Jesus the Question, Pt 2: For whom are you looking?
Fr Simon Cuff continues with our Easter reflections this week by considering two further questions Jesus poses: Who do you say that I am? and For whom are you looking? As with the previous entry, this piece began life as addresses at a retreat in Berkeley.
We have seen last week that questions frame Jesus’s ministry. We saw them in his childhood in Luke’s gospel; and at the end of his life on the Cross. We’re now going to see how they occur at a key moment in the Gospels in the disciples’ discovery of who Jesus is, Peter’s Confession of Christ (Mark 8.27-33 + parallels).
Here we see Jesus’s method of asking questions as a means of teaching others. He could easily say “I am the Christ, the Son of the Living God”. We know from John’s Gospel that Jesus is perfectly capable of making “I am” statements about himself to teach us who he is. Instead, Jesus uses questions. He asks two questions of the disciples that reveal he who is.
Jesus begins with the question: “Who do people say that I am?”. ‘What’s the word on street?’ (‘What’s the word about the Word?’, if you will!). The disciples report back: “John the Baptist; and others, Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets. Some say you are your cousin, others a prophet returned, others still a prophet.”
Jesus asks the follow up question: “And you? Who do you say that I am?”. Peter, pipes up! With his usual temerity. (It’s not for nothing that Jesus nicknames him Rocky). “You are the Messiah, God’s anointed one.” In Mark and Luke’s Gospel, Jesus shuts down further talk about who is. “Tell no one about this”. In Matthew, he praises Peter: “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jona! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven, before also enjoining the disciples to tell no one he was the Christ” (Matt 16.17).
Christ’s praise for Peter shows us that his answer to the question is the right one. Jesus is the Messiah. Why then order the disciples not to tell any one? Why doesn’t he want them telling those around the he’s the Messiah?
This has been a puzzle for scholars for a while. It is often referred to as the Messianic secret. Why does Jesus want to hide who he is? Does he, in fact, want to hide who he is?
The solution, I think, comes in what happens next. Immediately after Peter’s confession, and the injunction to silence, Jesus begins to teach Peter and the other disciples what being the Messiah means. “The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again” (Mark 8.31).
The Messiah must suffer and die, and rise again. We can imagine Peter replying, “What the…”. He takes Jesus aside and rebukes him, as if to say “Jesus, you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. You’re the Messiah, God’s anointed. You don’t suffer and die. You get to smash our enemies, and lead God’s people to victory”.
When Peter makes his confession, when he rightly identifies Jesus as the Messiah, he has no idea how right he is. He has no idea what Jesus’s being the Messiah means. It’s not that Jesus is hiding the fact he’s Messiah. Jesus is preventing the disciples from spreading mistaken ideas of who he is. Fake news about him. It matters what the disciples teach about him, it matters what kind of Messiah they tell others he is.
Let’s look at Jesus’s questions again. “Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?” These questions are not just about who Jesus is, but what is being said about him. What are people saying about me? What are you saying?
There’s an obvious question that connects these two questions. "What joins “What are people saying about me?” and “What are you saying?” is the question “What are you telling people about me?”.
What are people saying about Jesus? What are you saying? What are you telling people about Jesus?
Jesus’s question of the disciples and his rebuke of Peter reminds us that following Christ is not just about getting the answers right. You can rattle off the answers and get them all right, but the Christian life runs deeper than this. It includes understanding what those answers mean. It includes a responsibility to speak truthfully to those around us about who Jesus is.
Those around us learn who Christ is from us. What the people closest to us are saying about Jesus, comes in part from us. The witness we are giving to Jesus confirms or challenges or informs their view of Jesus, and what they say about him. Jesus’s questioning of Peter and the disciples reveal who he is, but they also invite us to reflect on how we are sharing the news of who he is; on what we are saying about him to those around, about what we are saying about him with the whole of our selves, the whole our lives: our words, our deeds, our whole manner of life.
What are you telling people about Jesus? What are you really telling people about Jesus? What does the Jesus look like to whom you are pointing others? What are people saying about Jesus because they know and love you?
Another question that Jesus asks challenges us to discern whether the ‘Jesus’ we point to in our lives is really the Jesus who is calling us to himself.
Sometimes you read the Gospels, or hear the Gospel read in Church, and something will suddenly make you sit up. No matter how many times you’ve read it or heard it read, something will suddenly strike you that you had never noticed before. Preparing these addresses, reading the Gospel of John, something struck me that I’d never noticed before. A question of Jesus that runs throughout John’s Gospel. “For whom are you looking?”.
At the beginning of the Gospel, Jesus is walking by, and John the Baptist, calls out: “Behold the Lamb of God”. Two of John’s disciples begin to follow Jesus as a result, literally following him as he goes on his way (one of whom is Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother). Jesus turns, sees them following him, and said to them: “For what are you looking?”.
When Jesus is arrested, Judas procures a band of soldiers, and along with officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, goes to the Garden of Gethsemane with lanterns and torches and weapons. Jesus comes forward and says to them: “For whom are you looking?”. They’re seeking him to arrest him: “Jesus of Nazareth”. He responds: “I am he”. Even this response reveals who he is: “I am he”. The emphatic ‘I am’ which runs through John’s Gospel, and alludes to the emphatic ‘I am’ which is given as the divine name in the Old Testament. Yahweh. He Who Is.
“For whom are you looking?”
”Jesus of Nazareth”.
“I am he”.
If we didn’t get that this was a reference to the Divine Name, John’s narrative helps us see the impact of this Name. They draw back and fall to the ground.
Again, he asks them. “For whom are you looking?”. “Jesus of Nazareth”. And they arrest him.
Noli me tangere (|1524), Hans Holbein the Younger.
On the first day of the week Mary Magdalen came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. She runs to find Simon Peter and the beloved disciples, and stands weeping outside the tomb. She sees a man she doesn’t recognise who asks her: “Woman, why are you weeping? For whom are you looking?”. As she answers this question he calls her by name. Mary. In asking this question, her identity in Christ is confirm. She is Mary. The one who seeks Jesus. The one who loves her Lord.
“For what are you looking? For whom are you looking?”
Two of John the Baptist’s disciples are seeking the Messiah. Judas and the religious authorities are seeking Jesus of Nazareth to arrest him. Mary Magdalen is seeking her Lord. “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him”.
All of them looking are for Jesus. The two disciples without realising for whom they are looking. Judas and the authorities are looking for Jesus to defeat him. Mary Magdalen is looking for Jesus out of love for him.
“For whom are you looking?”.
For whom are you really looking?
For whom are you searching in your life?
The repeated refrain of John’s Gospel, gives us the question by which we are called to order our life. “For whom are you looking?”
In Church, are you seeking Jesus as you enter that holy space? At work, are you seeking Jesus as you work from day to day? In study, are you seeking Jesus in your reading and in the work you submit? At home and at leisure are you seeking Jesus? “For whom are you looking?”.
This refrain isn’t only a question which suggests the answer: Jesus. It’s a question by which we can test all that we do. In all that you do, for whom are you looking? For whom are you really looking?
When we ask ourselves this question, the answers we can get might surprise us. What are our motives? What are we really seeking when we do this or that? Comfort? Security? The best for ourselves? For our family? A good career? Fulfilled ambition? Can we really say that we are seeking Christ in all and everything that we do? Are we really looking for Jesus as we live our life day to day, week to week? As we ask these questions, as we live the question God poses to us in Christ, our identity in him is confirmed, just as it was for Mary. Asking this question, Jesus said to her Mary. He knew by name. Asking these questions, Jesus call to us by name today.
In the midst of our lives, in the midst of our pain and suffering, the weights we bear, and the struggles we undergo, in the midst of our day to day, our week to week, comes Jesus. He comes to us each and every day, in each and every Eucharist, at each and every moment. And when he comes, when he breaks into our life he stands there. Not as the answer, not with all the answers, but the persistent and constant challenge of all that we do. Are we living for him? Are we really living for him? Is it him we are seeking?
“For whom are you looking?”
