You Are the Messiah

How did he know? When Jesus asked his friends, “But who do you say that I am,” how did Peter come up with the right answer, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God?” Even if Peter was speaking for all the disciples, how did he know? Like other Jews of their day, Peter and the other disciples knew their Scriptures. They knew that the prophets, beginning with Isaiah and running right through Malachi, had been promising for centuries that God would deliver the Jews and would inaugurate a reign of peace and justice. Perhaps they also used their reason: they could see, in the way that Jesus healed people, in the way he argued with the religious leaders, and in the way that he taught, that there was something special about him. And too they had had some personal experiences of their own of Jesus’ power. Hadn’t they taken part in Jesus’ feeding of the great crowd? Hadn’t some of them gone out in a boat with Jesus and seen him walk on water? When Peter tried to do the same thing and began to sink, hadn’t they seen Jesus reach out and save him? And when he got back into the boat, hadn’t they said then, “Truly, you are the Son of God?” So when Jesus finally put the question to them, “But who do you say that I am,” perhaps it wasn’t so surprising that impulsive and quick-witted Peter could put Scripture, reason, and experience together and come up with the right answer.

But I still have a question. When Peter blurted out the right answer, did he really understand what he was saying? Did he really know what it meant to say that Jesus was the mashiach, the christos, God’s Anointed one? And did he really understand what kind of a messiah Jesus really was? Most likely not. Almost immediately, he tried to distance himself from Jesus’ warning that he would die on the Cross. As we know so well, on the eve of Jesus’ crucifixion, Peter denied three times that he even knew Jesus. Only after Jesus’ return to life at Easter and Peter’s acceptance of the Holy Spirit did Peter begin to understand what he had said in his confession, and only then could he begin to witness to others of Jesus’ true identity. No wonder Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. Clearly, the disciples had to learn and grow in their understanding a great deal more before they could adequately proclaim that Jesus was the one for whom Israel had been waiting for so long.

Over the centuries since Matthew’s Gospel was written, Christian communities have pondered the meaning and importance of Peter’s confession of faith, and especially of Jesus’ response to it. Roman Catholics, Protestants, and Orthodox Christians continue to disagree on their interpretation of Matthew’s rendering of Jesus’ words. Even so, almost all Christian communities agree that Jesus’ initial question, “But who do you say that I am?”, is a question that all of us must answer. “How do you understand who Jesus is?” is the defining question of Christian faith. In the service of Baptism, after the candidates have renounced Satan, the evil powers of this world, and all sinful desires, the very next question is “Do you turn to Jesus and accept him as your Savior?” Even so, the question of Jesus’ identity is one many of us adults shy away from answering – perhaps it’s fortunate that many of you were baptized as infants! For starters, some of us are unsure exactly what a messiah is. Or we may say, “Every Sunday we say the Nicene Creed, and in the daily offices and the Baptismal service we say the Apostles’ Creed.1 It took the creed writers several centuries to work out the creedal statements. Isn’t the question of Jesus’ identity settled for now?” Perhaps so, but do the creedal statements have personal meaning for us? Or perhaps you might think that St. Augustine, or Martin Luther, or the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, have said all there is to say about who Jesus is. Or you might think that the pictures you’ve had of Jesus most of your life, the cute baby in the “ethereally lighted antiseptic manger,” the gentle teacher with his flowing white robes, the brilliant debater, or the dignified martyr, are sufficient. Really, I learned it all in Sunday School. What more do I need? Or you just might not want any more challenges in your life. Between family and work, personal and health issues, there’s enough challenge in your life. Let Jesus’ identity as the messiah at least be something that doesn’t challenge me! Finally, perhaps we’re afraid that, if we look too closely at Jesus, if we really think about who he was and what kind of a messiah he really was, we might need to change some things in our lives. If Jesus asked you, “But who do you say that I am?”, would you answer “I’m not sure,” because you’d be afraid that Jesus would call you to follow him more closely, perhaps even to follow him all the way to your own Cross?

My friends, the truth is that, just like Peter, we can’t duck the question of Jesus’ identity. If we are serious adult followers of our Lord, if we persist in calling ourselves Christians, i.e., followers of the Christos, God’s Messiah, God’s Anointed One, and if we hope to draw others into the Body of Christ, we must be able to give an answer to Jesus’ question that is more than formulaic words. We cannot hold on to our Sunday school images of Jesus, nor can we deny Jesus’ power to change our lives if we let him. And, like, Peter, we must be willing to let our understanding of who Jesus is change and grow as we continue to follow behind him.

As we continue to confront the question of who Jesus is for us, we acknowledge that any deeper understanding of Jesus’ identity, any greater faith in Jesus is a ultimately a gift of God. Nevertheless, we also know that God uses multiple ways to help us grow and mature in our faith. First, we too can study Scripture more closely. We Episcopalians are not Biblical literalists: we do not believe in the inerrancy of Scripture, we understand that not every Bible story is literally, factually true, and we accept that much of Scripture was written in particular social situations for particular communities. We realize that the church’s and our own interpretations of Scripture may change over the years. Even so, as part of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, we continue to acknowledge that Scripture is the Word of God, and that God continues to teach us through serious study of Scripture. Secondly, we can also use our God-given powers of reason. We can study history and theology and learn how others have thought and are thinking about who Jesus is, and how we can most sincerely and effectively follow him. This does not mean that we believe because of what Paul, or Augustine, or Aquinas, or Julian, or Moltmann, or Marcus Borg, or Rowan Williams have said. We believe because God gives us the freedom and the ability to think through questions of faith and identity with our own minds. And third we can learn from the experiences of the saints and from our own experience of Jesus in daily prayer and contemplation. We can continue to let Jesus nourish us with his Body and Blood. While deeper faith is always a gift of God, for us as for Peter, God uses all three means, Scripture, reason, and experience, to show us who Jesus is, to help us grow in our understanding of Jesus and his work, and to empower us to witness to others that God was in Christ, thereby reconciling the world.

What does this mean for our lives here in this Christian community? If faith and knowledge are both necessary aspects of our life as disciples, if we can deepen our understanding of Jesus through study of Scripture, history, and theology, then we too must commit ourselves to continued study, to continued formation as Christians. We are concerned, and rightly so, to provide Christian formation for the children in our midst. But we must also take seriously our own formation as adults. This year, I challenge this community to commit itself to an adult Christian education program. Use the next two weeks to let me or Carolyn Cogar know the ways in which you would especially hope to deepen your faith this year. Then join us after Labor Day as we inaugurate a new phase in our growth together as Christians.

As we leave this place, we will sing, in the words of that grand hymn, that “the Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ her Lord.” As you sing those words, pray about how you can know Jesus better. Commit yourself to letting your knowledge of Jesus continue to deepen and mature.

1. I depend on David Leininger, “Who do You Say That I Am?”, Tales for the Pulpit, (Lima, OH: CSS Publishing, 2007), 141-3, for much of this section.