Getting A Reputation

Mark 8:27-38

Do you spend much time thinking about your reputation? Even “managing” it? 

Apparently that’s a thing you have to do in the internet age - my radio news is frequently sponsored by a corporation eager to help you manage that reputation.

And maybe that’s been around for longer than I’ve given it credit for.  After all, Jesus seems to be busy managing his reputation today, asking his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?”

That’s easy!  There’s a lot of talk about Jesus in the village gossip network, and the religious circuit - the internet of first-century Palestine. Some say he’s a prophet. Or John the Baptist or Elijah reborn. It’s a mixed reputation: “God-inspired leader” and “trouble-maker” are both implied in those labels.

And it’s pretty accurate to Jesus’ actions - he preaches and teaches like a prophet, calls out the authorities like John the Baptist, and heals like Elijah.

So he moves on to what matters more, the question of whether his friends really know him: “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter - as usual - speaks up. “You’re the Messiah!” We know you! We’ve been watching, and we can tell that you’re the one who was promised, the one who will overthrow the foreign oppressors and bring peace and God’s favor back to our nation. You’re going to make everything better!

Now that’s a great reputation to have.

But when Jesus immediately starts to talk confidently about his own death, rejection, and resurrection, Peter gets seriously worried about how it’s going to affect his reputation.  “Look, Jesus, this is bad news. No one’s going to respect you that way. People are going to think you're crazy or doomed - either way it’s bad for business and bad for God.”  And it’s definitely not the way the Messiah should behave.

So now Jesus’ good reputation is actually getting in Peter’s way.

Because Jesus has a name as a man of God, and because the Messiah must be triumphant, Peter can’t really hear what Jesus is trying to say.

I suspect the same thing happens to us, now. I suspect that the reputation Jesus has in the twenty-first century can block our ears - and other peoples’ - to what Jesus is really trying to say to us.

The reputation of Jesus in the 21st century is, de facto the reputation of Christians, of the church.

And judging by the news these days, Christians’ reputation - and therefore Jesus’ reputation - is going to involve Kim Davis or Pope Francis (or both).  So Jesus is - by reputation very interested in marriage and divorce. And also in pregnancy.

Judging by a major survey in the last decade, Christians are - Jesus is - judgmental, hypocritical, political and increasingly irrelevant. Judging by Calvary, Christians are - Jesus is - mostly friendly, nice, often fun, and not terribly big on change.

There’s more to Jesus’ reputation, of course. More Christians and more people with opinions about Christians.  And all that noisy reputation of Christians and the church - good, bad and indifferent - is quite different from what Jesus himself says and does.

If you google “Who is Jesus?” the top five results all give you a short historical or theological description and then quickly turn to the benefits and necessity of committing your life to Jesus, 

of claiming for yourself Jesus’ sacrificial death on the cross.

Although the “cradle Episcopalian” in me is allergic to conversion pressure, and to some of the theology on these websites, I have to admit that they follow exactly the pattern of the conversation between Jesus and his disciples that we heard today.

When he’s checked his reputation with the disciples Jesus goes big with the invitation to commit. He calls a crowd to him, any and everyone around, and invites them - you and me - to deny ourselves and take up our cross; to get into trouble with him.

To know him not just by word of mouth, but by identifying with him, in action as well as in thought.

To know Jesus, to be able to really answer the question “who do you say that I am?” we have to fully commit ourselves to who he means to be. Not to his reputation, but to his action.

Not by being kind and good, not by being church, but by getting into trouble. Not for trouble’s own sake, but because God’s dream for the world is so different from the world as it is

that taking God’s vision seriously is going to upset everyone who’s comfortable now.  

And that’s dangerous.

Author and religion blogger Benjamin L. Corey says, “When Jesus comes back, I sure hope he doesn’t land in America. Being a progressive rabbi from the Middle East, teaching a message that’s anti-war & anti-rich, while claiming the poor are blessed, and that those who don’t welcome immigrants will be excluded from his kingdom, Christian leaders would most likely have him deported.”

He’s right. We don’t go in for literal crucifixion in the US these days, but Jesus would get in just as much trouble with the politicians, with the powerful - and with folks who just want to live their lives - today as he did in first-century Israel, and he’s inviting us to do it with him.

Here and now, centuries into the collaboration of the church with power and culture and government, it’s hard - probably impossible in spite of all I can say or anything you can read or research - to really sense how much of a disruptive cliff- hanger this invitation is.  To imagine what it means that  Jesus invites us to actually lose ourselves - lose our reputation, our self-image, our plans for the future, even any confidence that we’re right when others are wrong - lose ourselves so that God can make us something utterly different.

When that happens, it’s unmistakable.  

When that happens, you get Desmond Tutu and Martin Luther and Martin Luther King, Jr.

Heroes later, criminals first.

Because when it happens, God gets people who disrupt our hope for a Messiah who is going to make everything easy; people who make the church as uncomfortable and upset as Peter when Jesus started talking about crucifixion and death.

But when it happens the world is transformed.

It happens to Paul.

It happens - eventually - to Peter.

It happens to saints.

And Jesus wants it to happen to all of us, to each of us,

so that the world can be wholly transformed and God can be fully known, by heart and by life, not just by reputation.

The invitation’s still open.  It could happen to you.

Will it?