who do you say that i am?

based on Matthew 16:13-20

About forty-eight hours ago, I wasn’t in Racine, but I was close, sort of.  I’d gotten up quite early that day to catch a flight from Asheville, North Carolina to Atlanta, and then from Atlanta up to Milwaukee.  I don’t know how many times I’ve flown in my lifetime, but I never get tired of having the window seat, and on Friday the view was spectacular.  The plane came in over Indiana and shot right up what felt like the middle of Lake Michigan where I could make out all those port cities, an oil tanker, and then Chicago’s downtown—its massive skyscrapers, so tiny from way up there.  The view was clear enough that I could follow Lakeshore Drive down to Hyde Park where I went to seminary and met Karla. 

 As the plane continued north, I wondered if I’d be able to tell which coastal town was Racine.  I wasn’t sure—no labels from way up high and no dotted line to tell you you’ve entered Wisconsin airspace.  But then there it was, as clear as anything.  From where I sat, Racine’s coastline was just an inch or two long, but it was definitely Racine.  Even from that distance, North Beach is an unmistakable sliver of sand and Wind Point and the lighthouse are wonderfully obvious.  With those two landmarks in mind our harbor came into view and I could just barely make out some of the downtown buildings.  The blue roof over Festival Hall and up the hill, the courthouse.  I strained to see our steeple, but it was too far.  Still, I sat there in my seat on that plane and imagined this room that I have come to know so well.  The warm wood grain on this pulpit and the way the sun floats in through those windows there.  And it was nice and strange to be so far away and yet to feel so close at the same time. 

 I found myself wondering—as I suppose pastors often do, either because their minds tend to drift or because they live with a weekly sermon deadline—I found myself wondering a bit more about our time together this morning and about our story from Matthew’s gospel, where Jesus looks at his closest friends and says, “Who do you say that I am?” 

 The day before I left North Carolina we were in Black Mountain visiting one of Karla’s good old pals, a college roommate.  That afternoon she and her young son took us to a neighbor’s house to meet some of her friends there—a wonderful couple with two daughters just a bit older than Sylvia.  They had a big garden and a swing set and a trampoline and space for kids to run and run and run, so all six of them were off to the races. 

 Back at the house, the adults stood in the kitchen chit-chatting.  It’s funny—children have this uncanny ability to make fast friends—on a playground, on the beach, in an airport even, or in someone’s yard.  Kids have this way, through play and laughter and their constant quest for fun, to make quick connections.  Adults aren’t always so skilled in this area.  Adults can talk for an hour without saying much of anything.  We can small-talk the day away without realizing it—without discovering or revealing much.  This, however, would not be the case that afternoon.  We’d been there for about ten minutes when Christopher, a Rastafarian with long, loopy dreadlocks and beard down to the middle of his chest looked at me and said, “So Ben, you’re a pastor, and so that makes me curious.  What is your philosophy in life and, you know, how do you make it all happen?” 

 I’m used to more benign questions, of course.  Where do you live?  Where did you grow up?  What do you do?  Oh, you’re a Presbyterian?  Do you believe in predestination?  You know, questions like that.  But this one:  “What is your philosophy in life and how do you make it all happen?”  Would that we could answer that question every day—and that we could make our lives accountable to our response. 

 Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”  Granted, it took him longer than ten minutes to ask it.  Their lives had come together and led them over time to this moment of truth-seeking and truth-telling.  But it was time, and Jesus needed to know, or at least he needed for them to think about it.  After all, most folks weren’t sure what to make of Jesus at the time.  Some thought he was John the Baptist, but many thought he was Elijah, or Jeremiah, or one of the other prophets, back from the dead for a second tour through life and more messages from God.  But Jesus was the presence of God—God incarnate in a person, Emmanuel, God-with-us.

 “Who do you say that I am?”  At the end of the day, it’s the question with which we must wrestle.  But oddly, it’s a question that we tend to dismiss when we think about our faith from a bird’s eye view, or maybe from a plane eight miles away.  I’d argue that when many of us muse over the content of our spirituality or our religious life or our Christianity, we often drift away from “Who?” and entertain instead the other interrogatives.  Sorry for the grammar lesson—chalk it up to my past as an eighth grade language arts teacher—but you remember the interrogatives, right?  Who?  What?  Where?  When?  Why?  We’re good with the others. 

 We’re good at “What?”  What am I?  I’m a Christian.  Eighty-three percent of Americans identify themselves as Christians.  For many of them, the “What?” is the easy part.  It’s a pendant cross on a necklace or a bumper sticker on the car.  It’s looking at a list of religious preferences on some random form and marking the box next to “Christian.”  But Jesus did not ask the disciples, “What are you?”  He asked them instead, “Who do you say that I am?”

 We’re good at answering “Where?”  Because for most of the eighty-three percent of Americans who call themselves Christians, it’s virtually impossible for us to think of our faith without thinking of a building.  This is partly why the institutionalized church is becoming less and less relevant these days.  It’s because “Church” isn’t a place—it’s a people; it’s a family.  Still, we’re good at answering “Where?”  First Presbyterian.  716 College Avenue.  But Jesus didn’t ask the disciples where they worshipped.  He asked them instead, “Who do you say that I am?”

 We’re really good at answering “When?”  9:30 am on Sunday morning!  Noon on Wednesday for Bible study.  And for some, Christmas, Easter…  We compartmentalize our lives so effortlessly—work, school, family, church…  Our schedules have so much power over our lives, and I know that many of us often feel captive to a somewhat constant sense that there’s just too much going on.  And so spiritual identity becomes one more aspect of life that has to be filtered through a cluttered, overscheduled calendar.  But for Jesus, there was no “When?”  Only “Who.”  “Who do you say that I am.”

 We’re good at answering “Why?”  Well, ok.  Maybe we’re not good at it.  But we like to wonder “Why?”  In fact, before I go too far, I’ll share with you that this October we have five Sundays to entertain the “why” questions of faith.  Why is there evil in the world?  If God loves us, why do we suffer?  Why are we even here in the first place?  Between now and October 2^nd, I’m inviting you all to submit your “Why? Questions” to me and that month in my sermons and in our time together in Sunday school we’ll wrestle with those questions.  From the onset I’ll admit that our faith can get lost in the “why” questions.  Jesus didn’t ask the disciples “Why?” but “Who?”  “Who do you say that I am?”

 And here’s an interesting one.  Another interrogative sentence beginner… “To what extent?”  Who?  What?  Where?  When?  Why?  And then this one:  “To what extent?  Or “How much?”  We’re good at answering that one.  And by “good” I mean that we’re… not good.  “To what extent?” is a question of quality that we often ask of ourselves and others in the Christian faith, even if we never actually begin a sentence with those words, “To what extent…”  But we often assume that faith and faithfulness are things that could be or even should be measured.  We hear that eighty-three percent of Americans call themselves Christians and wonder, “Really?  Really?”  We tend to think of people as “good” Christians or “strong” Christians or even “faithful” Christians, implying, of course that there are also Christians who are bad, weak, and unfaithful.  I often laugh to myself when I hear someone say something like, “Oh, they’re a good Christian family,” because I find myself having a fantasy conversation where I say something like, “Oh, they’re a horrible Christian family” or even “Oh, they’re a delightful pagan/agnostic family.”  Christianity is not a “To what extent?” faith.  It’s about “Who?” and it’s as simple as that.  Jesus asked the disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

 Christopher was cutting a cabbage for supper when he asked me the question.  “So Ben, you’re a pastor, and so that makes me curious.  What is your philosophy in life and, you know, how do you make it all happen?”  And I don’t always get this right.  I don’t always say what needs to be said.  I often look back and think, “Goodness gracious, Ben—could you have been more long-winded?”  But that day it just popped out.  Not what, where, when, why, how, how often, how much, or to what extent… but who.  I said “I am a follower of Jesus Christ, who I understand to be God fully with us.  And so I struggle and strive every day to make Christ’s Way my Way.”

 Back to the plane over the lake looking down on my home, thinking of you…  Unable much to distinguish one building from the next, one church steeple from the next, it was clear then too.  In the day-to-day clutter of our lives, it’s easy to get lost in lists and seas of information, but our faith, at least, is about one question:  “Who?”