A Twist

Well good morning everyone. Here is a little challenge if you are a person who is in a Bible study group and it is your habit in your Bible study group to talk about what happened the previous Sunday in the sermon. I am going to give you a little challenge: the passage that Jennifer read talking about the healing of the blind man at Bethsaida—I am not going to say anything about that today, but I want you to ask yourself the question, "What has that to do, if anything, with what comes after it?" What does that little narrative about the healing of the blind man have to do with what comes after it? Well, that might be something you want to chat about during the week.

Every good story has a twist. Well, not always, but the reality is so many good stories have twists. It is like, "I didn't see that coming"—the unexpected plot development. You thought the narrative was going in this direction and all of a sudden it did that. Now, I need to apologize for what I am about to say. It is possible that there are at least one or two people here who will never forget today, and for those people, today will be seared into your memory. In years to come, when this topic comes up, your mind will flash back to today and you will remember me, and you will remember where you were sitting, and you remember what I said. I am about to take something away from you and you will never get it back, and I don't do this lightly. For those people who will be most affected this morning, I'm sorry, but all I can offer in defense is that it was bound to happen at some point anyway.

Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker's father. I know, I know. What sort of horrible person would drop a spoiler like that, and in church as well, and when you least expect it? It has got to be one of the great all-time twists. With one sentence, the whole story changes from being a straightforward battle against good and evil into a tale of redemption. Can Luke win back his father from the dark side? Well, I am not going to spoil where it goes, but when the plot twists, there should be a shock. The trouble is, when you know the twist, you don't feel the shock anymore; it becomes unremarkable.

So who is this man? We have been following Mark's account of Jesus' life and it has been on a certain trajectory. Right at the beginning, chapter 1 verse 1, we knew what it was about because Mark gave us the trajectory. He said, "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." He tells us right at the beginning. I remember a few weeks ago I mentioned to you Columbo—Peter Fork in that great detective series from the 70s. In most whodunits, you find out who the murderer is at the end, but in Columbo, you find out in the first couple of minutes of the show. And so you're watching not to solve the mystery, but to work out who is going to solve the mystery in the program, and watch them solve it. That is a little bit like what's happening here in Mark. Mark tells us right at the beginning that it's about Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

Jesus then walks into the world and He says, "The kingdom of God is near," which is kind of like saying, "I'm near." That seems to be what He is saying. He demonstrates His authority over sickness by healing people. He demonstrates His authority over sin by forgiving people; that is something that only God can do. He demonstrates His authority over the physical world by walking on water, by feeding people, by stilling storms. We didn't look at the passage, but it is very remarkable; he just stands up and says to the storm, "Be still," and it stops. Give it a go sometime when you're on the Manly ferry and you're heading across the Heads and it's as rough as it can be; go out the back and give it a try. "Stop!" I don't like your chances.

He demonstrates His authority over the spiritual world; He demonstrates His authority over even death itself. It is possible, you know, we have in church believers and skeptics alike. If you are a skeptic about the miracles that Jesus does and if you are a skeptic about the way they crop up in Mark's gospel, try this little experiment. Someone suggested this to me; I think it's a brilliant idea. Try this little experiment: read through Mark's gospel, and when you get to a miracle, just skip over it. Then go to the next thing, and then when you come to a miracle again, just skip over it and just keep skipping over it all the way through, and ask yourself, "Does it make any sense?" Then go back again and drop the miracles in and ask yourself which has more coherence: is it more coherent with the miracles in or the miracles out? I want to suggest to you that it doesn't make any sense at all if Jesus did not, in fact, do these things. You have to ask yourself, "How do we even get a Mark's gospel if those things don't fit into it?" What I would suggest to you is it makes a coherent whole with the miracles in.

What are we to make of that? Well, what we are to make of it is that everything that normally rules over us, he rules over. So the things that are we can't solve, the things that are just problems to us—sickness, we can't solve that; sin, we can't solve that. We don't have any power over the physical world; we don't have any power over the spiritual world; we don't have any power over death itself. But for Him, it's not a problem at all. He effortlessly rules over the things that rule over us.

Who is this man? That is the question being put to us in these first chapters. Then, when we get to Mark chapter 8, which is the passage that was read, Jesus is in the area of Caesarea Philippi. You see it there in verse 27: Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. Caesarea Philippi lies about 40 kilometers to the north of the Sea of Galilee, which is now the area of the Golan Heights. It was called Caesarea Philippi because Caesar Augustus gave it to Herod the Great, who in turn gave it to his son Philip the Tetrarch for a birthday present. Nothing says privilege quite like that, does it? "What did you get for your birthday?" "My dad gave me a city."

Herod the Great erected a white marble temple to the worship of Caesar because Caesar had given it to him. Before that, it was called Panas, and on that site was a pagan temple to the mythological Greek god Pan. You've probably seen pictures of him or effigies of him; he was half goat and half man. You can probably imagine what he looks like. So think about this for a moment: we're in the area where we're thinking about Rome, we're thinking about Caesar, we're thinking about Pan. We are right in the heart of the pagan world. It is here that Jesus asks the question that will give shape to Mark's gospel from here on in. He says in verse 27, "Who do people say I am?"

At one level, it's a strange question. He's been with them for three years; surely they would know by now. I have been here—the pastor, the rector, the minister of this church—for three years. Imagine I stood up and said, "I really want you to know who I am," and you might think to yourself, "Well, don't we know that already? You've been around here for three years." Who am I? The disciples reel off some chief contenders. See verse 28: some say you're John the Baptist, some say you're Elijah, some say you're one of the prophets. These are not lightweight people; these are heavyweights in the history of God's people. These are deeply impressive people. Clearly, the word on the street is that He is something special. Is He a teacher? Yes, He is a teacher. Is He a miracle man? Yes, He's a miracle man. Clearly, he is more than just some really smart guy, some sage-like teacher.

Jesus says, "Simon, what about you? Who do you say I am?" "You're the Messiah. You're the Christ (same word). You're the King." So this is the big reveal; this is the moment we've been waiting for. The expectation of a king, the expectation for a warrior king, one who would bring the rule of God. See, the history of God's people had been riddled with oppression. They'd been oppressed from nations around them; currently, they were being oppressed by Rome. And they're waiting for their Messiah, their warrior king. Simon says, "You are he. You are the Messiah."

Put yourself for a moment in Simon's shoes. You've seen some fairly amazing things. You've seen healings; that's got to be useful for a king, hasn't it? You've seen feedings; that's got to be useful. You've seen walking on water; that's got to be useful. Obviously, He is a wise leader and Simon in his mind is ticking off the things. There you are in Caesarea Philippi amongst the Roman temples and the pagan temples, and it is like Simon Peter is saying, "I can't process this all completely, but you seem to have some strange kind of mysterious relationship with the one you call Father, like You are the Son of God. And sometimes You call yourself the Son of Man, which is this human-divine figure. I don't quite know what to expect from a Messiah, but You seem to be it, and I'm not really sure what this means or even if I'm ready for it, but I think something momentous is happening at the moment."

Slowly, the disciples are working out Jesus is a rabbi—that's true; Jesus is a teacher—but He is so much more than just that. We think to ourselves today, "Okay, yeah, Jesus was the Messiah, Jesus was the Christ," but we don't really get what it was like back then to say those things. This was such an inflammatory idea because the world already had one ruler and that was Caesar. Israel already had a little sub-ruler called Herod, who was called the King of the Jews. The idea that there might be another king is a big deal. Simon says, "You are the Messiah, Son of the living God." Now, shh, don't tell anyone.

And so we come to the twist. Here is the twist; you see it in the verses that immediately follow. He is the Christ, He is the Messiah, but verse 31: "Jesus then began to teach them the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and teachers of the law, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again." He spoke plainly about these things. So here is the plot twist: the Messiah is not expected to suffer. The Messiah was going to save people from suffering. The Christ was not expected to be rejected; He was going to do the rejecting. The Messiah was not expected to be killed, but rather to live and rule forever. It just doesn't fit.

How? You can almost see Peter's brain whirring away, trying to come to grips, trying to make sense of all of this. He pulls Jesus aside and says, "Listen, we can protect you. This is wrong. You know, we can get weapons, we can do this. This is not the way the story goes." And Jesus says to Peter, "Peter, get behind me. What you are doing, what you are saying, is really devilish because the reason I've come is to suffer and to die and to rise. That's why I've come." So far in Mark's gospel, who is Jesus? We have worked that out and Peter's worked that out in the first part of chapter 8, but now the twist: what did He come to do? And we know, don't we? We know what He came to do. He's come to die and rise. He's come to make everything right by carrying everything that is wrong. He's come to rule, but His crown will be a crown of thorns. He's come to make the whole world whole, but in making the world whole, it will require Him to be broken. He will die and rise.

What do we make of this plot twist to finish? Well, I think the first thing to recognize is that our familiarity to this can blind us of the significance. We can kind of get jaded a little bit, overfamiliar, perhaps a bit contemptuous. We think we know how the story goes. Sometimes knowing just a little bit, like Peter did, can be dangerous because you don't realize you don't know the whole thing. It is always worth asking God to help you to read things with new eyes and to see in His word new things. We need to guard ourselves against familiarity, which can make us jaded.

The second thing to realize is that plot twists happen. Things don't just keep going on the same trajectory. Stories don't go on the same trajectory, and nor do our lives. It might be that your life story is currently unfolding and there is a twist happening. It might be that as your life is unfolding, Jesus doesn't really have His rightful place. You might reflect on it and think to yourself, "Yeah, you know, He doesn't really seem to have the place He should." You may well be a strong and self-sufficient person, but is there a place in your narrative for Jesus, and is it the right place? Plot twists happen; they happen when you least expect them. God may bring you a message you're not expecting, which totally shifts the course and trajectory of your life. When God speaks, what will you do?

Lastly, the question: "Who is this man? Who do you say I am?" says Jesus. It was the key question that Jesus was putting to Peter. He focuses down on Peter: "I'm not interested in what other people say. Peter, who do you say?" It is the key question that is being put to us today. The power of the question is such that when you are asked, the answer you give will in some ways go to define you. That is how powerful the question is. So this morning, I wonder if you could let Jesus ask you that question with a gentle probe or a gentle prod into your heart where he says, "Who do you say that I am?"

Just like in Mark's day, there are all sorts of ideologies, different concepts of who Jesus is. Jesus the wise sage, Jesus the social worker, the doctor, Jesus the prophet and teacher, Jesus the political Jesus, the psychotherapist Jesus—everyone has a version of Jesus. But how you answer that question will define you because here's the thing: you become like your god. If you're a believer in materialism, you'll become a materialist. If you believe in hedonism, you'll just seek every pleasure you can. If you follow "I-don't-care-ism," you'll become like that. As your god, you'll become like whatever you think the meaning and purpose of life is—if it's wealth, if it's success, if it's intelligence, if it's power, fill in the blank. Jesus' question to us today is a good one: "Who do you say that I am?" Peter says, "You're the Messiah, you're the Christ, you are God's King." But who do you say?

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