Year A
Matthew 16:13-20
The Very Rev. Denise Vaughn
Our God-Given Identities
Some years ago, a major research firm conducted a survey to determine what people would be willing to do for $10 million dollars. The results were astounding. Three percent would put their children up for adoption. Seven percent would kill a stranger. Ten percent would lie in court to set a murderer free. Sixteen percent would divorce their spouses. Twenty-three percent said they would become ladies or men of the evening for a week or longer. Most astonishing was the category at the top of the list. One-fourth of all surveyed said that they would leave their families for $10 million dollars.
It does seem that most everyone has a selling price at which he or she will step over a line of conduct and allow someone else to dictate the terms of their behavior. It might be $10 million or it might only be one more bottle of wine. We all have our selling price and it is usually linked to who we are, our identity: the stronger our sense of who we are usually the higher our selling price and the deeper our character. Each of us wears several identities. The first is the identity we receive from others. We get our looks and temperament from our parents. Our tastes and styles come from our culture.
A second identity we have in life is the one we make. Much of what we see in people around us has to do with what they have made of themselves. The third and deeper human identity is the one that transforms us from what we were, to what we are becoming. We become the person we want to be when we find our truest selves in God and this identity for the Christ followers is more important than either the identity we have received from others or the one we try to create. This understanding is what lies at the heart of the texts today. Anything that tries to define us on terms less than God’s grace limits our best self. Today, we find in the gospel reading the people are trying to define and understand who Jesus is by saying various things about him, identifying him with one great prophet or another come back to life.
It is important that we understand who Jesus is not just in our sometimes mistaken notions of who we would like him to be, but who he is by his own testimony and actions, his God given identity. This seems to be why Jesus takes this moment to challenge the disciples by asking “Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Their response of what people are saying seems to depend on what particular faction they are a part of-whether they are partial to John the Baptist, Elijah or Jeremiah. In the Protestant Church today people might respond by interpreting Jesus through the lens of Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Wesley, Barth, Billy Graham or another. Jesus knew better than anyone else that he was neither John or Elijah, nor Jeremiah or any of the other prophets come back to life.
So Jesus responds by making the question to his disciples more pointed: “But who do you say that I am?” Peter is somehow able to respond, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” That Simon Peter has expressed a correct understanding of Jesus’ identity is confirmed by Jesus’ statement that Peter’s confession is not based upon Peter’s own insight but is a revelation given to him by God. What we are to notice also is that Jesus responded not to Peter’s strengths and accomplishments as a disciple, which to be frank left much to be desired most of the time, but to his testimony – “What I have experienced in you, Jesus, is that you are the Messiah, the one that has been sent to us as a way into the kingdom of God. “Consequently, Jesus gives Peter a new title, “the Rock” translated into Greek as Cephas. He says to Peter, “You are the Rock and upon this ‘rock’ I will build my church.
Peter’s testimony, his faith, becomes the rock upon which God will place other stones as, over time, Christ builds a people for himself. The divine community, the Church, is being born at this moment. Yet, the Church is not founded on Peter, just as it is not founded on John the Baptist, Elijah, Luther or Calvin. Jesus gives “the keys of the kingdom of heaven,” creating the church as the epicenter of the Father’s answer to Jesus’ prayer that God’s kingdom will come, that his will may be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
The rock is not Peter, ‘the rock’ is Peter’s confession, his faith that recognizes who Jesus is-the Christ, the Son of the Living God. This is what transforms Peter into the foundation for the life of the church. His former identity is gone and what we see in all the texts today is that the answer to God’s call upon the lives of his followers requires the sacrifice of former identities and the willingness to give up one’s life as it is in exchange for the empowered and transformed life of God’s will. Just as God’s call placed Jesus on a path to the cross and the empty tomb.
When we read Paul’s exhortation to the Roman Christians, and by the way Peter was the first Bishop of Rome, we hear Paul ask the Christians to “present their bodies as a living sacrifice that is holy and pleasing to God.” To be a living sacrifice is a total condition, an offering of self, our identities that leaves nothing out. It is no surprise then, that Paul’s next words instruct us as to the empowerment we receive, “be transformed by the renewing of your minds,” for without such empowerment and transformation, how can we present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God? There is no mind/body split here. Instead, there is a recognition that our identities as human beings are a whole, and we are to present our whole identities and whole selves to God.
As we ask and receive God’s transforming work in us, we live in ways that extend God’s transforming work to others. Because we understand our identity in the self-giving life and purpose of God, we make choices about how we interact with others and how we participate in the social and economic structures of the world that draw attention to our cultures assumptions about human identity, value, and worth. And because God is renewing and transforming all things and all people those who find their identity in the life of God, our example being Jesus Christ, will advocate for those who are yet held in the grip of false assumptions by our culture. We become participants in God’s renewing and restoring work by living out our testimony, our true, God-given identities as witnesses and advocates of the Son of the Living God.
The conversation between Jesus and his disciples about his identity as God’s Messiah declares the Good News that God is making all things new. As God’s Messiah, Jesus embodies what is truly human, embodying self-giving for the sake of our wholeness. But unless we know body, mind and spirit, the identity of Jesus which becomes our identity, our actions will reflect our culture and our selling price. So the question Jesus asked his disciples that day is always relevant, “Who do you say I am?” As we search, and struggle with questions of faith, God will bless us with the faith to proclaim, “You are the Messiah!” Because Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God!