Correct Answer but Incorrect

Questioning our understanding of Jesus as Christ/Messiah

Mark 8:29

A father asked his 4 year old daughter if she understood what kind of job he did. “Yes, being my dad,” the young child replied. The father was touched by how she answered and began walking away in delight but then stopped and asked “Do you know what it means to be your dad?” The daughter without hesitating said “Yes, carrying my heavy stuff.”

We may answer a question with the correct word response but sometimes that word can be complicated and hard to describe. Why do our parents raise and care for us? Love. There may be a concise definition of love but to really understand love we must have experiences of love to refer to. Motherly love, friendly love, etc.

So if we reply that our parents nurtured us because of love, it may seem that we replied correctly. But if we are asked to define love and we say “love is a chemical reaction our body produces” we may no longer be right in our response because our current understanding of the word is limited. What appears to be correct may not be so.

Jesus asked his disciples “who do you say I am?” and Peter did answer “Messiah” correctly in one sense but in another not really. What Peter, and we as well, probably has is a limited comprehension of what the title “Messiah” means. We may say it as “Christ” or “the anointed” or repeat it many times but are we actually listening to Jesus’ explanation of what that means. Jesus is connecting “Messiah” to suffering, to the cross, to resurrection, to life.

If we cannot accept this then we don’t know who Jesus really is. No matter how much we proclaim Jesus to be Messiah or Christ. How then can we even call ourselves Christians if we are not willing to follow Jesus on his path towards Calvary? We need to contemplate on what we mean when we call Jesus Christ and ourselves Christiains. Can we understand that it involves us picking up our crosses and following Jesus? It may seem challenging but we should not worry too much since God our Father tends to always carry the heavy stuff anyway.

Tags: Identity, Messiah, Understand

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