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David Orendorff        Mark 6:14-16        August 2, 2009

The sermon title “Who Is Jesus?” is a knotty question for us.  Is Jesus a good teacher, a good man, or more?  And if more, what more?  What does it mean to claim Jesus is human and also God?  These questions are fundamental to understanding of our Christian faith.  Mark provides his answer to the question of “Who is Jesus?” in today’s gospel.  For such a short passage the answer is rather complicated for in Mark’s day, just as in ours, there are a variety of answers.

First there is the answer of Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great who ruled Palestine when Jesus was born.  The Herod family is one of the great soap operas except it is fact not fiction.  Herod Antipas was as brutal as his father Herod the Great.  Herod Antipas murdered any who opposed him, including members of his family.  He divorced his first wife then murdered his half-brother in order to marry Herodias, his now widowed sister-in-law.  It is this marriage that John the Baptist condemned.  And it was because of this condemnation that Herod Antipas had John arrested and beheaded.

Herod has a guilty conscience and to him Jesus is John the Baptist come again to haunt him in his sins.  In his reflections on this passage William Barclay writes:

Whenever a man does an evil thing the whole world becomes his enemy.  Inwardly, he cannot command his thoughts; and, whenever he allows himself to think, his thoughts return to the wicked thing that he has done.  No man can avoid living with himself; and when his inward self is an accusing self, life becomes intolerable.  Outwardly, he lives in the fear that he will be found out and that someday the consequences of his evil deed will catch up on him.

Some time ago a convict escaped from a Glasgow prison.  After forty-eight hours of liberty he was recaptured, cold and hungry and exhausted.  He said that it was not worth it.  “I didn’t have a minute,” he said.  “Hunted, hunted all the time.  You don’t have a chance.  You can’t stop to eat.  You can’t stop to sleep.”[1]

So it is for those who have done an evil thing.  Inwardly they are being hunted always.  There is no rest for their soul as every relationship becomes the hunter seeking to expose and prosecute them.  For Herod Jesus is the hunter come to condemn him.

Others answer that Jesus is Elijah.  It is said that Elijah, the greatest of the prophets, will return in the days prior to the Messiah.  Those of you who have attended the Seder Passover meal on Maundy Thursday, the celebration of the Hebrew’s escape from slavery in Egypt, remember that at the table a place is set and a cup of wine is poured for Elijah.  At one point in the meal a child goes to the door and opens it in hopes that Elijah will enter and proclaim that the long awaited Messiah is coming and that Israel will be set free of its oppression by a mighty warrior like King David.

This second answer to “Who Is Jesus?” is the hope of a nationalist, one who sees Jesus as someone who will lead the way to national liberty and then world conquest. Jesus as national liberator and world conqueror has been and is used to justify war an embarrassing number of times.  Those who see Jesus as Elijah hope that by the courage and blood of another they can be set free.  William Barclay says it this way:

This is the verdict of the man who desires to find in Jesus the realization of his own ambitions.  He thinks of Jesus, not as someone to whom he must submit and whom he must obey; he thinks of Jesus as someone he can use.  Such a man thinks more of his own ambitions than of the will of God.[2]

The third answer to “Who is Jesus” is the verdict of those waiting to hear the voice of God.  It has been three centuries since Israel has had a real prophet, someone who says with authority, “Thus says the Lord.”  Those of this third group are people hungry for an authentic faith.  They have listened for three centuries to the priests, the elders and the scribes argue about this piece of scripture and that piece of scripture, about what is the right way to obey the law and what is right to believe.  These folks just want someone to tell them so they know.

To them Jesus is that someone.  Jesus is the prophetic voice for God.  Notice that I said “a voice for God” not “the voice of God.”  For these folks Jesus is but another, though more recent, prophet.  For them Jesus is a good man and a wise teacher, someone to consider and study.  But like those of the previous two answers, Jesus is not one to whom one surrenders one’s life and obeys unconditionally.

Interestingly, though none of the answers is a full Christian understanding of Jesus, each has truth in it.

To the Herods of the world, those plagued with their own guilt, Jesus is the one who reveals their shame and calls them to accountability for their lives.  But unlike their expectations, Jesus brings not condemnation but forgiveness.  Jesus would forgive Herod and set him free of being hunted and haunted if Herod would only accept such forgiveness.

To those who see in Jesus a tool for their own ambitions, whether they are nationalistic or materialistic, Jesus does promise a coming salvation, a healing of what is broken, peace in the midst of war, life in the midst of death.  Jesus will indeed conquer tyrants and the world of violence.

But unlike their expectations in which a messiah will solve their problems for them, Jesus places responsibility upon each one to live compassionate and just lives.  Jesus is not a tool for whatever our hearts desire.  Jesus is our guide, a very present aid in times of trouble and a power that transforms lives.

John Wesley called this “responsible grace.”  In Jesus we know the forgiveness and salvation of God.  Now we are responsible to live it, to make it flesh in our own lives.  We will have to carry our own crosses just as Jesus carried his.  And when our burden becomes so heavy that we fall and even die, the living Christ raises us up again to go on in compassion and justice.  Jesus is the strength we need for a Godly life.

And to those who see in Jesus a new prophet, a fine teacher and voice for God, the Christian says, “This is almost the full truth.”  But unlike their expectations Jesus is not the voice for God but the very voice of God made flesh.  That is to say, Jesus is not repeating what God has told him, but is speaking as God in a human body.  Jesus voice carries authority not because it sounds like what we expect God to say, but because it is God saying to us all that is true of our lives, both for better and for worse.  Jesus is more than a teacher about the way of God; Jesus is the living way of God.

All three answers; he is John the Baptist returned; he is Elijah come again; and he is a prophet; are right but not completely right.  For us Christians Jesus is all of this and more.  For us Jesus is the forgiver of our failings, the savior and transformer of our lives, and the way of our living.

Christians surrender their will to the will of the resurrected Jesus.  Christians pray “forgive us our sins as we forgive the sins of others.”  Christians pray “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.”  And Christians answer “What would Jesus do?” by their deeds.  For us Christ has been raised from the dead and lives among us, forgiving us, healing us, and teaching us.  And because of this, we live as those free from our sins, free from our wounds, free to love and be loved, to be Christ alive in compassion and justice for all the world.

Who is Jesus?  Jesus is all my life.  And where I withhold my life to myself, I pray Jesus as the Holy Spirit will reform and transform me.  Shalom and Amen.

[2] ibid. 147