Who Do You Know Me to Be?

The Gospel reading we just heard is often referred to as "The Confession of Peter." Not "confession" in the sense of confessing your sins, but "confessing" as confessing before the rulers of the world… proclaiming, witnessing. Peter proclaims that Jesus is God’s Messiah. Sometimes this passage is called "Peter’s profession of faith." It is Peter’s public profession of faith that Jesus is of God.

Within the context of Luke’s Gospel, this passage falls within a chapter devoted to Jesus’ identity. Interestingly, it is Herod who sets things in motion. Secular, political Herod… outside the community of faith… Herod, who Luke tells us is puzzled and asks: Who is this man everyone is talking about? That is the same question that Jesus initially asks the disciples. Everyone is talking. Who do they say that I am? But then Jesus turns to the disciples and makes it personal. Who do you say that I am? Or, who do you know me to be? The disciples knew Jesus; they had eaten with him, journeyed with him, heard his teaching, known his presence with them. To them, Jesus said: Out of your own experience, who do you know me to be? Where and how have you known me in your own lives?

What if Jesus asked you that question. Out of the experience of your own personal lives, who do you know Jesus to be? Where have you met him? How do you know him?

Scripture is full of people who have an answer for that question. Think about all of the voices of the New Testament. They are people who can speak to when and where and how they have known Jesus.

In Luke’s gospel, the passage right after Herod expresses his puzzlement about Jesus is the feeding of the five thousand. What if Jesus were to ask any one of those five thousand sitting on that grassy hillside: Who have you known Jesus to be in your lives? They would respond: He fed me. He filled my hunger. Against all expectation or reason, he fed me. Last week, we heard the gospel passage about the woman of the city whose sins were many. She could speak to how she knew Jesus in her life. He freed me from the burden of my sins and gave me peace. Go in peace, he said. He gave me God’s peace.

Other voices from Scripture would say: He healed me where I was sick or broken. The tax collector might say: He loved me. When all of my neighbors didn’t, he loved me. The disciples might say: He gave my life meaning and direction. He showed me the road to God. Into an aimless life, he showed me the road to God.

How would you answer? If asked who you know Jesus to be in your own life, how would you answer? I think a lot of us, myself included, would more readily answer the question: who do people say that I am? Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah. The creeds say that Jesus is the Son of God. The church says that Jesus is one among the one of the Trinity. Some people say that Jesus is their personal Lord and Savior. But what do you say?

There is no "right" answer. This is not a quiz, although when Jesus challenges the disciples, it sounds like on. How and where do you know Jesus in your own life? The answers are different for different people. The answers are different at different times in our lives. The nature and quality of our relationship with Jesus grows and changes over time as it deepens and evolves.

There is no right answer, but an answer is so important.

Where do we find that answer? Where do we meet and experience Jesus in our own lives? If you need guidance, listen to others. Not as second accounts of their experiences of Jesus’ presence, but as clues to where you might find him in your own life. Listen to the confessions and proclamations of other Christians.

This morning’s scripture readings give us several descriptions of ways and places that we may know Jesus. In Paul’s letter to the Galatians, he speaks of "belonging" to Christ, of being "clothed" with Christ. But what Paul is mostly talking about is our relationship with one another in Christ. It is not so important that any one of us is "clothed" with Christ, but that we are all clothed with Christ. We all wear the very same uniform. Paul is talking about Jesus as the glue, the net, that binds us all together.

That is one way we can experience the presence of Jesus in our lives. We are all "in Christ." We are all "clothed with Christ." That means that it is the very living presence of Christ that unites us, binds us one to another. This image is probably more powerful for those of us who distribute Communion. Holy Communion is not something you receive; it is something we share. One to another, one after another, person by person, the actual presence of Christ is given. And given fully. No one receives a partial or lesser portion. Can you know Jesus as the living connection between all Christians? Not just those who gather at this table, but everyone who receives the living presence of Christ is linked by nothing less that Christ one to another.

In this morning’s Gospel Jesus describes another way in which he is known in our lives. He speaks of those who would be his followers and how they are called daily to take up their cross. Jesus’ is the voice that daily calls us to self-sacrifice. Self-sacrifice is a hard sell, and maybe not the way most of us would like to know Jesus. But what Jesus says, daily, is: There is more to life than "self". Make room in the midst of all of those "self" words… self-satisfaction, self-determination, self-righteousness. Make room. There is more. There is God’s loving kindness. Both today’s psalm and collect speak of the foundation of God’s loving kindness. Beyond anything we can do by ourselves, Jesus offers us, daily, God’s loving kindness.

I recently read a Christian "op-ed" piece by a priest who had recently returned to parish ministry. He describes the role of the preacher. He says the role of the preacher is to "look sinners in the eye and say, "God loves you. Now get it right." The preacher is also to look the complacent in the eye… in the eye… and say, you… "God loves you, now get outside yourself." And into God’s world. And, the preacher’s role is to look the lost and lonely personally in the eye and say, "God loves you, now get up, take heart, he is calling you" to be with him.

It occurs to me that to really preach that way I would need to know exactly who is a sinner, who is complacent, who is lost. To speak personally, to look them in the eyes, I would need to know. I considered asking for a show of hands… Who is a sinner, who is complacent, who is lost?

The easy answer is to say that all of us are all of those things to some degree or another, or at some time another. The better perspective is to realize that Jesus doesn’t need a show of hands. He knows. Every Sunday we begin our worship affirming that Jesus is one to whom all desires are known, from whom no secrets are hid. Jesus knows each and every one of us. He knows the souls twisted and knotted by sin. He knows those who hide insecurity in the superficiality of complacency, who fearfully refuse to risk or engage. He knows those who live in the isolation of despair and loneliness. He knows those deep places within each of us where we need the loving kindness of God.

Will you let him meet you there? Those places where you need the peace, the hope, the love that only God can give? Jesus offers peace that passes human understanding, hope that no darkness can quench, love in the midst of unimaginable sin. Those are the places where you can meet and known Jesus personally in your life.

It is easy to talk about Jesus. To pass along what others, including the church, say about him.

But we are offered much more… much more than a second hand account of who Jesus is. God’s desire is for us to know, to experience, his loving kindness in our own lives… to know the love, the peace, the hope that he offers us. Jesus came to earth, took on human flesh, for this reason. To hand deliver the loving presence of God to us. To make tangible and real God’s love in human lives. To make God’s love and presence with us more than hearsay. Jesus became human to bring God to us. That’s why he came. That’s why he comes.