Superpowers Jesus?
15 September 2024
Proper 19B
Homily preached at the Mission Church of the Holy Spirit
Sutherlin, Oregon
9:00 a.m. Sung Mass
Isaiah 50:4-9a; Psalm 19; James 3:1-12; Mark 8:27-38
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 few 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 put to death by the Romans with the punishment they reserved for insurrectionists. 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 variety.
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 who would 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: he uses a common Aramaic expression to refer to oneself in s self deprecating manner: “this human child you see before you” (literally, the son of man) is going to die at the hands of the elites.
Christians after Jesus’s death, including the writer of the Gospel of Mark,
would look back on Jesus’ life and words and understand them in light of Good
Friday and Easter. His use of “Son of Man” came to be linked with a
mysterious salvific figure in Daniel 7, 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.
They understand Jesus as saying this
figure, which they see as the “Messiah” 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.
In today’s story, 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.” These elites, after all, were in bed with
Romans exploiting the very people Jesus has been healing and to whom he has
been preaching the arrival of God’s kingdom.
“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. And then he quotes 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 dis own themselves, take up their cross,
and follow me.” This refers to the fact
that prisoners who were to be executed by crucifixion had to carry the
crossbeam to the place of execution. 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 “Son of Man,” “I will be killed,” “take up your cross and follow me” and “after three days God will raise me up.”
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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