September 13, 2009 Proper 19
Mark 8: 29 who do people say that I am? Peter said, you are the Christ.
John Meier entitles his recent study of the historical Jesus, A Marginal Jew. In doing so he reminds us that the Gospels reflect a ministry which is concerned with the transformation of Israel. When we consider Jesus in the historical sense - living in a particular time, place and culture, whatever we are able to recover from the Gospel and extra gospels have to be seen in this context. Baldly stated, nothing that Jesus said can be given an interpretation which represents the conditions that his resurrection created and the interpretations of the community which it created viz. Christian Church. So we should understand his identification as Messiah at Caesarea Philippi as one which reflects the current Messianic expectation of the Jewish community living in Judah in the first century of the common era. And, it would probably be historically less misleading if the translators would have refrained from using ”Christ” anywhere in the Gospels in order to emphasize this important caveat. Admittedly, this is an accurate translation of the Hebrew in a Christian setting but the change of context is crucial. You don’t see the Christ is coming on the bumper stickers of Lubavitchers!
The version of the story which is in today’s reading from Mark is regarded by all commentators as the basis for its presence in Matthew and Luke as well as the somewhat differing rendition in John 6. In all cases, with the exception of the passage which is our text, everything else in the accounts is the work of the Gospel writer and reflects to a great extent the concerns of the community for which it was written. Iss, it is fair to say that Jesus' ministry was for his disciples an indication of what they expected the coming of the Messiah to be all about. Thus, many writers feel the additions made by the all the gospel authors reflect a post resurrection backward projection into a pre-resurrection setting. This is possibly an illustration of the very early Christian idea that the encounter with the risen Jesus was a kind of apocalyptic revelation disclosing to the recipient that He was the Son of God. Paul’s experience on the road to Damascus is the prime example. The transformation then of this Jesus whom they knew into the Risen Lord (the point at which the Old Israel is absorbed into the New) is what the Gospels record. The task for spelling out how this change could take place was largely the work of Paul (remember he preceded all the Gospel writers) and we can expect that Matthew, Luke and John are the earliest examples of the way in which the sayings of Jesus were embellished to reflect this new post resurrection version of Israel.
I would like to mention two fallouts from these developments which continue to affect the Christian community. In Jesus' time the identity of Israel was unambiguous - his message was to prepare it for the final coming of God’s kingdom. His mission was not on saving souls in an individualistic sense - he was not a “personal” savior. His prophetic responsibility was to the entire people of God. But with advent of non-jews into the community of his followers, the question quickly arose as to how membership in the Israel of the risen Lord was to be effected. This was the controversy surrounding the need for circumcision as a sign of membership. At this point the historic role of Baptism as the means of renewal for the Old Israel became not just the symbolic instrument of a new life in Old Israel but the point of rebirth into the New Israel. The birth motif the physical point of entry into Israel was transformed into the symbolic point of entry into the New! In what sense then is the church to be understood as the successor to the Old Israel. So begins the complicated and sordid history of the relationship between Christians and Jews.
Meanwhile there remains the matter of how we are to understand our status in relationship to God. Generally this is what we call salvation but following on to what we have just presented does this mean we are “saved” because we have become a member of Israel now portrayed as the Church or does it mean that in seeing the Risen Lord we have been freed from all ties and the new Life is a deeply personal commitment to Christ. In the first sense the Church is a sacred body in the second it is a gathering of redeemed individuals. In the first sense membership in Israel is clear and defined, in the second it is only revealed at a final reckoning. Within the Anglican tradition both conditions are found.
Following on from these interpretation which we know largely in the simplified distinction between Catholics and Protestants, there is the matter of how we are to represent/re-present what is now called the Christian religion. We are required to decide what Jesus meant when he demanded that Israel reform its ways in order that it might be worthy to be called the Kingdom of God. To answer the question we have to use what information is available that indicates his relationship to the Roman authority. There are those who suggest that he was in the first instance a figure of interest only to the local Jewish community. There are others who argue that his understanding of the Kingdom of God presented a real threat to Roman authority particularly as he was almost exclusively interested in the disenfranchised members of the Jewish community. In this case His Old Israel was already a radical challenge to the status quo of society and it is not surprising that at least some communities of the New Israel had a similar point of view. This dispute centers today on how we are to understand Paul’s role in establishing and guiding the communities in Corinth, Rome, Glaltia, Phillipi and Thessalonika. And what the role of the gradual Romanization of the Church played in the suppression of communities in which Women, in particular had exercised a major leadership role.
Is it now possible to re-present our tradition in ways which allow for both a re-understanding of the past and an openness to events and ideas that must in all honestly be called new? The attacks mounted by the advocates of the New Atheism are fueled by our reluctance to admit past errors as well as their own ignorance of the past. These critics are aided by our inability to make the case for disagreement as part of our living tradition and the lack of respect which permeates our disputes. If we are the Body of Christ then what we represent must be re-presented to an increasingly indifferent world.
