Holy Cross Monastery, West Park, NY
Jesus doesn’t seem to have the same reticence that we might have about this question. Or maybe he just screwed his courage one day and asked his followers: Who do people say that I am? Maybe he was genuinely interested or perhaps a bit confused or both. And he braced himself to hear their responses. They answered: John the Baptist; or others Elijah; And still others, one of the prophets. And Jesus followed up by asking them: Who do you--who have lived with me and around me and know me well--who do you say that I am? Peter speaks for the group, as Peter so often does, and says: You are the Christ. Well, that's one answer. But it is by far not the only answer which has been given to this question in the 2000-year-old Christian tradition. We might begin with Peter’s answer, but we can in no way stop there.
One of my favorite books over the years has been Jaroslav Pelikan's Jesus Through the Centuries. Published back in 1985 but still worth reading, it's a history of the Christian Church told through the prism of the way Christians in various times and cultures have answered that question of Jesus. The chapter titles alone offer us a veritable litany of ways in which we might respond to the question: who do you say that I am? There is Jesus the Rabbi. Jesus the light of the Gentiles. Jesus king of kings. Jesus the cosmic Christ. Jesus the true image of the Godhead. And on and on it goes: Jesus the monk who rules the world, the bridegroom of the soul, the divine and human model, the Prince of Peace, the teacher of common sense, the poet of the spirit, the Liberator. And each of us could add to that litany: Jesus merciful Redeemer, friend, and brother, a St Richard of Chichester has it and whose hymn we just sang. Jesus our way, our hope, our life. Jesus the Fellow Sufferer Who Understands. And the list is never complete because, in ways that surpass our comprehension, Jesus is alive. And the way we understand him and relate to him and shape our individual and communal lives through him is also alive and always a work in progress with yet more to be revealed.
The two questions that Jesus asks in today's gospel—Who do people say that I am? Who do you say that I am?—those questions are related, but they are also distinct and distinctive in important ways. Consider the first question Who do people say that I am? We might today ask how the centuries of the living experience of this man whom Peter called Messiah and his story has become distilled in the very fabric of Christian thought. And we might ask how our own experience, our own contemporary struggle to come to know and follow this man adds to and contributes to that distillation which is Christian history and theology. This distillation is a public and shared quest, and it is in that great river of tradition that we exercise in this playground of Christian life and thought.
That second question however—Who do you say that I am?—strikes me as somewhat different. It is a question addressed by Jesus to his closest friends and followers, though it is answered by an individual. And we all struggle with our own answer to that question. Yes, it is a question addressed to us by Jesus. But I’m thinking that our answer to it is nobody else’s business but Jesus’ and ours. Maybe that's why I find the question which marked popular 20th century Evangelicalism—“Have you accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Lord and Savior?”—so impoverished and intrusive, if not outright offensive. A question to us from Jesus meant as an invitation to exploration becomes a weapon, an interrogation, and a judgment. It seems to me that nothing is farther from the witness of Jesus or of the early church. It's nobody's business but yours and Jesus. Which in no way means that you or I are released from the obligation and necessity to, if not answer the question, at least not ignore it. We all know how important questions are. The poet Rilke is famously quoted as saying that we must live the question, live into the question. The very engagement with the question is at least as important, if not more important, than whatever answer or response we come up with. Because the engagement with the question is itself an engagement with Jesus Christ, and that is of course at the heart of the Christian life.
In a few minutes we will recite the Nicene Creed, as we do each Sunday and major feast day, right after the sermon, perhaps as a necessary corrective or safeguard. What the Creed sets out for us are the broad outlines of this amazing Jesus movement over the centuries, its parameters or boundaries. It invites us to, if you will, play ball in this court. And playing ball here will be rich and challenging, interesting and rewarding, not constraining but rather containing and growing. Jaroslav Pelikan, whom I mentioned earlier, in a 2003 radio interview with Krista Tippet, highlighted the role of the creed in our worship. I've quoted this before and I believe it's worth hearing again:
“My faith life, like that of everyone else, fluctuates. There are ups and downs and hot spots and cold spots and boredom and ennui and all the rest can be there. And so I'm not asked on a Sunday morning, ‘As of 9:20, what do you believe?’ And then you sit down with the three-by-five index card saying, ‘Now let's see. What do I believe today?’ No, that's not what they're asking me. They’re asking me, ‘Are you a member of a community which now, for a millennium and a half, has said, we believe in one God?’”
All of which is to say that our reaction to Jesus’ question “Who do you say that I am?” is asked and explored and engaged within a tradition which is alive and, at its best, fruitful and nourishing. And when we say, “I believe,” we're not saying that I give total intellectual assent to every proposition in this or any other document. It is to say, however, that I desire to explore the Mystery within this framework, within this courtyard, on this ballpark and among this community of saints and sinners. And when others share the fruits of their exploration, I will listen attentively to how and where God has been acting. And again more shall be revealed.
Who do you say that I am? No, not me. I mean Jesus. I think if we were brave enough and honest enough to share that this morning, we would be both shocked and extraordinarily edified. And humbled. We never know where new insight will come from or where it will lead. We never know what illumination or self-disclosure God might offer.
One of my favorite stories about a surprising revelation was shared several years ago by Peter Hawkins, a professor at Yale Divinity School. Hawkins published an article, forty years after the fact, about engaging with a Ouija board, one which belonged to the poet James Merrill. He was just beginning his teaching career and was with friends and they were playing, as folks did in those days, with the board which was reputed to be a kind of oracle. You would ask a question and get an answer through the movement of a stylus or pointer, which in Hawkins’ case was an overturned teacup, which then spells out a response. For most of us of that era, it was a mere parlor game, though considered by some to be dangerous, perhaps a dabbling in the occult or in spirit contact. Hopkins took a risk and asked the Ouija board: Who is Jesus Christ? Let me read his description of what happened:
The cup stopped tracing circles and began to dart quickly (as if with a mind of its own) to the letters H, Y, I, S, T, H—moving faster and faster until I could hardly keep up with it, but not so fast that the friend playing scribe could not copy down the letters and then decipher the message they formed. ‘Who is Jesus Christ?’ I had asked. And the answer? ‘HE IS THE LENS IN THE DARK BOX.’
And for this budding theologian, so rational and erudite and tightly wrapped, this became the door. Hawkins came to see Jesus in a new and, for him, life giving way:
But for me, having asked “Who is Jesus Christ?” in a highly improbable setting, he is first and foremost the lens in the dark box. He is the imaginable focus who enables me to conjure an unimaginable God. He is the human prism in whom a transcendent divine light becomes a set of shoulders overturning a table of money changers, a finger writing in the dust, a back being scourged, a voice in extremis crying out the words of a psalm. He is an aperture, an opening up of a darkness I cannot fathom. He is at once God’s question and God’s answer. He is the lens in the dark box.
Who do people say that Jesus is? Who do you say that he is? Are you, am I willing to live those questions, to dwell in them, to wrestle with them and be surprised by where they lead? Are you, am I willing to live into the One whom Peter called the Messiah, the Christ of God; the One who for Peter Hawkins is at once God’s question and God’s answer; the One who is simultaneously both Mystery and Revelation, Savior and Judge; the One who is—yes—Love?
Who do you say that I am?
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