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Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. The text today is from the gospel, the confession of St. Peter. Please be seated.
There are some questions in life that I really don’t like to answer. Maybe you have some of those too. And for me, it’s not personal type questions. Those are easy; I don’t have any problem with them. It’s more survey type questions. Like, what is your all-time favorite movie? Or, what is the one word that best describes you? I hate those questions. Or, if you were stranded on an island and could have only one music album, which one would it be? I don’t like those questions because they seem like life or death questions to me—because there’s pressure to come up with the one single best answer. I really hate those questions because there’s a commitment. You’ve got to come up with this one single best answer. That’s why I prefer top ten lists. They leave a little wiggle room for variety. Okay. In no particular order, I like these ten.
Well, in the Gospel reading for today, called the Confession of Peter, one of those such questions is asked. A question looking for the single best answer. When Jesus inquires of his identity with the question to his disciples, who do people say that I am? And do you notice how the disciples answer? They make a top ten list. Some say you’re John the Baptist or Elijah or one of the prophets. But when Jesus asks it even more directly to them, he says, who do you say I am? And Peter answers. And this is one of those times when Peter wasn’t talking with his foot in his mouth, which he was apt to do sometimes. He says the one single best answer, You are the Christ.
And then, did you notice a little later in the reading, what does Peter do? He reinserts his foot in his mouth, but that’s another sermon. I’m not going to touch that today. But Peter answers well. You are the Christ. In the Christian worldview, that is the one single best answer to the question of the identity of Jesus. He is the Christ. And it’s not just acknowledging a name of Jesus. Okay, Christ is not Jesus’ last name; it’s his title. The word Christ in the Greek language means anointed one, chosen one. The Hebrew equivalent would be Messiah, as we know, the chosen one. The one sent by God to deliver and save his people. He’s the one, the Messiah, the chosen one who was promised so long ago… and now he has come. And to confess Jesus as Christ is to confess all of that.
Excuse me. And Peter does that. He confesses with his whole heart that Jesus is that Christ, the chosen one. And here’s something really interesting about this event here. That it takes place in the area of Caesarea Philippi, which is in the northern part of modern-day Israel today, very close to the border with Lebanon. I’d love to take you there sometime. I’d love to go to Israel and see that this is a wonderful place where this happened.
And what was there during that time—in fact, the remnants are still there in Caesarea Philippi—is a large area of several shrines that were set up by the Greeks and the Romans to various gods. There was a temple to Zeus and to all kinds of other so-called gods there. And they’re set next to a hill, and behind them is a hill with all kinds of little niches cut in it, where there would be statues of all these different gods that the Greeks and Romans worshiped.
Now, it’s reasonable to believe that Jesus and his disciples were near to this area or even right there at this place of all these temples and statues of these other so-called gods. It’s there that this event could have happened. And it’s as if Jesus is standing right next to or in front of all these so-called gods and says to his disciples, hey guys, you know what people say about these gods, right? Who do you say that I am? And so what a response by Peter actually here. I like to give Peter a hard time, but he’s right on with this. In the shadow of all these other gods who compete against the only God, and despite standing even on their home turf, despite their popularity with the people of the area and the government, Peter speaks up and confesses, Jesus, you are the Christ, the chosen one, the anointed one. That is the single, one single best answer to that question.
And it’s the one single best answer for Christians today who continue to confess who he is and have this question put to them. For us today, the question is still there. Jesus says, who do you say that I am? And it seems like it gets asked in various ways, especially each year around Christmas and around Easter, when Jesus becomes a big topic of discussion and even gets on the front cover of Newsweek or Time magazine, questioning, who is he? Who was this guy? Did he even exist? And your friends, your relatives, your neighbors, maybe even your enemies, may also ask this question of you. And that can be a very difficult question to answer sometimes.
It’s difficult to confess that Jesus is the Christ sometimes in this world. It’s difficult to confess that Jesus is the Christ in situations like at work, at a meal, in class, even in an email, a text message, on Facebook, while you’re walking next to somebody on the treadmill, traveling on a plane, or just speaking to somebody over your backyard fence, or somebody at your front door. It can be difficult to talk about Jesus when the topic of discussion turns religious in nature and you get asked, well, who do you say Jesus is? And you can’t say it. Maybe you’re tongue-tied or just too scared. And instead of the one single best answer, maybe you make a top ten list. Or you look for some wiggle room in answering, and you may fail to confess who Jesus really is. You’re not bold like Peter. And perhaps it maybe even leaves you feeling ashamed about it.
Well, it’s my hope that in those situations, your response will be like Peter. You’re eager to respond with that one single best answer that Jesus is the Christ. He’s the one. He’s the one that was promised for so long. He’s the chosen one sent by God to be your Savior. Jesus of Nazareth was crucified and buried and risen again, as Peter said in that Acts reading; Jesus saves you from your sin in this broken world. And he did so by going to the cross and dying for your sins. That’s not something to be silent about.
Although right after Peter confessed this, Jesus told him and the disciples not to tell anybody about him. But he hasn’t said that to us. No. We get to tell people about Jesus, and that should be our response. He’s the Christ. He’s the chosen one. He’s the one sent to save us from our sins. We get to be commissioned by Jesus to go out and tell people that he is the one. We get to proclaim the gospel, that good news of Jesus, by teaching God’s word, and we get to witness it in the sacrament of baptism that we got to do today. Good timing on your part. Thank you for having a baptism today. We saw that gospel come to Sawyer’s life, and we get to tell others about it and see Jesus come into their life too.
In Matthew’s account of this, we read it today from St. Mark, but in Matthew’s account, Peter, when he confesses, you are the Christ, he also adds, you are the Christ, the son of the living God. That’s the kind of God we serve—a living God. One who is alive. Not a God who just sits in a little temple or in a little niche on a hillside somewhere. We have a God that does things and does things for us. We have a God who comes to us with mercy and forgiveness, and he brings it to us in water, in bread and wine, and in the proclamation of his word. He saves us through his chosen one, the Christ, his son Jesus.
And God wants us to respond by losing our lives and picking up our cross and dying to ourselves and to confess like Peter. To not be ashamed of him. We can also respond by not giving attention to the so-called gods of this world. That people can see in us that the gods of this world, money, status, grades, career, those are not our God. Jesus is the one. Those things don’t save us. Jesus does. It’s that important for us to be involved in that.
Really, it’s a life and death question that people can ask of us. Not for our sake, but for theirs. If people are asking us, who do you say that Jesus is? We know. We want them to know. It’s for their sake. Because there are people who don’t know about this Jesus, who has saved them too. So I hope that this will be an easy question for you to answer whenever it’s shot your way. But it’s tough. No doubt. This world is making it harder and harder to confess this. It’s a difficult world. It’s getting more difficult to be a Christian, but that’s the time when God’s people really stand up and say, no, Jesus is the Christ. Not in a defiant, militant way, but so that mercy and love of Jesus is shared with them too.
May your response be that one single best answer. Jesus is the Christ. And that’s good news for you and for people that don’t know him—that we can tell them that there’s one who saved us and one who has saved them too. In Christ’s name, amen.
