“My name is Rick, and I’m a bureaucrat.”
“Hi, Rick.”
For thirteen years! I’m not saying that makes me uniquely qualified to explain how Peter became the first pope—from fisherman to bureaucrat in ten easy steps. In fact, I’ll argue that I’m hardly unique. But, how Peter did it, and it didn’t take ten steps; it didn’t take even one: he had it in him all along.
We like to think of Peter as slightly, endearingly unstable, almost out of control. But like every good bureaucrat—and the good bureaucrat in each of us—he is, on the contrary, not out of control but controlling. That’s part of—a big part of—what this coming Sunday’s gospel lesson is about (Mark 8:27 – 9:1, to set its proper limits), Peter’s desire to define the terms—actually to set them and define them. (What I’m saying here is nothing new, no inspiration of mine: the commentaries are full of it.)
Peter makes his grand confession, that Jesus is the Christ (8:29). Then, in Mark, after telling his disciples to let that go, to say nothing about it, Jesus goes on to another matter. We’re not sure quite why he asked the question, “Who are people saying I am?” He’s already on to other things: “This is the way I see what’s going to happen next.” The Spirit that drove him into the wilderness is leading him toward Jerusalem. The Son of man—this is what Jesus calls himself, not the Christ (or Messiah)—the Son of man is going there, even though it’s going to be a mess. A bloody mess.
“Oh, no,” Peter says, catching at Jesus’ sleeve. Peter has the bureaucrat’s fear of mess, and messiness. And he has the bureaucrat’s concern, as I’ve suggested, that terms be properly defined. “Oh, no. You are the Christ!” Don’t you know what that means? Let me explain.
The right thing to do at this point in the story, the right thing for the reader to do—I suppose this is right; the commentaries seem to agree—is to fall out of sympathy with Peter. I’d like to do that, but as I indicated, “My name is Rick, and I’m a bureaucrat.” (“Hi, Rick.”) None of us wants to let go of his most cherished ideas of Jesus—or hers. Actually, that’s an understatement. None of us wants to let go of his or her most cherished ideas for Jesus’. (Note the possessive.) Here’s an example.
In the January 20 New York Times, Charles Marsh takes on his fellow evangelicals with regard to their support of the war in Iraq (“Wayward Christian Soldiers”). “Recently, I took a few days to re-read the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. . . . Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president’s war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine,” so that the “single common theme among [these] sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God’s will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.”
Marsh winces and wonders how American evangelicals could have gotten so far from the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 that “affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that ‘the church is the community of God’s people rather than an institution’”—a bureaucratic institution, or can an institution be other than bureaucratic?—“belief that ‘the church is the community of God’s people . . . and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology’” (italics mine).
The commentators on Mark 8 suggest that we are supposed to see Peter’s mistake and somehow avoid it. But the forces of the world-we-live-in and the ideas that we gather from living in that world—and especially the way we frame those ideas to define our world and make it livable—are so strong and so obviously right that we just don’t escape them, no matter what the commentators say. At least I don’t see how. Not today.
“Take up your cross,” Jesus says, and I grasp at the word your. Thank God for it. It’s my cross, then, right? I get to say what it means.
Right?
Rick
For thirteen years! I’m not saying that makes me uniquely qualified to explain how Peter became the first pope—from fisherman to bureaucrat in ten easy steps. In fact, I’ll argue that I’m hardly unique. But, how Peter did it, and it didn’t take ten steps; it didn’t take even one: he had it in him all along.
We like to think of Peter as slightly, endearingly unstable, almost out of control. But like every good bureaucrat—and the good bureaucrat in each of us—he is, on the contrary, not out of control but controlling. That’s part of—a big part of—what this coming Sunday’s gospel lesson is about (Mark 8:27 – 9:1, to set its proper limits), Peter’s desire to define the terms—actually to set them and define them. (What I’m saying here is nothing new, no inspiration of mine: the commentaries are full of it.)
Peter makes his grand confession, that Jesus is the Christ (8:29). Then, in Mark, after telling his disciples to let that go, to say nothing about it, Jesus goes on to another matter. We’re not sure quite why he asked the question, “Who are people saying I am?” He’s already on to other things: “This is the way I see what’s going to happen next.” The Spirit that drove him into the wilderness is leading him toward Jerusalem. The Son of man—this is what Jesus calls himself, not the Christ (or Messiah)—the Son of man is going there, even though it’s going to be a mess. A bloody mess.
“Oh, no,” Peter says, catching at Jesus’ sleeve. Peter has the bureaucrat’s fear of mess, and messiness. And he has the bureaucrat’s concern, as I’ve suggested, that terms be properly defined. “Oh, no. You are the Christ!” Don’t you know what that means? Let me explain.
The right thing to do at this point in the story, the right thing for the reader to do—I suppose this is right; the commentaries seem to agree—is to fall out of sympathy with Peter. I’d like to do that, but as I indicated, “My name is Rick, and I’m a bureaucrat.” (“Hi, Rick.”) None of us wants to let go of his most cherished ideas of Jesus—or hers. Actually, that’s an understatement. None of us wants to let go of his or her most cherished ideas for Jesus’. (Note the possessive.) Here’s an example.
In the January 20 New York Times, Charles Marsh takes on his fellow evangelicals with regard to their support of the war in Iraq (“Wayward Christian Soldiers”). “Recently, I took a few days to re-read the war sermons delivered by influential evangelical ministers during the lead up to the Iraq war. . . . Many of the most respected voices in American evangelical circles blessed the president’s war plans, even when doing so required them to recast Christian doctrine,” so that the “single common theme among [these] sermons appeared to be this: our president is a real brother in Christ, and because he has discerned that God’s will is for our nation to be at war against Iraq, we shall gloriously comply.”
Marsh winces and wonders how American evangelicals could have gotten so far from the Lausanne Covenant of 1974 that “affirmed the global character of the church of Jesus Christ and the belief that ‘the church is the community of God’s people rather than an institution’”—a bureaucratic institution, or can an institution be other than bureaucratic?—“belief that ‘the church is the community of God’s people . . . and must not be identified with any particular culture, social or political system, or human ideology’” (italics mine).
The commentators on Mark 8 suggest that we are supposed to see Peter’s mistake and somehow avoid it. But the forces of the world-we-live-in and the ideas that we gather from living in that world—and especially the way we frame those ideas to define our world and make it livable—are so strong and so obviously right that we just don’t escape them, no matter what the commentators say. At least I don’t see how. Not today.
“Take up your cross,” Jesus says, and I grasp at the word your. Thank God for it. It’s my cross, then, right? I get to say what it means.
Right?
Rick
posted by Rick at 8:33 AM
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