"Who Do YOU Say That I Am?"

 

 You got love it when your bishop hears something you said on a podcast and decides to make it into a graphic!

I'm back from my vacation in Europe to see the solar eclipse and to take in the festivities in Laruns, France, on the Feast of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary. Those were the two big highlights of this excursion.

And I wisely wrote this sermon before I left. So, tell me what do you think? Do you think Jesus is a little bit sassy at times?

 

Text: Matthew 16:13-20 

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“Who is Jesus Christ?”

That was the question put before me during my interview with the bishop of Florida in 20-13.

He didn’t exactly ask that question as much as barked it at me.

But of all the things that I was asked during that interview…who was Jesus Christ was the one question for which I could answer with no hesitation and a big smile.

“Jesus Christ is the greatest liberator from oppression ever!”

I have no doubts about that answer.

And it came from having run away…struggled and wrestled with God for more than ten years before that meeting.

It was born from experiencing the depth and breadth of a Love that was beyond my wildest imagination.

It had it’s formation from entering Holy Week and the Triduum—those three Holy Days of Maundy Thursday, Good Friday, and Easter—and emerging out of an Easter service with that fullness of joy in feeling God’s promise having been kept to us: that assurance that Love wins!

That Love always is a stronger, more enduring power than fear or hate.

Incidentally…I tend to think that’s the reason why so many of our politicians and others lose their minds every June when the LGBTQIA community celebrates Pride. because…Pride…is really a big ol’ carnival of honoring and rejoicing in Love.

The bullies and tyrants can’t hold power over others when that Power of Love takes up all the space.

Bullies and tyrants were all around Jesus and the disciples at Caesarea Phillippi. Where this Gospel scene takes place is at or at least near the grotto dedicated to the pagan god Pan…the deity of shepherds.

The disciples are far away from the safety of being with their kinfolk when Jesus asks them, “Who do the people say that I am?”

And the answers run the gamut.

“Well…some think you’re your cousin John the Baptist. Some say you’re Elijah. Some think you’re Jeremiah or one of the other prophets.”

Jesus is like, “Uh-huh. OK. Cool, cool.”

I mean…none of those are bad ideas…and showed a type of Judaism that was faithful and dutiful to God.

But then Jesus makes the question personal.

“Who do you say that I am?”

This is no longer about what others say or think.

There isn’t a cheat sheet that they can check to find the “right answer” to this question.

This is about their own belief…their own experience…their own understanding of this man they’ve been following all over the place.

And he’s quizzing them as they were standing at a place of worship centered on an idol…and not the God of their ancestors.

I find this is one of those moments that’s still relevant for us today…living in a time where to profess to have faith in Jesus can evoke either strong positive or negative reactions from others.

Our vestry has been reading the book “Church Tomorrow?” by the Reverend Stephanie Spellers…who once served on the Presiding Bishop’s staff under Michael Curry.

She notes that survey after survey of people in this country shows the steep decline in religious affiliation…especially in mainline Protestant churches.

A 20-24 Pew Research Center poll found that only 63-percent of those surveyed identify as Christian…while those who claim no religious affiliation is 28 percent.

This change has been happening over the past 50 years…with the steady decrease in church attendance and the gradual uptick in the number of people who have no faith affiliation or interest in religion at all.

So knowing and being able to articulate “who Jesus is” to us…each one of us…remains probably the most important question for any of us to answer when we take a moment to contemplate our relationship to God through Jesus Christ.

And how we answer that question speaks to how we have come to find God in this second person of the Trinity…Jesus…in a culture where that might be seen as “weird” or even really counter-cultural.

Each one of us will have any variety of words…and feelings associated with those words…for how we relate to Jesus…or if we even feel we do relate to him. 

From the Christian perspective…the hope is that we have at least found in him a Word…the Word…that has become flesh…and through him it has led us to faith in the Name that is above all Names.

In our Gospel story…Peter…our beloved extroverted disciple… is the one who pipes up with, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!”

Good job, Peter!

The next few verses…where Jesus gives the details of how he’s giving him the nickname, ‘Peter’ or petras…meaning “The Rock”…and declaring it will be upon this rock that Jesus will build the church…is a description that only appears in Matthew’s telling of this story.

Scholars believe it’s because the Matthean community was a Christian community forming and emerging in the middle of a struggle and upheaval in Judaism after the destruction of the second Temple.

This new community also continued to face hardships living as a minority group within the Roman Empire.

Matthew includes these words spoken at a pagan shrine to give confidence to those beleaguered and fearful followers that Jesus was establishing something new…and that this was all happening within this pagan culture.

It’s also telling us I think something about Peter as that representative of this new church.

Remember about a month ago when we heard all those parables of Jesus…and his description of the “kingdom of heaven is like” a sower tossing seeds around.

Jesus describes the seeds that land on rocky ground as “this is the one who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy. Yet such a person has no root, but endures only for a while, and when trouble or persecution arises on account of the word, that person immediately falls away.” (Matt 13: 20-21).

Think about what happens with Peter when Jesus confronts the power structure in Jerusalem.

Jesus gets arrested…Peter gets put on the spot about whether he has anything to do with this upstart challenging the status quo…and then three denials and a cock-a-doodle doo later…the one who we heard call Jesus “the Messiah” in front of the grotto of Pan is suddenly not so bold sitting by the fire in the high priest’s courtyard.

This is also a perfect reflection of the church…both the institution and the people.

While the church has exalted Jesus and we have venerated the cross…we have also not always lived into our call to follow in Jesus’s footsteps.

Like Peter…we have been the rocky soil…happily hearing the words of Scripture while it’s read within the walls of the building on Sunday.

But when faced with a world that does not know this liberating Love… and governmental and political structures that don’t care about its message of compassion for the planet and its people… we have a tendency to shrink back into silence on Monday.

There’s a reluctance to confront the systems that have done harm…sometimes because of our own guilt in the ways we have participated in those systems.

And many times…because of not wanting to get involved in things that are messy.

Our own denomination was slow to speak up about the injustice and unfairness of the Jim Crow laws in the South.

It wasn’t until a white Episcopal seminarian…Jonathan Myrick Daniels…was murdered in Alabama in 19-65 for an act of heroism in saving a young black teenage girl named Ruby Sales that the broader Episcopal church finally took a stand for civil rights.

When the church…you and me…goes silent…we allow others to speak in our name in ways that betray that life-giving liberating Love of God that we have known through Jesus.

And it’s not as if Jesus hadn’t warned that trouble would be coming to the church.

In the verses that follow this morning’s reading…Jesus tells the disciples the horrors that will occur in Jerusalem…that he will be killed…but that he will also be raised on the third day.

And Peter…the rock of the church…says, “No, no, no. Don’t say that! That’s scary. That’s hard.”

Yes, it is.

And again…that’s the world in which the church…both the institution…and each of us…has to operate.

We have to risk facing the scary…and the unpredictable nature of the world. But we can and we must do it.

Look again at Peter.

Remember Pentecost?

The Holy Spirit blows through the Upper Room…and re-ignites the flames that had been dimming in the wake of all the trouble and turmoil at the crucifixion…and the exhilaration and confusion at the resurrection.

And Peter finally screws up his courage to assert…in the face of opponents and skeptics…that Jesus was right…his way of being is the way to life.

Despite the flaws…the stumbling…the lack of courage…his rocky faith found the good soil and dropped down strong and resilient roots.

And the one who was given the keys to the kingdom is finally ready to drive the car.

That’s the truth of the church as well.

When those of us who make up the foundation of this institution find the words…and the feelings we attach to those words about Jesus…and live by them…love our neighbors through them…and challenge our systems to be better because of those words…we also become the ones who are bringing earth and heaven closer together.

Who is Jesus Christ?

That’s the question.

It’s up to each of us to have an answer…guided by our own experience of the God who is Love.

And how we answer…and then live into that answer…is how we can help show others the true nature of Jesus as that beacon of life-giving and liberating Love that God has to offer this world.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.