Sermon by Reverend Dr. John W. Mann | August 27, 2023

Matthew 16:13-20

Two workers were fixing a garden wall at the church manse that had been damaged in a storm. I checked on their progress during the day. Out of the blue, one guy said to me, “I don’t believe in God.”

I thought, “I’m just looking at the wall – sigh.” I wonder why people feel the need to tell me about what they believe. There are people, I can’t say how many, but I’ve met a few along the way who think that as a church pastor, I must go around with some sort of judgement checklist; or a belief meter to see who measures up. I’ve known ministers who give that impression, but that’s not how I operate.

I’ve settled on a response to that sort of comment; a one-word answer.

I said, “Okay.”

The guy said, “Okay? That’s all you have to say?”

So I told the guy, “Yes, that’s all I have to say, okay because I’m not going to take the bait. Whether or not you believe in God has no bearing on your ability to repair this wall.”

I don’t like to argue about religion, or what one believes about God. What I believe about God is along the lines of, “This is my story, and I’m sticking to it.” The story has many chapters. It’s evolved over the years. There are chapters yet to be written. Insight can come from the most unexpected sources.

For example, when Donald Rumsfeld was the U.S. Secretary of Defense, he made a statement, not about faith, but which might as well have been about faith saying, “…as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know.” He could have been talking about God.

Jesus asked his followers a question. He wanted to know what people were saying about him. What is the word on the street, the perception out there and how close is it to the truth? In Matthew’s portrait of Jesus, he asks the question differently than the way Mark or Luke tells it. Mark and Luke have him ask, “Who do people say that I am?” Matthew has him ask, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”

The “Son of Man” is a title that appears many times in the four portraits of Jesus. It’s a self-reference mostly. He refers to himself as the “Son of Man.” Did he really, or did the writers of the stories add it in later as a way of saying, “He knew who he was?” One challenge is the phrase “Son of Man” doesn’t have any clear meaning. We can read into it a connection with the idea of Messiah, but its meaning is never clearly defined.

It could very well be the writer of Matthew implying, “We know who he is as we look back on this story through the lens of his death and resurrection.”

They answered, some people say you are John the Baptist. Another charismatic prophet come out from the wilderness. You stir people up, give them a sense of hope, create anticipation, and then it’s off with your head once Herod gets around to dealing with you. Just like John the Baptist. Here today, gone tomorrow. So maybe we shouldn’t get too committed to whatever your cause is.

Some people say you are Elijah, Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Those guys who gave the powers that be a hard time. Some of them called down lightning from heaven. Some of them made life difficult for the status quo. Some of them made life difficult for themselves. Show us what you’ve got, and we’ll let you know.

Those were fairly typical answers for that time and place. They would see Jesus according to their own cultural and religious reference points. Then Jesus said, “What about you. Who do you say that I am?” Not me in the second person, but me the one you’ve been hanging around with these last months.

Peter said, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

Jesus said, “Good answer. True answer. You are a rock and on this rock I will build my church. I will give you the keys to the kingdom with all power and authority.” When He said, “On this rock,” I believe he was referring to the truth Peter confessed. On this truth will be built God’s dream for humankind.

The realization of that truth, what God in the flesh implies is not something that is realized once and for all. In many ways we’re still waiting for the dream to be fulfilled. Each generation has to grasp it, each individual has to wrestle with it.

One might think that after nearly 2000 years we would have a pretty good idea of who Jesus was and is. We can go back and dig around other historical figures, read the records of their time and place, and have a fairly solid understanding of who they were.

The challenge with defining Jesus is that none of his story was written down during his lifetime. By the time people started telling his story in written form, the movement that was inspired by his life and teachings had already split off in many different directions. And it has moved on, evolved, split and reformed to this day.

What if someone today wanted to know who Jesus is? Where would they go for an answer and who would they ask? What kind of answer would they receive?

In our postmodern world one place to start is the internet. If you type the word “Jesus” into the Google search engine, in less than one second there appears nearly three billion possible avenues of research. Maybe as when he asked his followers the question, the answer depends on who you ask.   

If you go into a church seeking the identity of Jesus, he is presented in many different guises, depending on the church. There is general consensus in church that Jesus is the Son of God, but the meaning of that is interpreted through the culture of particular churches.

A few hundred years after his life and work, there were many interpretations of Jesus. By then the Emperor of the Roman Empire had declared Christianity the official state religion. But what was Christianity really? A council of leading church people was called together to decide the issue once and for all. It was called the Council of Nicaea and they arrived at a simple statement, what we call the Nicene Creed. One outcome of that statement was that followers of Jesus started killing each other over their differences of opinion.

More creeds and statements were created over time to address what people believe or should believe according to the creed in question. Our Presbyterian system has a Book of Confessions with twelve different statements of belief. It makes me wonder if somewhere Jesus is saying, “Enough already! Make up your minds!”

The question he asked his first followers is a question that he asks of us today, “What about you, who do you say that I am?”

It’s as if the question Jesus asked so long ago, “what about you, who do you say that I am,” is left hanging, waiting to be answered by those who would even today seek to be his followers. One perspective I appreciate comes from the South African poet, pastor and philosopher John Van De Laar who writes –

Who do I say You are, Jesus?

Sometimes I think I know, and I eagerly praise You, I confess that I have learned to know God because of You, I celebrate the fact that my life is fuller because of You, I recognize that, at great cost, You have made it possible for me to have a second chance when I mess up my life, and hurt those around me.

But, then sometimes I confuse You with others that have helped me or challenged me;

Great teachers and writers, prophets and priests, parents and authorities. This can be helpful – sometimes they do point me to You; but sometimes I can’t see You through the image they present, and my relationship with You gets blurred.

Sometimes I’m not sure if I know You at all; I begin to get a sense of who You are, but then, like Peter, I misunderstand Your mission, or Your message, or what You really want from me.

Who do I say You are, Jesus? You are the one I have come to love as God, You are the one I am learning to recognize and will give eternity to know, You are the unfathomable mystery that is always beyond my ability to understand; You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

The challenge is to discover the answer for ourselves to Jesus’ question – “Who do you say that I am?” Who he is to you is what is most important.  Amen.