A New Allegiance
A New Allegiance
Mark 8:27-35
March 15, 2026 Meeting Jesus on the Road Lent 4
Rev. Cynthia Cochran-Carney, First Presbyterian Church of San Rafael, CA
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?" And they answered him, "John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." He asked them, "But who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are the Messiah." And he sternly ordered them not to tell anyone about him.
Then he began to teach them that the Son of Humanity 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. He said all this quite openly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.
But 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."
He called the crowd with his disciples, and said to them, "If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake, and for the sake of the gospel, will save it.
A challenging passage. A quotation that helped me this week is from German poet and novelist, Rainer Maria Rilke From Letters to a Young Poet
Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart
and to try to love the questions themselves
like locked rooms and like books that are written
in a very foreign tongue.
Do not now seek the answers,
which cannot be given you
because you would not be able to live them.
And the point is, to live everything.
Live the questions now.
Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it,
live along some distant day
into the answer.
How do we deal with unsolved questions and locked rooms? I aspire to “love the questions themselves.” I am comfortable with paradoxes and mystery. But sometimes I and we may ache for clarity and certainty.
In Debi Thomas’ reflection on this passage, she shared this on her blog. She wrote, “I sat in my spiritual director’s living room, and cried tears of grief and exhaustion for all that remains “unsolved” in my relationship with God. “I’m tired of unmaking,” I told her. “Tired of unraveling, tired of letting go. I want to grab hold again. I want to land. I want to know.”
Rilke’s quote calls to us powerfully, perhaps because “living the questions” is dynamic, personal, and intimate in a way that “knowing” static truth is not. To love the questions is to hold mystery and possibility close to our hearts, to allow them to work on me, shape me, transform me. Being right often does not lead to depth or love or truth. Israeli poet Yehuda Amichai puts it this way:
From the place where we are right
Flowers will never grow
In the spring.
The place where we are right
Is hard and trampled
Like a yard.
But doubts and loves
Dig up the world
Like a mole, a plow.
In this week’s Gospel reading, Jesus invites his disciples to live into a question. “Who do you say that I am?” he asks them as they make their way through the villages of Caesarea Phillipi. Who am I? Where do I stand in this life we’re making together?
But wait. Maybe that’s not the kind of question Rilke is talking about. That’s a creed question. It is a belief question. A discipleship and baptism questions. We may have many titles and descriptions – The Christ. Holy One, Love Incarnate, wise teacher, Son of God, The Way, the Truth, and the Life.
Yes. And yet. If this reading has anything to say about it, we are meant to live the question of who Jesus is, day by day. We’re not meant to “solve” him once and for all. We’re not meant to land. To arrive. To hang tight. We’re meant to journey on this road.
As Mark tells the story, Jesus (being an excellent teacher) prefaces his zinger question with an easier one: “Who do people say that I am?” In other words, what’s the word on the street? What have you heard? What do the opinion polls reveal?
I get the feeling the disciples all want to be the one to get the gold star. Such a human moment. They might have said, “Ooh, ooh! This is an easy one! I know this one!” as they scramble to answer Jesus’s question: “People say you’re John the Baptist!” “No, no, they say Elijah! More people say ‘Elijah!’” “No, lots of folks say one of the prophets! I’ve heard them talking about it! They’re sure you’re one of the prophets!”
I’m guessing they go on for a while, each trying to drown the other out with the most promising answer they can come up with. After all, this is solid ground. Clear, fact-based, truth-telling. They can do this.
Interestingly, Jesus neither affirms nor denies any of their answers. He simply listens to them, allowing the disciples to offer up everything they think they know, based on other people’s perceptions. As if to say: this is the place to begin. This is where all explorations of faith begin, in naming what we’ve heard, examining what we’ve inherited, and parroting back the certainties others have handed to us. These answers cost us little or nothing, so they’re safe and benign. But of course, they don’t offer us much in return, either. They hearken back to history and tradition, and that’s lovely. But there’s no life in them. No intimacy. No fire.
So Jesus presses on. “Who do you say that I am?” he asks next, looking at each disciple in turn. Meaning: forget about other people’s theologies and interpretations. Put aside tradition and creed, valuable as they are, and consider the life we have lived together thus far, your experiences. The bread we’ve broken, the miles we’ve walked, the burdens we’ve carried, the tears we’ve shed, the laughter we’ve shared. Who am I to you? What do I mean… to you?
Of course, Mark doesn’t give us much detail about the scene, but when I imagine what happens next, I see the disciples falling into a long, awkward silence. I imagine them avoiding eye contact with Jesus. Shuffling their feet. Coughing. Casting anxious glances at each other. I imagine every single one of them desperately hoping that someone else will answer.
And I imagine Jesus, standing patiently and vulnerably in their midst through that long silence, waiting to hear what his closest friends will say about him. Do they know him? Have they learned to trust his heart and his words? Do they love him?
Cue Peter. Bold, reckless, earnest, impetuous Peter. When the silence becomes unbearable, he answers the question as confidently as he can: “You are the Messiah.”
A perfect, A-plus answer. The whole gospel story in a nutshell. Right?
Wrong. Or, at least, not quite. Because this is where the story gets strange. Instead of praising Peter’s discernment, Jesus tells him to keep his mouth shut, and immediately launches into a grim description of the suffering and death that await him in Jerusalem. It is inevitable. Jesus is challenging the religious leaders and the leaders of the empire. There is a cost.
He paints a picture so bleak, so upsetting, so unfitting the Messiah, Peter pulls him aside and tells him to knock it off. But this — Peter’s insistence that Jesus fit into his small box understanding of who Jesus is —causes Jesus to turn and rebukes Peter in turn. And he does so using words that seem shocking (then and now) “Get behind me, Satan! For you are setting your mind not on divine things but on human things.”
Jesus seems to be saying - There’s so much more for you to learn, Peter. So many more answers for you to grow into. Be patient. Don’t force the locked doors. Try to love what is unsolved. Keep living the question.
In Mark’s gospel, Jesus will predict his death two more times in the next two chapters. This is reality. This is what happens when you confront those with power who are not empowering others. This is what happens when oppression and greed and coercion and violence are rampant. And when rigid religious power is threatened with compassion and love and justice and peace.
Who do you say that Jesus is? It’s a question to ponder for a lifetime. What stories of Jesus have you inherited? What do you need to say goodbye to?
If we follow the ways of Jesus, what does that devotion, that allegiance, look like in this time and place? What are we saying yes to and what are we saying no to? Is our devotion to following the ways of Jesus keep us comfortable? Or are we willing to see the risks, the cost of discipleship, the depth of being open and vulnerable? Lose your life – lose your ego, your prejudices, your assumptions – and be open.
As we continue on this road with Jesus and he is moving toward Jerusalem, his arrest and death on the cross, we are faced with our own questions around mortality, of life and death and life beyond death. In Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus offers the same predictions and promise - undergo great suffering, be rejected by the chief priests, and be killed, and after three days rise again.
What Peter learns in this encounter is that Jesus is powerfully present in the questions. To love what is unsolved, a mystery is not to deny Holy Love. It is to see how this Christ presence, this mystery, is already in us, and to see that love is more deeply in our hearts than any impersonal truth. Live the question. Be devoted to spiritual practices and acts of kindness and compassion. May we keep meeting Christ on the road. Amen
Resource
Debie Thomas, “Living the Question,” 9.16.18 Journey with Jesus blog https://www.journeywithjesus.net/essays/1939-living-the-question