Who do you say Jesus is? 11th after pentecost a

The holy gospel according to Matthew (16:13-23)

¹³Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi,

       he asked his disciples,

              “Who do people say that the Son of Humanity is?”

¹⁴And they said,

       “Some say John the Baptist,

              but others Elijah,

                     and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”

¹⁵Jesus said to them,

       “But who do you say that I am?”

¹⁶Simon Peter answered,

       “You are the Messiah,

              the Son of the living God.”

¹⁷And Jesus answered him,

       “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah!

              For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you,

                     but my Father in heaven.

       ¹⁸And I tell you,

              you are Peter,

                     and on this rock I will build my church,

                            and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.

                     ¹⁹I will give you the keys of the dominion of heaven,

                            and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven,

                            and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.”

       ²⁰Then Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone

              that he was the Messiah.

²¹From that time on,

       Jesus began to show his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem

              and undergo great suffering

                     at the hands of the religious authorities,

              and be killed,

              and on the third day be raised.

²²And Peter took Jesus aside and began to rebuke him, saying,

       “God forbid it, Lord!

              This must never happen to you.”

²³But Jesus turned and said to Peter,

       “Get behind me, Satan!

              You are a stumbling block to me;

                     for you are setting your mind not on divine things

                            but on human things.”

The gospel of the Lord.

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Who do you say that Jesus is?   

Peter has his answer and jumps right in with it: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” and Jesus totally affirms Peter: Right on! “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”  But then, a mere 5 verses later, as Jesus explains what it actually means to be the Messiah, Peter finds out that he is totally off-base.

Maybe that’s why Jesus “sternly order[s] the disciples not to tell anyone that he [is] the Messiah.”  Peter, and now the rest of the disciples with him, have a title, a name for Jesus: Messiah, Son of the Living God, but they haven’t yet gotten what that means.

For Peter and for many at that time, the Messiah was the one to come and lead the violent overthrow of the occupying Roman Empire.  The Messiah would be powerful, a revolutionary.  But that is not quite who Jesus is.

At this point in the gospel of Matthew, we are just over halfway through and Jesus is shifting his focus to Jerusalem.  After Peter’s bold proclamation, Jesus is starting to explain what it actually means to be “the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”

Jesus shows and tells the disciples that as the Messiah, “he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the religious authorities, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”  This Messiah is one who is with humanity in the pain and in the struggle.  Jesus is the Messiah who will confront injustice, but not the way Peter wants.  Instead of violently attacking and overthrowing, Jesus responds to the violence and oppression of his people by taking it all onto himself.  Jesus takes the pain and suffering of the whole world into his own self on the cross.

And as he begins to show this truth to the disciples, Peter gets spooked. 

This isn’t what Peter had in mind and so, in typical Peter fashion, he quickly speaks out to rebuke Jesus, saying, “God forbid it, Lord! This must never happen to you.”  Peter doesn’t want Jesus to die, but in our violent world, we respond to the ultimate Love with violence and so it will be for Jesus.

Peter rebukes Jesus and Jesus rebukes Peter right back.  The rock gets caught up in himself and becomes a stumbling block.  His assumptions about who Jesus is help and then hinder his ability to follow Jesus.

But Messiah is not the only name we call Jesus.

There is a poster on the back of the door to my childhood bedroom that lists most of the titles or names that we say Jesus is.  The Bread of Life, the Son of Humanity, the Christ, the Vine, the Living Water, the Good Shepherd, our Brother, Lord and Master.  Each of these points us to different aspects of who Jesus is.

No one name or title can fully define or describe Jesus.  We need these different names to give us a bigger picture and a deeper understanding.  When we only call Jesus one thing, we can lose sight of Jesus’ connection to the whole world.

When we say Jesus is Middle Eastern, born in 1^st century Palestine, not only are we being historically accurate, but we are also naming that the Divine dwells in Arab and Indigenous bodies, tied to the land on which they have lived for millenia.  When we say Jesus is an immigrant and refugee without papers, who fled with his family to Egypt, we recognize that God does not abide by our borders and laws, but instead journeys with people in their struggles for a better or safer life.

When we say Jesus is the Good Shepherd, we name the care God has for every person, guiding and calling to each of us.  When we say Jesus is the Bread of Life, we recognize the many ways that Jesus feeds and nourishes us—through communion, through fellowship, and through the gifts of creation.

When we say Jesus is the Son of Humanity, we recognize his humanness—his commitment to being truly with us.  When we say Jesus is the Son of God, we recognize God’s immense love for us that God would come to be with us at the same time as we recognize her power in creating all that is—from the tiniest atom to the greatest galaxy.

Dylan Roof, who attacked and killed 9 members of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, and other white supremacists, including those we read and heard about in Charlottesville, Boston, and San Francisco, say Jesus is white.  Because whiteness is the norm and the default for our culture, they also mean that people of color are worth less and that white people matter more—that the Divine cannot dwell in bodies of color, but only in white bodies. 

Too often we imagine Jesus and God as white, as the ones with power and privilege, yet that is not how God chose to come into this world.  God chose to come into the world as a baby born into poverty, with unwed parents, hunted by the government.  When we say Jesus is white, we are like Peter rebuking Jesus, because it is scary and unsettling to admit that Jesus might be different from us, that Jesus might choose to not be all-powerful, that Jesus might not be on our side, if we are not siding with the oppressed.

But when we say Jesus is Black, we recognize that God chose to come to those who are oppressed and marginalized, that God is about liberating all people from powers and systems that oppress.  When we say Jesus is Lord, we name that all authority is his and that the power of God and our commitment to following Jesus is greater than any ruler, president, or country.

Who we say Jesus is matters—it both reflects and informs how we understand God, ourselves, and each other.  Different names and titles for Jesus can stretch our understanding of God and our faith and challenge our assumptions not only about God, but also about others and the world around us.

We can and do say Jesus is many things and the diversity of our responses to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” reflects God’s diverse image and makes us a fuller body of Christ, because Jesus is all of the things we say and is so much more than we could ever name.  And so as we expand the language we use for Jesus and for God, we also expand our capacity to love God’s people and to embrace the whole body of Christ.  

Thanks be to God. 

Jesus walks toward us in the storm: 10th after pentecost a

The first reading is 1 Kings 19:9-18.

The holy gospel according to Matthew (14:22-33)

²²Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat

       and go on ahead to the other side of the Sea of Galilee,

              while he dismissed the crowds.

              ²³And after he had dismissed the crowds,

                     Jesus went up the mountain by himself to pray.

       When evening came, he was there alone,

              ²⁴but by this time the boat,

                     battered by the waves,

                            was far from the land,

                                   for the wind was against them.

²⁵And early in the morning Jesus came walking toward them on the sea.

       ²⁶But when the disciples saw him walking on the sea,

              they were terrified, saying,

                     “It is a ghost!”

              And they cried out in fear.

                     ²⁷But immediately Jesus spoke to them and said,

                            “Take heart, it is I;

                                   do not be afraid.”

       ²⁸Peter answered him,

              “Lord, if it is you,

                     command me to come to you on the water.”

       ²⁹He said, “Come.”

              So Peter got out of the boat,

                     started walking on the water,

                            and came toward Jesus.

                     ³⁰But when Peter noticed the strong wind,

                            he became frightened,

                            and beginning to sink, he cried out,

                                   “Lord, save me!”

              ³¹Jesus immediately reached out his hand and caught him, saying to him,

                     “You of little faith, why did you doubt?”

³²When they got into the boat,

       the wind ceased.

       ³³And those in the boat worshiped Jesus, saying,

              “Truly you are the Son of God.”

The gospel of the Lord.

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Storms are not new to us. 

10 years ago next week, a storm crashed waves of water through this town, destroying homes, a sense of safety, and this church building’s basement. 

8 years ago the ELCA decided to follow Jesus more closely during the Churchwide Assembly by beginning a campaign to raise millions of dollars to fight malaria and by recognizing and affirming the calls to ordained and consecrated ministryof people of a variety of sexual orientations and gender identities.  The response of some to the latter commitment was a storm that tore through communities of faith, including here in Rushford, tearing friends and colleagues apart.

Storms are not new to us, nor are they new to Peter, a fisher by trade.  Peter knows the danger of the sea—the water that can be so calm one day and life-threatening another.  So when he’s in the boat, “battered by the waves,” he knows how to handle the boat.  That’s not the terrifying part of it all.

The terrifying part is Jesus.

Jesus shows up in the midst of the storm, heading for the boat, walking on water, and this terrifies the disciples in the boat.  The storm isn’t terrifying, Jesus is.

How often are we scared of Jesus coming to us?

Are we scared of what it means to follow Jesus?  If we’re not yet, we probably should be.  We know where Jesus ended up.

We are currently in the midst of many storms.  A storm is raging as our president threatens and escalates this country towards a nuclear war with North Korea, which would likely destroy this whole planet.  Even as we’ve been praying for peace and de-escalation each week, the president has been intentionally escalating the threat.

Another storm, this one of white supremacy, has been raging, last week in the bombing of a mosque in Bloomington, and most especially this weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia.  Uninvited and unwanted white supremacists, engaging in acts of domestic terrorism, gathered without the KKK’s usual white robes of anonymity, carrying torches, and violently protested the planned removal of Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s statue.  These neo-Nazis chanted many horrible things, including “Blood and Soil,” a philosophy of the Third Reich, used as a Nazi chant in Germany.  The storm of racism and evil is real and alive in this country.

And Jesus is walking towards us in the midst of this storm.  It is easy for us to gather here in Rushford and dismiss what is happening in Charlottesville or with the president and North Korea as far away and not connected to us.  In college we called it “living in the Luther bubble” as we were fairly ignorant to much of what happened outside of our sphere of study, college, and community.

But Jesus comes to us, walking on the water through the storm with a different way of being.  The ministry we do here in this place as Trinity and First is important.  It matters.  It matters that we make this place more welcoming of Spanish-speaking folks, especially immigrants working on the farms, and of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, and questioning folks.  These are important ways of following Jesus by resisting racism and forces of oppression. 

And yet we are also part of a larger body of Christ.  We are part of a whole country and world in which storms are raging and Jesus calls us into this world and that can be terrifying.

We call this place where we gather a sanctuary.  A place of safety amidst the storm.  Many church buildings have historically been constructed like ships and have areas called “naves” to reinforce this.  And, the implication is that life is not always safe.  That’s true.  Jesus doesn’t call us to safety, he calls us to discipleship.

In our first reading for today, Elijah has just stood up to the priests of Baal, as God bests them in a challenge of sacrifice and power, which then ends the drought.  This provokes the ire of the powerful followers of Baal and so Elijah responds by hiding in a cave in the desert far away, feeling alone and afraid for his life.  And God comes to him as “a sound of sheer silence,” or in other translations: “a gentle and quiet whisper,” “a sound of gentle blowing,” or “a sound. Thin. Quiet.”  God’s gentle presence contradicts the storm of anxiety, fear, and loneliness raging in Elijah.

Yet even God’s presence cannot shake Elijah’s terrified and lonely lament, which he repeats word for word when God asks again what Elijah is doing.  And God persists, calling and equipping Elijah and those who would come after him to continue the work.  And Jesus keeps calling to us in the boat in the midst of the storm, “Take heart, it is I; do not be afraid.”

Jesus calls us to deep commitments locally—in welcome and hospitality and boldness as we proclaim the gospel here.  And we are faithful in this call as a community of faith.

Jesus also calls us to deep commitments to justice throughout the world.  And what a witness that could be—

--to gather in our own town, or travel to the state or national capitols, advocating in solidarity with people of color being menaced by proud white supremacists, or to travel together as a community of faith to show up with people of color to resist racism.

--to challenge the narratives that separate our country into rural republicans or urban democrats, showing that more than any political party, we are children of God, caring for our kindred, our friends, and our neighbors around the country and the world. 

--to challenge the narratives that claim at best that we don’t care about and at worst that we support the president’s threats of nuclear war with North Korea, the bombing of the mosque in Bloomington, or the white supremacists’ presence in Charlottesville. 

But more importantly than any of those, what if we took this action to follow Jesus even in the storm that rages, because that is what faith means to us.

This weekend the ELCA issued a statement from Bp. Bill Gafkjen, the chair of the Conference of Bishops, with this prayer:

“Just and merciful God, we give you thanks for … bishops, pastors, deacons, people of God – who this Saturday walk the way of the cross in Charlottesville, Va. On this day and in that place, they join other courageous and faithful people across time and space to stand against bigotry, hatred and violence; to stand with those who are intended victims; and to stand for justice and mercy, peace and equality for all people.

“We stand with them in prayer, asking you to empower them, protect them, and use their witness as [a] hopeful sign of your resurrection reign afoot in your beloved and troubled world. By your might, break the bondage that bigotry, hatred and violence impose on their victims and their perpetrators. May your kingdom come on earth as in heaven. And, we pray, empower us in our own communities to follow their lead as fellow servants to your dream of a community in which all people and their gifts are welcomed and honored, cherished and celebrated as beloved children of a just, merciful and loving God; through Jesus Christ crucified and risen for the life of the world. Amen”

The PCUSA stated: "Because of our biblical understanding of who God is and what God intends for humanity, the PC(USA) must stand against, speak against, and work against racism. Antiracist effort is not optional for Christians. It is an essential aspect of Christian discipleship, without which we fail to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ."
- Facing Racism: A Vision of the Intercultural Community, 222nd General Assembly (2016), Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)

These are prayers and commitments of words and they are important, but so are the prayers we pray with our feet and with our resources.  Where we show up matters and resisting this mob of white supremacist terrorists, resisting nuclear war, is praying with our whole bodies.  How will we show up?  What are we willing to risk in the storm, to follow the Jesus who is walking to us now?  Jesus is calling to us, how will we respond?  How will we connect to those who suffer injustice not only in our community, but around the country and the world?

Our Church in the World moments have been a great way to keep us aware of what is going on in the world and we include places and people all over the world who are facing injustice and hardship in our prayers each week.  Awareness and spoken prayers are an important step, and they are good beginning steps. 

I think we are ready for our next step. 

What if we commit to showing up or hosting even just one thing a year that addresses injustice in the country or the world?  What if we show up at the state capitol, the nation’s capitol, or the site of resistance in the face of white supremacy?  One embodied prayer, one form of resistance to the storms of injustice that rage around us.  We stay in the boat to fight the storm, rather than escaping.  Jesus is walking toward us and calling us to follow.  So, we pray with our bodies because we trust that the storm can never stop Jesus.  

Thanks be to God.