It was a highly impetuous thing for Peter to say: "You are the Christ - the Anointed One of God - the Messiah!"
Where on earth did that come from? Was this just Peter being Peter - forthright, bull-in-a-china-shop Peter, well-meaning but often slightly off-target?
None of the gospel accounts record the other disciples present saying, 'Yes! Peter's right - you are the Christ'. They all seem to leave Peter out on a limb, stranded with the words he's just uttered, waiting for a response from Jesus.
We don't get a picture of a group of disciples of one mind on these big issues, all absolutely clear about the aims and objectives of Jesus's mission. I think we get a picture of a group of simple, good-hearted people, all at different stages of understanding about what they see Jesus do, about what they hear him say, about how people react to him, and about what Jesus expects from them as individuals and as a group.
I don't know how many of that group gathered at Caesarea Philippi would have gone out on a limb with Peter and agreed with his claim. I don't know how many of Jesus's followers will have seen him put to death and gone into that Passover time thinking it was all over and that the mission had failed.
What I can see is a range of responses to Jesus, even when he was sat face to face with those first disciples and they could see, hear, and experience his message in its full reality. I can imagine glimpses of Jesus's power and insight which would be totally convincing and lift someone's belief onto the highest plane. And I can imagine times when the mission seemed hard, when the outcome was in doubt, when Jesus was rebuking disciples for being slow to understand or telling them that he must face death, and when doubts about the whole enterprise will have crept in.
No group of followers could have experienced the tremendous highs, and the desperate lows, of Jesus's mission without their faith taking a substantial battering.
It may have been enough for Peter to come forward with such a bold answer to Jesus's question, 'Who do you say that I am'; but I wonder how many of his other followers were still on a journey, still absorbing the facts, and would take some time to achieve that same level of conviction. And how strong was even Peter's faith when Jesus was arrested and Peter was accused of being a follower? What do his three denials say about the highs and lows of following the way of Jesus?
And in our responses today to the risen and ascended Jesus, if he asks, 'Who do you say that I am', we may not always be in a place where we can make that impetuous confession of Peter's. And that does not necessarily point to any weakness or failure on our part; it points to discipleship as a life-long aim, not a short-term achievement.
If we can say we are still on a journey - ideally one that's actually going somewhere; if we can accept that doubts do creep in from time to time; if we realise that for every glimpse of certainty we will have many moments in the wilderness; then we are responding just as some of those first followers of Jesus responded to his mission among them. It is by keeping Jesus as our focus that we grow in our faith, deepen our understanding of his message, and make progress on our personal journey - a different journey, experience and challenge for each one of us.
I have quite a lot of respect for the person who, when questioned about who they believe Jesus to be, says that she's not sure, that she's still deciding, still absorbing the facts and the arguments.
I have an instinctive fear of the person who says that he is totally certain about anything to do with Jesus and that he is going to use that certainty to capture the world for Jesus.
One of those people is still open to the change that Jesus seeks to bring about in people's lives; the other person may have closed his mind to God's continuing revelation to humanity and risks freezing himself and others into an exclusive, sectarian and fundamentalist belief system.
Allan Boesak, a reforming South African minister, uses these words to show how damaging it can be to underestimate what Jesus asks when he says, 'Who do you say that I am?'
'It
is in the church - not so much in the world - where Jesus is effectively denied.
It is in the church - not so much in the world - where the dream of God for
this world is distorted and discarded. It is the temple - not the market-place
- where in holy wrath Jesus takes up the whip and seeks to re-create the "house
of prayer" out of the "den of robbers". The question: "Who
do you say that I am?" is a question about us, not about Jesus. Entirely
and inescapably linked to this question and its answer is the suffering of
Jesus and, simultaneously, the cost of discipleship. For those who understand
the question and dare to give the answer, there is no escape. The answer can
never be a kind of triumphalistic messianism, never the clarion call to join
God's armies to march against the world, so sure that victory is certain.
It is not the answer that ensures that all questions can be answered and that
removes all traces of doubt. It is never the core of our unwavering conviction
about the rightness of the "Christian" cause.
It is, rather, the realization that the victory of the messiah comes through
the pain and suffering of the cross. This messiah teaches that sharing of
the victory only comes after sharing of the pain. The joy does not lie in
avoiding Gethsemane, but in knowing that Jesus was there first.' (Allan Boesak
at World Alliance of Reformed Churches Conference, Seoul 1999.)
Peter is recorded by the gospel writers as showing unique insight about the real identity of Jesus in the way he answers, 'You are the anointed one - the Christ - of God'.
But
it was Christ on Peter's terms that Peter wanted. When Jesus steadfastly followed
the way of non-violence, the way of love, the way of the cross, instead of
Peter's expectations of who he should be, Peter rebuked him and in the shadow
of that cross denied him. Of course, that wasn't the end of the story for
Peter, either; and it is after Jesus's death that the Spirit of God and the
power of the Pentecost revelation started to break down the exclusive and
fundamental barriers which surround Peter's belief system.
So, perhaps it's not so much finally a question of do you believe the right
things about Jesus? But rather, are you willing to follow Jesus on his own
terms - no matter how stumbling and indirect and uncertain the journey may
seem to be, and no matter how long it takes? Our understanding of Jesus comes
to us from that same Spirit of God and Pentecost revelation which empowered
Peter and the other disciples after Jesus's death to understand the great
truths of his message and to take them fully to heart.
There is a huge contrast between the Peter who stumbled upon a divine truth when Jesus asked him a question at Caesarea Philippi, and the Peter who, having followed Jesus to the tomb - and beyond - eventually leads the followers of Jesus beyond the confines of Judaism into an all-embracing faith of justice and love.
Surely that is an example: that it's not so much finally a question of what we make of Jesus, but what Jesus is making of us.
Amen
(Philip Jones)
This
sermon was first preached in the Metropolitan Community Church of Manchester.
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