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In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus puts to his disciples two questions, two questions which, in a way, Jesus puts before all his disciples. Anyone who wants to be a follower of Jesus, anyone who wants to turn to Jesus as Teacher or Savior or Lord, must at some time come to grips with these two questions. On a symbolic level, and on a very practical level, each of us needs to respond when Jesus asks, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” Between the two of them, these questions call us to account for both the communal and the personal dimensions of our faith.

The first question—”Who do people say that I am?”—is all about the communal dimension of faith, the understanding of Jesus we get from other people. In the story, the disciples answer this question in terms of what they’ve heard the crowds saying about Jesus; and what the crowds are saying about Jesus is all based on their previous experience and their community tradition. Who do the crowds say Jesus is?

Well, some say he is John the Baptist, come back from the dead. John had made quite an impression on the people of Judea, with his message of coming judgment and the people’s need of repentance and moral purity; and when John was martyred at the hands of Herod Antipas, that left a lot of the people wondering what God would do to vindicate John and to punish Herod. When Jesus came, preaching God’s kingdom in much the same way John had, it was easy for some people to think that Jesus was John come back. They interpreted the presence of Jesus in terms of the past they had known with John.

Others among the people say that Jesus is Elijah, who has come to prepare the people for the end of the world and the great judgment Day of the Lord. The Second Book of Kings said that Elijah was carried up bodily into heaven in a chariot of fire; and over time it became the tradition to interpret that to mean that Elijah had never died, but was still physically alive in the heavenly places. That meant that, in principle, Elijah could physically come back from heaven to bring God’s message to earth; and the prophet Malachi predicted that God would send Elijah to do just that, before the time of the End. Jesus preached with such authority and such authenticity and such passion about the coming of God’s reign that many people believed he was Elijah come back to fulfill the promise. They interpreted the meaning of Jesus in the terms of the traditions about Elijah their community carried from the past.

Still others among the people thought of Jesus in terms of Jeremiah or one of the other prophets of the past. The ancient role of the prophet was to pray to God for the community and speak to the community for God—and that was certainly what they saw Jesus doing. So they also interpreted Jesus’ actions in terms of the precedents of the past.

And that is the way we must answer Jesus’ first question, too. When we are asked, “Who do people say Jesus is?”, we must turn to the witness of the past and the traditions of our community in order to find our answer. Because everything we know about Jesus comes to us through our faith community. None of us were eyewitnesses of Jesus earthly ministry; none of us heard Jesus’ original preaching, or felt the healing touch of Jesus’ fleshly hand, or ate fish and bread with Jesus on the evening of the Resurrection. Everything we know about Jesus comes to us through the witness of those who came before us: the apostles who told stories of their experiences with Jesus to the earliest Christians, the evangelists who wrote down their understandings of Jesus in the Gospels, the preachers and catechists and theologians and storytellers who deepened their concepts of Jesus from generation to generation in the communal life of the Church—right down to the Sunday School teachers who taught us our first stories about Jesus and showed us Jesus’ love in the way they cared for us and loved us. Everything we know about Jesus comes to us first through the tradition of our community—so we need to know what the community believes about Jesus. That’s why we study things like biblical scholarship and history and archeology and theology and religious studies—and we don’t study them just for seminarians and academics, but for all the faithful, of people of all sorts and conditions—because we need to know what faithful people say about Jesus, because that’s where our faith is rooted and grounded, too. It is important for our own believing to know that, within our faith community, some say Jesus is a humble carpenter who models for us obedience to God’s will; and some say Jesus is the supernatural Son of God and Lord of all, whose power and righteousness is far, far beyond us; and some say Jesus is a prophet of the end-times who never intended to start a new religion; and some say Jesus is the ultimate fulfillment of all human potential; and some say that Jesus is only the first of many brothers and sisters, and someday God will make us all as Jesus is now; and some say Jesus is the first exemplar in a new evolution of the human organism; and some say Jesus is God’s intention for the entire Universe writ small in a single human life, the macrocosm in the microcosm; and some say Jesus is Love, and leave it simply at that. It is part of our own spiritual growth to know who the people say Jesus is, because our spirits grow in that communal dimension of the faith.

But knowing the community’s faith in Jesus is only one part of our spiritual growth—because after Jesus asks “Who do people say that I am?” he also asks “Who do you say that I am?” Genuine growth in faith requires that we go beyond simply repeating what the tradition has said, and be able to say something about who Jesus is and what Jesus means and what difference Jesus makes for ourselves, for you and you and you and me, in our own words and in our own hearts and in our own lives.

In the story, Peter answers Jesus’ second question by saying, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Peter is able to go beyond the traditional and conventional ideas about Jesus to see in Jesus something new, something that had been promised by the tradition, but something that had never been realized or recognized before. And that recognition in Peter, that going beyond conventional wisdom, is something that Jesus pronounces to be a blessing: “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah,” he says, “because flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father in heaven.” Peter’s recognition of Jesus as God’s Son is not something he just “figured out”; it’s not like he put two and two together and rationally deduced that “Jesus = Messiah.” Peter’s insight is a gift of inspiration from God, God’s Spirit working within Peter’s spirit to allow Peter to know Jesus in a way that goes far beyond all conventional and traditional descriptions, and touches Peter’s heart with the personal knowledge of the human presence of God’s deepest love.

And that is the way the Gospel invites us to know Jesus, too. Jesus says to Peter, “You are the Rock on which I will build my church”: Peter’s faith to let God’s wisdom open his eyes to Jesus is the foundation for all our faith; Peter’s experience of knowing Jesus in a personal way, from the inside of his own soul, is the way we are all invited to experience Jesus for ourselves. And God blesses us with the same kind of insight Peter received, so that we can go beyond conventional identifications and know the living presence of the Son of the Living God in our own ways and our own lives. Of course, we’re not physical eye-witnesses of Jesus the way that Peter was; but we can know Jesus, up close and personal, in the way the living Word can speak to us from the written word of Scripture—in the light and peace and joy, and the challenge and conviction and calling, that can come to us in meditation and in prayer—in the love, so much greater than our own love, that can come to us when we reach out to someone in need, or when someone reaches out to us in our need—in the way the example of Jesus makes a difference to us, so that we are motivated to work in our communities for justice and for peace, to work to build better race relations in our city, and better corporate ethics in our companies, and a deeper commitment to constructive and peace-making policies in our government. We confess Jesus, as Peter confessed Jesus, when we know Jesus not simply by the traditional titles, but know him also as the one who calls forth from us our greatest gifts and our fullest life and our deepest love.

Jesus today asks us, “Who do people say that I am?” and “Who do you say that I am?” How we answer those questions makes all the difference in the world.

In the Name of God: the Holy One, the Holy Word, the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Readings For Sunday, August 25th, 2002

The First Lesson                 Isaiah 51:1-6

Listen to me, you that pursue righteousness, you that seek the LORD. Look to the rock from which you were hewn, and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who bore you; for he was but one when I called him, but I blessed him and made him many. For the LORD will comfort Zion; he will comfort all her waste places, and will make her wilderness like Eden, her desert like the garden of the LORD; joy and gladness will be found in her, thanksgiving and the voice of song.

Listen to me, my people, and give heed to me, my nation; for a teaching will go out from me, and my justice for a light to the peoples. I will bring near my deliverance swiftly, my salvation has gone out and my arms will rule the peoples; the coastlands wait for me, and for my arm they hope. Lift up your eyes to the heavens, and look at the earth beneath; for the heavens will vanish like smoke, the earth will wear out like a garment, and those who

live on it will die like gnats; but my salvation will be forever, and my deliverance will never be ended.

The Second Lesson         Romans 11:33-36

O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are his judgments and how inscrutable his ways! "For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who has been his counselor? Or who has given a gift to him, to receive a gift in return?"

For from him and through him and to him are all things. To him be the glory forever. Amen.

The Holy Gospel   Matthew 16:13-20

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, "Who do people say that the Son of Man is?" And they said, "Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?" Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God." And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.  And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.