The Rev. Dayle Casey Proper 16 -- A

The Chapel of Our Saviour Isaiah 51:1-6

Colorado Springs, Colorado Romans 11:33-36

August 25, 2002 Matthew 16:13-20

I'm told that when one enters the Benedictine order, the only question he is asked is, "What is your name?" No questions about where you went to school, or about your grades, or about your success in business. No questions about the positions you've held or the awards you've received. "Only your name, please. Who are you?"

"But what about my resume? What about all the thing things I've accomplished, all the things I've done? Don't they count for anything?" "No, we just want to know who you are." "You mean I have to stand or fall just on who I am, not on what I've accomplished?" That's disquieting.

You've noticed, haven't you, that even in simple social relationships, we are quick to jump to the question of what we do rather than just to rest on who we are. "Hello, I'm Peter Smith." "I'm glad to meet you. What do you do?" "I'm a software developer."

"Paul M. Hanson, 86, died Friday, August 13. Mr. Hanson was a retired landscape architect." Even in death, we are quick to define a person by what he did, not by who he is, someone who was loved, a child of God and inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, as if the way a person made a living, rather than the person himself, was the measure of his life.

We do this so much that we begin to think that we are what we've done. We like to think we are self-made men and women, people who create ourselves by what we do, and we stay so busy displaying the things we do that we seldom get around to asking the most important and basic question: Who am I?

Paul Tillich says that the ones who are best at avoiding this question are the righteous of the world. The pharisee of every age -- you and I, good people, all of us -- are slow to examine the question of who we are, slow to see that we are children of God, recipients of a gift, inheritors of God's world, not its creators. Because, to explore our identity, really to explore in depth the question of who we are, would lead us to the truth of the matter -- that we are not self-made, that our lives and our worth are not created by all the good works we do, but that we are, every one of us, dependents. Dependent upon God, upon God's creative love and upon his grace and forgiveness.

Who am I? It is not just the central question of the Gospels; it is the central question of the Bible.

"Who do people say the Son of Man is?" Jesus asks. And the disciples say, "Well, some say you are John the Baptist. Others say you are Elijah. Others say Jeremiah or one of the prophets."

And Jesus persists: "But you," he asks. "Who do you say I am?" And Peter answers, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God."

Who is Jesus? It is not only a question of the identity of Jesus; it is the question of our identity as well. The disciples' answers to Jesus' question said something about who they believed they were. Our answers to Jesus' question say something about who we believe we are. If our answers are different, then we are different. If Jesus is Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God, then who are we?

The question has been with us since Jesus himself walked the earth. N. T. Wright's recent book

-- Who Was Jesus? -- is only the latest in a long line of books that have asked the same question. In the early 18th century, a scholar named H. S. Reimarus began the modern quest for the "historical" Jesus. He searched the Gospels, but he did not see a son of God. He saw only a Jewish revolutionary. Later, in their study of the Gospels, H. J. Holtzmann and others searched the same Gospels, and they did not see a divine Son of God. They saw a great teacher of timeless ethical truths. Still later, Albert Schweitzer read the same Gospels, and the Jesus he met there was primarily an apocalyptic prophet who was obsessed with the coming of the end of the world. Today, the Jesus Seminar and N. T. Wright and you and I continue the quest. "Who was Jesus?" we ask.

Sixty years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer had a secure and comfortable teaching position at Union Seminary in New York City. Bonhoeffer, too, had met Jesus in the Gospels. The Jesus he saw was the same Jesus Peter saw, and it led him to conclude that he should return home to stand by Jesus at his Lord's trial in Germany. "Who is Jesus Christ for us today?" That's the question for twentieth-century Christians," said Bonhoeffer. And by answering the question as he did, by returning to Germany and going to prison with Christ rather than submitting to the Nazis, Bonhoeffer answered the question of who he was as well: a disciple of Jesus, not of Hitler; a son of God, not a son of fear. Bonhoeffer answered Jesus' question for himself in his day, and the Nazis executed him because they didn't like the answer he gave.

"Who is Jesus?" It is indeed the central question of the Gospels, the question that most separates Christianity from other religions. And it remains the central question for Christians in the twenty-first century. It is a question that brings uncertainty, even anxiety, because our answers, like Bonhoeffer's answer, carry deep implications.

Some of you will remember my telling you about my own experience with this question during my first year in seminary. Our New Testament professor, O. C. Edwards, assigned a paper. We were to answer just one question: "Is Jesus the expected Messiah?"

I covered every possible angle. I studied every group in ancient Israel. Was Jesus the Messiah the pharisees expected? Nope. Was he the Messiah the Scribes expected? The Essenes? The Priests? The Sadducees? What about the disciples? No. In every case, with all kinds of supporting evidence and footnotes, I concluded that Jesus was not the expected Messiah.

I aced the paper. But I was used to that. I was a hard worker and reasonably intelligent, a diligent student. Considering at all the work I'd done and all the cogent arguments I'd made, Father Edwards was duly appreciative. He gave me the A+ I deserved for my work.

But he put only one brief comment on the paper. "Good job," he said, alongside the grade. "You've neglected only one question. Is Jesus the Messiah you expect?" Now that I was not used to!

Since then I've forgotten an awful lot about the Scribes and the Pharisees and the Essenes, but I've never forgotten Father Edwards' question.

Let me tell you another story about seminary. But it's also a story about you and me, about all of us.

Three people died one day, and all three ended up at the Pearly Gates at the same time. One was a Lutheran, one was a Roman Catholic, and one was an Episcopalian.

It was St. Peter's day off, so Jesus himself was administering the entrance exam. "The question is simple," said Jesus. "Who do you say that I am?"

The Lutheran stepped forward and said, "The Bible says...." But he never got to finish, because Jesus interrupted him and said, "I don't care what the Bible says. Who do you say I am?" And the Lutheran said, "Well, I know that the Bible says that...." And with that he fell through a trap door to that other place.

The Roman Catholic stepped forward and said, "The Pope says...." But Jesus interrupted him and said, "I don't care what the Pope says. Who do you say I am?" "Well," said the Roman Catholic, "I know that the Holy Father is convinced that...." And he too promptly fell through to that other place.

Jesus then turned to the Episcopalian and asked, "Who do you say that I am?" The Episcopalian replied, "You are Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God!" Then, just as Jesus smiled and gestured for the Pearly Gates to be opened, the Episcopalian continued, "but on the other hand...."

Who is Jesus? Is Jesus the Christ? Is the One on the Cross God's Anointed, the One sent by God? Is the Crucified who God is when God assumes human form and human life and human death? Or do we wait for another messiah? Perhaps for the gentle Good Shepherd of John's Gospel, or for a great teacher of timeless ethical truths, or for a leader of revolutionary causes and a champion of the poor, or for a prophet like Elijah or Jeremiah or John the Baptist? Perhaps we just expect a Great Buddy, someone we can all be pals with? Who is Jesus Christ for us today?

"But you," the young girl asks. "Tonight, in the high priest's courtyard, who do you say Jesus is for you tonight, Peter? You are one of his followers. You are a Galilean; your accent gives you away." And Peter said, "I do not know the man."

That was "one particular sermon I will always remember," says Frederick Buechner. It was a sermon preached by Robert MacFarlane in an Episcopal Church in Glen Ellyn, Illinois. I will always remember that sermon, says Buechner, "though I cannot be sure [if what I remember] is exactly the sermon he preached because of course it is the sermons we preach to ourselves around the preacher's sermons that are the ones that we hear most powerfully.

"He was talking about Saint Peter in any case, how Peter was sitting outside in the high priest's courtyard while Jesus was inside being interrogated. A maidservant came up and asked him if it wasn't true that he was a follower of this man who was at the root of all the trouble. Then Peter said, 'I do not know the man.' It was Peter's denial, of course, MacFarlane said: I do not even know who he is. It was the denial that Jesus himself had predicted, and the cock raised his beak into the air and crowed just as Jesus had foretold.

"But it was something else too, MacFarlane said. It was a denial, but [it] was also the truth. Peter really did not know who Jesus was, did not really know, and neither do any of us really know who Jesus is either. Beyond all we can find to say about him and believe about him, he remains always beyond our grasp, except maybe once in a while the hem of his garment. We should never forget that. We can love him, we can learn from him, but we can come to know him only by following him...." (Telling Secrets, 1991)

Like Bonhoeffer. And like Peter. We can come to know Jesus only by following him, by following him as Peter followed him right into the high priest's jurisdiction, and to the Cross and the empty tomb. And it is there in the courtyard with Peter that find out who we are just as it was in the high priest's courtyard that Peter found out who he was. And it is there at the Cross, and later at the empty tomb, that we find out who Jesus is just as it was there that Peter found out who Jesus is.

It's so much safer, isn't it, to think or say what others think or say than it is to follow. It's so much safer than to venture ourselves into the high priest's courtyard and to dare to walk to the foot of the Cross. Some think you are John the Baptist, Jesus. Some say you are Elijah or Jeremiah or one of the prophets. Some say you are the Good Shepherd, or a great healer or teacher, or a pal. Some say you're a revolutionary. Some say you're a fraud. "But you," Jesus persists, "who do you say I am?"

It is not only the question of Jesus' identity; it's the question of our identity, a question that is perhaps most critical and most intense at three times of life, though it's always lurking there just below our consciousness.

The question of who we are and who God is is most critical and intense during adolescence, at the peak of our worldly success -- the so-called mid-life crisis -- and as we approach the end of our lives. These are the three times in life when we become acutely aware that what we do in life -- as important as what we do is, and it is important -- is not nearly as critical to us as who we are and who God is.

Adolescence -- that time in life before our personal skills and abilities and interests are well known or developed. It's a time when we can't yet really define ourselves by what we've done for the simply reason that we haven't yet done much. Often we are floundering around with what to do with our lives. And we ask, "Who am I, anyway?" And it's very important that we do that, because it's really a spiritual question we're asking. It's not only the question of who I am, but also the question of who God is. "And what in the world is life all about, anyway?" we want to know.

And "mid-life" -- that time of life when we've reached the height of whatever worldly success we're going to have, a time when we've got the big house and an important position in the corporation and a vacation spot in the mountains and the mortgages to match, and we begin to ask ourselves the question again: "Is this it? Is this what I've been living for all these years? Is this what life is all about? Is this all there is to it?" It's the time, as Harold Kushner puts it, "when all we ever wanted isn't enough." And so we begin to ask the spiritual question again: "Who am I anyway? Is this all there is? Just what does it all amount to?"

And finally, as we approach the three-score and ten year limit of the span of life that God has given us, we begin to realize, more acutely than ever perhaps, that all the defining of ourselves by what we have done, all the identifying of ourselves by our accomplishments and accumulations, and by all our degrees and honors and bank accounts and credit cards...we begin to realize that all this finally counts for little, if anything, and that it cannot save us at the hour of our deaths from the spiritual question that Jesus has been asking us all our lives, but that we keep putting off: "Who am I? And who are you, Jesus?"

If Jesus is not the Messiah, then who is he? If Jesus is not the One sent by God, God's Anointed, then what is all the singing about?

If, as Peter confessed, Jesus is Messiah, the Christ, if Jesus is God himself in human flesh, then what about you? And what about me? What about us?

If Jesus is the Christ, if Jesus is human being as God means human beings to live and be, then what about you in your teenage years as you consider your vocation? Who is Christ to you as you plan your future and your work, as you begin to shape the life that you want for yourself?

If Jesus is the Christ, if Jesus is Redeemer, the divine measure of meaning and life, then what about you in your mid-life crisis? Who is Christ to you with all your questions about yourself, about all your barns and your failures and your successes and the purpose of your life, and all your questions about what it's all about?

If Jesus is the Christ, if Jesus is Savior, then what about you who are now within shouting distance of the three-score years and ten of human life. Who is Christ to you as you consider your future?

In 1872, John Bowring died. He was eighty years old. He had lived not only the three-score and ten of the span of our years; he had also been given strength for the ten additional years that the psalmist notes is sometimes ours by the grace of God. Bowring had done a lot of things in his long life. He was a successful man by any of the world's measures. He was, to begin with, an accomplished linguist. Able to converse fluently in dozens of languages, he had an important career as a interpreter. But his resume also included considerable achievements as a biographer, a naturalist, a financier, a statesman, and a philanthropist. He had lived a life he could be proud of.

But today, as far as I know, Bowring is remembered for just one thing. He is remembered for a hymn he wrote: "In the Cross of Christ I Glory." In this hymn Bowring identified who he was above all, above all the things he had done and achieved in life. Above all, he was a child of God, an anointed of God and heir to the kingdom of heaven, not because of anything he had ever done, but because of what God had done for him.

In the cross of Christ I glory,

towering o'er the wrecks of time;

all the light of sacred story

gathers round its head sublime.

Towering over all the things I've done, writes Bowring -- over all the hopes and fears and pains and pleasures and successes and failures of life, towering over time and history itself -- is the basic fact that I am a child of God, one of God's anointed for whom Christ died. That is who Jesus is, and that is who I am, he sang.

Who is Jesus? Who are you?

In the Name of God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.