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| Jesus' coming as the Messiah was even more disruptive than moving from a rotary phone to a smart phone. |
© Seth Olson 2020
August 23, 2020—Twelfth Sunday after Pentecost
Isaiah 51:1-6
Psalm 138
Romans 12:1-8
Matthew 16:13-20
Video of today's sermon may be found here: https://vimeo.com/450836046
O God, let my words be your words, and when my words are not your words, let your people be cunning enough to know the same. Amen.
This week school started for many in our community. We prayed for our students, their parents, as well as teachers, administrators, and staff beginning this academic year both last week and earlier this morning. The usual emotions of excitement, anticipation, and curiosity are tinged with anxiety, trepidation, and fear—it is as challenging a start to a new school year as has ever been.
This is not to say that school wasn’t hard enough already. It was! While our children and adolescents are learning science, math, language, history, social studies, the arts, and sports, they are also discovering who they are. They are figuring out their identity. Learning to fully accept who we are is a life-long journey, and it has always been tough. Still it feels especially tough right now. I feel for not only our children and teens, but all of us as we navigate who we are and who we are becoming in this ever-changing world. We are not alone in this self-discovery though.
In today’s Gospel lesson we observe Jesus wondering the all-important question “Who am I?” with his closest followers. He first asked them a safer version of the question, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” (It would be like me asking, “What are people saying about the 30-something-year-old Associate Rector at All Saints?”) Jesus did not refer to himself directly, but used a title—“Son of Man”—that he often applied to himself. And he did not ask the disciples point blank, but instead allowed them to crowd-source their reply.
Jesus did not go so far as to ask the disciples for the wrong answers only, but the crowd’s understanding of Jesus was nonetheless off the mark. The masses believed Jesus to be the recently martyred John the Baptist or a longer dead prophet like Jeremiah or Elijah. We will come back to these incorrect answers in a moment, but first Peter tells us the truth of who Jesus is. In the midst of all the healings, teachings, and confrontations with the Pharisees, God had opened Simon’s eyes to the truth. When Jesus asked, “Who do you say that I am?” Simon replied, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
By merely uttering these words Simon underwent a transformation from a struggling follower to the Rock of the Church. To behold Jesus as the Messiah—the Savior—the One coming to save the world is enough to change anyone’s life. Jesus gave Simon the nickname Peter (the Rock) because he had—with God’s help—realized this truth before any of the other disciples. We would be wise to remember that Mary, the Magi, John the Baptist, the Canaanite woman, and others had discerned this earlier in Matthew’s Gospel account. Still, this acknowledgment of who Jesus truly was, and who he still is—the Messiah, the Christ—has the power to transform not just Simon, but us too. Now, what about these other answers? What about the wrong assertions of who Jesus was? Why might they be useful to us?
The crowds professed that Jesus was John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or another prophet. With 2,000 years of hindsight we can clearly tell these answers are wrong, but they help us nonetheless. The crowd’s responses all had in common that they were prophetic voices from the Jewish Tradition. In other words, they were known commodities. The crowds would have heard Jesus and recognized echoes from their people’s past. Sometimes, as human beings, we have a hard time understanding something or someone as wholly new, and we try to put them into an already existing category or box. It’s challenging for us to face a completely novel and disrupting force—even if it is good for us. Let me give you a modern analogy.
Do you remember rotary phones? If you are younger than me you may not even know what a rotary phone is, but it was the way that people used to have to make phone calls (mimic dialing with rotary). It was a slow process. But, then came along the touch-tone or keypad phone. It was a big advancement, but still an “incremental improvement.” It would be like going from one prophet to another. More recently though there has been much more disruptive advancement … “combining a phone, a camera, a computer, a music library and player, a GPS device, and a mobile Internet portal,”[1] as phones evolve into smart phones. Jesus’ coming was not a rotary phone evolving into a keypad phone, but rather it was much more unsettling—like going from no phone to a smart phone overnight.
This analogy though can be harnessed to talk not only about Jesus’ coming and his disrupting of the systems of the day, but also to the current moment. We are in a disruptive era. Even before the pandemics we now face, we were looking at times of change, especially in the Church. Long held institutions (including religious ones) coming under greater scrutiny, seven-day work week schedules, and the appeal of other interests have made it less likely for some to find merit in traditional, Sunday morning church. Unlike in previous decades it has not been enough to hang a church sign and open the doors, and that is even more true since March.
If we were already experiencing such a time of upheaval, and now we are facing these pandemics, we cannot simply try to go back to the way things were. The bell cannot be unrung—the toothpaste cannot go back in the tube—the smart phone is not exchanged for the rotary phone. I had a New Testament professor who warned against jumping from one Gospel account to another—what she calls “making Gospel soup,”[2] but disruptive times call for disruptive measures. This moment calls for jumping from Matthew’s account to John’s telling of the Good News where we hear Jesus say one must be born again. This does not mean, as Nicodemus thought, we go through the womb a second time. Rather, in such a challenging age, we are being called to be spiritually reborn. Honestly, we have always been called to this divine rebirthing, but it just has not been so dramatic in any of our lifetimes.
We are in an unprecedented time. We are facing seemingly endless challenges on manifold fronts. This is not a rotary phone evolving into a keypad one. This feels like going from the stone ages to the internet age overnight. In the middle of these challenging times we might be wondering who are we as a Church and who am I as an individual? Whether we are heading back to school, trying to navigate new work realities, struggling with unemployment, facing isolation, or worrying about our own health or that of our family, we are all trying to figure out who we are in this new day. Who am I now? Who are we going to be as the Church now?
These questions are so crucial that they—on top of everything else—may make us feel like we are collapsing under the weight of it all. Ugh! These questions are important—don’t get me wrong. I love wondering about them and about who we are, but there is still an even more important question.
Like Simon we are called to wonder about Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am?” How will we answer? If we take hold of Jesus not just as a teacher, healer, and disruptive force, but also as a Savior, something changes. So often I find myself trying to save myself instead of resting in the truth that Christ has come to make me—and all of us—whole. We cannot save ourselves and as I let this sink in the words from a Gospel lesson several weeks back flood into my heart: “Come to me, all you that are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me; for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”[3]
Yes, we will not come out on the other side of these pandemics the same way we came into them. Yes, it is crucial to wonder who we are and who we are becoming. Yes, this has been and is a disruptive age. But the biggest yes is that in God we can rest, in God we can trust and not be afraid, in God is our hope, and whatever it is we are going through we can know fully that God is with us.
As you answer who you are remember also whose you are. For we all belong to God. May we rest in this truth, especially as face such disrupting times.
[1] Brian McLaren, “A Disruption of the Spirit” from Center for Contemplation and Action Daily Mediations, Wednesday, August 19, 2020: https://cac.org/a-disruption-of-the-spirit-2020-08-19/.
[2] The Rev. Dr. Cynthia Kittredge was fond of saying this to my seminary New Testament class.
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