Jesus Is Not Who You Think He Is

Rebecca Sheridan
Sunday, July 14, 2024
Mark 6:14-29

    On our family vacation to San Francisco, Rich and the girls went with some of our family to Alcatraz while I went with the others on a one-hour boat tour of the San Francisco harbor that left at the same time.  The boat tour I was on got really close to Alcatraz island at one point, so close that I could see many tourists walking around outside the buildings.  I knew Rich was wearing a distinctive bright orange jacket, and I waved excitedly for a few moments to see if I could catch his eye.  Turns out, when we all got back to compare our adventures, it wasn’t Rich, when we compared the timing of my sighting.  They were already inside the facility at that time.  I was waving at some other person who also happened to have a bright orange jacket!
    Have you ever thought you knew someone but realized it was someone else?  In our gospel for this morning, people are asking who this Jesus guy they’ve been hearing about is.  Is it John the Baptist, raised from the dead?  That’s what King Herod is afraid of.  Is it Elijah, or another prophet like the prophets of old?  People are using the important, famous spiritual leaders that they are familiar with to compare them with Jesus. They are having a hard time understanding that Jesus is a totally new, different kind of person – the Messiah.  People are using what they know, because what Jesus is saying and what he is doing is kind of like the prophets, like Elijah, like his cousin, John the Baptist.  And in fact, many faithful Jews at this time believed that Elijah would return before the coming of the Son of Man.  
    Of course, we will learn that Jesus is LIKE John the Baptist and the prophets of old, but he is not the same as them.  Jesus is different.  Jesus is more than another prophet – he is a different kind of King, the Son of Man, and also the Son of God and the Savior of the world.  And I wonder, when are we tempted to turn Jesus into the person we want him to be rather than accept Jesus as he really is for us?  What words might we put into his mouth, and what assumptions do we make about what Jesus would do in a certain situation, or who he is?  It happens to all of us that we want Jesus to be like us and do what we want rather than let Jesus challenge us to meet him where HE is and listen to the words he actually says.  Sometimes, we mistake Jesus for someone else.
With the presidential election just a few months away, for example, we start to hear assurances that a certain political candidate is surely who Jesus would vote for. We may be convinced that a certain political party is more “Christlike.”  Certainly, our faith informs our politics.  But when we go back to the gospels and look at what is actually written in our holy scriptures, we see that Jesus stands outside of and often in opposition to the political structures of the day.  Jesus calls both Simon the Zealot and Matthew the tax collector into his inner circle as two of the twelve disciples– people on complete opposite sides of the political spectrum.  And the political power that King Herod and Pontius Pilate have is self-serving and easily corrupting, aligned more with their own wills than with God’s will.  Our gospel cautions us about completely aligning the Christian faith and our desire to follow Christ faithfully with any human-made political party, leader, or system.
In fact, this morning’s gospel is quite a challenging one!  The gospel writer Mark retells the tragic story of John the Baptist’s beheading.  As a prophet pointing people to Christ, John confronts the powers that be and it gets him killed, even though King Herod, “liked to listen to him.”  It appears that Herod as well as Pilate somewhat wanted to do the right thing but choose preserving their own power and status over faithfulness to God.  
John’s death is a foreshadowing of what is in store for Christ himself as well as for his followers.  Only one of the twelve original disciples, we believe, died a natural death – the rest are martyred for their faith.  Jesus himself of course will be mocked as the “king of the Jews” as the self-serving Pontius Pilate washes his hands and sends him to his execution on a cross.  From our gospel this morning we learn that following Jesus and remaining faithful includes taking risks and doing hard things, and this can be frightening.  Acknowledging the risks that come with following Jesus help us remember that being a Christian is in fact not always easy, and while Jesus assures us that he will always be with us, it is sometimes through suffering and trials that we find Christ, with no promises that Jesus will make our lives easier, even if Jesus in fact makes our lives better despite the challenges.
So who is Jesus, anyway?  Along with the first disciples, let’s keep asking that question as we strive to be faithful.  Just like my mistaking someone in an orange jacket for my husband, we can recognize Christ-like behaviors and attributes, but struggle to know who Jesus is in his fullness. Faith is a lifelong journey of discovering and rediscovering who Jesus is for us.  When we suffer from a case of a “mistaken identity,” we can always go back to the gospels to hear again and again who Jesus is:  God’s only beloved Son who comes to save us and for whom no person is too far gone to save.  The Son of Man who comes to heal, teach, and forgive.  The One who seeks out the least and the lost.  The Son of God who dies and is raised for us.
One idea for a prayer practice this summer is to simply Google “names for Jesus” and reflect on a different aspect of who Jesus is each day.  A quick search I did this week reveals almost 200 different names, titles, and descriptions in the Bible for Jesus, with Bible verse references.  As one of the three persons of God, we acknowledge as human beings that we don’t always get who Jesus is right – we cannot fully know or describe all of who Christ is to us.  But in learning and discovering more about who he is for us, we grow closer to him.  And even when times are difficult, we can be encouraged that like John the Baptist, like the disciples, we can’t avoid difficult times in life, but we can go through them knowing that Christ goes with us.  Christ has been there, too, dying on the cross for us.  And on the other side of suffering on the cross, thanks be to God, is resurrection, so that Christ’s resurrection is ours!  Thanks be to God.  Amen.