Will the Real Jesus Please Stand Up?

* Read Matthew 16:13-20

Over the last several years I’ve been particularly interested in reading the writings of authors from the “Historical Jesus” movement; Marcus Borg, Stephen Patterson, John Shelby Spong, and John Crossan, to name a few. For those of you not familiar with the movement, it is basically an empirical exercise in constructing a picture of Jesus solely as a man, and setting aside all narrative in the gospels that depict him as divine. Now this might seem heretical at first, but I’ve had the pleasure of meeting several great writers and speakers engaged in this process, and am constantly amazed at their commitment to accuracy and seach for a real Christianity. They are good, loving and committed Christians who sustain their faith journeys by engaging in deep theological thinking. Seminary often teaches you the skills to do this. Perhaps that’s where the saying originated; seminary will ruin a good preacher. But I must admit, that after several years of engaging in this process for myself, I also came to realize that focusing on only the humanity of Jesus had not lessened my desire to unravel the mysteries of his divinity.

Todays gospel text is one such narrative that I can not easily dismiss. For the gospels record several very pointed, poignant, and powerful questions that Jesus candidly asked those around him. Perhaps the question Jesus asks of Peter in today’s text is the one that intrigues me the most; “Who do you say that I am?” For the Christian, every day we are on this earth is an attempt to answer this question. And how we answer it shows just what place Jesus holds in our lives. That fact is, we have all stood in Peter’s shoes before, and answered that question one way, but revealed our true feelings on the topic with a completely different behavior.

I use to go to my Grandmother’s house for lunch on Sundays, and without fail she has her TV turned to Trinity Broadcasting Network where an evangelist is preaching to an enormous crowd. Growing up Pentecostal I’ve developed a litmus test for “tuning out” these preachers; the louder they scream, the less I listen to them. Sometimes I really doubt whether they really understand the good news of Jesus. Could you imagine Jesus preaching like one of these guys? And you don’t have to be loud and obnoxious to turn the gospel into a message of hate.

In this text, one minute Peter proclaims that Jesus is the messiah, the very Son of God, and the next minute, as we will see next week, he is pulling Jesus aside to tell him just how to act like the messiah. And don’t we do the same? We proclaim Jesus as our messiah in one breath and in the next we are telling Jesus how to save the world. How do we know the real Jesus? There are so many people in history who are mysterious. Who was the real Abraham Lincoln? Do we ever understand a Richard Nixon? For that matter, do we really understand our spouses or our children? I’m not sure I even understand myself. Can we really attempt to know the reality of Jesus, or is it possible to let Jesus speak for himself?

Since I’ve graduated I’ve had to let go of the quest to know the real historical Jesus. Just as the Dalai Lama says there are many paths to the Buddha, there must be many paths to Jesus, but there are some stumbling blocks along the way. The biggest stumbling block for Peter, and for us as well, is that the messiah will end up on a cross. The cross of Christ simply isn’t very user friendly. Being crucified is not the upwardly mobile, successful, self-loving and prudent thing to do in our society. There are no trophies, no book deals, after the cross. The only crown is made of thorns. Why is the cross so central, so necessary to understanding Jesus? Why can’t we just take some of his teachings like the Beatitudes or the Golden Rule and skip the cross. It would be easier, and much more marketable.

But this question that Jesus raises in the text is an important one. In fact it is a vital question for each one of us, designed to put us on the spot and keep us honest. But it is a dangerous question, because it cuts right to the existential core of our revelation of God—and whether Jesus is our response to that revelation.

But before we begin to answer that question for ourselves, I’m interested in why Jesus asked it at all? Why then, at that time and place? According to Matthew the question was first posed to the disciples at the city of Caesarea Philippi. It was a major city north of Galilee near the border of Syria, built by Herod Philip in honour of the emperor Augustus. In ancient times, it had been called Paneas in honour of the god Pan, who had a shrine there. And before that the god Baal had been worshipped there, too. And before that, well, who knows. When Jesus and his disciples visited, there was a shrine for the emperor cult. In other words, it was a place where many of the gods who walk the earth made great claims for themselves and where other people made claims for them, too. This is the setting, according to Matthew, where what happened – happened.

It’s pretty much the same with many people today. People still wonder about him. I wonder about him. Who do people say that he is? Well, I’ve asked a lot of people over the years and gotten a lot 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, Lao-tzu, or the Dalai Lama.

Some say he was a political revolutionary and enlist him in their cause. Some say he was a capitalist and do the same. There was actually a best selling book several years ago entitled Jesus-CEO. There are those who say he was clearly a socialist, and others who are just as sure that he was a liberal Democrat. These days, 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. Others wonder if he was a real man at all, with a real history, or if he was just a made-up man, the product of human hope, need, and projection.

It’s all very interesting—if sometimes confusing—but it does matter what you think. But the fact is; what you believe about Jesus affects your entire worldview. If you suddenly 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, to venture beyond the iconic Christs of our popular culture, beyond our church hierarchies, and academic scholarship, and allow ourselves to be confronted by the iconoclastic Jesus of Nazareth; a Jesus with no identifiable face, no particular ethnicity, no specific cultural allegiance. A Jesus who is not of this world.

Jesus’ question is an invitation to take personally and seriously the necessity to stop taking refuge in the answers of others and answer for ourselves. It is an invitation to stand as existentially naked as we are able before the one in whom our existence takes on new meaning.

“Who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Jesus answered, “Blessed are you…. For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.” It was a self-defining moment for Peter. Through the grace of God he had discovered himself in the presence of the one who disclosed God and revealed the Way of God—the way of love and justice. He spent the rest of his life figuring out what that meant for who he was and how he lived.

“Who do you say that I am?” Naturally, we have to answer for ourselves, and our answers will disclose as much about us as they do about him. My answer? Jesus is the one in whom I am loved, and called to love. Jesus is not a crucified savior, but a living Christ. A Christ living in you, and living in me. My journey of life is about figuring out what that means for who I am and how I live. Who do you say Jesus is?

(Special thanks to some wonderful excerpts from Barry J. Robinson’s sermon “Keeping Quiet About Jesus” for August 21, 2005 – www.fernstone.org, and Daniel B. Clendenin’s essay on “Who Do You Say That I Am?" for August 21, 2005 - www.journeywithjesus.net/index.shtml)