"Living the Questions"
Matthew 16:13-20
“Who do you say Jesus is?” is one of the most
challenging and important questions in the gospels. Knowing that his time with his disciples will
be coming to an end, Jesus periodically tests their understanding.
Jesus asks his disciples, "Who
are the people saying that the Son of Man is?"
The disciples give four answers. Some think of Jesus as John the Baptist,
others as Elijah, still others as Jeremiah, and some say one of the prophets. Some people are identifying Jesus with dead
prophets who had been sent by God who did miraculous deeds and who had stood
toe-to-toe with kings, speaking truth to power, in words of challenge,
opposition, and hope from Yahweh.
Each
of these ideas makes sense in some way.
But each of these popular understandings fails to discern the depth and
fullness of Jesus’ identity. The people look
at Jesus, but they only see the reflection of religious ideas from their past. They have a hard time imagining that God
could be doing something new.
The true identity of Jesus is at the
very heart of the gospel message and the Christian movement. Jesus has been described as a great teacher
of wisdom, a social reformer, a champion of individual freedom and worth, or a
revolutionary. There are grains of truth
in all of these ideas, but, as Tom Long says, in each case people have “pounded
a peg labeled “Jesus” into a
hole drilled to fit into their own religious preconceptions.”[1]
When
Jesus asks the disciples, “Who do you say I am?”-- they named some of the
incomplete and mistaken understandings of who Jesus is. Then Peter blurts
out, "You are the Messiah, the Son
of the living God."
Something in the way Peter says
those words or some uncertainty in the disciples' voices causes Jesus to
recognize that they had pronounced the truth without actually comprehending it.
So Jesus tells the disciples to be quiet
and not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.
But, if they can’t tell anyone, how will they build an ekklesia-- a gathering of those
called--on the truth of his identity?
I
think Mitzi Smith puts it well
when she says “by the life they live, a life of love for God, a life that loves
the other as much as one loves herself, and a life in pursuit of justice and
peace.” The disciples’ lives “will speak
louder, more truthfully, and more effectively than their words.”[2]
Mitzi envisions the kind of church
it could be. “On this rock, thou shall not build a prison nation. On this rock,
thou shall not build a nation where millions of children are homeless and
hungry…. On this rock, let us build assemblies that demonstrate belief in a
living, speaking, incarnating God, a God of freedom and not of oppression, a
God of justice, love, and peace.”
Who are the people saying Jesus
is? Who do we say Jesus is? What do our lives say about who we believe Jesus is?
Every day, our faith calls us to
live in the midst of these questions. We live in the tension between the
prevailing and popular pronouncements we hear and our daily confessions of who
we know Jesus to be through our study of the scriptures and prayer and living
in a community that encourages and challenges us.
When people claiming to be Christian
leaders support unjust policies--who are they saying Jesus is? When people say,
“We are a Christian nation,” but fail to care for those who are hungry or
homeless or oppressed-- who are we saying Jesus is?
When Jesus asks his disciples “Who
do you say I am,” Peter comes forward and speaks up. He figures out what he
needs to say, what he believes, and he says it. So I think it’s important to
ask: Does Jesus say he will build his church on Peter because he got the right
answer? Or because he spoke up? (I don’t
have a simple answer for you on this. I’ll just let you ponder it.)
I believe our faith can empower us
to step up--out of the crowd or in the middle of the masses, or in the face of
idolatries. We need to pay attention to
what we see going on and keep asking, “Who do we say Jesus is?”
I believe Jesus is the Son of the
living God, the God of love and compassion and justice. I believe Jesus “came
to live among us, full of grace and truth”[3] because
Jesus is God’s way of showing us how much God loves us and all people. Jesus reveals to us a living and loving God
who cries for Heather Heyer and for the victims of Barcelona and Cambrills in
Spain, a God who cares for those in the path of the storm in the Gulf and for
those who are the victims of violence or racial or ethnic profiling.
I believe Jesus also came to show us
what’s possible. Rather than giving
in to disease, Jesus healed people. Rather than abandon people to their demons,
Jesus showed compassion. Rather than let people go hungry because there’s not
enough to go around, Jesus fed people. Jesus refused to be limited by the
status quo and invites us to do the same. In the resurrection, Jesus shows us
that goodness is stronger than evil and love is stronger than hate or fear or
even death. In his life and in his teachings, Jesus shows us that God’s love
wins.
There is so much going on in the
world right now, in our nation and in our communities, that needs our prayers,
our efforts, our work, and commitment. The living God calls us in our
individual lives and in our life as the church to confess Christ-- the suffering
Christ who always sides with the vulnerable, in word and deed. With our lives, with our relationships, our
bank accounts, our time, our energy, we are called to proclaim who we say Jesus
is. In light of Jesus’ actions and teachings, how will our lives be different?
The Rev. Jill Duffield is the Editor of The Presbyterian Outlook and lives in the Charlottesville, Virginia
area. She was actively involved with the interfaith group who witnessed to
their faith and against hate and white supremacy a few weeks ago.
In
Jill’s posts, she talks about the chants that echoed through the campus of the
University of Virginia during the “Unite the Right” rally. “They will not
replace us.” “Jew will not replace us.” As Jill writes, white supremacists don’t
see neighbors to love-- they see competitors to be feared.
Jill writes that, at one point on
Saturday, August 12, she found herself standing beside a young,
African-American woman from “over the mountain,” about 40 miles west of
Charlottesville. She’s an Episcopal priest who’d heard and heeded the call to
come and support area faith leaders.
As they talked, they could hear
chants coming from the park where the Unite the Right rally was to be held at
noon. The crowd grew louder and angrier, audible even above the din of the helicopters
hovering overhead. The chant that wafted into the Methodist church parking lot
was filled with expletives and invectives.
Jill said her new friend shook her
head and looked down. Then she looked up and said something Jill didn’t expect:
“There are a lot of hurting people over there.” The
she added: “There is no joy over in that park. They are hurting.”
Jill writes, “Her grace caught me off guard and I think
my expression revealed my surprise, because she continued: “We have to remember
that they are hurting, because we need to be the church for them, too. If we forget
that, we’ve lost everything that really matters.”Jill says, “In that moment, I felt that all my faith fit into a thimble, while hers overflowed into the menacing streets outside our protected parking lot. She was rock solid in who Jesus is and therefore who we are called to be, and no earthly power – no matter how ruthlessly oppressive – was going to make her forget it.”[4]
When we know how much God loves us-- how beloved and irreplaceable we are to God, we don’t need to be afraid of being replaced by others, and we can know the peace that passes understanding. The unshakeable foundation upon which Christ builds the church is this love.
Jesus gives the keys of the kingdom
of heaven to Peter and to the whole church,[5] as a symbol of the authority of the church on
earth. What the church does-- the decisions we make, the grace we show, the
truths we teach-- these all matter to God.
When the church reaches out to share
the good news of God’s love to someone who is alienated from God, when we teach
the faith to a child, when we care for someone in need, when we offer
hospitality to a stranger, when we stand in solidarity with those who are
marginalized or oppressed or stand up for justice-- we are living into God’s future—the kingdom
of heaven—here and now. When we do
that-- we are participating in the very life of God.
Thanks be to God! Amen!
Rev. Fran Hayes, Pastor
Littlefield Presbyterian Church
Dearborn, Michigan
August 27, 2017
[1]
Thomas G. Long, Matthew.
(Westminster John Knox Press, 1997), page 184.
[2]
Mitzi Smith, “Commentary on Matthew 16:13-20, at Working Preacher. http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=3361
[3] John 1:14
[4]
Jill Duffield, “Looking into the Lectionary” at The Presbyterian Outlook at https://pres-outlook.org/2017/08/12th-sunday-pentecost-august-27-2017/
[5]
Matt. 18:18
