How BIG am I to you?

DAILY BYTE

Today we are going back to the story we looked at on Monday. Mark is very precise on the geography of this story, he makes it clear that Jesus and the disciples are going to the ‘villages around Caesarea Philippi’. Most first century listeners would have understood the relevance of this straight away.

That is because the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi, were renowned for being littered with about 14 different pagan temples, included two very large ones. One built by Herod and dedicated to the Roman Emperor for the purposes of Emperor Worship, and the other was an older one built around a cave for the purposes of worshipping the Roman god of nature (Pan).

I just love the sense of drama that Jesus has here. Now Jesus’ height is never mentioned in the Gospels, so we must guess that he was probably of average height. However, as you can well imagine, no matter how tall he was he would have been dwarfed by the surrounding temples.

So picture this tiny figure of Jesus, standing dwarfed by these great temples dedicated to false and pagan gods, asking of his disciples, ‘Who do you say that I am’ – ‘How big am I to you?’

Peter, to his credit, answers ‘You are the Christ.’ After journeying with Jesus and witnessing his miracles and hearing his teachings, Peter’s sight is now clear enough to believe that Christ is bigger than any other god, even one with the awful force of a Roman Emperor.

But then comes the crunch, because although Peter’s view of God has clearly grown since he was first called away from his fishing nets, it is still not large enough to carry him through all life’s challenges.

This is why he needed to hear Jesus’ rebuke.

Peter may have believed God was bigger than those pagan temples, the very same temples that he and most Jews hoped ‘the Christ’ would destroy, but as soon as Jesus began to speak of his own suffering and death, Peter faltered. I mean if Christ destroyed those temples, well then Peter would share in the glory, but if the Christ was to suffer and die – what would that mean for Peter?

Like most of us, Peter was fine with his faith as long as it promised him prosperity, but as soon as it threatened to lead him through adversity or hardship then he hesitated.

His view of God was not big enough for him to properly grapple with the idea of God voluntarily entering suffering and hardship, it was not big enough to see that for God at least, being ‘big’ means squeezing down into all the fragility of a human frame and risking humiliating death – all for the cause of love.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Lord you are a great and glorious God who delights in surprising us. We acknowledge that many of our ideas of what it means to be great and ‘big’ differ from your own. We know that whoever we are, and whatever we have done with our lives so far, we still need to grow and so we pray that you would bless us with an ever increasing ‘picture’ of who you are. Help us to learn to see ‘big’ for what it really is. Amen.

FOCUS VERSE

Mark 8 : 27-31 (NIV)

Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, "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?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?" Peter answered, "You are the Christ."

Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.