Mark 8:27-9:8
February 23, 2020

When I lecture on the Dynamics of Interpersonal Communication, the first half of the first class is always spent explaining just how communication works.

There are two parties involved … the sender and the receiver … and I would draw a straight line between the two words. Most of the university students would just nod … few … if any … of them ever seemed to be taking notes.

I’m pretty sure some of them were checking hockey scores on their laptops.

I would imagine that the students figured that they could remember two words and a straight line.

In between the words … I would write “message” on the line.

Then, I would loop a line back from receiver to sender … and then I would loop another line back from the sender to the receiver … the curved lines represented a response to the message and a response to the response.

Usually, a few students would poke their heads up to see what the lines meant. Kind of like Prairie dogs sitting in a classroom.

And then, to really muck things up for them … I’d write the word “noise” across the middle of the diagram.

At about this point, some of the students would take out cellphones and snap a picture of the blackboard … this is how the current generation takes notes.

The idea behind the diagram … besides following the flow of interpersonal communication …  is that noise always gets in the way of the message and understanding it.

Communication is not a passive activity … it’s always active … always flowing.

Today, as we prepare to exit the season after Epiphany, we and the disciples get another glimpse of Jesus’ true nature and we get an opportunity to gauge how successful the lessons … the messages … have been communicated.

On the way to Caesarea Phillipi, Jesus asks the question … each of us may have tried to answer from time to time … “who do the people say I am.”

 The answers Jesus receives show that the people haven’t quite gotten a handle on things … they name the prophets … basing their answers on the stories they had heard and knew.

They anchor the answers on the familiar.

Then Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do YOU say I am?”

Only Peter gives the correct answer … “you are the messiah.”

But even with the right answer, Peter shows that he really doesn’t understand the implications of that answer.

He doesn’t understand what it means.

Jesus and the disciples have spent a great deal of time traipsing around the region of the Galilee.

They have been teaching, healing and cleansing people throughout the towns and villages … they’ve fed a multitude … with a few loaves of bread … and just before today’s passage … Jesus brings sight to a blind man.

The disciples have witnessed … they have seen and experienced a great deal in their travels with Jesus.

So, Peter draws his answer to Jesus’ question from what he and the others saw … he put the pieces of the puzzle together … he just doesn’t comprehend the picture that they form.

Perceptions and misinterpretations … noise … gets in the way.

Peter even argues with the teacher about what the teacher must do next … to the point where Jesus tells him to get back in line and stop being a barrier by placing the divine in an earthly context.

Peter soon gets the opportunity to get it right.

The second part of today’s reading has the Jesus, Peter and two other disciples climbing a mountain near Nazareth six days later.

Once on the summit, the group is enveloped by clouds and Jesus is suddenly draped in the whitest cloths … whiter than any Bible-era bleach could ever hope to accomplish. He’s joined by Moses and Elijah.

A voice from the clouds affirms Jesus’ identity to the three disciples.

“This is my Son, the Beloved;”

And then the voice tells the disciples …

“Listen to him…”

Still, Peter heard, but didn’t quite listen.

He suggests building three tents … one each for Jesus, Moses and Elijah … just like they do at festivals. The divine nature of the moment is framed by Peter’s earthly perspective.

The voice had said, “listen to him…”

In other words, pay attention … you need to pay attention … you need to mute the noise … if you want to understand.

And to understand, the disciples cannot simply sit there like sponges … they need to be engaged … to make listening as much a priority in their lives as praying.

Listening is a key to our faith … necessary for each of us to grow in our faith and into our call to discipleship.

Listening is difficult … it requires concentration … it requires that the person actively participate in the process.

Listening is not the same as hearing … and, in fact, actually there are a number of different types of barriers to listening and as many steps that need to be taken in order to effectively listen and effectively minister.

One – you need to hear what’s being said … OK, that seems obvious.

Two – you need to pay attention … the person needs your undivided attention. The distractions need to be filtered out, so that you can concentrate on what is being said. This is harder than you would think.

These distractions can be as simple as physical noise … or something more internal such as selectively listening to what is being said so you can avoid certain topics that make you uneasy or even plug in your own beliefs, or memories to fill in the gaps in another’s message.

Three – you need to understand what you’re hearing and seeing. This is where the disciples really come up short in Mark’s gospel.

Four – you need to be able to remember key points of what is being communicated.

The key point today is you need to listen.

And five – you need to take all the previous steps and appropriately respond to the message.

Listening is an intensive activity … one that is essential to our call to discipleship … after all, you have to hear the call and understand what it means before you can act. You have to listen for the cries of those we are called to serve and then understand what they are saying.

Listening informs our response to a message … those looped lines I placed on the blackboard.

The phrase “Listen to him” calls the disciples to actively follow Jesus in the time ahead … a time when … ironically … Jesus is a passive participant as he is persecuted and crucified by the political forces of the world.

A time … we know … when the disciples show just how much they had really listened.

We are coming out of the season of Epiphany … a time when we captured glimpses of Jesus’s true nature. It is also a season when we are called to consider what those glimpses hold for us. How these glimpses inform our life of faith.

And we are about to enter Lent … a period when we are called to be more reflective … placing those glimpses in the context of the journey … considering what it means to carry the cross … what it means to follow Jesus’ path to Golgatha… and share the benefits of grace.

To consider, what barriers we create that make our listening a little iffy and living into our call to love more difficult or even impossible?

Do these barriers create moments of hypocrisy … moments of disconnect between word and action, rather than moments of grace and love?

Through it all … how do we communicate the meaning of the cross to the world around us?

Mennonite scholar Timothy Geddert has written at length about Mark’s gospel.

In discussing today’s passage, he says that cross-carrying shouldn’t be cast in a negative light … that the cross should not be seen as sign of discipleship horror … but rather, seeing discipleship as simply saying yes to Christ.

He wrote:

“The cross is a way of living … not a way of dying.”

“The end of the road of discipleship is not crucifixion, it is resurrection.”

That is what Jesus was trying to explain to Peter in today’s passage … if he had listened.

And that is what we are called to remember … that we are a resurrection church … a resurrection people. That we are a people who embrace and share a new life in Jesus.

In the coming weeks, as we trace Jesus’ journey to Jerusalem, we are invited into a time of deep reflection … a time when we should be actively listening to words and cries within the journey … cutting out the noise and discerning their relationship to our lives and the life of the world.

I pray that you have been listening.

AMEN