Matt 16- False Images of Jesus

Exodus 3: 1-15; Matthew 16: 21-28

Last week Jesus asked his disciples who they say he is. And Simon Peter answered, 

"You are the Messiah, the son of the living God." 

And in response to this answer Jesus says, 

"Blessed are you Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you but my Father in heaven. 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."

It's hard to imagine getting higher praise from Jesus. He is telling him that he has heard the voice of God, and that is how he knew how to answer Jesus's question.

He then sternly orders the disciples not to tell anyone that he is the Messiah. This is sometimes called the Messianic Secret. This is the idea that Jesus wanted to keep the fact that he was the Messiah under wraps for the time being.

And then in our reading for this week it says that Jesus began to show his disciples that he must 

"go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and the chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised." 

So Jesus begins preparing them for what is about to take place: that he is going to suffer and die at the hands of their leaders.

And Peter pulls Jesus aside and we read that he begins to “rebuke” him. The Greek work means a stern correction. The same word is used when Jesus rebukes the winds and calms the storm (Matt 8:26). The word is used again when Jesus confronts a demon during an exorcism in the next chapter (17:18). This kind of rebuke is what you might give if one of your children hitting their brother or sister, or running out of the road.

So, Peter and Jesus are both on the same page regarding Jesus being the Messiah, but Peter has a very different idea about what that means. They have a different idea about what road they should take to get where they're going. Jesus says the path forward is through suffering and Peter rejects that.

Peter, who just had received such high praise from Jesus, now receives the words, 

"Get behind me Satan! You are a stumbling block to me; for you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things."

Back in Matthew chapter four, Jesus is tempted by the devil. Two of those temptations have to do with Jesus showing himself to be the Messiah without needing the cross. He is encouraged to throw himself down from the pinnacle of the temple so that angels will catch him and the leadership of the temple will see who he is as he is gently set down on the pavement. It would be an obvious miracle to prove to the leadership that he is the Messiah. He is also encouraged to worship Satan and then receive all the kingdoms of the world. Both of these are temptations to become the Messiah without the cross.

Jesus sees Peter tempting him in a similar way and so he ascribes his words not to Peter but to Satan.

There was an understanding in their culture about the role of the Messiah. He was meant to be a King David figure that would unite the people and remove the enemies of Israel. He would correct Temple worship, and remove the corruption that was rife within their leadership. Suffering and dying and rejection were signs of a false messiah. So understandably Peter feels the need to correct Jesus. They knew what the role of the Messiah was supposed to be and what Jesus was describing did not fit.

There was probably also some fear in His words as well. As your leader goes so go you. If Jesus' path leads to rejection and suffering then what does that mean for the disciples who are following Him? How can that not mean suffering as well? And who wants that? In the ancient world suffering was not a sign of having divine approval. Power was a sign of divine approval.

We can fall into a similar trap that Peter stepped into. We can try to tell God who He is supposed to be, what His role should be, what actions He should be taking in the world.

A number of years ago I was helping organize a conference. As a part of that, I took a video camera, and I was interviewing people about what they thought of Jesus. The people I interviewed were not a part of any church. There were people you might pass on the street every day but not see inside a church building on a Sunday morning. I wasn't looking for a foaming-at-the-mouth atheist. I was looking for people who are open to the idea of God but just didn't go to church on Sundays.

Well, among those I interviewed was a man who was about my age. I asked him what he thought about Jesus. I asked him what it would be like to sit down across a table with Jesus.

He said, 

“I think he'd just be a decent guy. I think he'd probably be appalled at some of what he sees religion doing to his memory. I think that he'd just be a straight-up nice, easy-to-talk-to person that's humble and polite and understands everybody's problems and doesn't judge.”

It is interesting to hear what people say about what Jesus' character is like, what his role is. It's important for us to ask this question of ourselves too: how do I see Jesus? What is his role in my life? What is he doing in the world? What do I think his character is like? What do I think his politics would be like?

We should ask ourselves how well our image of Jesus aligns with what we read in Scripture and the witness of the Early Church? Or, am I just making Jesus in the image of my preferences? 

We might not have the kind of cultural baggage around the role of the Messiah that Peter had, but we probably have images and ideas that we impose on Jesus that probably doesn't come from Scripture or the witness of the Early Church. 

Maybe our image of Jesus is imbalanced. We emphasize one aspect and ignore other aspects of his character.

In our reading from Exodus 3 Moses asks for God's name, but God doesn't ask Moses for suggestions. It’s not put to a vote. God reveals himself with the mysterious name "I am who I am." And there are a number of other possible suggestions for how to translate that. Even the translation is strangely mysterious. God resists being put into our boxes.

Some have translated the Hebrew name of God as, 

"HE CAUSES TO BE", 

or 

“I AM THAT I AM”, 

or 

“I WILL BE WHAT I WILL BE”. 

Theologians and Bible scholars have theorized that this name might say something about God being the origin of all that exists, or that God is eternally self-sufficient, or that God is a pure being, or that the name is in relation to God's unchanging existence across past and present and future. Some suggest that the name "I will be what I will be" means that they we'll know who he is by what he's about to do.

But the point I'm trying to make is that God tells us who He is. We don't get to tell God who He is, and our job, when God reveals who He is, is to come into alignment with God’s will, our job is to match the beating of our hearts with God's heart.

Turning back to our gospel. After Jesus corrects Peter, he says, 

"If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." 

For those who want to save their life will lose it and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”

Following Jesus requires self-denial and that also means allowing our false images that we impose on Jesus to be torn down. If my image of Jesus is just one that makes me comfortable and highlights the values I think are important but that image doesn't challenge me, then we're probably not looking at the real Jesus. What we need in our life is the real Jesus.

I might be tempted to rebuke God over the life He has given me, to say that God has made a mistake, that God has not treated me well. That would be to say that I know better than God what I need. My job is to trust that God has put in front of me exactly the life that I need in order to learn to be a faithful follower of Jesus. That my life, the precise particular life that I have been given, is exactly the life that I need in order to learn what it means to be saved by Jesus Christ.

A god constructed from my good ideas isn't the real god and so can't save me. As followers of Jesus Christ we let him lead. It is not on us to tell Jesus who he is. He tells us who he is and it's our job to follow, trusting that he will lead us into all the places that he wants us to go and that he wants what is best for us. That he desires us to be citizens of the kingdom of God. How we do that is by accepting him as he is and accepting the life he has put before us. AMEN