12th Sunday After Pentecost
The Rev. Rod Sprange

Matthew 16:13-20

Who Do You Say I Am?

This passage we just heard, from Matthew, relates one of my favourite scenes in the Gospels. A scene where it is easy to put ourselves right there among the disciples and where we can sense the importance and urgency of Jesus’s seemingly simple questions.

Pretend you are there, you and the other disciples have been travelling with Jesus, watching him teach and heal. When you are all away from the crowds travelling the hot and dusty road Jesus asks you, two important questions. First, Jesus asks “Who do people say that I am”. He is curious about what the people in the crowds are saying. Some of you tell him that some people say he’s John the Baptist (remember, John had recently been beheaded by Herod. Some of you told him that other people say he is Elijah. According to scripture, Elijah hadn’t died he had disappeared into heaven - many expected he would return to announce the coming of the Messiah. Some of you report that other people say he is Jeremiah or another of the prophets.

How would you answer that question today - who do people today say that Jesus is?

Now comes the bigger question. Jesus asks you all, “But who do you say that I am”. I can imagine his disciples looking around them, who wants to go first? Do you? Who is ready to respond? Clearly you had talked about it among yourselves. But what if your answer was wrong? No one likes to look stupid in front of the teacher and the rest of the students. So, good old ‘act first think second’ Peter, pipes up with sudden inspiration. “You are the Messiah. the Son of the living God”. Wo, that’s big You’ve all been wondering if he is ‘The One’. I imagine a moment of tense silence as the disciples wait to hear how Jesus will respond. Then relief, you can all breathe again, as Jesus says “Blessed are you, Simon Son of Jonah! For flesh and blood have not revealed this to you but my Father in Heaven”.

I expect some were thinking “I wish I’d said that” or “That’s what I was going to say”. Yet, a little later Jesus “sternly ordered his disciples not to tell anyone he was the Messiah”. Why wouldn’t Jesus want them to tell everyone, I mean this is amazingly good news. It’s what Israel had been waiting for so very long. The problem was that what people wanted and had come to expect about the Messiah was completely different than what God intended and was now fulfilling. It turns out Peter also didn’t yet really get it, we will hear about that next week. They were all looking for a warrior king who would defeat the Romans and make Israel great again.

If word reached the authorities that Jesus was claiming to be the Messiah, the Romans, Herod and many of the Jewish leaders would be terrified of an uprising, the loss of power and control and would kill him. Jesus knew It wasn’t yet time. He had a vital mission to fulfil before all that was to unfold. Jesus had much work to do before the ultimate demonstration of the kind of Messiah God had actually sent.

So, let’s stand together before Jesus and answer his question. Who do you say that I am? This is an absolutely critical question.

Most weeks we join in saying the Apostles’ Creed: “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth, and in Jesus Christ his only son our Lord”. And we go on to remember his birth, death, resurrection and ascension. These are all pretty bold statements. These can be difficult to accept. Faith is a gift from God, but it is also a decision to be made. We hear these revelations but must choose to believe or reject them.

Not everyone here today, not all Christians, and probably none outside the Christian family trust in these words. These are not easy beliefs. So we need to go deep into our own hearts and examine who we believe Jesus to be, and to be honest about that with God. We need to pray that God reveals the truth to us and that we are open to hearing it and able to receive it. I don’t say “I have the truth”. I do say, “I trust I have the truth”, and will try and live my life accordingly, which includes inviting others to meet the Risen Christ. If we, like Peter, confess to who Jesus is, we must be evangelists, even if we feel we are not very good at it.

What is critical, is not just who we come to understand Jesus to be, but that we are prepared to tell others. Jesus didn’t ask “Who do you think I am?”, but, “Who do you say that I am?”.

The truth has not been revealed to us for our private pleasure, to make us feel like superior insiders, it has been given us to share and to share widely. Our calling is to share this Good News with others and to invite them to come and see Jesus for themselves. And remember, it’s not just our words that matter, our actions are even more important. We don’t say the Gospel, we live it.

People may get hung up worrying about how Jesus could be the Son of God - how he could have been born to a girl who was a virgin - or killed and raised on the third day. We have to remember, we are talking about the God who created the whole Cosmos - for God, nothing can be impossible - so I never waste time wondering how could these things be true. On the other hand, I often wonder why? Why would this God, creator of the Cosmos worry about us, these insignificant creatures on this third planet of a minor solar system on the edge of an unremarkable galaxy? And, why would God come and live as one of us and die a terrible human death, for us?

Why would God come and suffer the indignity of a mere mortal life? 

The simple answer of course, is love - God’s steadfast love for all creation. But why the personal visit? Why the seemingly bizarre demonstration of being killed and then raised on the third day? The answer, I think, is that love only exists in relationship. What we have come to understand about God, is that God is relationship - God is Trinity - perfect community. Perfect communication. Perfect love. In the Trinity there are no boundaries where one person starts and the other begins - they are eternally and perfectly one.

It seems God desires for us to be in communion with Them. Just a quick aside. There are many debates about inclusive language and non-gender specific language when we talk about God. This is understandable but creates difficulties in language. This can lead to us referring awkwardly to ‘Godself,’ or saying things like “God wants us to know God’s heart” or using God wants us to know His heart, or to say God wants us to know Her heart - either pronoun problematic for some.

None of these seem satisfactory to me. In Genesis God is quoted as saying “Let us make them in our own image”. Early in the Bible the one God is referred to in the plural. So, as God is three in one, I have started to refer to God in the plural - even though there is only one God. So, I will refer to They, Them, and Theirs. It’s not perfect either, but it works for me right now. I hope you will indulge me.

So God desires for us to have relationship with them. But how can we? How can we, these insignificant creatures on the edge of nowhere in the vastness of the Cosmos, possibly feel in relationship with God who created the whole thing? Me having a relationship with an ant would nothing compared to the vast difference between us and God. Clearly though, God does desire for us to have relationship with them.

The Bible is full of stories of various peoples’ experiences of God - of their revelations about God. Of their relationship with God.
Yet, they never really seem to get it. The relationship seems to break down over time when the people seem to forget all that God has done for them and shown them.

Perhaps God said, “We will just have to go and become one of them, so that they can form a relationship with us; so that we can reveal our nature to them. The gulf between them and us must seem so vast as to make us unreachable. We need to give them a connection with whom they can relate, and become part of our community. And through this demonstrate Our perfect love for them. This is the only way to help correct their understanding of Us and what we desire”.

And so they gave us Jesus - fully human and fully divine. As Jesus is quoted in John’s Gospel. “If you have seen me you have seen the Father”.

Let us give thanks to God for Their extravagant generosity in creation, Their unconditional, steadfast love for us. For the gift of Jesus Christ, our saviour and lord and the communion of the Holy Spirit. And may God continue to bless this community of faith. Amen