Mark 8:27-31 — Who Do You Say I Am?

FRANK EDWARDS: "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death." In the psalm a sheep says that, about its own dark road. Today, on a road in the far north of Israel, the Shepherd tells his friends that he will walk that valley himself. And every time he names it, he names its far side too. LINDA BROWN: Welcome to Dig Deeper. I'm Linda Brown, here with Frank Edwards, and this is step eight of our sixteen steps through Psalm 23. Last time we left the disciples in the boat, astounded, with hard hearts. Today's reading is short, five verses, and it sits at the hinge of Mark's whole Gospel. Mark chapter eight, verses twenty-seven to thirty-one. Then Jesus and His disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way, He questioned His disciples: "Who do people say I am?" They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets." "But what about you?" Jesus asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ." And Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about Him. Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and that He must be killed and after three days rise again. FRANK EDWARDS: On step six we heard that "walk" is halak, the plain verb for going on foot, and that walking means you are still moving. We heard that "the shadow of death" is tsalmaveth, the deepest darkness. Today look at the first two words, "even though." They assume the valley will come. The psalm does not say if I ever walk through it. It says when I do, here is what is true. Today we find out who walks it first. LINDA BROWN: Mark sets the scene carefully. "The villages around Caesarea Philippi." Where was that? FRANK EDWARDS: The far north, about twenty-five miles above the Sea of Galilee, at the foot of Mount Hermon. A spring pours out at the base of a cliff there and runs off to feed the Jordan, and in the cliff was a cave that had long been a shrine to the Greek god Pan. Herod the Great had built a white stone temple nearby in honor of the emperor Augustus, and his son Philip rebuilt the town and named it for Caesar. A town full of claims about who is god and who is lord. That is where Jesus asks who he is. LINDA BROWN: And Mark says the question came "on the way." That sounds like a small detail. FRANK EDWARDS: In Mark it is not small. His opening lines quote Isaiah: "Prepare the way for the Lord." From this point on Mark keeps telling us that Jesus and his disciples are on the way, and the way runs south. Two chapters later he names it: "As they were going up the road to Jerusalem, Jesus was walking ahead of them." That is the psalm's verb on a real road. The Shepherd is walking, and he knows where the road goes. LINDA BROWN: Just before this, Mark tells of a blind man Jesus heals in two stages. After the first touch the man says, "I can see the people, but they look like trees walking around." FRANK EDWARDS: Many readers think Mark put that healing there on purpose. The disciples are about to see something true, but not yet clearly. First the easy question: "Who do people say I am?" John the Baptist, Elijah, one of the prophets. Every answer is a compliment. Malachi had promised, "Behold, I will send you Elijah the prophet before the coming of the great and awesome Day of the LORD." To say Jesus was Elijah was to say God was about to act. But all of them fall short. LINDA BROWN: Then it turns. "But what about you?" Jesus asked. "Who do you say I am?" The "you" sounds deliberate. FRANK EDWARDS: In Greek the pronoun comes first, and it is plural: but you, all of you, who do you say I am? The crowd's opinions have been reported. Now he asks the men walking beside him. And Mark's Gospel has sixteen chapters; this question comes in the middle of chapter eight, very nearly the halfway point of the book. Everything before it asks who he is. Everything after it walks toward the valley. LINDA BROWN: And Peter answers, "You are the Christ." FRANK EDWARDS: Christ is the Greek form of messiah, anointed one. On step two we met the shepherd boy David, and First Samuel 16 tells how Samuel took the horn of oil "and anointed him in the presence of his brothers." God promised David in Second Samuel 7, "I will raise up your descendant after you, who will come from your own body, and I will establish his kingdom." So Peter is saying: you are the anointed King from David's line. The shepherd boy's Son. LINDA BROWN: Mark used that title in his very first sentence: "This is the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." The reader has known it since line one, and Peter is only now saying it out loud. FRANK EDWARDS: Peter is the first person in the story to say it to Jesus' face. John's Gospel adds that when Peter's brother Andrew first met Jesus, "He first found his brother Simon and told him, 'We have found the Messiah.'" Peter had heard the word about Jesus from the start. On this road he finally says it himself, and he is about to learn that the Messiah's road runs through a valley. LINDA BROWN: Then Jesus warns them not to tell anyone. Why, if Peter is right? FRANK EDWARDS: Because of what "Christ" meant to many people then. After Herod the Great died, the historian Josephus says several men claimed to be king. One, named Athronges, had been a shepherd. He put on a crown and fought the Romans until his movement was crushed. Say "the Christ" to a crowd in Galilee and some would reach for swords. Jesus is not denying the title. He refuses to let it be filled with the wrong meaning, and the next sentence fills it with the right one. LINDA BROWN: "Then He began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things." He moves from "Christ" to "Son of Man." Daniel 7 has a figure with that name, given a kingdom that will never be destroyed. FRANK EDWARDS: Daniel's figure is given "dominion, glory, and kingship." It is a title of glory, and in the same breath Jesus joins it to four things no one expected: suffer, be rejected, be killed, and after three days rise again. This is the valley of Psalm 23:4, named plainly by the one who will walk it. LINDA BROWN: One small word runs through that whole sentence. "Must." FRANK EDWARDS: The Greek is dei, and in Mark it is the word for what God has planned and will bring about. The valley was not an accident that interrupted his work. It was the road the Father had set, and the Son walked it willingly. In John's Gospel he says it himself: "No one takes it from Me, but I lay it down of My own accord." And the same "must" reaches the last words of the sentence: after three days rise again. LINDA BROWN: Psalm 23 says "walk through." Is that why he keeps adding "after three days rise again"? FRANK EDWARDS: That is the heart of it. The English of the psalm says "through," not "into," and the verb is a walking verb: the sheep keeps moving. It does not settle in the valley. Every time Jesus names his death in Mark, and he does it three times, he names the far side as well. Here, "after three days rise again." In chapter nine, "after three days He will rise." In chapter ten, "after three days He will rise again." Many readers hear behind it Hosea's hope, "on the third day He will raise us up." The valley is real, and it has a far side. LINDA BROWN: Isaiah 43 uses that walking verb too, doesn't it? "When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched." FRANK EDWARDS: The same Hebrew verb as "Even though I walk" in Psalm 23. And Psalm 138 has David using it again: "If I walk in the midst of trouble, You preserve me." The walk goes through the fire and through the trouble, and God brings his people out. On the road south Jesus walks ahead of his disciples, toward the valley, knowing what is in it. LINDA BROWN: The reading stops at verse thirty-one, but the very next verse shows how hard this was to hear. Peter "took Him aside and began to rebuke Him." FRANK EDWARDS: Peter had the right title and wanted a Christ with no valley in his road. Jesus answered, "Get behind Me, Satan! For you do not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men." Many people want the same thing Peter wanted: if God is with you, surely the road goes around the dark stretch. Psalm 23:4 never promises that. It says "even though I walk." Paul and Barnabas told new believers plainly, "We must endure many hardships to enter the kingdom of God." LINDA BROWN: Isaiah 53 had already said the Servant would be "despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief." And Jesus says he will be "rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes." FRANK EDWARDS: The Greek of Psalm 118 uses the very same verb for "The stone the builders rejected," a line Jesus quotes about himself later in Mark. And those three groups together made up Israel's ruling council. A King from David's line, and a Servant rejected by his own leaders: on this road Jesus says they are one person. Two chapters later he says why: "For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life as a ransom for many." Hebrews says he did it "so that by the grace of God He might taste death for everyone." LINDA BROWN: The title Peter got right comes back at the end of Mark, in a terrible place. At the cross the chief priests mock him: "Let the Christ, the King of Israel, come down now from the cross, so that we may see and believe!" FRANK EDWARDS: Peter's confession, turned into mockery. And he stayed on the cross. He did not come down out of the valley. He went to the bottom of it, exactly as he said on this road, and on the third day he came out the other side. LINDA BROWN: So the sheep's line in Psalm 23 changes once the Shepherd has walked the valley first. FRANK EDWARDS: Every sheep who says "Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death" now walks a road the Shepherd has already walked, into death and out the other side. They do not walk it alone, and they do not walk it into a dead end. LINDA BROWN: The passage leaves its question with anyone who reads it, though. Who do you say I am? FRANK EDWARDS: The question still stands. Mark gives the answer through Peter's mouth, even before Peter understood it: you are the Christ. Then Jesus defines the word, so an honest answer has to include the road: a King who suffers, is rejected, dies and rises. Hear the question again, and Peter's answer, and then the line from the psalm. "But what about you?" Jesus asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ." Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death. [long pause] LINDA BROWN: For a way to take this into an ordinary week, the Apply This Today section in the app picks it up. Next time we go back to the psalm, to verse five, where the shepherd becomes a host and sets a table in the presence of enemies. FRANK EDWARDS: Dig Deeper is a free app, and you can find it at dig deeper dot A I. LINDA BROWN: Thanks for listening, and for walking the road to Caesarea Philippi today.