20150913 16th Sunday after Pentecost
Readings: Proverbs 1: 20 – 33; Psalm 19; James 3: 1 – 12; Mark 8: 27 – 38.
Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”
Caesarea Philippi is a town in Northern Galilee nestled at the foot of Mount Hermon. Today
it goes by the name of Banias or Paneas. In the time of Jesus it was a Greek town and was
said to be the centre of where Pan was worshipped. Pan was the god of all things. Living
where we live at the foot of a majestic mountain, a mountain which forms part of a range
which stretches for miles and which has as a breathtaking centre-piece, a table in the heart
of a city surrounded by ocean, we are regarded as the envy of many! Friends who visit here
are overwhelmed by the sheer size of Hoeriquagga! And then, as if that is not enough, just a
few kilometres across the plain there is another whole range of mountains – not just one! It
is equally spectacular with peaks that reach even higher than the range behind us. You could
say that mountains are us! We don’t get into discussions about size or height because we
just know there aint non like it!
Given the findings of the past week by archaeologists, it is hard to say if our distant cousins,
Homo Naledi, ever got down this far to view these splendid sights of the Cape, but we do
know that some of our later cousins did, their footprint forever fossilised in the sandy plains
of the west coast! The size of mountains was a hot topic among the ancients. Mountains
stood out, they were raised above the rest and they were associated with divine presence
and if there was an added phenomenon, like a spring or fountain, then that made them all
the more special. Some believed that there was a correlation between the size of the
mountain and the size of your god. The psalmist in Psalm 48 talks about God’s greatness and
links it to Zion. He then relocates Zion in the far north totally displacing Mount Hermon
which stood there! “Great is the Lord and greatly to be praised in the city of our God. His
holy mountain, beautiful in elevation, is the joy of the whole earth! Mount Zion, in the far
north, the city of the great King.”Poetic licence allows you to move and replace mountains
maybe hoping that with similar ease you can move and replace their gods! It was not Zion
that was located in the far north but Mount Hermon and it was situated in an area where
Greek beliefs and traditions dominated in the time of Jesus.
Yet, from the time of settlement, that whole swath of territory of Northern Galilee
bordering Lebanon was considered part of the land God had promised to His people even
while other gods and other religions occupied it. It is about as far from Jerusalem as one can
get and it represented the very heart of what needed replacing – a focus which would
occupy the Messiah when he appeared to establish the reign of the one true God of Israel
over those of the other gods. The prayer of the faithful was: ‘O Lord, as your name is great
in Zion, so establish your name in every corner of this land’.
This tradition of establishing Zion even in the farthest reaches ran as a thread through the
traditions and liturgy of God’s people and was also through the Messianic expectations of
Jesus’ day. Zion would be the highest of the mountains, not in size, because a hill is just a
hill, until the God of all Gods makes His home there! But when God makes His dwelling
there, well then it is the highest!
Jesus and his disciples venture into this Greek territory in the north and into a village at the
foot of Mount Hermon named Caesarea Philippi is. Not only is the mountain spectacular,
the town is also known for its spring which oozed crystal clear water out of the side of its
sheer rock-face, the water forming the origin of the Jordan River, the artery which provides
life and lushness to what would otherwise be an arid landscape. Water is the life giver in
these parts. Israel had had an encounter with a rock from which water flowed, but that was
just a stop on their journey but it did expose them as fickle and disobedient and their
penchant for quarrelling rather than being wise and listening to God. That day at Meribah at
Mount Sinai when the people grumbled against God and doubted God’s ability to provide
the water they needed in the desert.
The significance of the moment and the echoes of their past would not have been lost on
either Jesus or his disciples and it is into this cauldron of strange gods, of mountains and of
water gushing from a rock that Jesus asks a question which has echoed through the ages:
Who do people say that I am?
Not surprisingly, the disciples have a rich past with many options from which to choose – a
prophet, a teacher, someone who surpasses all the luminaries of faith. But who do you say
that I am? Jesus asks. You are the Messiah, says Peter! Was Peter thinking mountains and
greatness? Was he thinking great conqueror of other faiths and religions? the annihilation of
objects and those who believe in them? Was he thinking from Mount Zion to Mount
Hermon God will now reign? What Jesus said next was a shock and surprise to Peter and the
rest for the way of God which Jesus was to submit to was the way of the cross and of
suffering. Jesus speaks about his suffering and death - to gain life you have to let go of the
life you have and be willing to die. This picture clearly does not fit with Peter’s idea of a
Messiah and he rejects it outright as he would later at the idea of having his feet washed by
Him who is Lord and King. Without accepting suffering and humiliation as the way to glory
and power though he would have no part in this Messiah and Lord.
When I visited Caesarea Philippi in August of 1984 there were men in blue berets manning
checkpoints with huge guns in their hands. The Golan Heights forms part of this territory
and is maintained as no-man’s land and kept as such through a strong UN presence. It is
only in this way that warring sides are kept apart and that peace exists at all, a forced peace,
a peace through the barrel of a gun - Israel to the south and Lebanon to the north. Into this
meaningless and intractable conflict the prince of peace asks, “Who do you say I am.?” With
war raging across Europe the basis of which is one form of religion seeking to annihilate
another, the God of truth asks, “Who do you say I am?’ Who do you say I am? You are the
source of life who gave up your life for love of us and calls us away from our pursuits and
trust our life to you the Messiah and the Lord of all life. Amen.