and goodness, it does not compel us by some impressive display of sovereign power.
But our minds are routinely set not on such divine things, but on human things. And so, the secret remains hidden.
But the secret will come out, and we are given a hint of it in today’s Gospel in Jesus’ prediction of his passion and death.
The only moment in Mark’s gospel when Jesus speaks clearly and unambiguously to his own people about his identity is at his trial before the High Priest. He is asked directly, ‘Are you the anointed? Are you the Son of God?’ Jesus replies, ‘I am.’ And the secret is finally unveiled.
What Jesus has to say about himself could not have been spoken publicly until now. It is only when he is isolated, alone and stripped of everything, as arbitrary human power closes in around him, that he identifies himself with the words ‘I am’ to the High Priest. The divine name that God revealed to Moses. This is the God whose power is manifested only when all worldly and human appearances of power and success are stripped away.
This is the great divine paradox. God’s glory and power is not like that of worldly kings who laud it over their subjects. Divine glory is not the exercise of brute power. It is instead self-outpouring, self-giving, crucified love. In Christ’s death on the cross we see what God’s power truly looks like, as Jesus gives his life and absorbs death into his own person, so that he might destroy it and open to us the gates of eternal life.
It is this divine paradox that turns human thoughts upside down – if you want to save your life, lose it. If you want to be a follower of Jesus, the Messiah, then pick up your cross and follow him. Because if we want to live in his kingdom, then we need to allow his self-giving love to grow in us.
The liturgy we celebrate this morning is a manifestation of that same power. As we take the humble and simple stuff of bread and wine, fruit of the earth, and the work of human hands, God feeds us with the abundant life of Christ, that we may be signs of his kingdom. Let us pray, then, that when Christ comes to us in this holy sacrament, he may find a place prepared within us for him to dwell.