The Final ExamAugust 24, 2014Hot Springs, Arkansas
Matthew 16:13-20/Romans 12:1-8
I wonder if it seemed like the “final exam?” Standing there in the beautiful resort city of Caesarea Philippi, it didn’t really seem like the time to be asking such important questions like “Who do people say that I am?” With the beautiful Mt. Hermon rising up 9000 feet in the distance, preacher/teacher Fred Craddock describes the place as “the playground of the wealthy…a place where they built their summer homes.” Snow-capped Mt. Hermon hardly seemed like the right “vista” for struggling with such pithy questions like that! But, then again, you never know when or where those kinds of questions might come along…
Here at the end of the summer, I know that I’m not very interested in anything that even resembles a final exam, I mean, come on--school has just started! There can’t be a test, at least, not yet!
It’s an odd question; actually, “Who do people say I am?” There, midst the gambling casinos and Lake Galilee excursion boat-rentals, a town filled with Gentiles and other “worldly” people-- it must have taken some energy just to focus on a good answer. But they did try. Their answers kind of remind me of the multiple choice exams that I actually preferred to all the other exams. Questions like this:
“Which 3 people were among the signers of The Declaration of Independence?”
- Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, George Washington.
- Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams.
- George Washington, Bill Clinton, Thomas Jefferson.
Correct answer? “B!” Yes. And that’s kind of easy. You can almost just guess at it, if you want. A good grasp of American history isn’t really even necessary. Could the disciples have been guessing? It almost sounds like it. But, maybe not. More than half-way through Jesus’ ministry you would expect Jesus to have at least a mild interest in the kind of impact he was making… you know, an interest in what others were saying about him. They didn’t have time to wait on the results of a Gallup poll. Just a simple “what are you hearing out there on the street?” So, that’s what they report: Well Jesus, I’ve heard some say John the Baptist (but how can that be…he was just executed not long ago) and then some say Elijah (but my that was so very long ago…do you think it could really be?) and there are some who’ve even mentioned Jeremiah---I don’t know. Perhaps they were all talking at once holding their hands up high so Jesus could see them and call on them—having the right answer is always so empowering. It makes you look so smart, so important.
Except here… I don’t think that’s what Jesus was after. He changes his question. It has nothing to do with facts and figures. It has nothing to do with history. It has nothing to do with “head-knowledge.” “But what about you?—who do you say that I am?” Jesus goes much deeper, gets much more personal and asks them what each individually would say. Suddenly, all the hands go down that had been up in the air, urging Jesus to call on them so they could show off.
Has that ever happened to you? You’ve had plenty of opportunities to showcase your knowledge of this or that—your great insight on what you’ve observed about this process or that phenomenon and suddenly, someone asks you personally what you believe.
One of the UK’s greatest evangelists of the 20th Century was my teacher at SMU…a man terribly ill when he came to teach in the doctoral program. He found himself at that stage in his life in the middle of the bridge to the 21st Century, aware of the strengths of the mighty preachers in history but painfully aware of the Church’s shortcomings. Perhaps it was because of his illness, perhaps it was because of what he perceived to be the urgency of the time, and he had little time for merely playing around with ideas… for dabbling in fanciful intellectual stimulation. After lecturing an entire semester, after reading hundreds and hundreds of pages of his class member’s papers, even after spending time with us after class frequently in a nearby pub, going on and on about what it meant to be the Church in the “post-modern age,” he still brought each individual class member into his office for what he called the final exam. It was a face to face encounter with each one of us, without anyone else in the room, and I was as terrified as a 49 year old man could be. “I really want to know what makes you tick, Michael, so tell me, what is your greatest hope for the Church?” Beside him were the stacks of papers I had written for his class and behind him were the stacks of papers all the others had written and I stammered and stuttered and said something like, “My greatest hope for the church is that we be the inclusive community Jesus called us to be.” I had no idea if that was the “right” answer. But I do know he made me engage with what, for me, was the bottom line… what was foundational … what I was willing to stake my life on in ministry?
There in Caesarea Philippi with the disciples, where it had become very quiet, it was Simon who spoke up to answer Jesus’ question, “But what about you…who am I for you, personally?” Simon blurts out, and everyone must have gasped when he said it, “You are the Christ (Messiah) the Son of the Living God!” Jesus sees immediately that Simon, son of Jonah was speaking straight from his heart and not just from his head. He’d been doing a lot of that over the past 3 years of knowing Jesus—popping off here, speaking up there about this or that, but this was different. So Jesus told him so… and spoke of that kind of bedrock… deep in your gut kind of awareness that only comes from heaven above. The fancy word for that is revelation. Truth, Awareness, Insight that is revealed not learned; revealed, not recited; revealed, not memorized; revealed, not studied. The same kind of revelation that came to a young Mary when she came to realize she was pregnant, but instead of complaining and crying out “why me… why me?” she proclaimed, “My soul magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God!” It’s the same kind of revelation that caused the Apostle Paul to proclaim “I know whom I have believed and am persuaded that he is able to keep that which I’ve committed to him against that day!” It’s the same kind of revelation that caused Martin Luther King to proclaim, “I have a dream…I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification; one day right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.” All that is revelation.
In your journey with Jesus have you encountered that yet? Have you encountered revelation? Jesus saw in Simon something that he might not have even seen in himself before. So, he re-named him. It was the darndest thing, the strangest name. You are Petros (which means Rock) and on this rock I will build my church, my community. Jesus sees in Simon, whom he re-names rock... (Peter) p. 345) real “building material”… stuff that is foundational for the new community! Hence his reference—on you, Peter, I will build my church! On your testimony to your revelation, I will build my church!
Peter is not the builder; that’s Jesus’ job. Peter’s testimony is merely the foundation! And there’s nothing wrong, necessarily with fanciful speculation about what people say about Jesus. But that’s not bedrock faith. That’s not foundational. But there is more. He’s also the key-holder AND the “binder and loosener!” 3 jobs, 3 functions.
Today, people still wonder about Jesus. At least once a year Jesus shows up on the cover of Time magazine or Newsweek because people still wonder about him, more than 2000 years later.
Who do people say Jesus is? Ask enough people over the years and you’re bound to get all kinds of answers. Some say a great moral and political leader like Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. Some say a great prophet like Mohammed. Still others say a great spiritual teacher to be numbered with the likes of the Buddha, Confucius, or the Dalai Lama. Otherssay he was a political revolutionary and enlist him in their cause. Some say he was a capitalist and do the same. Though many might find it hard to believe it, there was actually a best-selling book written several years ago entitled Jesus-CEO.
Still, there are those who say he was clearly a socialist, and others who are just as sure that he was a liberal Democrat. Many Republicans eagerly claim him as one of their own. Still others say he was but a dreamy idealist with his head in the clouds. Some speculate even further and say what kind of car he drives and print bumper stickers that ask, “What Would Jesus Drive?”
But none of this is bedrock, foundational stuff on which the church can be built. It’s all very interesting—maybe even sometimes confusing! Paul urges the Romans to refuse to allow the world to “squeeze you into its mold.” Instead, he writes in Chapter 12, be “transformed by the renewing of your mind so that you may discern what the will of God is.” (Romans 12:2) As Evangelist and scholar, N.T. Wright pointed out, “What you say about Jesus affects your entire worldview. If you see Jesus differently, everything changes.” Jesus' question, “Who do you say that I am?” is an invitation to take personally and seriously the possibility that maybe we need to see him differently.
It is an invitation, as Robert Funk has suggested, to venture beyond the iconic Christs of popular culture, ecclesiastical hierarchies, and even scholarship, and allow ourselves to be confronted by the Jesus of Nazareth you meet in today’s gospel. So have you found your answer yet? If he stood right here and asked you, what would you say? (1748)