WHO AM I? Matthew 16: 13-20
Who do you say I am?
A simple question asked by Jesus to his closest followers.
They have just told him what others have been saying. Their answers have linked Jesus with the prophetic tradition be it through John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah. Each of these three men has been used by God at some point in the past, in John’s case actually overlapping with Jesus.
Others might have produced very different answers. To some, Jesus was the healer who had given them restored health. To others, Jesus was the teacher who had given them value. Whilst to others, Jesus was man who mixed with the wrong type of people, a man whose teaching was a blasphemy which was disobedient to the Law, a man who threatened the religious traditions of Israel. Meanwhile, for some Jesus was someone to be mocked, to have a crown of thorns placed on his head, a sort of King but without dignity.
And since then, this question has still not gone away.
Who do you say that I am?
For Jesus goes on being seen in so many different ways. We have the indecisive Jesus of Zefferelli’s Last Temptation and in contrast Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar in which Jesus is interpreted through the lens of celebrity. Meanwhile, traditionalists, revolutionaries, feminists and believers in patriarchy all seem to construct Jesus in a way that suits them.
And yet, this Jesus hold a great fascination for so many people. A piece of prose entitled One Solitary Life that dates back to the 1920s perhaps explains why;
He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in an obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty
He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born
He did none of the things associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through a mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he has dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind’s progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the Parliaments that have ever sat
All the Kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life.
In those words we see a glimpse into how unique Jesus is. No wonder, his followers began to see him as Lord! No wonder, as the early Church reflected, they saw in Jesus the full measure of Divinity. This of course led to lengthy debate within the Church. They saw Jesus as a man but they also saw him as Divine. How could this be understood. The key man in the process of such understanding was the Emperor Constantine who came to power in Rome in the year 312. He had had a vision of the cross just the night before a crucial battle. Many would question how genuine his conversion was. After all whilst he became a patron to the Christian Church, he also worshipped in the temples of the Sun God whom his ancestors had worshipped. However, he did get the Christian leaders of his time to gather together in order to resolve the question as to who Jesus was. And it was at Nicaea in one of those Councils that it was resolved that whilst Jesus was fully human, he was also Divine, being ‘One Being’ with God the Father. So we find the significance of Jesus enhanced. This is more than another of the heroes of the past. This is the one in whom we meet with God. It is as David Jenkins, when Bishop of Durham, said;
God is. He is as he is in Jesus. Therefore, there is hope.
You get the picture? If you want to know what God is like, all you have to do is look at Jesus. In this man is God. Through him, God has taken on flesh and come into our world. As we look at his birth, we can sing;
He came down to earth from Heaven.
In his death, we see God suffering for the world. And in his resurrection, we see affirmed God’s decisive YES to all that Jesus, said and did in his ministry.
But whilst Constantine was right about Jesus’ significance as being ‘One Being’ with God, he was equally wrong as to the character of Jesus. His understanding of God was about power. He believed that God had granted him victory in battle with his rivals for supremacy in Rome. And so, he linked his power to God. And in the name of his power, he killed his wife in a boiling bath, executed his son and generally linked his often cruel use of power to his being God’s man. And sadly, others have down through the years followed in his footsteps using God as a defence for cruelty and domination over others in a way that is a sick perversion of all that Jesus was about.
Indeed, Jesus cannot be put into our neat boxes. Nowhere is that more clear that in Peter’s answer to the Who do you say I am question. His answer You are the Christ, the Son of the living God can be seen as a statement of faith, faith on which the church is to be based. But that is not the whole picture. For whilst Peter’s statement is absolutely true, the problem lies with what he and others understood the Christ, the anointed one of God would do. You see, the expectation was that the Christ, the Messiah, would be one who would be victorious over Israel’s enemies. Years of wrong would be ended and all would be well. And in this understanding, there is no room for a Christ to be tortured or to die the vile death of a criminal. Soon Peter will be resisting Jesus when Jesus talks of his future sufferings. For Jesus turns upside down the traditional expectations of the Christ that Peter shared.
As we face the Who do you think I am question, we face a question that is about more than titles. We face the very way of Jesus. For Jesus is about a Kingship that is like no other Kingship. Unlike Constantine, the Kingship of Jesus is not about domination and coercion. Instead it is rooted in the giving of value to all, it is rooted in a vision that all can be connected to God, it is rooted in a vision of peace and that peace with justice. It has values of respect, forgiveness and graciousness. And whilst as the humiliation of a Cross reminds us that it comes with no guarantees of success, it is this Jesus who has changed the world through love rather than might.
On Saturday, many of us will gather in Torrington, to witness the burning of that great model of HMS Victory that has been erected over the past months. We may spare a thought to how that defeat of Napoleon in 1805 was a major blow to his plans to dominate Europe, plans that came so close to fulfilment. But Napoleon knew that great as his military power was, it was eclipsed by a greater albeit different power. Hear his words;
"I know man and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love: and at this hour millions of people would die for him."
The question asked to Peter - Who do you say that I am? - has resounded down the years and continues to challenge us today. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis sixty years ago, we can see in Jesus, the God Man who encompasses both human and Divine. But we can never capture this Jesus into our neat modes of thinking. Instead, the proper response is to follow him on a journey in which we will be surprised and challenged time and again. And ultimately it is only in following Jesus that we can come to know him. And it is only in knowing him, that we can truly know ourselves.
This sermon was preached at a Baptismal Service at Bideford on August 21st. It wa written with the rock band TheWho's song of the same title ringing in my ears.
A simple question asked by Jesus to his closest followers.
They have just told him what others have been saying. Their answers have linked Jesus with the prophetic tradition be it through John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah. Each of these three men has been used by God at some point in the past, in John’s case actually overlapping with Jesus.
Others might have produced very different answers. To some, Jesus was the healer who had given them restored health. To others, Jesus was the teacher who had given them value. Whilst to others, Jesus was man who mixed with the wrong type of people, a man whose teaching was a blasphemy which was disobedient to the Law, a man who threatened the religious traditions of Israel. Meanwhile, for some Jesus was someone to be mocked, to have a crown of thorns placed on his head, a sort of King but without dignity.
And since then, this question has still not gone away.
Who do you say that I am?
For Jesus goes on being seen in so many different ways. We have the indecisive Jesus of Zefferelli’s Last Temptation and in contrast Lloyd Webber’s Jesus Christ Superstar in which Jesus is interpreted through the lens of celebrity. Meanwhile, traditionalists, revolutionaries, feminists and believers in patriarchy all seem to construct Jesus in a way that suits them.
And yet, this Jesus hold a great fascination for so many people. A piece of prose entitled One Solitary Life that dates back to the 1920s perhaps explains why;
He was born in an obscure village
The child of a peasant woman
He grew up in an obscure village
Where he worked in a carpenter shop
Until he was thirty
He never wrote a book
He never held an office
He never went to college
He never visited a big city
He never travelled more than two hundred miles from the place where he was born
He did none of the things associated with greatness
He had no credentials but himself
He was only thirty three
His friends ran away
One of them denied him
He was turned over to his enemies
And went through a mockery of a trial
He was nailed to a cross between two thieves
While dying, his executioners gambled for his clothing
The only property he had on earth
When he has dead
He was laid in a borrowed grave
Through the pity of a friend
Nineteen centuries have come and gone
And today Jesus is the central figure of the human race
And the leader of mankind’s progress
All the armies that have ever marched
All the navies that have ever sailed
All the Parliaments that have ever sat
All the Kings that ever reigned put together
Have not affected the life of mankind on earth
As powerfully as that one solitary life.
In those words we see a glimpse into how unique Jesus is. No wonder, his followers began to see him as Lord! No wonder, as the early Church reflected, they saw in Jesus the full measure of Divinity. This of course led to lengthy debate within the Church. They saw Jesus as a man but they also saw him as Divine. How could this be understood. The key man in the process of such understanding was the Emperor Constantine who came to power in Rome in the year 312. He had had a vision of the cross just the night before a crucial battle. Many would question how genuine his conversion was. After all whilst he became a patron to the Christian Church, he also worshipped in the temples of the Sun God whom his ancestors had worshipped. However, he did get the Christian leaders of his time to gather together in order to resolve the question as to who Jesus was. And it was at Nicaea in one of those Councils that it was resolved that whilst Jesus was fully human, he was also Divine, being ‘One Being’ with God the Father. So we find the significance of Jesus enhanced. This is more than another of the heroes of the past. This is the one in whom we meet with God. It is as David Jenkins, when Bishop of Durham, said;
God is. He is as he is in Jesus. Therefore, there is hope.
You get the picture? If you want to know what God is like, all you have to do is look at Jesus. In this man is God. Through him, God has taken on flesh and come into our world. As we look at his birth, we can sing;
He came down to earth from Heaven.
In his death, we see God suffering for the world. And in his resurrection, we see affirmed God’s decisive YES to all that Jesus, said and did in his ministry.
But whilst Constantine was right about Jesus’ significance as being ‘One Being’ with God, he was equally wrong as to the character of Jesus. His understanding of God was about power. He believed that God had granted him victory in battle with his rivals for supremacy in Rome. And so, he linked his power to God. And in the name of his power, he killed his wife in a boiling bath, executed his son and generally linked his often cruel use of power to his being God’s man. And sadly, others have down through the years followed in his footsteps using God as a defence for cruelty and domination over others in a way that is a sick perversion of all that Jesus was about.
Indeed, Jesus cannot be put into our neat boxes. Nowhere is that more clear that in Peter’s answer to the Who do you say I am question. His answer You are the Christ, the Son of the living God can be seen as a statement of faith, faith on which the church is to be based. But that is not the whole picture. For whilst Peter’s statement is absolutely true, the problem lies with what he and others understood the Christ, the anointed one of God would do. You see, the expectation was that the Christ, the Messiah, would be one who would be victorious over Israel’s enemies. Years of wrong would be ended and all would be well. And in this understanding, there is no room for a Christ to be tortured or to die the vile death of a criminal. Soon Peter will be resisting Jesus when Jesus talks of his future sufferings. For Jesus turns upside down the traditional expectations of the Christ that Peter shared.
As we face the Who do you think I am question, we face a question that is about more than titles. We face the very way of Jesus. For Jesus is about a Kingship that is like no other Kingship. Unlike Constantine, the Kingship of Jesus is not about domination and coercion. Instead it is rooted in the giving of value to all, it is rooted in a vision that all can be connected to God, it is rooted in a vision of peace and that peace with justice. It has values of respect, forgiveness and graciousness. And whilst as the humiliation of a Cross reminds us that it comes with no guarantees of success, it is this Jesus who has changed the world through love rather than might.
On Saturday, many of us will gather in Torrington, to witness the burning of that great model of HMS Victory that has been erected over the past months. We may spare a thought to how that defeat of Napoleon in 1805 was a major blow to his plans to dominate Europe, plans that came so close to fulfilment. But Napoleon knew that great as his military power was, it was eclipsed by a greater albeit different power. Hear his words;
"I know man and I tell you that Jesus Christ is no mere man. Between him and every other person in the world there is no possible term of comparison. Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne and I founded empires. But on what did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded his empire upon love: and at this hour millions of people would die for him."
The question asked to Peter - Who do you say that I am? - has resounded down the years and continues to challenge us today. Like Dietrich Bonhoeffer who was executed by the Nazis sixty years ago, we can see in Jesus, the God Man who encompasses both human and Divine. But we can never capture this Jesus into our neat modes of thinking. Instead, the proper response is to follow him on a journey in which we will be surprised and challenged time and again. And ultimately it is only in following Jesus that we can come to know him. And it is only in knowing him, that we can truly know ourselves.
This sermon was preached at a Baptismal Service at Bideford on August 21st. It wa written with the rock band TheWho's song of the same title ringing in my ears.
posted by Rev Paul Martin at 1:09 AM
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