Lifting the Veil
Proper 19B-24
Immanuel Lutheran, Chicago
“Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27). Jesus and the disciples are walking toward Caesarea Philippi. The city was well known for its temple to the Roman nature-god, Pan; and also, for honoring Caesar who was often regarded as divine. Jesus questioned them as they walked among the crowds loyal to Roman colonial power.
The disciples parrot what they have heard others say. You are the return of John the Baptist; or of Elijah; or one of the prophets” (Mark 8:28). Readers of Mark’s gospel are already clued in to the correct answer. Here, now, in 2024 we know the whole story, don’t we? Yet, hindsight is not always 20/20.
When you picture Jesus walking and talking on the road to the disciples, does your mental image include any women? What about Mary Magdalene (Mark 16:9-10 and John 20:17-18), and the other Mary (Matthew 28:8-10), or Joanna, and others (Luke 24:9-10) who are named in all four gospels as among the first to witness of the resurrection? Magdalene, Joanna, and Susanna were among the first funders of Jesus’ mission (Luke 8:1-3). If these women had kept silent about the empty tomb, there would not be a church today.
Scan your heart and mind for images of God. Somewhere near the top of a mental google search for most of us is—a bearded man, or a king seated on a throne. Or sadly, of an angry Jesus, ruling from this throne, threatening us with damnation and provoking fear rather than inspiring love. Then it may be a welcome surprise that God told Abram, ‘My name is El Shaddai’ (Genesis 17:1). This name for God occurs 48 times in the bible. It can mean a “mountain refuge,” or literally, the “many breasted one.” It is a wonderful feminine image of God as divine mother and sustainer of us all. Yet, why are we not surprised, ‘El Shaddai’ is most often translated as ‘God almighty,’ or even ‘Lord God almighty?’
Words matter. Our words about who God is might matter most. Our images of God shape us. Reading the bible through a patriarchal lens often means we have missed the message. Like Peter, we know the correct answer—Jesus is the Messiah. Yet, like Peter, our ideas about who Christ is are way too small. Peter fell miserably short in understanding what Jesus must do. When Peter tried to redirect him away from Jerusalem and the cross Jesus rebuked him saying, “Get behind me Satan” (Mark 8:33).
We do the same thing all the time. We want Jesus without the cross. We want the gospel without the suffering. We want strength without becoming vulnerable.
Christendom made a deal 1,700 years ago not unlike the one Jesus rejected from Satan when Constantine first attempted to colonize Christianity under the guise of Empire. “For all these years since, biblical Christianity –forged in the cross, humility, and poverty—has been at war with a co-opted Christianity that forgets Jesus’ gospel of liberation and instead seeks to use his story to entrench wealth and power in the hands of a few white men.” (Angela Denker, Red State Christians, 2022, p. xx)
For 1,700 years the Church increased its power by scaring people. We are all too familiar with a church of the past that operated as some type of protection racket, casting fear rather than inspiring love. Words matter. The truth matters. Thanks be to God, the gospel of Christ shines through our patriarchal blinders, points past the power of Empire, and illumines the way to our future together in Christ.
Words matter. James cautions us to choose our words wisely, so as the prophet Isaiah says, we may ‘know how to sustain the weary with a word’ (Isaiah 50:4a). What you say can unite people, or it can create great division in a community. We may have been entertained this week by countless humorous memes about eating cats and dogs, but in Springfield, Ohio it’s not funny. Bomb threats at schools and hospitals have shaken people’s lives.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Gospel-centered teachers and prophets can lead us forward. One of them is French scientist, world-famous paleontologist, Jesuit priest, theologian and mystic, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881 – 1955) who answered Jesus’ question in our gospel today, but unlike Peter, had much more expansive notion of who Christ is.
The word revelation comes from the Latin revelare, which means “to lift the veil.” Christ is God’s self-revelation. The church’s traditional doctrine of the Incarnation teaches that God was born in the flesh. Yet, said Teilhard, ‘what has the church done with this radical teaching at the center of its faith? Instead of allowing it to point to the oneness of heaven and earth…the church has said this truth applies only to one, namely, Jesus and that this one is an exception to humanity rather than a revelation of the deepest truth of humanity.’ (Teilhard as quoted by John Philip Newell, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul, p. 176)
Teilhard perceived “At the heart of matter is the heart of God…Without leaving the world, we plunge into God.” (pp.171-172) I wonder how the world might be different now had our ancestors sought out new people and places with wonder and expectation of encounter with the divine rather than with greed, domination, and control?
We urgently need a new meaning of the cross. The cross is about offering ourselves, including even our failures, in the holy service of love and of new beginnings. Together, we bear the weight of the world in its journey of unfolding. We are “on the way” like Jesus and the disciples on the road to Caesarea Philippi (Mark 8:27).
We will encounter this evocative phrase repeatedly in coming weeks. The Greek word translated the ‘way,’ can simply refer to a road or path, or it can refer to a way of life. Jesus will be “on the way” next week when the disciples argue among themselves about who is greatest (9:33-34). Jesus will be ‘on the way’ next month when the rich man asks him what he must do to inherit eternal life; and again, when he will tell the disciples a third time about the cross and resurrection. (10:17, 10:32). Many of you know that ‘The Way’ became a title of early Christians (Acts 18:25, 26; 19:9, 23; 22:4; 24:14, 22).
Little by little, on the way, we realize that only Jesus’ way of the cross can give us what we truly crave—a life that passes through death; bonds of fellowship that cannot be broken; a meaning to our mortal endeavors that cannot be erased, a life that joins us now with all life. God through Christ has shown us the way to life lived with others. It is the power of love. The power of trust. The power of faith. The power of tears. The way of the cross. Amen.
