What about the Messiah?

Lectionary Link

11 Pentecost, Cycle A  Proper 17, August 28, 2011

Exodus 3:1-15  Psalm 105:1-6, 23-26, 45c

Romans 12:9-21  Matthew 16:21-28

  In today’s appointed Gospel, we find some rather harsh words from Jesus for the man who was to become the premier leader in the Christian Movement after Jesus left this earth.  Jesus said to Peter, “Get behind me Satan.”  Satan is the personification of the lie.  Lying is not just saying things that are not true, it is also choosing to remain in comfortable opinions of things that are only partially true.

  This Gospel highlights an issue amongst the early followers of Jesus and the Judaic community that excommunicated them from the synagogue around the year 80 of the Common Era.  This was an issue:  How is Jesus of Nazareth the Messiah?  And what is the significant definition of the Messiah?  When Jesus told his disciples that he was going to suffer and die, it was hard for Peter to accept this.  How could this be the Messiah?  How could this be God’s anointed one who would be like King David and come to re-establish independence and order for the people of Israel?  Peter was saying to Jesus: “Jesus you are wrong about yourself.  You don’t know how to understand yourself.  The Messiah can’t suffer and die and so you cannot suffer and die.”  It does seem rather comical if not absurd that Peter is trying to correct the Messiah about His misunderstanding of the Messiah.

  The early expositors of the Messiah had a dilemma.  Those who witnessed the suffering and death of Jesus had to look for other Hebrew writings to find other models of the Messiah.  They found such a model in the Prophet Isaiah who wrote about a Suffering Servant Messiah.   But what about a King David triumphant kind of Messiah?   The early expositors wrote that the Suffering Messiah would leave but someday soon return as the triumphant Messiah, and so the two notions of the Messiah were reconciled in a first coming and a seconding coming.  Many members of the  early church and St. Paul believed that they would see this second coming in their own time.  And lots of Christians are all oriented towards this second coming today, even to the point of being apocalyptic fatalists and dismissing the need for taking care of our planet.  After all if Jesus is coming tomorrow, why do we have to conserve and preserve?  We still do have varied opinions about the Messiah today.  Just recently, a preacher was predicting the rapture on May 21st, now delayed until October 21st.  Another TV preacher--who is a self proclaimed spokesperson for the divine meaning of natural disasters-- said the Earthquake that put a crack in the Washington Monument was a sign from God of the approaching coming of the Messiah.

  Get behind me Satan!  Let us not get trapped into a lie about very narrow and limited views of the Messiah.  The record of the Scriptures presents a variety of messianic meanings.  The notion of messiah comes from the Hebrew word that is associated with the ritual anointing with oil.  It meant that people understood the person or the object to represent God’s selected mode of presence or action in this world.  It was used to refer to early Levitical priests in Israel.  The sons of Aaron were God’s chosen and anointed priests.  The notion of anointing and designation referred also to the Temple and the holy objects as well as the unleavened bread.  (In the same sense the Eucharistic bread and wine are also messianic objects in how we regard them to bear the presence of Christ).  Messiahs were not necessarily always good; King Saul was the first “anointed” king of Israel but he and his lineage lost the “messiahship” to the Davidic line.  The investiture of Israel’s Kings involved the pouring of a horn of oil over the head of the new King thus designating God’s anointing and selection.  The Davidic line declined and lost the “messiahship.”  In fact, the Kings of Israel and Judah became so bad that the prophet Isaiah even called the conquering King Cyrus the Great of Persia, a messiah.  This conquering king was designated as one who was doing God’s will and work in carrying the people of Israel off into exile.  So can we admit that the notion of the messiah in the Bible is quite diverse in its application?

  Yes, indeed the hope of people in Israel was for restoration and for someone and some way to make it actual in their lives.  Hope is always looking for a narrative and heroes to bring justice in our world.  Justice is always looking for laws and law givers to make justice actual.  Hope springs eternal and so Hope will always inspire notions of the messiah, notions of how God will be present to us in significant ways.

  We still look for the messiah today in many, many ways.  The problem for Christian messianism is that some still are just like Peter; they want to cling to a very limited notion of the messiah.  Popular messianism today of fundamentalist Christian communities today has more to do with assuming precise correspondence  of catastrophic events with their own  interpretations of the Bible.  Most of these communities and their leaders essentially hope for a messiah who will come in the way they want and they mostly think that God will prove that they were right and to prove it their followers will be whisked away in a rescuing rapture.  I assert their right to have such narratives of hope and such visualizations to bear up with the pain that they think that they are in; but it is a very limited notion of the messiah and like Peter’s notion of the messiah, it is a selfish notion of the messiah that centers on their own exclusive beliefs and communities.

  We do not have to give up hope for our future; we do not have to give up dreams and visualizations of Peace and Justice achieving actual success upon earth.  We can maintain hope and the narratives of hope without falling into very limited notions of the Messiah.

  I would invite us to find the messiah as personal events for us today.  Where has God anointed our lives and our world with the divine presence?  How and where does God get through to us?  How and where does God move us and inspire us in the work to surpass ourselves for better and more excellent outcomes for our lives and the betterment of our families and communities?  The messiah and the messianic come to us in many ways, and even in suffering and apparent failure or in the experience of lack.  It is not that the actual events of suffering, failure or lack are messianic but it is our faith and hope in the future that helps us to redeem such negative experiences in subsequent events of our lives.  Resurrection gives death a new meaning; suffering, failure, and lack can be made to be messianic events with subsequent redemptive events.  Peter could not see anything messianic about the suffering and death of Jesus.  And we can forgive him for that; the notion of a suffering messiah is very counter-logic.  The risen Christ invites us to think outside of the box of logic so that we do not limit the notions of the messiah.

  We like Peter, should always hear the rebuke of Jesus: “Get behind me Satan!”  when we try to limit the work and the presence of the Messiah.  Let us believe that the Messiah touches our lives in many ways and let us be attentive to present ourselves so that we can be the hands, the hearts and feet of the Messiah to bring hope and good news to our world.  Amen.