The Sixteenth Sunday after Trinity, 15 September 2024,
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
‘Who do people say that I am?’ asked Jesus; for he understood that the names we call each other acutely affect our relationships.
‘Who do people say that I am?’ Jesus wanted to be seen as the person he knew himself to be, resistant of the untrue images imposed on him by others.
This was a joyful, lightbulb moment for Peter. He replied to Jesus’ question saying, ’You are the Messiah!’, brightly expressing his vision of Jesus as The One sent to save the people, a leader who would liberate Israel from their Roman oppressor, using all the temporal power he could muster.
But Jesus was quick to silence such talk and to present the quite different way he saw himself. He calls himself a ‘Son of Man’, in other words a mortal just like Peter. Refusing to be seen as a messianic saviour wielding aggressive worldly power: rather, Jesus was intent on teaching Peter that he would express his saving power through his suffering at the hands of the world’s powerful ones.
And sure enough, the glory of Jesus would be shown through his dying and then his rising again. The power of this Suffering One was of a different kind altogether – the power of life over death.
But why did Jesus call Peter ‘Satan’? ‘Get behind me, Satan’: That seems like a very extreme reaction against Peter’s confession of faith in him; a terrible name to use against the faithful friend and follower who had just expressed such profound belief and confidence in him.
Well, elsewhere Jesus describes Satan as ‘the father of lies’, ‘a murderer from the beginning [who] does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him.’ [2] And Jesus’ rebuke teaches Peter that it is a lie that there is no alternative to the messianic powers of the world which rule through military force and the power of political, economic systems. There is another way, made known through his teachings about the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God.
Jesus asserts that it is a lie that all we Sons and Daughters of Men are trapped in the futile battle for position and recognition and influence which is the way of the world. There need not be that struggle, when we learn to rest in the grace of God, accepting that we are embraced in his love.
It is fascinating that the gospel of Mark records this discussion about identity. It seems so current, so contemporary a subject. For ‘Who do people say that I am?’ is a question at the heart of our culture, which we come across all the time, and which involves us, whether or not we want it to.
Have you ever been asked by a website or by your phone to set up a profile for yourself? Unless you’re extremely adept at avoiding all contact with digital technology, I’d be surprised if you hadn’t. My NHS app wants me to set up a profile, with my name and contact details on it; so does the bank; and the tax office; and pretty much every other body I’m connected to. My Amazon account wants my profile to include a picture of myself, so that anyone clicking into my Wish List can see that it’s me – or the version of me that I choose to display. Currently that’s a photograph taken on a North Wales beach about a decade ago, where I’m wearing a Panama hat at a jaunty angle. Whereas for my Facebook profile I’m in full clerical mode baptising a baby at Eldroth. Everyone knows that these profiles barely describe the true ‘me’, they are a tiny part of the full picture of who I am.
‘Who do people say that I am?’ is the flip-side of the more profound question, ‘Who do I think I really am?’
Rejecting the name of ‘Messiah’, Jesus called himself The Son of Man, a Suffering One. By doing this he was placing himself in the company of all the powerless ones in his society, the despised, the marginalised, and everyone who struggles. [3]
For many in our society today the fundamental struggle is to know themselves and to be known by others. The technology which increasingly rules our lives demands that we display a public face: which can be a crushing pressure, particularly on those who have learned to measure their worth by the amount of followers or likes they have on social media. ‘Those who want to save their life’ by keeping up appearances, find themselves defeated by this ceaseless, exhausting, task.
This same technology also mines all the data which we generate moment by moment through our mobile devices, our virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri, our car’s black box, our TV set and digital doorbell, meaning that those who own the technology also own all the information about us which these devices record. ‘Those who want to save their life’ by entrusting more and more of it to these technologies and the companies and oligarchs behind them, may ask uneasily, ‘But who do they say that I am?’, ‘This detailed but incomplete version of myself that they own, what could they do with it?’
Many, in our increasingly surveilled society, worry about what happens if their data is wrong, or wrongly interpreted, and they are powerless to challenge or change it. As in the recent case of the 17-year old first-time driver whose car insurance company ‘threatened’ him with debt collectors over black box data that suggested he was driving his 18-year-old VW Polo at 540mph. [4] Or for that matter, the little rural church hit with ridiculously inflated electricity bills because the readings which the smart meter are giving bear no relation at all to reality.
Society’s focus on personal identity can cause people to feel alone in this world, separated from others, individuals vulnerable against the powerful forces of the corporations which rule our lives: which is why in our times many, from the margins, are working hard to rebuild community, to unite with others to resist all in our world which harms us. [5]
‘Who do people say that I am?’ is a burning question of our times. It is good news indeed that he who called himself ‘The Son of Man’ is one – in community – with everyone who suffers in this world. His divine power is totally unlike, and works in opposition to, the ways of the world’s Messiahs, Lords, and techno oligarchs, against the worldly structures and powers which separate us from our true selves and from those communities which might affirm and support us.
Think of one name Jesus called himself, ‘The resurrection, and the life’. He explained that this means that ‘Those who believe in me, even though they die, will live’.[6]
Those who suffer loss of face, loss of favour, loss of self, even loss of home or income, in this image-obsessed, data-driven society, can come to him to begin again, to put their anxious struggles behind them, to learn to rest in the grace of God, and to know that they are embraced in his love.
Notes
[1] A partial rewrite of the talk ‘On Calling God Names’ preached in Yorkshire in 2018 and in Somerset, 2015, and What’s in a name? preached in Devon in 2012.
[2] John 8.44.
[3] Hengel, Crucifixion: In the Ancient World and the Folly of the Message of the Cross, p.86f in Ched Myers, Binding the Strong Man: A Political Reading of Mark’s Story of Jesus, p.245
[4] Chloe Louise, Car insurance company ‘threatened’ cancer-stricken first-time driver, 17, with debt collectors over black box data that suggested he was driving at 540MPH in his 18-year-old VW Polo. ThisIsMoney.co.uk, 16 October 2023.
[5] Naomi Klein, Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World. p.327-334.
[6] John 11.25.
