The Messianic Secret

 Matthew 16:13-20   August, 27, 2023

 

Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God.

Then Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone he was the Messiah.

 

In the Jewish faith, the Messiah is a person that was promised by

the prophets. He would be a future king of the Jewish people.

He would be in the line of David. It was believed he would be

a great charismatic leader that would be familiar with Jewish law.

There was no specific time when the Messiah would come,

it was believed that the Messiah would come when the people

needed it the most (when things were going so bad) 

or when they deserved it the most (when genuine goodness rule the world.)

The Messiah is the one that would rule the people and deliver them

from the injustice of the world.

 

Jewish people today are still waiting for the Messiah.

And Christians believe that the Messiah came to us in Jesus Christ.

 

So when Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”

At first the disciples give him the scoop on the street: “Some say

John the Baptist, some say Elijah, a prophet.”

But then - and I think this is what he really wants to know -

Jesus asks them who do they think he is.

 

And Peter comes up with the right answer.

This is not something that happens all the time in the gospels.

Peter and the rest of the disciples are kind of goofy when it comes down to it.

But Peter got it right this time.

He says “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.”

And Jesus confirms it.  Telling Jesus that Peter, the Rock

and his confession will be the basis of Jesus church on earth.

Seems like a good revelation that everyone would want

to be spread far and near, especially maybe, Jesus.

But then Immediately, Jesus tells the disciples

not to tell anyone that he’s the Messiah.

 

Among bible people this is called the “Messianic Secret”

It shows up mostly in Mark’s Gospel,

but it also shows up a few times in Matthew and Luke, like it does here.

And John is, as usual, a whole other story.

And there’s few theories about why Jesus wants the disciples

to keep this Messianic secret,

but bible people don’t have one solid answer.

 

Some people say that it’s because Jesus is afraid that the

authorities would have him killed if they knew he was the Messiah.

But that’s kind of boring.

And there are also a lot of issues with that theory.

But the one that I’m going with today is this:

Jesus does not want the disciples to claim Jesus’ authority

before they see fully how he lives his life, and how he dies.

 

Jesus does not want the disciples to show off and claim Jesus

and tell people that they represent the Messiah,

before they fully see and understand how the Messiah lives

and how the Messiah dies in service to the world.

 

And this is very insightful of Jesus.

Because the church has very often done this.

Lots of people say “Jesus is the Messiah,

I’m an authority in the church of Jesus,

so therefore whatever I say and think is from Jesus.”

With no attempt or intention to act like Jesus does.

This has resulted in a lot of messes.

Some would say most of the messes of the modern era.

 

And some of these messes stem from the use of this

piece of scripture right here that we’re reading today, ironically.

 

After Peter confesses Jesus is the Messiah,

Jesus says: “And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock

I will build my church, and the gates of

Hades will not prevail against it.”

The Church has taken this very piece of Scripture

and has used it to claim absolute authority of the church

and the men who have held the office that Peter held,

the office of the bishop of Rome (which is the Pope).

 

Now today, Pope Francis, is very kind and seems very intent on

following Jesus example as best he can, which is refreshing.

Because that has not always been the case with the leader

of the Catholic Church.

The Catholic church, whose history we share, 

has a pretty embarrassing history of their leaders 

using their authority to justify some seriously horrifying things, 

the Crusades and the Inquisition are just two very big examples,

but there are multiple others that have been facilitated, 

aided, and abetted by claiming the absolute infallible authority 

of the earthly church claiming the authority of Jesus.

 

And Catholic Popes don’t have exclusive rights 

to bad behavior by claiming the authority of Jesus. 

Protestants have been just as guilty of taking advantage 

of their positions, and using the authority of Christ for their own ends.

 

Jesus knew all of his disciples very well and he knew we would

easily claim our authority in the disciple we follow,

but we would not so easily follow in Jesus’s footsteps.

 

Throughout time, God has been kind of a fuzzy character

to the human race.

God has been labeled with a lot of different characteristics over time.

God has been seen as a wonderful creator, slow to 

anger and abounding in steadfast love, but more often God has been seen as a destroyer –  

angry and vengeful, a God of war.

A God who kills and destroys who wants human and animal sacrifice,

who is jealous and vengeful.

 

God has been an excuse to  defend slavery and white supremacy.

God is credited with wanting the obscene wealth of religious leaders.

God has been used to justify the second class citizenship of women.

God has been just to justify wars and destruction,

to defend condemning people, scaring, and threatening people.

God has been used to justify sexual and physical abuse.

God has been used to justify about everything.

God is so grand, so divine, so unknowable, that we can

tell people that God is whatever we want God to be.

 

We know that God created us in God’s image,

But I think that we also try to create God in our image.

We make God into whoever we need God to be to justify our

hates and likes and wants fears and desires and greed.

And that, I think, is why God sent us Jesus.

  

Jesus is very clear. Jesus isn’t fuzzy at all.

Jesus is human, living and breathing and existing on this earth with all of us.

 

We can clearly see Jesus in the stories we have shared for centuries

Eating with outcasts, sharing, welcoming children, healing,

caring for others, crying for friends, keeping company with shepherds and

prostitutes and sinners, feeding the hungry, giving good news to the poor,

demanding justice for others, caring, and freeing.

Restoring humanity and bringing new life.

 

We have seen Jesus,

Not dropping bombs or making threats, or keeping everything for himself.

But speaking the truth, sharing, giving.

We have seen him, not coercing and intimidating,

but serving and empowering.

 

And if anyone wants to claim Christ’s authority –

we always have to return to Jesus not just who he is,

but how he was and how he lived and died.

 

We have to remember that God didn’t just send A messiah.

God sent us Jesus to be the Messiah.

Jesus brings that fuzzy picture of God back into focus.

It changes the God who could be anything we want

into a solid, living, breathing, human life, who is a clear reflection of God.

Right down to his own death for the salvation of the world.

 

Jesus is how God wants to be seen and understood.

God is not all these other things that we want to make God out to be.

God is this. Jesus on the cross.

Giving himself to us until the end.

 

Jesus came to us to show us how God loves us

and how much God loves this world.

Unconditionally and without end.

 

So who do we say that Jesus is?

Jesus is the Messiah, the son of the living God.

And that is who we serve.

But let’s not tell other people that.

Let’s show them by the way we live our lives.

Changed by Compassion

 Matthew 15:21-28    

August 20, 2023

The Crumby Dog
Ally Barrett

 

There’s a comedy sketch or a cartoon

or something that I remember

it’s in a restaurant and a man is having a heart attack

and another diner yells to the waitress, “Call a doctor!"

and she says, “Sorry, that’s not my table.”

 

Now, it’s just a joke, but jokes always have a bit of truth

to them and the truth brings up anger in me. 

Someone was in need and the waitress wouldn’t put aside

her work protocol to help him.

We get that way when a bureaucracy of company

or a government office stands in the way of helping people.

I don’t think I’m alone in this.

 

Businesses and institutions and people should put their

protocol and traditions aside to help someone, right?

That waitress should just help that man,

it’s kind of inexcusable that she wouldn’t.

We wouldn’t like a person who did that.

 

In the same way, I have to say that I don’t

really like Jesus at the beginning of this story.

I have a hard time with the way he acts.

Jesus is in the Gentile area of the country, Tyre and Sidon,

the non-Jewish area and a woman,

who Matthew points out as a Canaanite, someone who isn’t Jewish.

A woman comes up to him because her daughter is in trouble

and she begs Jesus to help her.

But he says that the food he has is for the children,

meaning the people of Israel.

He says it’s not fair to feed her before all the children are fed.

He even kind of calls her a dog in the process.

  

Faced with this person in need,

Jesus tries to turn her away because of protocol or bureaucracy.

Now that is against everything else that I’ve understood about Jesus.

 

Some people want to save Jesus here

and say that he was teasing her so she could show her faith.

Or that he was using her to teach his disciples a lesson.

But I don’t know if any of those reasons make

me feel much better than my first impression

and I think that it’s reading more into the story than what’s there.

And what’s there is that at first, Jesus tells this woman

that he can’t help her. That’s not my table.

 

I think people try and make up noble reasons for Jesus behavior

because people are uncomfortable with Jesus

having any negative attitude or emotion.

We don’t ever want Jesus to be dismissive as

he was here with this woman.

 

But I think what people are most uncomfortable with is that

Jesus could change his mind on something.

We feel like Jesus is supposed to know everything all at once.

He’s supposed to never let what he

sees or hears change his mind about anything.

 

We don’t want Jesus to be changed.

We want Jesus to have all the right answers all at once.

We want him to be all knowing right at the beginning.

Jesus doesn’t learn, he IS.

 

We say that Jesus is fully human,

but we don’t want him to be too human.

We don’t want the reality of the world have

an effect on Jesus ideology or his theology

or what he believes God wants him to do.

We don’t want him to be changed by things like

compassion or sadness, or pleas of a desperate mother.

We don’t want Jesus’ heart to change Jesus mind.

Now Martin Luther didn’t see Jesus like that.

Here’s what he had to say about this gospel story

in a sermon he gave in 1534:

“What a superb and wonderful object lesson this is,

therefore, to teach us what a mighty, powerful,

all-availing thing faith is.

Faith takes Christ captive in his word,

when he’s angriest, and makes out of his cruel words

 a comforting inversion, as we see here….

she catches Christ with his own words,

and he is happy to be caught.”

Martin Luther was comfortable with Jesus changing

his mind and his heart.

 

Regardless of what you think he is doing here,

Jesus ­is reflecting what was believed for thousands of years of history

and scripture and tradition by the Jewish people.

That Yahweh was the God of the Israelites.

God’s covenant was for the Israelites.

The Gentile nations might be blessed through the Israelites

But the promise was for the Israelites.

The messiah was sent for them, and consequently,

and the messiah’s Salvation was meant for the Jewish people.

 

Scholars try to remind us over and over that

the way of Jesus, Christianity, started as a movement inside Judaism.

Jesus was a Jewish man, he talked about Jewish customs,

his disciples were Jewish, most all of the early followers were Jewish.

           

And Matthew’s community, the community this story for

was a Jewish community that followed Jesus.

The way Jesus acted at the beginning of this story

was probably normal for the writer of the story.

The way Jesus acted, was probably a reflection of the

thoughts of most of the people who would have been

following Jesus at that time.

  

But when Gentile people heard about Jesus Way,

As the Holy Spirit got a hold of them

they wanted to be a part of the promise too,

they wanted to worship, to be preachers and teachers and leaders,

they wanted to be a full part of the community.

 

This was a struggle that shows up in a lot of Paul’s letters.

This struggle of who is in and who is not was

probably the main topic of conversation in the first 50 or so

years of Christianity. It just took a while for the people

to catch up to the Holy Spirit and to God’s plan.

 

So when the early church heard Jesus say to the woman,

“It isn’t fair to take the children’s food and throw it to the dogs”

Most of them probably weren’t shocked by it.

They would have heard it before.

And a few of them probably would have said, “yes. I agree with that.”

 “The promise was not meant for the gentiles.”

 

And the woman in the story understands the tradition too.

She doesn’t argue with its fairness or justice

but she appeals to Jesus compassion:

“Jesus, wasn’t it you who fed 5000 people (plus women and children)

with two barley loaves and five fish?

Wasn’t it the God of Israel who fed everyone

indiscriminately without regard for who they were?

Jesus, didn’t you teach your disciples that God was abundant?

Didn’t you tell them that there was enough for everyone?

Don’t the dogs under the table at least get the crumbs?”

 

And if I didn’t like Jesus in the beginning of the story,

Jesus impresses me three times as much in the second part.

 

Jesus does something that is so amazing and so humbling and

I have to admit is so hard for me to do at times:

Jesus changes his position. He goes in a different direction.

He lets his compassion change his ideology, his theology,

He lets his heart change his mind.

Through the persistence of that one gentile woman,

In one act of openness and welcome and love

- Jesus heals this woman’s daughter of the demons AND,

- Jesus  opens the promises and covenants of Yahweh

to the, Gentiles, to the rest of the world,

to most of us who wouldn’t have received it before.

- And in the process, he changes thousands of years of scripture and tradition.

That can’t have gone over gently in every early 

Jewish/ Christian community. But thank God it happened.

 

In this week’s gospel, and throughout the scriptures, really

we see Jesus bending and breaking and changing laws, 

or the traditional interpretation of laws for the sake of compassion.

Jesus eats with sinners, touches lepers,

talks to women, heals on the sabbath.

All laws of his religion, all deeply held beliefs in his time.

Some accused Jesus of ignoring the law or disposing of it,

but Jesus doesn’t dispose of the laws, he actually makes another law.

A law that more accurately reflects the nature of the God of Israel.

A law that is possibly harder to keep than all the rest.

And that is: when laws and rules and tradition and scripture

conflict with the love of neighbor, the love of neighbor wins.

 

Meaning that, as Christians,

we can’t hide behind a rules or laws or doctrine or tradition

in order to ignore our neighbor.

That’s what it means when we say we should follow

the spirit of the law and not just the letter of the law.

We can’t be like that waitress and claim “that’s not our table”.     

Jesus expects that as his followers, we won’t embed

ourselves in our tradition, or even in scripture so far that we can’t

be moved by the plight of another person.

 

As Christians the dilemma comes when we ask ourselves

when the rules need to be changed,

and when should they stay the same?

 

-This was an issue during Paul’s time when some

people believed that circumcision

needed to be a requirement for being Christian.

-This was an issue in the US during the 1800's when most people

of faith in the South AND THE NORTH believed that the bible

condoned and supported slavery.

- This was an issue in the 1970's when Lutherans

and other denominations were debating the ordination of women.

-And this is an issue in the Christian church now

when we talk about issues of sexuality and gender identity.

-And there will be another issue down the line, I’m sure.

 

These days, for some reason,

people see changing your mind is something bad.

In politics they’ve called it things like flip flopping or being wimpy.

For religious people some see it as

compromising our faith to the culture around us.

 

Coming to another conclusion is seen as an indicator of weakness.

Especially, for some reason, Christians seem to highly value

sticking to every tradition and everything

that we’ve ever been taught or believed is seen as

faithful, steadfast, true.

 

But Jesus has shown us another way.

Jesus showed us that compassion wins over tradition and rules.

Sometimes we end up realizing that

what our parents believed does not work for us now.

Or what we believe doesn’t work anymore,

or what our whole denomination or

church believed at one point needs to change.

Sometimes drastic change is the most faithful thing to do.

 

God is on the move.

God is revealing the scope and wideness

of God’s grace to us every day.

Bit by bit, as we are moved by our compassion,

and we turn it into practice.

Jesus showed us how to do this

as his compassion for one Canaanite woman

changed the whole course of his mission to the world.

And Jesus is still showing us how to do this today.

 

How wide is God’s mercy and compassion?

I am hoping that our minds and convictions

are always stressed and strained and

moved as we discover the answers to that.

I hope that we are always surprised and changed

by the vastness of God’s love.

Walking on Water

 Matthew 14:22-33 

Jesus Walking on Water
(I can't find the artist)

 August 13, 2023

 

Jesus has just fed more than 5000

people with five loaves and two fish.

And now he’s doing something amazing again.

 

After he’s done with the crowds,

he sends the disciples off in a boat.

And the wind takes them out into

the deep part of the sea.

And while they’re there,

they see a figure walking on the water.

 

At first the disciples are scared,

not because of the storm, but because they think it’s a ghost,

because what else could be walking on the water.

But they realize it’s Jesus. Jesus is walking on water.

Jesus calls out to them.

“It’s just me walking on water, don’t be afraid.”

 

And Peter is maybe emboldened by Jesus’s presence,

or moved by the Spirit, or just trying again

to impress everyone, he tries it himself.

He tells Jesus to command him to come out into the water.

And Jesus does. “Okay, Peter, come on”

But the wind is high and Peter freaks out and he starts to sink.

He calls out to Jesus, “Please save me”

And he does and Jesus says the oft quoted phrase:

“You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

 

Now the interpretation of this line I’ve

heard most often is that Jesus was

disappointed in Peter because Peter faltered.

He took his eyes of Jesus and became self-conscious.

He doubted that he could walk on water.

And his doubt caused him to become afraid

and he sank right then and there.

So based on this, the sermons kind of follow:

Don’t take your eyes of Jesus like Peter did, and you won’t fail.

If you don’t let your faith falter, then you won’t fail.

You’ve got to step out of the boat, take the risk,

believe you can do it and success will follow.

Don’t doubt for a minute, or you’ll end up like Peter.

Basically the power of positive thinking and faith,

enables us to do the impossible.

 

But I struggle with that interpretation.

Is that really what the Gospel writer wants us to come away with?

If I believe hard enough I can do it?

I can walk on water? Really?

Can anyone walk on water?

If this were true, you would think there would be

some Christians who could – walk on water.

I’ve known many with a faith that couldn’t be shaken for anything.

But they’re still not walking on water.

 

So maybe I’m just a cynical person,

but my main trouble with seeing this story that way is that

Peter can’t walk on water. He never walks on water.

Even in Acts, he’s filled with the Holy Spirit, he is courageous,

he sees the power of God, he has visions,

wonderful things happen, miracles all around him.

But we never see him walking on that water.

 

And I think that is probably what the Gospel writer

wanted us to leave this story with:

We can’t walk on water.

Only Jesus can walk on water.

 

But even though we know that in some portion of our brain,

it’s hard for us to remember.

It’s hard for us, as followers of Jesus, to remember that it’s not all

on us, that the world the church and everything else

doesn’t all rest on our shoulders.

We feel like we need to walk on water.

 

Whenever we see those difficulties of the world

that have been put in front of us as disciples:

Spread God’s love, feed the hungry, heal the sick,

bring good news to the poor, I mean,

at times even just keeping our churches open,

alive, and preaching the gospel

they all seem like a impossible tasks in themselves.

 

And at this point, it seems like our country

is slipping further and further into a dangerous place.

Hate and racism seem to be surrounding us.

We seem on the verge of violence all the time.

We have staggering inflation and looming evictions,

and poverty, hunger, and desperation.

And the climate is changing which is leading to disastrous results

and none of our leaders seem to have the will or courage

to do anything or formulate any constructive plan to

get us out of this situation that  

 

I look at this disaster at this present moment

and I say “this is impossible.”

How are we ever going to climb out of this hole?

How can we fix all of these issues ?

 

How can we help so many people in need

How will I change the world?

Sometimes I can hardly keep up with life in general

how am I going to do this?

You ever get that feeling of being overwhelmed?

We feel like we need to walk on water sometimes.

But we just don’t have the skills?

 

When I was in seminary, our very first class was Hebrew.

We did a month of intensive Hebrew in

August before the year started and our professor was Dr. Robinson,

he was very smart and exceptionally kind.

I was pleased to have seen him again at the reunion I just went to.

 

At the end of the month of this Hebrew class,

we all felt woefully inadequate, and it was our first dip into seminary

and a lot of us felt like we didn’t have a grasp on Hebrew it at all.

The month ended with an in-class translation test.

We were worried. Some people thought they might fail.

First class in seminary and we were going to fail.

We were all talking about it a lot and some of this talk

got back to Dr. Robinson.

 

Dr. Robinson came into class the day before the exam.

He said, “I hear some of you think you’re going to fail.”

“I have to say, I’m very disappointed in you.”

We thought, Here it is,

we’re gonna hear how bad at Hebrew we really are.

 

But he said, “I’m disappointed that you would think

I would let anyone fail.

I am here to help you learn Hebrew, not fail you.

We’ve spent a lot of time together over the last month and

I’m disappointed that you thought that of me.”

Which was a relief, but almost smarted worse than failing.

 

I think it’s important to look at this parable this way.

Jesus said to Peter “Oh you of little faith, why did you doubt”

Jesus was not disappointed in Peter because

he doubted he walk on water and he failed.

Jesus was disappointed in Peter

because he doubted Jesus would save him.

 

Peter doubted that Jesus would save him.

And we doubt that Jesus will save us too.

Jesus is not here to fail us on our exam.

Jesus is not here to give us tests we can’t pass.

Jesus does not want to see us drown.

Jesus is here to save us.

So, let’s get this straight. We cannot walk on water.

Only Jesus can walk on water.

It’s God’s job to save this world.

God will do something

amazing with this mess, I have no doubt.

 

Now there are things that we can do.

It’s not permission to just sit out and watch

the world go by and do nothing.

We still had to work hard at learning Hebrew

and learning our vocabulary, and understanding it.

 

We all have our own part in this,

we do all have to help others,

we need to demand the changes to our systems,

we are asked to love others the way Christ told us to love.

There are things that we can do.

 

But it is not our mission to walk on water.

Jesus will walk on water.

The Spirit will do the heavy lifting.

It might take a while, it might not all look

and feel like we want it to,

but God will be the one to bring

all the pieces together in the end.

God will save us.

 

CS Lewis, the popular Christian writer said:  

“The problem is not that we expect

too much out of God, but we expect too little.”

 

Why do we doubt God’s love for us?

Knowing what we have known,

why do we doubt that Jesus will be there?

Why do we doubt that God will get things done?

Why do we think that it is all up to us,

and that we have to learn to walk on water?

 

We are living in the middle of this rough sea.

Some of us are out on the sea in our personal lives,

and all of us, I think, feel like this world is out to sea right now.

Listing this way and that, battered by waves and wind,

barely able to stay afloat, at times it seems hopeless.

 

At times we might feel like we’re drowning

and desperate and like there’s no hope for us.

Will God save us?

 

Oh we of little faith, why did we ever doubt?