I suspect that today many congregations are experiencing the sudden thrill of being asked what they think of their preacher only to realise a moment later that this is not what was meant. Sermons all over the country will be starting with the words What do you think about me?’ and then the preacher having got everyone’s attention will seguy into a more accurate quotation of Jesus’ words from today’s gospel Who do you say that I am?’ And whereas there might be a great variety of answers about the vicar, the answers about Jesus may be more hesitant; a good man, an inspiring example, a great teacher, my Saviour, the son of God, someone I talk to in prayer.
Perhaps here we might find it easier to say what we don’t believe about Jesus. I recently saw an advert on television for a DVD about the life of Jesus produced by the Church of Jesus Christ of the latter Day Saints. A permanently smiling round faced man with a curly beard and a mane of chestnut hair who wanders round healing the sick and making everyone smile and then comes back looking if possible even more smiley to make Mary Magdalen stop crying is not my picture of Jesus.
Perhaps we find it difficult picturing Jesus at all as a human being. And that may be because he lived so long ago in such a different world and culture or it may be because we cannot imagine what a human being whom we also believe is divine could possibly be like. For some people the fact of Jesus being different is crucial to their belief. The virgin birth, the miracles culminating in the resurrection these are the things that give Jesus the unique authority to be my saviour and give me hope. For other people these are precisely the things which make Jesus difficult because they make him so unlike us and if he is in any way to be relevant to our life he must be like us and to have experienced what we experience. Jesus can only be my saviour if he has overcome what I have to deal with and so can help me and give me hope.
So who do you say that Jesus is? Peter’s answer was that he is the Messiah. Not an easy concept to understand for there was no clear definitions of what people were looking for in a messiah in Jesus’ day. The word Messiah means someone who has been anointed which means royalty. The royal leader they expected would restore the kingdom of Israel. And that they assumed must involve a battle and the completion and renewal of the temple. That is broadly speaking what Peter must have meant in calling Jesus messiah. When Jesus starts talking about his capture and death this clearly goes against what Peter means even though Jesus has also talked about rising again. But Peter is so wrong that his protests are said to be Satanic. Clearly Jesus is redefining the meaning of Messiah-ship but not so much that his followers didn’t feel it appropriate to go on referring to him as the Messiah so what sort of messiah was Jesus in his own understanding?
At its simplest Jesus saw himself as inaugurating the kingdom of God but as a servant rather than as a king. The kingdom was offered to people as the home they had been seeking after a long exile. The presence of the kingdom meant the defeat of evil and the forgiveness of sins. Most dramatically however, the victory of the kingdom meant the overcoming of the forces opposed to it not by a display of greater strength but by the rejection of the use of force and the acceptance of defeat and self sacrifice. And where the Messiah led so his disciples are expected to follow. The kingdom is won, life is saved precisely by being given up.
Perhaps because of this our answer to the question, Who do you say that I am?’ is bound to be hesitant. Anyone who like Peter thinks they know the answer is bound to be mistaken in some way. In fact to be a Christian is to live with the challenge of that question. And yet we do have as it were guidelines for living with the question. We may not be able to picture Jesus or sum him up, but we know that his purpose was and is to change us. We may not be able to conceive the nature of his divine humanity but we do know that his purpose was to make possible in us the more human humanity that God wants for us. And we do know that finding that new humanity involves the painful process of letting go of our current image of ourselves our ways of behaving that are destructive both for ourselves and others. And we do know that becoming ourselves as God wants us to be cannot be just a personal and private journey. My salvation is bound up with the salvation not just of my neighbour but my neighbour everywhere. Salvation is both personal and political because the kingdom is the kingdom of a renewed creation. And finally we know that whatever else the resurrection means it means the vindication of all that Jesus did. The victory over evil can be won by us because through his death he first won the victory. Because of Jesus hope is rational.
Over the past weeks a famous poem by WB Yeats keeps coming back to me. And particularly those famous lines, The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.’ There is a lot of passionate intensity in all the religions of the world and amongst those who are against all religion. And the world is a much more dangerous place because of it. What I have been talking about this morning doesn’t sound like a very good basis for conviction. I have not answered Jesus question Who do you say that I am?’ It is only through a lifetime of living with that question that we will in the end know the true answer. In the mean time our conviction the means we have of convincing others depends on the extent to which we allow the question of Jesus’ identity to change us and make us better human beings. It is a matter of allowing Jesus to tell me who I am. Amen.