In this long season after Pentecost, we are 17 weeks into it, we have been hearing stories from the Gospel According to Mark. We have been working our way through Mark’s telling of the Gospel, and we have been hearing stories of Jesus’s teaching and healing, stories of calling Disciples, gathering people around him. We have heard news of him spreading about, and people wondering who this guy is.
This has all been taking place in the region of Galilee, which is the area around the Sea of Galilee. But today we have moved out of that section of the Gospel, which is about the first third of the Gospel, and have moved into the middle of the Gospel. One of the indicators that we have moved is that we are in a different geographical place. We are now in Caesarea Philippi, north of Galilee, and Jesus is with the Disciples.
This section of the Gospel, this middle chunk, is book-ended by two stories about the physical healing of blind people. In literary criticism, when there are two book-ends like this, it is pointing to something that is in between them. So what does it mean to have two stories of the healing of blind people on either end of this middle section of the Gospel?
I would argue that we have these two stories of healing of blindness because what Jesus is doing in this middle section is trying to heal the blindness of the Disciples. He is trying to open the eyes of the Disciples to understand who he is and what it is that God is doing with him in this world. We begin to hear about the cross and the resurrection, and we will hear it time and again through the next several weeks, in various ways, with implications about what that means for us and our faith.
This section starts out with Jesus asking the question that everyone has been asking, who do people say that I am? I wonder if Jesus is testing his Disciples: are your eyes open, Disciples? Do I need to heal any blindness here? But in answer to his question, the Disciples say that some say you are John the Baptist, others say you are Elijah or one of the other Prophets. By the way, Herod, in the story we heard several weeks ago, thought that Jesus was John the Baptist “who I killed”, raised from the dead. Then Jesus asks the Disciples, then who do you say that I am? Peter steps forward and says, you are the Messiah. Remember that Mark gives us the abridged version of all these stories, because a longer version says, you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus says A+, Peter. That is fantastic. You got it right. In the other Gospels Jesus says, you, Peter, will be the rock on which I build my church. That’s pretty impressive. Peter got it right, and he is important for having done it.
Then the Gospel goes on to say that Jesus explains what that means. He starts talking about having to die and be raised again. This scandalizes Peter, so Peter pulls Jesus aside and asks, what are you saying? You can’t say this. This is not what the Messiah is all about. Jesus rebukes him and says, get behind me Satan. That rock on which Jesus is going to build his church is now the rock on which people will stumble. Peter goes from being right to being wrong. He goes from understanding to not understanding.
I am going to argue that Jesus is going to use this middle section of the Gospel trying to convince the Disciples of what this is all about. He is going to try to open their eyes, heal their blindness, and is not going to succeed. We know where this story goes: the Disciples continue to misunderstand Jesus and what he is all about. This Peter, who gets it right and then gets it wrong, is going to get it right again. Then he will get it wrong again, then right, then wrong, then right, and then he dies. That is the story of Peter. A lot of back and forth.
We will talk about all the stuff that Jesus is trying to open the Disciples’ eyes to see in the coming weeks. But today I want to focus on Peter. Peter is understood to be the great exemplar of the faith, and I think that is right. I think he is a great exemplar of the faith, but the reason is because he gets is wrong. Here is the thing about faith: it is not about getting it all right. It is not about being perfect. That is not what our salvation is based upon. I know there are over 20,000 denominations in this country, because people thinking that getting it all right is the most important thing. When they think someone else has it wrong, they start a new church.
But that is not what the story of Peter shows us should be the way. The story of Peter shows that faith is not about getting everything right, faith is about following Jesus and trying. Faith is not about getting it all right, faith is about taking the journey, knowing that we can’t fully understand and know everything, at least not during this mortal life. As St. James says in the Epistle today, we all make mistakes. As St. Paul says elsewhere, we see through a glass darkly, we see through a mirror dimly. It is impossible for us to understand it all, to get it all right. It is impossible for us to be perfect.
Therefore, faith is not about being perfect. Faith is about trying to follow Jesus, trying to draw close to him, trying to shape our lives based on what he is teaching us, knowing we will not get all the way there perfectly. That is a hard message for us, for in so much of our lives we are trying to be perfect. We think that our value, our worth is found in perfection. We think that about our professional careers, we think that about our relationships, and, oh, my, do people think that about their faith. But that is not the way of God. The way of God is the way of Peter, in which Peter, who gets it wrong, is still beloved. And not just beloved, he is raised up as one of the most important of them all, in spite of all the ways he gets it wrong.
The next story is the story of the Transfiguration. Peter is right and then he is wrong, but Jesus still tells Peter he will take him on a special trip up this mountain. Not because Peter has gotten it all right, but because Jesus invites him to do it.
There is a thing in our faith we like to call grace. Perhaps you have heard of it. If you have sung the words, “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me; I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see. ‘Twas grace that taught my heart to fear, and grace my fears relieved.” Grace.
Another word you might think of is mercy. Another important word is forgiveness. These things are vastly more important that perfection. Here is the fact: God has already offered you grace. God has already been merciful to you. God has already forgiven you for all the ways that you and I have fallen short of what God’s dream is for this world, because God loves you. That love is not conditional upon anything that you have done. That love is because of who God is. God loves you as you are. The life of faith is not trying to earn that love, the life of faith is trying to live in that love, and then realizing there is enough of that love to share with other people. The life of faith is a pilgrimage. It is not about the destination, it is about the journey, the journey of drawing close to God, trying time and again. Sometimes on that journey we are going to be right, and sometimes we are going to be wrong. But in all of it, God loves you and God is calling you, God is inviting you to draw closer, to learn to open your eyes, to heal whatever blind spots you have so you can move closer towards that dream that God has of a world saturated with love. You are not going to get there perfectly, for we all make mistakes. And that’s OK.
Here is what I ask of you, my friends: try and offer a little bit of grace. Try and offer a little bit of mercy. Try to be a little bit forgiving to yourself. Start with yourself. And if you get a chance, offer that grace and that mercy and that forgiveness to your neighbor as well. But start with yourself. Recognize that perfection is not the goal, but try each day, day in and day out, to draw a little closer to God, to see God a little more clearly, and to give yourself that grace, that mercy, and that forgiveness that God has already offered you.
AMEN.
