Superpowers Jesus?
16
September 2012
Proper
19B
Homily
preached at Trinity Episcopal Church
Ashland,
Oregon
8:00
a.m. spoken Mass, 10:00 a.m. Sung Mass
God, take away our hearts of stone, and give us hearts of
flesh. Amen
A clip from the British television series Outnumbered went viral a couple of years ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYjfDvg1WgE). In it, a young boy and his sister ask a priest uncomfortable questions about Jesus: “When King Herod was trying to kill Baby Jesus, why didn’t Baby Jesus zap him?” … Because Herod was an insignificant little speck to Jesus, and Jesus could have squished him with a hippopotamus or something.” Little sister replies, “Jesus wouldn’t do that, he was meek and mild. Beside, he knew all he had to do was wait until Herod was in Hell, where he could roast forever until his eyeballs exploded.” Brother resumes: “When Jesus was a bit older and the Romans were searching for him, why didn’t Jesus shape shift and become a Roman soldier and wait until they fell asleep and then stab them all to death?” The priest finds his voice, “Jesus wasn’t a Power Ranger. God sent Jesus to sacrifice him for our sake.” “Well, wasn’t that a bit selfish of us?” the boy answers. Sister adds: “Why couldn’t God have done it a bit differently, like writing everyone a letter and asking them to be a bit better or something bad might happen?” Big brother: “When Jesus was being crucified, why didn’t he ask God to send a meteorite down and kill all the Roman troops and let him off the cross?” Priest: “God sacrificed Jesus for us because he was the most precious thing for him.” Little sister: “So why then did he kill him?”
We often, like these annoying children,
mistakenly think that Jesus should have superpowers.
There are plenty of stories in the
Bible that might lead us to this conclusion—Jesus healing the sick, raising the
dead, walking on water, turning water into wine, “torching on” at the
Transfiguration and finally, flying up into heaven like Superman at the
Ascension.
But as we have seen again and again in
the last weeks, many of the stories about the marvelous deeds of Jesus in the
Gospels are told as ways of hinting, from a post-Easter perspective, at who
Jesus really is and how he interacts with each of us. Biblical scholars of all backgrounds agree
that the historical Jesus was a faith healer of great renown. Beyond that, opinions vary. What is sure is that these stories of
wondrous deeds should not be read as if they were in comics of the X-men,
Captain America, or Superman.
Belief in Jesus as a super-hero is
belief in an idol. That’s what today’s
Gospel reading is all about.
Peter confesses Jesus as the Messiah,
the Christ. That means he is the ideal
King or Priest of the future promised in the Hebrew scriptures. This promised Anointed One was to set things
right, vindicate the right and punish the wrong, set up God’s kingdom here. Many believed he would be a military figure to
defend God’s people from their foreign oppressors, liberate the nation, and
establish a new Davidic monarchy. Some
expected a prophet or priest with wondrous powers to heal the sick, feed the
people, and confound the enemy.
The bottom line? They wanted a Messiah who would fix this
broken world in an obvious, clear way that they expected, one that sounds
suspiciously like super-powers, maybe not shape-shifting or X-ray vision, but at
least the ability to zap enemies.
Peter’s experience of Jesus and his
healings leads him to confess that he is the Messiah. But Jesus quickly tells him that what he expects
of this hoped-for future King of Israel is all wrong: the Messiah has to
undergo great suffering, be rejected by the leaders of his people, and be
killed.
Peter reacts: “Jesus, you’re out of line not to expect
complete and early victory as Messiah.”
Peter wants a superpowers Jesus.
Jesus’ linking the Messiah with suffering is a completely new idea. He uses the image of the “Son of Man” found in Daniel 7, a mysterious figure seen in the distance coming in clouds of glory looking something like “a human being” (“a son of man”) who receives kingly dominion over all nations and then destroys the evil kingdoms ruled by “beasts” or wild animals. He says this figure will suffer, suggesting the “Suffering Servant” of Second Isaiah, a figure representing God’s people and their sufferings in history, and never linked to the Messiah there. Second Isaiah sees the nation’s suffering as not in vain, but rather as a witness to help bring people of all nations to knowledge of the true God, a suffering that is for the benefit of others because it brings the possibility of God’s peace and grace to all.
This linking of the idea of the Messiah and a suffering servant upsets Peter. Jesus is saying “Put away any hope that I am somehow—magically, militarily, or otherwise—going to make the hated Roman oppressors go away, or somehow win over the powerful elites in Jerusalem.”
The “elders, priests and scribes” there,
in greater of lesser degree, collaborate with the Romans. They are the
beneficiaries of a huge system of oppression having at its heart the Temple
cult, strictly interpreted Law, and the influence that money can buy. The major
objects of this system of oppression are the very people whom Jesus has been healing
and attracting throughout the Galilean rural areas by preaching the arrival of
God’s kingdom with such words as “Blessed are the poor, God’s kingdom belongs
to them; blessed are the downtrodden, for they shall inherit the earth.”
No, he says to Peter: “God wants me to go to Jerusalem to confront the powerful. Those powerful people will reject my message. If I go on preaching my message and go to Jerusalem, I will have to suffer and be killed. No superpowers are going to save me from that. But despite this I still trust in God—on the third day, he will raise me up.”
Jesus is quoting here a poetic expression of hope in God from the book of Hosea, “[the Lord] has struck us, but he will bind our wounds. He will revive us after two days; on the third day he will raise us up, to live in his presence” (6:1-2).
Peter just cannot believe what he has
just heard. “God blesses the righteous and punishes the wicked,” he thinks.
“Don’t be so negative. Where’s your faith, Jesus?” he says. “How can this be
the kingdom of God when evil triumphs by killing you?” he says, “Going with the
Messiah means going with the winner. Be
a winner, not a loser. Use your superpowers.”
Jesus’s reply is biting: “Get away from me, Satan.”
Then, as if to underscore the point
that it is Rome that is the Super Power, Jesus summons the crowd and announces,
“Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and
follow me.”
The word “deny” here means disown,
renounce claims to ownership. “Pick up your cross” refers to the fact that
prisoners who were to be executed by crucifixion had to carry the crossbeam to
the place of execution. Crucifixion was the Roman execution reserved for
revolutionaries, slaves, and bandits who fought against the established order.
It was a brutal form of slow torture ending in death, all conducted in public
to make sure that the shameful punishment had deterrent effect on anyone else
even thinking of challenging Roman power.
So what Jesus means is something like “If you want to follow me, you must give up any claims you may think you have of owning yourself. You’ll have to stick your head in the hangman’s noose to follow me.”
So what Jesus means is something like “If you want to follow me, you must give up any claims you may think you have of owning yourself. You’ll have to stick your head in the hangman’s noose to follow me.”
Jesus here is not praising suffering
for suffering’s sake, and extolling the virtues of a stoic victim-hood. Sometimes this wrong idea is actually used to
encourage passivity and enabling behavior by the abused or the oppressed.
Similarly, Jesus is not here simply
predicting in full knowledge of Good Friday and Easter what was going to happen
to him.
Orthodox Christology is that Jesus is
wholly God and wholly man, and that he suffered like us in all ways save for
sin. That for me means that He shared our unknowing fear of the future. It took Good Friday and Easter and then a
great deal of reflection and further experience for Jesus’ followers to
understand and see the ultimate significance in the words “I will be killed,” “take
up your cross and follow me” and “after three days God will raise me up.”
Christians have always felt a little
uncomfortable with the fact that Jesus, despite the miracle stories, appears not
to have had superpowers. The doctrine of
the occultation of the divinity (the
hiding or obscuring if the divinity) and the doctrine of the kenosis, or of Jesus’ emptying out of himself,
both attempt to make sense of the contradiction of an Incarnate God who is
human in every way but without sin, that is, in every way but without struggling against God to have our own way,
without hoping or insisting on having
superpowers.
What Jesus here is calling for is this: those who wish to follow him should actually follow him. Follow God’s call and empty yourself. Let go, and let God. Work for God’s kingdom, announce the liberation of the captive, help the sick and the downtrodden—and do this even when you know it may not do any good. Do it even if it may ruin you or kill you. Take up your cross and follow him. Don’t try to be a superhero or expect a super-hero to help you. Be willing to put your head in that hangman’s noose. Follow Jesus. Empty yourself.
Superheroes use force and flash, shock
and awe. A person carrying his cross loves,
simply loves. Superheroes struggle for outcomes
and results. A cross-carrier simply does
the next right thing God puts in front of her, and does not worry about
outcomes. Superheroes work in zero sums.
A crucifer trusts that death is not the end, and that in the end all will be
well. If all is not well, then it is not
yet the end.
It is a matter of trust. Belief in God
is not just intellectual assent to the idea that “God exists.” It is confidence
in God’s love and goodness, and in God’s ability to finally bring things
aright. This is not a naive and silly “everything is gonna be OK.” Nor is it “God
will zap my enemies and magically make my problems go away.”
Jesus was no superhero, and did not expect the Father to be one. He accepted and embraced his humanity, and calls us to do the same. Acceptance is only possible because of trust. He asks us to trust God even when God calls us to stick our heads in a noose.
May we all learn acceptance, and trust in God. In bearing our cross, may we get up off our knees, stop our worship at the idolatrous altar of superheroes and superpowers, and follow Him whose love beacons to us all to follow.
In His name, Amen.
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