Jesus cannot be the one without being the only. [A sermon preview]

“And they came to Bethsaida. And some people brought to him a blind man and begged him to touch him. And he took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and when he had spit on his eyes and laid his hands on him, he asked him, “Do you see anything?” And he looked up and said, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Then Jesus laid his hands on his eyes again; and he opened his eyes, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly. And he sent him to his home, saying, “Do not even enter the village.”

And Jesus went on with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. And on the way he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” And they told him, “John the Baptist; and others say, Elijah; and others, one of the prophets.” And he asked them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered him, “You are the Christ.” And he strictly charged them to tell no one about him.” (Mark 8:22–30)

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Why is it greater that Jesus is the “Christ,” which means anointed one, rather than prophet, John Baptist, or Elijah? In the Old Testament prophets, priests and kings would be anointed with oil to represent the presence of God. In the four or five centuries before Jesus’ birth, God’s people understood that the next anointed one would be the last because he would bring the Kingdom of Heaven to bear in the world; a King who would sit on David’s throne, a priest who would make God’s people holy again, a prophet who could not only tell forth the Word of God but fulfill it. Jesus could not be what the people thought he was because none of those things are the last thing, they’re only—at best—the next to last thing. And human hearts are always on the lookout for something better.

It reminds me of overhearing a college boyfriend, back on break, talking to his high school girlfriend at a coffee shop where I happened to be studying, trying not to overhear their conversation. The girl, getting progressively louder, wanted to know where their relationship was headed. Was it serious, was it casual? Had he met someone else? The boy went on to shower her with positive feedback, he listed her qualities and how satisfied he was in their relationship and he ended with this he said, “when I think about the kind of person I want to end up with, the person I want to spend my life with there’s no one else I’d want to be with than you…”

“…so far.”

And it’s really on the so far that everything hinges. If we see Jesus as John the Baptist resurrected or Elijah or as one of the prophets it allows for the possibility of a better option down the road. Jesus putting the question to us highlights a crisis of belief: do we follow a God who allows me to shape him according to my needs or a God who we fashion or a God who is so unknowable that we cannot touch him. The answer of the Scriptures is something else entirely: the anointed one. One that we do not control, but who is also not merely the best god so far. His anointing means he is not only the one, but the only.

After the healing they travel the 25 miles to Caesaria Phillipi while Jesus applies the lesson of the healing to his disciples. He asks them, as he asked the blind man, what do you see? Who do people say that I am? The disciples respond that the people have half-opened eyes: they see Jesus as a prophet or a revolutionary or a great one of faith. Jesus then opens their eyes again: but who do you say that I am? Peter speaks up: “you are the Christ.” The emphasis is on the two moments together—wanting us to see the two-stage healing of physical sight and the two-stage healing of faith. We are not in need of some spiritual glasses. We are a people who are blind. We are a people who at our best see the saviors like trees, walking.

To follow a prophet is to follow someone who tells you the truth. The prophet tells forth the future, points you in a direction and declares your sin or where you lack. To follow a prophet is to be healed of your uncertainty. We gladly follow prophets, both the spiritual kind and the non-spiritual who make us value certainty even more than rightness. The social media influencer or the politician who says what we want to be told.

To follow a revolutionary is to follow the crowd. It is to be zealous for a truth that you believe. We follow revolutionaries because they appeal to the part of us that knows the world is not what it is supposed to be. Jesus as the culture-changer, the table-turner. Joining a revolution is easier than questioning whether we are the ones who need to be overthrown.

To follow Elijah, the prophet and warrior and leader, is to be healed of our powerlessness. To follow the strong makes us strong. None of those are adequate titles for Jesus. There’s a way of getting halfway to seeing that can make you feel even more blind. There’s a way of getting halfway to the truth that can break your heart.

T.S. Eliot’s Hollow Men is a collection of stanzas written in the era immediately following WWI. Modernity’s hope of a savior through human progress was a half-way answer, and it was crushed by the brutality of modern war. Eliot saw a blindness not of the optic nerves but the soul.

The eyes are not here 
There are no eyes here 
In this valley of dying stars 
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms

In this last of meeting places 
We grope together 
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river

Sightless, unless 
The eyes reappear 
…
The hope only 
Of empty men.

He wasn’t alone. H.G. Wells went from supreme optimist about humanity before the Second World War to saying, after the war, that “Homo Sapiens, as he has been pleased to call himself, is played out.” How did they get there? The hope placed on the ability for human beings to save themselves was exposed and left empty space behind. We are in the same danger in our cultural moment. Having pushed ourselves beyond healthy limits to gain all that we can of an anointed life, human beings are left hollowed out by life’s realities: the advantaged but rebellious child, a fairy-tale wedding that gives way to the disappointing marriage, a promising career that grinds us to dust by its inhuman demands. If we anoint things as Christs that are only half-truths or half-healings, we will be left too hollow to see Jesus.

Richard Lovelace in Dynamics of Spiritual Life writes that “Modern man is not immune to the impact of traditional Christian terminology; he is simply inert in the presence of answers to questions he has not yet been induced to ask.” This is our greatest challenge as the church: to provoke the question Jesus asks in our own day. Is there a God who is the worthy object of my hollow heart in a hollowed-out world? They’ll only ask if they see us following him not as our god so far but as the one and only. May the world ask of us: who do you say Jesus is?

Jesus asks Peter, who do you say that I am? And his answer: you are not the prophet but the one who fills the mouths of prophets. You’re not John the Baptist but the wild cause for which every person should repent and believe. You’re not Elijah. You are the fire Elijah called down from heaven. In other words, Jesus is not defined by the question, he is the answer around which questions grow like vines.

Who do you say that Jesus is? You cannot answer Jesus’ question properly if you answer it academically (the truth about him) or therapeutically (the truth of how he relieves your suffering), or individualistically (the truth about him as you think he should be). When Jesus spits on the man’s eyes he has to be close, right in front of him, so that when the man is given the ability to see, he must see Jesus before he sees anything else clearly. Jesus is not one kind of truth, he is anointed as the real and last truth, the truth by which every half-truth is exposed and every hollowed out hope is restored. Not only the one, but the only God.

What’s more offensive to our modern sensibilities, that there is an anointed one, or that by his anointing you and I are no longer free to see him as anything less?

When the Son was anointed by the Father it was to set him out as the one who could save us. The Son was anointed by the Father when he was baptized in the Jordan, and he was anointed by the Romans when they put him on a cross and a sign above him. They too called him the chosen one—King of the Jews they said, tongue-in-cheek. In between those two anointings he was anointed by desperate ones who put their hands on him, or their hair on his feet, or their tears on his shoulders or their anemic hands on the fringe of his garment. He was anointed as the one and only Christ so we would know that we could trust him with our weary, sightless eyes.

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Jesus Christ, anointed before creation, ours even before there was an “us,” draw us to yourself. We could say it so many ways: draw us up out of our sin, teach us to treasure what you treasure and despise what you despise, renew our minds, seat us at your table, gather us like sheep who go astray. Or simply: open our eyes, Jesus, that we might see you as you are—and by that vision—see everything else.