Bible Text: Mark 8: 37-38 | Preacher: Rev. Jenn Geddes
Juliet famously said, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose, By any other name would smell as sweet.” She said this as she realized that her Capulet love for a Montague would never be acceptable in the eyes of her family or Romeo’s for that matter. However, I often wonder if people who change their name feel this way. What is in a name? Did you know that Pablo Picasso’s full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso? And yet most of us know his signature as simply Picasso. Sometimes people use pseudonyms to protect their actual identity, Benjamin Franklin used 9 different pen names including Martha Careful, Alice Addertongue and Anthony Afterwit. When CS Lewis wrote “A Grief Observed” he felt that it was so raw and personal that he chose to use the pseudonym N.W. Clerk. He was forced to reveal his authorship after most of his friends recommended the book to him as a way to cope with his grief. Sometimes people change their names to pursue a career in the arts. Dino Paul Crocetti began a career crooning in illegal casinos and called himself Dino Martini after the Met opera singer Nino Martini, his name changed again to Dean Martin as his career took off. When Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta walked into the recording studio of Rob Fusari he told her that her name just wouldn’t work in the music industry. A few days later he meant to text her, Radio Gaga, as a note about the song by Queen, but thanks to auto-correct the word radio came up as Lady. Stefani looked at the text and said, “That’s it. Don’t ever call me Stefani again” and Lady Gaga was born. So, what is in a name? Is it true that, that which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet?
Well Jesus has a similar question. The issue in a name is that identity with which it is tied. Even the names we use for Jesus are different from those his own parents used and we call him by those various names according to the theology we want to project. Emmanuel literally means in Hebrew, God with us. The word Jesus is a transliteration of the Hebrew name Joshua or Yeshua, which means Jehovah Saves or God is salvation. In Greek the term Christ means anointed and is the Greek translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. But not only do we have various pseudonyms for Jesus, the crowd who followed Jesus also had various names and expectations associated with those names of who Jesus was and even what to call him when. It is this challenge that faces our passage today.
The first verse in Mark’s Gospel begins, “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” But for the first eight chapters the disciples constantly confuse Jesus for other things and people. Jesus is not only a story teller and healer but in the end of chapter four they ask, “who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” In chapter six they mistake Jesus for a ghost as he approaches them on the sea. We as readers have the pretext that Jesus is the Son of God but it takes the disciples a great many tries before they get it right.
In our section we discover that the disciples are not alone in their confusion because people are claiming that Jesus might be John the Baptist reborn (an impossible notion since John and Jesus were alive at the same time) or maybe Elijah, the great prophet who did not die but was taken up in a cloud or maybe Jesus is one of those other prophets. But when Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” The response from Peter is short, “You are the Messiah.” After eight long chapters it would appear that the disciples finally understand who Jesus is and the gap between reader and disciple is closed.
Except just as this gap is closed a new rift opens wide. Because, what is in a name? What is in a title? What does it mean that Jesus is the Messiah? While the Hebrew word means anointed, it also carries with it the idea that a Messiah would be a liberator, would be a deliverer, would most likely be a solider who won a great battle over the oppressor. For the Jews of that time period they figured a Messiah would do battle on the Roman Empire and break the hold that the Romans had upon them, that a Messiah would be victorious in a great rebellion. So this lanky, pour, son of a carpenter Nazarene does not quite fit those expectations. He does not fit the expected associations with the name Messiah. Jesus certainly does not fit it when he begins to say that instead of winning a great battle he will have to suffer and die, essentially be defeated. This is not the kind of Messiah that was promised to the Hebrew people in the Torah. So while Peter vocalizes who he believes Jesus to be Peter was also making some of those assumptions about what the Messiah would do and therefore Peter can be forgiven for rebuking Jesus when Jesus says he will be defeated.
Then Jesus turns to the crowd, and loses that sense of secrecy he had built up over the previous verses. He calls out to all who are present that this walk is not his alone to take but that those who want to follow him must also take up their cross. Jesus is not going to suffer for sufferings sake but rather because what he does, how he lives, is in stark contrast to the cultural norms, political set ups and religious practices of his day. By reaching out and serving the marginalized, by questioning the religious authority and traditions, by living among the unclean, Jesus is going to anger quite a few people and when people in power get angry they turn to suppression. They want to overcome this rebellious talk.
This is the take away for us. Theologian Micah Kiel says, “Mark profiles a deeper dynamic that spans the ages: how are human knowledge and expectations in tension with the aims of God? We know the way things are, how they are supposed to go. If we believe God is active and that Jesus is aline in the world, then the question posed to us is not whether we confess Jesus as the Messiah. That is the easy part. We know what the title is. The question becomes how do we misunderstand what the title means?” What is in a name?
What does it mean to call ourselves Christians? What does it mean to call ourselves a church? The Session of CVPC has been studying a document by the World Council of Churches called “Together Towards Life: Mission and Evangelism in Changing Landscapes. This week one of the passages said, “The church exists by mission, just as fire exists by burning. If it does not engage in mission, it ceases to be church. In this perspective it is not the church that has a mission but rather the mission that has a church. Mission is not a project of expanding churches but of the church embodying God’s salvation in this world.” What does it mean to come to Comox Valley Presbyterian Church? Instead of answering that question for you I know you will think about what that question means to you. Jesus’ clarity in the kind of Messiah that he is, lends itself to a certain kind of discipleship. Perhaps we are not like Peter in a way because we are informed by the death and resurrection of Jesus. But we also commit to follow someone who we know and understand only in part. For it is only as we walk with Jesus, the Messiah, the Christ, Emmanuel, that we come to know what is in his name. And it is in his name that we pray. Amen