Who Do You Say That I Am?

On Sunday, the Minister at St Andrew’s Wesley United Church asked an important question. Other Ministers  following the Church Lectionary may have asked the same question. The Gospel reading for Sunday September 16, 2018 was Mark 8: 27-38 and in that scripture passage, Jesus asks Simon and the disciples: Who do you say that I am?

On Monday September 17th I sat down at my computer and drafted this blog. The first thing I did was to compare the Mark 8 question with the same question posed in Matthew 16.

Then I thought about the questions the angels and the anointed Rabboni ask the Woman in the Garden: Why are you weeping? Who are you looking for? (John 20).  In my experience, when a person is weeping, they are looking for someone to listen to them and to encourage them to tell people who have hurt them why they are sad. They may even want some vindication.

In Hebrew, the word LISTEN is a common Greek name. That word is Simon. So, it is important to note that Jesus asks the question Who do you say that I am? to Simon, to the one named in the Gospels as the epitome of the word Listen.

Reflecting on this some more, I asked myself. Why did Jesus ask Simon this question and why did the anointed Rabboni ask the Woman in the Garden, who she was looking for?

I’m now thinking, Jesus gives new meaning to the word Listen because the one called Listen, listens with his whole body and responds in love and faith. He replies: You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God (Matthew 16:16).

You see, in response to the one who listened with his whole body and responded in love and faith, Jesus says: Forever after you will be called Cephas…Peter…the Rock on which my Church will be built and you will stand at the Gate…with the keys of heaven. But then, Jesus also calls SIMON, Satan and a stumbling block.  Why?  He who listens is thinking like a human being, like a Cyrenaic (Mark 15:21) and not like a great Patriarch…created in the image and eternal likeness of God the Father.

So then I asked myself: Why is the Woman weeping in the Garden? What is causing her to stumble? Who is she looking for? Why does she think the Rabboni is the Gardener? Has the Rabboni taken HIS body? Is he keeping her, Peter and the disciples from realizing who Jesus of Nazareth is?

In my view, people need to ask: Who is the Gardener?  Jesus says I am the Vine and the Father is the Gardener, the husbandman who prunes my branches…John 15: 1-2). The psalmist in Psalm 128: 3 sings…happy is the man who fears the lord and walks in his ways…his wife will be a faithful vine.

The Rabboni responds to the Woman’s quest and her tears by giving her the name Mary, the name the widow Naomi called herself when she returned from Moab. In the Book of Ruth, Naomi a Hebrew name that means sweet and pleasant said: “…do not call me [sweet and pleasant] anymore…call me Mara for the Lord has treated me bitterly” (Ruth 1:20).  He has left me without a husband in my old age.

Standing “face to face” in the Garden of the Tombs, the Rabboni tells the one he called Mary to go to my brothers and say to them, “I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.” Then the narrator of John’s Gospel says, “Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, ‘I have seen the Lord’; and she told them that he had said these things to her” (John 20: 19-31).

Eventually, the disciples answer the question of who Jesus is in terms of the Great Commission (Matthew 28:16:20) saying…“It is true! The Lord has risen and has appeared to Simon” (Luke 24:34).  As more and more disciples realize the truth more fully, a cloud of witnesses grows in faith and number as the Father takes his beloved by the hand and lifts her up (Acts 9: 41) in front of the anointed Rabboni and his beloved in the house of Grace also known as the house of Bethany (Luke 24:53) or heaven.

I love Peter’s speech after the Ascension, on the Day of Pentecost. He certainly knew his scripture. Everyone from all over was proclaiming the Good News in their own language. God had fulfilled the long awaited Messianic Prophecy. To those trying to follow along and LISTEN..the people sounded drunk. Peter however, sets them straight. According to Peter and all those hearing his words that day…Jesus of Nazareth, the very stone the chief builders rejected and crucified, is very much alive and pleased to be celebrating the gift and Patriarchal promise of the Holy Spirt with the anointed Teacher and their disciples (Acts 2; Acts 4:11).