Who Do You Say That I Am?

by the Rev. Dr. Paul S. Nancarrow

This sermon is based on Mark 8:27-38. An audio version of this sermon may be found here.

Jesus said to his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”

In this dialogue from our Gospel lesson today, Peter responds to the question of Jesus, and he gives the right answer. But, as he discovers almost immediately, his right answer is not yet the whole answer. To identify Jesus as “Messiah” is not untrue — but in order to get closer to the whole truth, Peter has to learn more about what being the Messiah, the Anointed One of God, really means for Jesus. And Peter, and all the disciples, have to learn more about what being followers of the Messiah will mean for them.

Because in Peter’s day there were floating around several different and competing ideas about what the Messiah would be like. Some people expected the Messiah to be a military commander, who would rally the Jewish people to drive out the Romans and be a King like David. Some people expected the Messiah to be a supernatural figure who would bring judgment, and initiate the great battle between good and evil that would end this world, and would vindicate to the faithful. But Jesus explains that being Messiah means undergoing great suffering, and being rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and being killed, and on the third day being raised. That was a kind of Messiah that Peter had never thought of before, and it took some digesting for him to get used to it.

And if Jesus was a different sort of Messiah than Peter had expected, that made Peter a different sort of disciple than Peter had expected. A follower of a military commander would be a soldier, a fighter in the Jewish People’s Liberation Army. A follower of a supernatural judge would be a holy man, pledged to exceptional personal purity and exact religious ritual. But followers of Jesus, Peter learns, must deny themselves, and take up their cross, and not be ashamed of Jesus and his words, and be willing to lose their life for Jesus’ sake in order to find their life for Jesus’ sake.

Peter has to learn more deeply what it means for Jesus to be the Messiah; and in the process Peter has to learn more deeply what it means for him to be a disciple of the Messiah, too.

And what really fascinates me is that Peter's learning didn’t stop with the scene in today’s Gospel.

After the Resurrection, Jesus appears to Peter and asks him three times, “Do you love me?”, and instructs him three times, “Feed my sheep.” And Peter learns that the Messiah is One who calls us to be filled more and more with God’s eternal love, and that a follower of the Messiah is one who nourishes others with that love.

And even later, in a story told in the Book of Acts, the Ascended Jesus sends Peter a vision that tells him to go eat and drink and live with Gentiles and preach to them, even though Peter has never before in his life broken the kosher laws in order to fraternize with Gentiles in that way. And Peter learns that the Messiah is meant for more than just the Jewish people, and that being a follower of the Messiah means reaching out beyond your own circle of friends, beyond your own clan and kind, in order to share Good News with anyone, absolutely anyone, who has ears to hear.

All through his life and ministry, Peter was challenged to learn and learn again what it means to call Jesus “Messiah” — Peter was challenged to learn and learn again what it means to be a follower of Jesus the Messiah. Jesus said to Peter, “Who do you say that I am?”, and Peter kept discovering more and more and more in his answer.

And that’s the way it is for us, too. Jesus says to us, “Who do you say that I am?” — and Jesus challenges us to discover more and more and more in the way we answer.

When I was a child we had a Sunday School lesson about Jesus the Good Shepherd, and I learned to see Jesus as the one who would always keep me safe when things got scary, who would always go looking for me when I strayed off — and that being a follower of Jesus meant praying to him to show me the right way to go and the right thing to do.

When I was a teenager I got very intrigued with the image of Jesus as the rebel, who was always calling the authorities into question, the one with the long hair and the beard who gathered a commune and was their guru — and that being a follower of Jesus meant meditating on his wisdom and challenging anything that seemed shallow or un-intense or inauthentic. Hey — I was a teenager, and it was the ’70’s…

When I was in seminary I learned to see Jesus as the Great High Priest, who took common bread and wine and made them the holy sacrament of Body and Blood, who took death on the cross and made it the holy sacrament of new life — and that being a follower of Jesus meant taking the common things of our lives and consecrating them as sacraments and signs of God’s holy love.

When I studied liberation theology I learned to see Jesus as the one who stands with the poor and calls us to liberate the oppressed. When I studied ecological theology I learned to see Jesus as the Savior of more than just the human race, but the one who teaches us how to live in community and communion with the biosphere, with the ecosystem, with the whole Community of Creation in God. When I studied missional theology I learned to see Jesus as the one who lives out God's mission of New Creation, and who calls and empowers and sends us to be agents of creation in everything we do.

Jesus has said to me, “Who do you say that I am?” — and all of my answers have been right answers, and none has been the whole answer. The image of Jesus I had as a child wasn’t enough to meet the challenges of being faithful as a teenager. The image of Jesus I had as a teenager wasn’t enough to meet the challenges of being faithful as an adult. The image of Jesus I have now won’t be enough to meet the opportunities of becoming more fully alive in Christ that God yearns to give me in the future. Like Peter in the story, I have to learn and learn again what it means to call Jesus “Messiah,” and to learn and learn again what it means to call myself a follower of Jesus the Messiah.

And that is an adventure that we are all in together. We are all constantly outgrowing our images of Jesus, constantly needing to learn more deeply what kind of Messiah Jesus is, and what kind of disciples we can be. One of the great tasks — one of the great joys — of being in Christian community together, is that we can learn from each other new ways of seeing Jesus, and new ways of living our discipleship in mission and ministry and prayer and love.

And that is a big part of what we are doing here today. As we begin a new program year, as we commission Sunday school teachers and acolytes and choir members for another year of formation and service and worship, as we begin this week a new series of adult Christian formation study groups, as we get back into the full swing of our parish life together — it all centers on how we learn together new ways of seeing Jesus, new depths of understanding what it means to call Jesus Messiah and Lord and Savior, and new dimensions of what it means to call ourselves disciples and followers and missioners of Jesus.

Jesus says to us, “Who do you say that I am?” May we each answer from our heart, and show forth that answer in our lives. Amen.