Moment of Truth (Mark 8:27-37)

Mark structured the first half of his gospel so that we would arrive at this moment of truth. The disciples have seen and heard enough. They should be able to answer the question that Jesus posed to them. “Who do people say that I am?” Peter had been taught that the Messiah would be a royal figure, the offspring of King David, whom God would empower to deliver Israel from her enemies. The Messiah was, by definition, a winner. Peter acknowledges that Jesus is the Messiah, but Jesus goes on to say that he must “suffer many terrible things and be rejected by the elders, the leading priests, and the teachers of religious law. He would be killed, but three days later he would rise from the dead.”  A Messiah was good news for sure, it was the news Peter and the rest of the Jewish nation had been longing for over 400 years. But a Messiah who turned himself over to the Romans? A Messiah who suffered and would be killed? A Messiah who got killed? And yet, Jesus insisted that it was good news; that he had come to save them all, not just from Rome, but also from themselves—to conquer sin, to defeat death, to restore and reconcile all things to God.