In our Gospel lesson today from St. Mark, we are told that Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi and asked the disciples, “Who do the people say that I am?” This was in essence the final exam question for them after an in-depth Jesus seminar. The disciples had lived every waking hour with Jesus for several years; they had heard him preach. He had taught them about the Kingdom of God in parables. They had seen him walk on water, still the storm, heal the sick, raise the dead. So, now Jesus wants to know how much has sunk in; what they had learned. This was the “$64,000 question.” What would the correct answer be? How much had they learned?
In Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Letters and Papers From Prison, the question is raised: Who is Jesus Christ for us today? Imprisoned in a land whose long tradition of Christianity did so little to oppose the Nazi evil that was to end his own life along with millions of others, Bonhoeffer could at that point no longer be content to point to traditional answers to such a question. The question still stands for us today and it is not one that must be asked only in the midst of terror or imprisonment. Whoever we are and wherever we may be, in apparent safety or in peril and affliction and dire need - if we are to relate to Christ at all, each individual must define what Jesus’ identity means in a particular sense, to find the meaning of the fulfilled life our Lord offers.
“Who do the people say that I am?” Jesus asks. The spiritual inspiration and setting for this question and the answer to be given is a turning point in the Gospel - from the mostly popular Galilean ministry of teaching, preaching, and healing - to the way of the Cross. And so the disciples chime in with all conventional thought about Jesus’ identity: “A prophet, Jeremiah, Elijah, John the Baptist,” and so on. All wrong. So, Jesus asks again more pointedly, “But who do you say that I am?” And it was actually the impulsive, bungling, likeable Peter who got the answer right, jumping in as quick as a Santa Ana parking ticket to say: You are the Messiah!
Something new was happening to Peter and the followers of Jesus - in them and around them. They were as Paul put it in Romans, “justified by his grace as a gift... to be received by faith.” This is considerably more than what Mark Twain once quipped: “Faith is believing what you know just ain’t so.” But the theologian, Paul Tillich, spoke of this experience as the adventure of faith. He said: “Faith does not mean the belief in assertions for which there is no evidence. It never meant that in genuine religion and never should be abused in this sense. Faith means being grasped by a power that is greater than we are, a power that shakes us and turns us and transforms us and heals us. Surrender to this power is faith. The people whom Jesus could heal and can heal are those who did and do this self-surrender to the healing power in him.”
This faith is never something set apart from life. It is not something reserved for Sunday more so than Monday. It is not a badge of righteousness, but the radiating center of action that permeates all of life. It is not a just an empty creed, but the axis upon which life turns. “You are the Christ,” Peter said, because he had been grasped and turned and transformed by the power of God in Jesus. And what did this mean? It meant a re-centering of life around Christ. Peter’s faith, then became the rock on which Jesus said he would build the Church.
Thomas Merton said, “If you want to know who I am, don’t ask me where I live or what I like to eat or how I comb my hair. Ask me what I am living for and push me on it. Ask me what I think is keeping me from living for the thing I want to live for.” Faith is the engraced desire to live for Jesus. So many of us balk at surrendering to this power in Jesus because we do not trust what God wants to work in us through the power of faith. Jesus challenges us, as He did Peter and all the disciples, to become children of God, rock-like in our commitment to following him, following him all the way…
But what then is the true way, the Way of the Cross? First, it is being grasped by the unconditional grace and unlimited power of God in Christ, saying yes to it from the depths of one’s soul. It is the experience of allowing oneself to be a child of God; it is totally free, full of love and joy and peace. Secondly, out of this primary experience, it is listening to and for the gifts God is giving us to act Christ-like in the world. In our new life in Christ, the way of the world will be confronted and this may be painful – that is what Our Lord is talking about in today’s Gospel. It is sincerity of actions, not empty lip-service that characterizes the genuine followers of Jesus... not to become ineffective “pet rocks” of Christ, but to part of the very bedrock of his strength to a foolish and shifting world.
Fear is something we all have experienced at some time, to one degree or another. But fear inhibits living life to the fullest. Faith and trust liberate us through real life in the Spirit & are gifts we all need to cherish and nurture. There are some people who demonstrate a tremendous trust in God, even under the worst of circumstances; but most of us are challenged in our ability to do so. Yet, the extraordinary thing is that we are, indeed, capable of great trust and faith in our everyday affairs. We begin each morning demonstrating trust by not worrying whether the sun will rise that day, or if the floor will be under our feet when we jump out of bed. Yet, admittedly, trust and faith are hard attributes to maintain in these difficult times.
When we are at peace with ourselves, personally through trust and faith and through harmony with our fellow human beings; we have then achieved the wisdom of building our house on the rock of Christ allowing us the ability to be able to experience the full power of the Spirit; reaching out with empathy and compassion in the service we are called to do.
Amen.
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