Bible Lecture 2
With us on the way to Caesarea Philippi
reading the Prophets – Mark 8:27-9:1
On the Road from Emmaus to Jerusalem
When he was at the table with them he took bread, blessed and broke it and
gave it to them.
Then their eyes were opened, and
they recognised him; and he vanished
from their sight.
They said to each other, “Were not our hearts burning with
us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures
to us?”
There was nothing else for it.
That same hour, they got up
They made their way through the dark and
forbidding streets to the upper room.
They found the eleven and
their companions gathered together.
There was a buzz of excitement. They were bursting to tell their story but
the others got in first.
“The Lord has risen indeed, and
he has appeared to Simon!”
Cleopas and his
travelling companion then started their story.
They told the others exactly what had happened on the road, and how Jesus had been made known to them in the
breaking of the bread.
They were in full flow, talking about everything that had
happened, going through the conversation in every last detail when it happened.
They hadn’t been expecting it
Jesus himself stood among them and
said to them
Peace be with you.
They were startled.
More than that they were terrified.
They were convinced they were seeing a ghost.
There was something in Jesus’ voice that calmed them, made
them focus …
“Why are you frightened, and
why do doubts arise in your hearts? Look
at my hand s and
my feet; see that it is I myself.
Touch me and see;
for a ghost does not have flesh and
bones as you see that I have.
When he had said this he showed them his side and his feet.
While in their joy there were disbelieving and
still wondering he said to them, “Have you anything here to eat?”
They gave him a piece of broiled fish and
he took it and ate in their
presence.
Then he said to them something very profound.
In a strange way it was familiar to the two who had
journeyed on the road to Emmaus.
These are my words that I spoke to you while I was still
with you – that everything written about me in the law of Moses, the prophets and the psalms must be fulfilled.”
Then he did exactly as he had done with the two on the road.
Luke is in no doubt at all.
This was the priority the risen Jesus had on this Resurrection day.
Jesus wanted to leave his closest disciples a way of reading
the Bible, a strategy for reading the bible – it was a way of reading the Bible that found
its focus in him.
His concern was to open their minds so that they could
understand the scriptures – see how
they worked, see what was at the heart of them.
It’s the big question we as Christians need to ask ‘How do
we read the Bible?’
Thinking back to our first Bible Study we need to remember the questions Jesus
asked of the expert in the Law
What is written in the Law?
What do you read there?
We need to remember the response Jesus accepted
Love God, Love your neighbour.
And we need to remember the Midrash Jesus gave on what is
written in the law, the story we think of as the Parable of the Good Samaritan,
and we must realise that we can put
no limits on who our neighbour is!
Today I want to see what happens when you apply those two
questions Jesus asked of the expert of the law to the next section of the
Hebrew Scriptures.
What is written in the prophets?
What do you read there?
What is written in the prophets is what you find in Joshua,
Judges, Samuel, Kings and in Isaiah,
Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and the Book of
the Twelve
That’s what’s written in the Prophets – but Jesus is
interested in enabling his friends and
followers to understand the
scriptures.
And so there’s a second question we might expect Jesus to
ask …
To help us I and
to move from Luke’s Gospel to Mark’s Gospel and
to a passage that comes right in the middle, at the centre of Mark’s Gospel. Indeed it is a passage on which the whole of Mark’s
gospel hinges.
As we take a look at Mark 8:27-33 we shall find that the
Lord our God is with us wherever we go and
when it comes to reading the Prophets he is especially with us on the way to
Caesarea Philippi.
Pause and ask people to look
at Mark 8:27-33 or bring to mind what
they recall of that passage headed ‘Peter’s Declaration about Jesus’ and ask ‘What’s it about?’
Peter’s Declaration
about Jesus
27 Jesus went on with
his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi; and
on the way he asked his disciples, ‘Who do people say that I am?’ 28And they
answered him, ‘John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and
still others, one of the prophets.’ 29He asked them, ‘But who do you say that I
am?’ Peter answered him, ‘You are the Messiah.’ 30And he sternly ordered them
not to tell anyone about him.
Jesus Foretells His Death and
Resurrection
31 Then he began to
teach them that the Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and
be killed, and after three days rise
again. 32He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. 33But turning and looking at his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, ‘Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting
your mind not on divine things but on human things.’
I am always in a rush to get to the punch line of a joke, to
the end of a story. I have been
influenced by the heading of this passage and
I rush to Peter’s acclamation of Jesus as Messiah.
Until fairly recently I always tended to skip over what the
disciples report the crowds as saying.
I have read it in a tone of voice which suggests that Jesus
implies that the people have got the wrong answer – of course he’s not John the Baptist!
Of course he’s not Elijah! Of
course he’s not one of the prophets!
But I have been thinking again about this conversation.
Let’s suppose Jesus is asking a very searching
question. He is wanting to check out
whether he is getting the message across, whether people have really understood
what he is about.
And so on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say
that I am?”
When they answered him John
the Baptist I wonder now whether a smile began to creep over Jesus’ face. Yes, they are beginning to get it, was his
implied response.
Others were saying Elijah.
The smile was growing. Yes, so
they are getting the message, Jesus thought.
And still others, one of the prophets.
By now Jesus was excited.
Yes the people had got the message.
They were beginning to understand
what he was doing, what he was saying.
Jesus is quite clear on the evening of resurrection day that
everything written about him in the Law, the prophets and
the psalms must be fulfilled.
But in what way did Jesus set about fulfilling the prophets?
How does Jesus fulfil the prophets?
It is very easy to slip into the way of thinking that
scattered through prophets are predictions that come true in the story of
Jesus.
I wonder whether something very different is going on,
something very much more interesting.
One thing we know about Jesus is that from a very young age
he knew his Bible.
At the age of 12 when taken up to Jerusalem by his parents he went
missing. When they found him, what did
they find him doing?
They found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers,
listening to them and asking them
questions. And all who heard him were
amazed at his understand ing and his answers.
1) Jesus positions himself in
the line of the prophets as a prophet
Might it be that by the time Jesus embarks on his mission and his ministry he deliberately models himself on
what the prophets did. In the synagogue
in Nazareth he
described himself as a prophet, ‘a prophet is not without honour except in his
own land ’.
When his cousin John
the Baptist appears and starts his
ministry he dresses like the archetypal prophet of old as if he is another
Elijah, another Elisha, another prophet.
His message is a powerful indictment of the powers that be exactly in
the mould of the prophets of old.
When Elijah died he took Elisha with him down into the
Jordan and up from the Jordan and then he cast down his mantle for Elisha to take up the mantle of Elijah, cross
back through the Jordan and take up
where Elijah had left off.
And when the time comes for Jesus to start his ministry he
goes down into the Jordan is
baptised by John and then comes up out of the Jordan into the
wilderness … and only when John has been arrested does he begin his ministry.
It is as if Jesus is taking up the mantle passed on from
Elijah to Elisha passed on down through that great line of prophets passed on
to John the Baptist and now passed on to Jesus.
Repent – not so much sorry as have a whole new way of
thinking, a whole new way of looking at the world for the kingdom of heaven has
come near. Matthew 3:2
And when John had
been arrested, from that time Jesus began to proclaim Repent, not so much sorry
as have a whole new way of thinking, a whole new way of looking at the world
for the kingdom of heaven has come near.
Matthew 4:12,17.
What is it about the prophets that John
takes up and Jesus does too?
Joshua to the end of 2 Kings sees the slow move of the
people towards thinking of themselves as a kingdom.
The prophets are those who see that move as fraught with
dangers. They are the ones who challenge
those who aspire to positions of power, who hold them to account. They are the ones who speak truth to power.
When Abimelech attempts to forma a monarchy in Judges 9 Jotham tells a parable, a story about
the trees of the forest who look for one tree to be King over them. The olive, the fig tree, the vine all say
their task is to produce olives, figs, grapes – they cannot be king. It is only the bramble that is left … and the bramble is only too keen to seize power and become king with calamitous consequences.
When the people demand
a king to be just like the nations, Samuel
warns them in no uncertain terms that God alone must rule over them.
When David arranges the death of Uriah and takes Bathsheba to be his wife he thinks he has
got away with murder until Nathan
tells him a story about two men in a certain city, one rich and the other poor.
The rich man had very man flocks and
herds, but the poor man had nothing but one little ewe lamb, which he had
brought up. When a traveller came to
the rich man seeking hospitality, the rich man did not want to lose one of his
fine creatures and so took the poor
man’s one and only lamb to make a
feast of it.
Elijah, Elisha, Amos,
Micah, Isaiah – as the story of the kingdom unfolds it is a sorry tale
whereby those in power are so often found lacking – and
it is the prophets who speak truth to power, hold the king to account and challenge.
This is exactly what John the Baptist did as Luke records in his
powerful preaching – it is when he calls Herod the Great’s son, Herod Antipas
to account for his marital arrangements that he is arrested.
When he is executed Jesus withdraws to the mountain to be
quiet in prayer.
Jesus’ preaching
in the sermon on the mount, in so much that he does holds the powers that be to
account. When that same Herod Antipas
hears what Jesus is doing and what
he is saying he is taken aback – he thought he had silenced John the Baptist, now Jesus is saying much the same
thing. Pharisees came to Jesus warning
him that Herod wanted to kill him.
In replying Jesus speaks of himself as a prophet and speaks to Herod in the voice of a prophet
holding truth to power
Go and tell that
fox for me. Listen, I am casting out
demons and performing cures today and tomorrow and
on the third day I finish my work. Yet
today, tomorrow and the next day I
must be on my way, because it is impossible for a prophet to be killed away
from Jerusalem .
In the Herodian City of Caesarea
Phiilipp Jesus checks to see if the people have got it.
It is not without
significance that it is when Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages
of Caesara Philippi and when he is
on the way that he asked his disciples,
Who do people say that I am?
It’s easy to miss the point.
But location is important here, very important.
This is one of hose points in the Gospel story when
geography matters.
Here it matters a lot.
Where is Caesarea Philippi?
What is Caesarea Philippi. It is
significant for Mark – he wants us to know exactly where Jesus is at this
point.
Caesarea Philippi is a brand
new town.
It is one of those great towns that were built first by
Herod the Great and then by his sons
as his Jewish kingdom was divided among them.
Herod the Great was a tyrant, ruling his people with a rod
of iron. His building works were
monumental and designed to establish
his power over the people.
His summer palace overlooking Bethlehem was to be his mausoleum and it was incredibly powerful statement. He carved off the top of a mountain shored up
its sides and sank into the top a
palace that would be cool in the heat of the summer. At the foot of the mountain a palatial villa
complete with a large scale pool big enough to have mock battles with small
–scale war ships. And on the side of the
hill his mausoleum
On the coast he built the city of Caesarea – named after ht emperor. It had a full sized chariot racing stadium, a
theatre, it was the seat of government for the roman occupation of Judea and Samaria
– and in the theatre they have discovered
a seat with Pontius Pilate’s name on it.
The harbour used under water setting cement and
as ships arrived trading across the Mediterranean world they were greeted with
the sight of a temple Herod the Great
had built to Augustus the emperor as Son
of God.
The part of his kingdom to the west of the Sea
of Galilee was hand ed
over to Herod Antipas. And what should
he do but set about rebuilding the city of Sepphoris
near Nazareth up in the hills, and by the shores of the Sea of Galilee a great new Roman city, tourist resort
complete with shopping mall and
theatre, the city of Tiberias .
And Philip another son, had the area to the north and east of Galillee – and
he too built a city nestling uneder the hills and
he called it Caesarea after the emperor and
I nall humility to differentiate it from his father’s city on the coast he
called it Philips’ Caesarea , Caesarea
Philippi. Ooh and
he built a temple to the Emperor as Son
of God.
It had been a stroke of genius of Augustus, the first Roman
emperor to decree that his Dad, Julius Caesar was a god. If his dad was god, what did that make him,
Son of God?
And you owe complete allegiance to the Emperor as Son of
God.
What is Jesus message?
Repent – not just say sorry, not just turn around and make a new start. Have a whole new way of thinking a whole new
meta narrative to understand the
world – metanoio – repent. For the
Kingdom of heaven has come near.
He makes his base in Capernaum
facing off Tiberias – he offers an alternative way of being kingdom to the
Roman way of empire – it is based on love for God, love for neighbour, love for
enemy too
Jesus is himself a prophetic voice speaking truth to power …
and it is no wonder that the is
arrested and executed by Herod in
collaboration with Pontius Pilate.
Read through the prophets to see the way they bring people
back to God and the way they speak
out against the powers that be – and
this is the line that Jesus is in.
But he is more than a prophet.
He turns to the disciples and
asks, “Who do you say that I am?”
And Peter is the one who responds.
You are the Messiah, the Christ, the anointed one, the one
anointed of God to be king in the kingdom
of God .
2) Jesus shapes the way he is to be Messiah by drawing on those
passages that show what it takes to rule in God’s Way in God’s Kingdom
Jesus accepts this description and
goes on to describe how the Messiah must suffer, be killed and after three days rise again.
Peter doesn’t however read the prophets in that way at all.
And so he intervenes.
As far as Peter is concerned the Messiah will be one to
overturn the might of Rome
and use might to do it – Jesus will
be another Joshua, as it were, coming in power and
might … and so Peter takes Jesus on
one side and rebukes him.
He wouldn’t let such a thing happen.
This elicits a really strong response from Jesus
Looking at the disciples he rebuked Peter and said, Get behind me, Satan, for you are setting
your mind not on divine things but on human things.
In one sense Jesus fulfilled the prophets simply by living,
working, preaching, telling stories, doing miracles and
taking a stand against the powers
that be in exactly the way the prophets had done.
In another way he has an understand ing
of the Prophets that draws him to particular passages that show what it takes
to rule in God’s way in God’s Kingdom.
These were the passages the prophets of old used to hold their kings to
account. These are the passages that
Jesus draws on as he shapes the way he envisages God’s rule to happen.
What does it take – in the first sermon in Nazareth that he preaches he shapes the kind
of Messiah he is to be from Isaiah 61
‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
because he has
anointed me
to bring good
news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
to let the
oppressed go free,
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.’
Initially all spoke well of him and
were amazed at the words of grace that came from his mouth.
But in Jesus’ mind it wasn’t just ‘our poor’ that needed
good news preached to them – it was all poor – it was when Jesus recalled an
incident in the life of Elijah when he was sent to the widow at Zarephath in
Sidon, a Gentile, and an incident in
the life of Elisha when he was sent to cleanse Naaman the Syrian that the
crowds turn against Jesus.
Other passages have gown to be linked with Jesus, the
Messiah.
Isaiah 7 – that in Jesus God is with us – Immanuel.
Isaiah 9 –
authority rests upon his shoulders;
Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God,
Everlasting Father,
Prince of Peace.
He will establish and uphold it
with justice and
with righteousness
from this time
onwards and for evermore.
Isaiah 11
The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him,
the spirit of
wisdom and understand ing,
the spirit of
counsel and might,
the spirit of
knowledge and the fear of the Lord.
His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord.
He shall not judge by what his eyes see,
or decide by what
his ears hear;
but with righteousness he shall judge the poor,
Righteousness shall be the belt around his waist,
Isaiah 32
See, a king will reign in righteousness
And princes will rule with justice
He will be a suffering servant in the mould of Isaiah 53.
he had no form or majesty that we should look at him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despisedand rejected
by others;
a man of sufferingand
acquainted with infirmity;
and as one from whom others hide
their faces
he was despised,and
we held him of no account.
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised
a man of suffering
he was despised,
These passages are the ones that find their focus in Jesus
because these are the passages that determine what it takes to rule in God’s
way in God’s kingdom..
What’s written in the prophets runs from Joshua chapter 1
verse 1 through to II Kings chapter 25 verse 30.
What you read there finds its focus on the way the prophets
hold the powers that be to account and
show what it takes to rule in God’s way in God’s kingdom – and what it takes amounts to nothing less than
righteousness and justice, good news
to the poor, release to the captive.
Read the prophets in this way and
something happens.
Seven weeks after that first Resurrection day, Peter it was
who on the Day of Pentecost was the first to draw on the kind of passages from
the prophets that Jesus had opened up as he could see that that prophetic role
was now to be passed on to us
In the words of the prophet Joel
God declares
I will pour out my spirit on all flesh,
And your sons and
your daughters shall prophesy,
And your young men shall see visions
And your old men shall dream dreams
Even upon my slaves, both men and
women,
In those days I will pour out my Spirit
And they will prophesy.
Read the Prophets in this way, through the eyes of Jesus and it becomes and
we too must take up the mantle of the prophets from Jesus and have a prophetic voice. We are called to speak truth to power, holding
the powers that be to account.
And we can measure what those in power do by the very
measure Jesus used as we recognise that what it takes to rule in God’s way
under God’s kingdom is that kind of justice, that kind of righteousness that is
indeed good news for the poor.
As you seek to fulfil that prophetic voice and shape be sure to know that the Lord your God
will be with you wherever you go.