Mark 8:27-26
One of the reasons I enjoy teaching Confirmation class is that I like kids that age. Oh, I love the little ones, and especially the hugs I get from them on Sunday mornings. But I also love the conversations I can have with the older ones. Thirteen and fourteen year-olds are starting to think for themselves, starting to question what they’ve been taught, which are qualities I highly value. They also can be sarcastic, silly, and rebellious, which are qualities I highly resemble!
I think I also like working with this age group because I remember how I was then. Seemingly overnight I turned from a sweet, sensitive child who hated to disappoint her parents, into a snarky, rebellious brat. Even I was confused by the changes. I had a hard time figuring out who I was, or wanted to be. I didn’t want to be the teacher’s pet, goody-two-shoes preacher’s kid, and I didn’t think I wanted to be at the opposite extreme, but I wasn’t sure where the middle ground was. Apparently, in my search, I began taking on the mannerisms and styles of my friends, particularly one of my best friends, Jarin. I remember my sister saying, “Jarin Green is hard enough to take on Jarin Green. But Jarin Green on Cindy Maddox is horrendous!” Over and over my mother kept saying, “Just be yourself! Don’t try to be Jarin or Amy or Cathy. Just be Cindy!” Finally I’d had enough, and I yelled, “I DON’T KNOW WHO THAT IS!!”
Your identity search may not have been as problematic as mine, but I think most of us go through questions about our identity . . . first as teenagers or young adults, but also as we continue to grow and change. I think this is especially true when we take on a new role or start a new job. Who am I as a parent or grandparent? Who am I as a boss? Who am I as an associate pastor, a solo pastor, a senior pastor? What kind of person do I want to be? It’s human nature—the search for meaning, the goal of finding ourselves, our true selves.
There is also the question of who gets a say in that identity. As a fourteen-year-old, I rejected my parents’ right to define me; and yet I still sometimes struggle with my desire to please them, or I feel guilty for the pain they feel because I am not everything they wanted me to be.
I try not to let other people define me, yet I do look to others I trust to help me figure out who I am. There’s a certain personality type system that I find intriguing, and I can never figure out for sure which personality type I am. Every time I take the test, I find myself asking Jackie for the answers. Do you think I tend to focus too much on myself or too much on others? Do I prefer to challenge people or comfort people? Do I more often annoy other people because I’m stand-offish or bossy? I don’t always know how others see me, and so I ask someone I trust.
All of this came to mind this week as I studied our scripture passage for today, particularly Jesus’ question, “Who do people say that I am?” Maybe it’s because of all the presidential candidates we are constantly hearing about, but I hear Jesus’ question like a politician checking the polls. What are people saying about me? Is our message getting out? How is it being received? Do we need to tweek our communication strategies?
The disciples’ answers were varied. Some people believed Jesus was the reincarnation of John the Baptist. Not a bad comparison. John was definitely a popular figure. People went way out into the wilderness just to hear him preach, and he wasn’t even nice! OK, so there was that little matter about getting beheaded, but assuming Jesus could escape that fate, people thinking that Jesus was John the Baptist was OK.
Others thought Jesus was Elijah. Elijah was a great prophet who brought down fire from heaven, multiplied meal and oil, raised a boy from the dead, and was taken into heaven on a whirlwind. A good comparison, the disciples must’ve thought. And without any of that nasty beheading!
Still others thought Jesus was one of the prophets. The prophets were known, not for predicting the future, but for articulating the problems of the present in a clear and undeniable fashion. They announced plenty of judgment, but also the assurance that God would forgive. Not a bad comparison, either.
So Jesus asked, “Who do people say that I am?” and he got three answers. Then he asked a more important question: But who do YOU say that I am? Those other people—they don’t know me as well as you do. They only see the show, the miracles, the public persona. You all know the real me. Who do you say that I am?
Now, I have always assumed that Jesus asked this question because he was testing the disciples. He wanted to make sure that they were all “on the same page,” no slower learners hiding in the back of the class, afraid to raise their hand. Everybody know who I am? Good, let’s go!
But now I’m not so sure. Several scholars have recently pointed out that in Mark’s Gospel, “Jesus is not portrayed as marching forward on a campaign that has been clear from the beginning.” Instead Jesus appears to have been in a process of “clarifying his mission and realizing bit by bit the depth and breadth of its implications.”[1]
So what if he wasn’t testing them, but was earnestly asking for their input? Maybe, just maybe, he had not yet figured out who he was or who he was called to be. Maybe the path was only being illuminated a few steps at a time, and being fully human (even if also divine), he had limited vision. I’m not absolutely positive that I believe this theory, but I do like it because once again we can relate . . . to the questions and doubts, the uncertainties that gnaw at us, the lack of clarity about the next right step.
And when you think about it from Jesus’ cultural context, it makes even more sense. “In contemporary North American culture we consider an individual’s psychological makeup to be the key to understanding who he or she might be. We see each individual as bounded and unique,” complete in and of themselves. “This sort of individualism has been and is extremely rare in the world’s cultures. . . . In the Mediterranean world of antiquity, such a view of the individual did not exist. There every person was embedded in others and had his or her identity only in relation to these others who form a fundamental group. For most people this was the family, and it meant that individuals neither acted nor thought of themselves as persons independent of the family group.”[2]
But Jesus had left his family group. Jesus had left home and all the people who defined him and his place in the world. Of course he would look to his disciples, those closest to him, for help. He turned to those who knew him best and asked, “Who do you think I am? What do you say?” He didn’t let others define him—as is obvious in the next paragraph when he rebuked Peter for denying his purpose. He knew enough to know that he wasn’t called to be THAT kind of Messiah. But he did look to them for validation: Who do you think I am? Yes, that’s what I thought, too.
I believe that one of the problems in our society, one of the things that ails us, is our individualism gone wild. It not only contributes to our own personal malaise and isolation, but also the failures of our society: hunger, poverty, bigotry, violence, and hate. If we believed, truly believed, that we are connected, that we are defined in relationship rather than individualism, then we couldn’t deny food to the hungry and housing to the homeless and refuge to the lost. We would know that the very air we breathe unites us.
This is true in the world, but even more so in the church, where we are united by much more than air. We are united by gathered waters and broken bread. Now, to be clear, I am not suggesting that we allow other people to define us in a negative way—to accept their demands or turn ourselves into someone else’s ideal. I am suggesting that we find our truest identity in community, in relationship to God and one another.
So in case you are wondering this morning who you are, please let me tell you what I think. You are a child of God. You are God’s beloved creation. You are part of the family. You belong. You don’t have to be exactly like me or any other person in the room. You can still be you, with all your uniqueness and exceptionality, and I can still be me, with all my oddities and idiosyncrasies. But you are most you, and I am most me, when we are one, united in the community of God’s beloved. You belong. Welcome home.
[1] Ringe, Sharon H. Feasting on the Word Year B, Volume 4, p. 71.
[2] Malinda and Rohrbaugh Social Science Commentary, as quoted on www.onemansweb.org