Never the Mascot--February 27, 2024

Never the Mascot--February 27, 2024

"Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way he asked his disciples, 'Who do people say that I am?' And they answered him, 'John the Baptizer; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.' He asked them, 'But who do you say that I am?' Peter answered him, 'You are the Messiah.' And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him. Then he began to teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, 'Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things'." [Mark 8:27-33]

You can put your big foam fingers away, because Jesus forever refuses to be anybody's mascot.

There may be a sense in which we see Jesus as a coach (who guides, instructs, and directs us) or even Jesus as a cheerleader (encouraging and supporting us through thick and thin), but he'll never let himself be reduced to the role of a speechless mascot who has to endorse the schemes and strategies we've laid out for him.  Jesus will not give us his permission to treat him just as a brand-name, corporate logo, or lucky charm to be tapped for our own interests.  Instead, the real and living Jesus always comes with his own agenda--and it always points to the way of the cross.

I think that's really the wake-up call in this climactic scene from Mark's Gospel (a part of which, many of us heard this past Sunday in worship).  Simon Peter is all excited about finally saying out loud that Jesus is "the Messiah"--the long-awaited chosen one, to bring about God's Reign--because he has a ready-made mold for Jesus to fit into, and he has a set of expectations of what he wants his Messiah Jesus to be and do.... but Jesus won't accept any of them.  Jesus insists that his way of being the Messiah is precisely through a cross, not through crucifying his enemies. It is the way of suffering love rather than conquest that inflicts suffering on others.  It is the way of lowliness and self-giving, rather than the way of glory and "greatness."  And this doesn't sit well with Pete.

In fairness to Jesus' disciples, of course, they aren't the only ones who expected firepower and fury from the Christ (reminder: the title "Christ" is just the Greek version of the Hebrew "Messiah," which means "anointed," like ancient Israel's kings had been anointed for their roles).  Just about everyone in first-century Judaism who held onto an expectation of a coming Messiah pictured a conquering king, or a military commander who would repel the foreign empire (the Romans), slay his enemies, and usher in the "kingdom of God."  And, to be sure, when Jesus first began his movement, his central message was in fact that "God's reign has come near."  Lots of folks were putting two and two together and began to wonder if Jesus was in fact claiming to be the Messiah--so Peter wasn't the only one who would have been befuddled when Jesus announced that he was headed to a confrontation that would mean his death.  That couldn't be!  The Messiah doesn't die--he destroys his enemies!  The Messiah doesn't get defeated--he is victorious and triumphant!  He wouldn't need to do something unheard-of like resurrection from the dead--he would just not die in the first place!  To Peter's ears, Jesus' talk about being killed (not to mention a shameful death on a Roman cross!) sounded completely wrong.  Of course Peter starts to rebuke Jesus--it's like Jesus has taken all that Peter knew to be true and turned it upside-down.

Now, it's no sin to be incorrect; the solution to a lack of correct information is to be educated, and then you can improve.  Had Peter simply said back to Jesus, "Wow--a Messiah who goes to a cross? I did not have that on my bingo card--I guess I have a lot to learn about how God really operates in the world.  Please teach me, Jesus!" well, that would have been one thing.  But you can tell in this moment that when Jesus presents his own agenda (the way of the cross) and it doesn't fit with Peter's expectations, Peter really wants to keep his old expectations and to force Jesus to conform to them.  But he just won't do that. Peter wants Jesus to be his Messianic Mascot--the one who fulfills all of Peter's hopes and wishes for a war against their enemies and glorious victory--and instead, Jesus simply refuses to get in the costume Pete's got all picked out.  Jesus will not be anybody else's talisman, figurehead, or lucky charm.  He insists on being his own completely free self, who chooses the way of suffering love and laying his life down.  There will be no conquering, no "taking back their country" in the name of God or God's kingdom, and there will be no armies slaying the Romans.  That is all part of Peter's agenda, not Jesus'.

It's easy for us to look down on Peter, of course, but the temptations are just as real and just as strong in our own time and place.  We are so easily led to want to use Jesus as a genie to grant our wishes, a vending machine to dispense the favors we pray for, or merely our mascot to endorse our "side," our group, our country, our party, or our particular denomination of church.  We want to have Jesus' celebrity status to back our plans and programs, but would rather he stay silent so we can tell him what to do and where to do.  And once we stop listening to Jesus' own way of doing things (which always centers on the self-giving love of the cross), it is horrifyingly easy to think we can baptize our own self-centered agendas tell ourselves we have Jesus' blessing for them.  We can build these little circular loops of faulty logic that say since we're Christians, whatever we already want to accomplish must be in line with God's will, even if the programs and priorities we want to pursue aren't very Christ-like at all.  (And like Blaise Pascal so hauntingly said it, people "never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious conviction."  Once we tell ourselves that our self-centered quests for "greatness," power, status, wealth, control, or whatever else, are being done "for Christ," we become incapable of actually hearing Jesus, who refuses to endorse that kind of agenda, no matter how much we want to put his name on it.  Jesus always insists on the way of the cross, no matter how we or Saint Peter himself don't like it.

All of that means that just because I say I'm doing something or advocating for something "for Christ," it doesn't mean that it really aligns with Christ's actual will or work in the world.  Countless armies marched on crusades in the Middle Ages, convinced that they were killing their enemies for God's glory and with Jesus' approval; so did shiploads of colonizing conquistadors sailing across oceans to enslave the people they found in this hemisphere in the name of benefiting "Christian nations."  They all may have zealously and fervently believed that they were doing God's work--but that's only because they had, quite frankly, stopped actually listening to Jesus and instead tried to use the cross as their logo or brand.  And even now, it's worth stopping to ask, to reflect, and to be prepared to repent, over whether we have been trying to use Jesus as our mascot rather than to listen to him as our master.  It can be scary, but it was scary for Peter, too, when Jesus force him to stop and listen, rather than to make Jesus fit our pre-arranged mold for him.

Today, maybe the action we need to take doesn't look like "action" at all, but to slow down enough to pause, to listen to Jesus himself, and to ask where our pet projects, partisan platforms, and personal agendas have strayed from his course that leads to the cross.  Maybe we should let Jesus speak to us on his own terms rather than insisting he just hold up a megaphone to shout ours louder.  Maybe today is the day we give up on trying to make Jesus into our lucky charm and listen to him as our crucified Lord.

Lord Jesus, help us to surrender our old agendas and to quit pretending we can make you trade the way of the cross for the mold of the conqueror.  Let us be shaped in the likeness of your cruciform love.