Lectionary reading
First reading: Isaiah 50:5-9
Responsorial Psalm: 114(116):1-6, 8-9
Second reading: James 2:14-18
Gospel: Mark 8:27-35
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COMMENTARY
In today’s Gospel (Mark 8:27-35) we reach a true watershed in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus explicitly raises with his disciples the issue of his identity. As readers of the Gospel, we have known from the start that he is ‘the Messiah, the Son of God’ (1:1). But this has been concealed from all other participants in the drama save Jesus himself, who immediately following his baptism by John has heard the Father declare from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the beloved, with whom I am well pleased’ (1:11). As Jesus’ ministry in the cities and towns of Galilee unfolded, the disciples have wrestled with the question that they voice immediately after he has calmed the sea, ‘Who is this, then, that even the winds and the sea obey him?’ (4:41). People have been struck by the authority of his teaching and by his powerful works of healing and exorcism (1:22, 27). Only the demons, feeling the force of his power, acknowledge his identity as Son of God. But Jesus will not allow them to speak; his identity is not to be revealed from malign sources such as these.
Now, however, the moment has come for Jesus to draw from the disciples an explicit acknowledgment of his identity as Messiah. He approaches the issue in a somewhat roundabout way, first asking them to report on who the people in general think he is. The response comes back in the shape of various prophetic figures. Increasingly, however, the disciples, as distinct from the mass of the people, have been the focus of Jesus’ attention and instruction. So, when Jesus puts the question directly to them, it is not surprising that Peter as spokesperson for the group gets it right: ‘You are the Christ (the Messiah)’. In contrast to the people, they have this privileged knowledge of his true identity.
ONE WHO IS TO SERVE
Jesus neither confirms nor applauds Peter’s response. Instead, he strictly enjoins the disciples not to pass on this knowledge to anyone else and then goes on immediately to speak – for the first of several times in the Gospel – of his coming passion and death. The knowledge that he is Messiah is not to be separated for a moment from the kind of Messiah he is destined to be: not one who will be served and honoured, as is customary in the case of rulers of this world, but one who is ‘to serve and give his life as a ransom for many’ (10:45).
For the remainder of the Gospel the disciples will have to wrestle – quite unsuccessfully as turns out – with holding together two truths concerning Jesus: on the one hand, that he is indeed the long-awaited Messiah; on the other hand, that he will fulfil his messianic role by entering into the pain and suffering of this world, even to the point of death – something totally unforeseen in Jewish messianic expectation.
Peter’s remonstrance with Jesus voices just this sense of incompatibility between the two. How can it be that the Messiah should suffer in such a way. How could God allow this to happen to the Chosen One, the instrument of Israel’s salvation? The long journey to Jerusalem that makes up the second half of the Gospel will be mainly taken up with a futile attempt on Jesus’ part to get the disciples to confront this issue. Only the women disciples will show some greater understanding and remain with Jesus in his suffering to the end (14:3-9; 15:40-41, 47).
TAKE UP THEIR CROSS
Jesus’ rebuke to Peter is severe: ‘Get behind me, Satan!’ While doubtless well meant, the attempt to hold back Jesus from his divinely ordained path is to play Satan’s game: namely, to frustrate God’s gift of life to the world through the cross of Jesus. It will be by taking the road to death that Jesus will become the instrument of life, and those who would be his associates must go the same way: take up their cross and follow after him.
The fact that Peter who has just got something so splendidly right stumbles so badly at the thought of suffering can be, nonetheless, an encouragement for us – a recognition in the gospels that we all do badly at suffering. At the end of the story (the passion) the disciples – the male disciples at least – failed miserably. But that wasn’t the real end of the story. God’s power triumphed over human failure in resurrection.
The First Reading offers the Third Servant Song of Isaiah (50:5-9) as an appropriate background for the sense of a suffering instrument of God that emerges in the Gospel. We should be aware, however, that such texts were not interpreted in reference to the Messiah in pre-Christian Judaism. In the Second Reading, James continues to insist that faith must express itself in realistic social concern.
Brendan Byrne, SJ, FAHA, taught New Testament at Jesuit Theological College, Parkville, Vic., for almost forty years. He is now Emeritus Professor at the University of Divinity (Melbourne). His commentaries on the Gospels can be found at Pauline Books and Media