August 21, 2008
Who?
Pent 15/16A Mt 16.13-20
“Who do (people) say that the Son of Man is?”
It may have seemed to his companions that he would never ask. Jesus doesn’t quite strike me as the type to care all that much what other’s think, but perhaps things had gone on long enough. So when he finally asks them the question, it seems that he really wants to know how they are sizing him up more than just to hear what’s the skinny on the street.
“Who do (people) say that the Son of Man is?” Their answers are consistent and probably not all that surprising. John the Baptist. Elijah. Jeremiah. Or surely one of the prophets. Then Jesus asks, “But who do you say that I am?”
Peter gets it. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” With this realization — profound in its seeming simplicity — Peter wins the Blue Ribbon Prize — a set of keys to the Kingdom itself. But that’s not all. He is also handed the very heaven-sanctioned authority to forgive. One wonders how he’ll feel about that when he soon denies that he ever knew Jesus and suddenly be in need of some mighty big-time forgiveness, himself.
Who do we say is this Son of Man?
Over the centuries since that question, we’ve come up with some answers. They’re not always answers to the questions people ask, but they’re answers, all neat and organized, systematized and religionized. On this key question, the church answers with what we call Christology. “You are the Christ!” Peter realized, as do we. But I doubt he had anything like the Athanasian or even the Nicene Creed in mind.
Rather might it be like the person attending her first Quaker meeting and being deafened with silence. Finally, she asked her neighbor in the pew, “When does the service begin?” “As soon as the Meeting is over,” came the gentle reply.
The Baptismal Covenant sets us altogether straight on this service and emphatically answers our Lord’s question once and for all. “Will you seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving your neighbor as yourself?” the Covenant asks. There in the midst of that question is Jesus’s prior one — “Who do people say that I am?”
So where do we look? I once rather impertinently asked one of our church’s leading theologians “How can one know the will of God?” I expected him to pause, even to ponder. But no. His answer was instant. “Follow your hunches,” he said. Look for the Christ, he implied, look for Jesus in yourself, for that’s where he is. And that’s what this ministry is about. Those who are called out to follow the Way need no further creed, no further confession, no further systematic theology, and, God help us, no more denominations.
Like Jesus gave Peter the keys to kingdom, Holy Baptism gives us the keys to the Kingdom’s mission. We’re given the authority to forgive and to restore and to reconcile. We’re commissioned to seek out this Jesus in ourselves, in our intuition, in our God-given hunches, in our imaginations. Thus finding him, we’ll more than likely discover that he doesn’t look all that different in our neighbors.
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