The Rev. Dayle Casey
The Chapel of Our Saviour
Colorado Springs, Colorado
August 24, 2008

Proper 16 – A
Isaiah 51:1-6
Romans 11:33-36
Matthew 16:13-20

I’m told that when one enters the Benedictine order, the only question he or she is asked is, “What is your name?” No questions about where you went to school, or about your grades or your business or athletic successes. 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 things I've done in life?” “No, thanks, 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?” Now that’s disquieting!

You’ve noticed, haven’t you, that even we are introduced to other people, we are quick to jump to the question of what we do rather than just to rest on who we are. “Hello, I’m glad to meet you. I’m Peter Smith. I'm a software developer. What do you do?”

“Paul M. Hanson, 86, died Friday, August 13. Mr. Hanson was a retired landscape architect.” Even in death, we tend to define a person by what he did, not by who he is, a beloved child of God and inheritor of the kingdom of heaven, as if the way a person makes a living, rather than the person himself, is 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, and we stay so busy displaying the things we do that we seldom get around to the question of who we are.

Paul Tillich, one of the best known twentieth-century theologians, insists 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 works we do, but that we are, every one of us, dependents and mortal, mortals dependent upon God, dependent upon God’s creative love and upon his grace and forgiveness.

But few of us get through life without asking the question of our identity at some point, and the question of who I am is perhaps most likely to occur at three stages of life – during adolescence; at the peak of our worldly success, the so-called mid-life crisis; and as we approach the ends of our lives. These are the three times in life when we become most 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 are well known or developed – is a time when we can’t yet really define ourselves by what we've done, for the simply reason that in adolescence most of us 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 a deeply spiritual question we’re asking. It’s not only the question of who I am, but also the question of who God is. “Where did the world come from anyway? And what in the world is life all about?” we want to know.

And in “mid-life” – that time of life when we may have reached the height of whatever worldly success we’re going to have, a time when maybe we’ve got the big house and a key position in the corporation and a vacation spot in the mountains, and the mortgages to match – we often begin to ask ourselves the question again: “Is this it? Is this what I've been working 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 we may begin to realize that “all we ever wanted isn’t enough.” 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 mortal life the psalmist reminds us of, we begin to realize, perhaps more acutely than ever, 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, in the scheme of eternity, because it cannot save us at the hour of our deaths from the spiritual question that the Bible has been asking us all our lives, but that we keep putting off: ”Who is God? Who am I? And, by the way, who are you, Jesus?”

Who am I? Who is God? These are the central questions of life. And because they are the central question of life, they are the central questions of the Bible, and especially of the Gospels.

“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.”

“But you,” Jesus persists. “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, and our answers to Jesus’ question say something about who we believe we are. If Jesus is Messiah, the Christ, the Son of the living God, then who are we? Our personal identity lies in our response to the question, “Who is Jesus.”

There has been a spate of books and articles in the past two or three decades that all ask this question. But these recent books are only the latest in a long line of scholarly research that began to appear in the early 18th century, when a scholar named H. S. Reimarus began the modern quest for the “historical” Jesus, and, not surprisingly, they arrive at a variety of different conclusions. Three hundred years ago, Reimarus 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 Scriptures, 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 simply continue the quest. “Who is Jesus?” we ask.

Seventy-seven years ago, Dietrich Bonhoeffer asked the same question. In 1931, at age 25, Bonhoeffer was already an accomplished scholar who held a secure and comfortable teaching position at Union Seminary in New York City. Bonhoeffer, too, had met Jesus in the Gospels, and the Jesus he saw was the same Jesus Peter saw, the Messiah, the Christ. And Bonhoeffer’s recognition of Jesus as Son of God and Lord, led him to conclude that, under the circumstances, he could not continue his life in the security of the United States and Union Seminary while Jesus was being ignored or persecuted in his homeland, but that he had to return home to stand trial with Jesus 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, and by returning to Germany to insist that his people judge not only their personal lives, but also the life of their nation, by the measure of the Crucified Christ, 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’s presence in Germany, of course, challenged the Nazi’s power and, in time, Hitler had him arrested and then, on April 9, 1945, hanged, in Bonhoeffer’s thirty-ninth year and just three weeks before the end of the war.

“Who is Jesus?” It is indeed the central question of the Gospels? It is the question that most separates Christianity from other religions. And “Who is Jesus for us today?” 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. Our answers define who we are.

Three people died one day, the story goes, 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 began to speak. “The Bible says...,” he began. But he never got to finish, because Jesus interrupted him and said, ”I didn’t ask what the Bible says. I don’t care what the Bible says. Who do you say I am?” And the Lutheran began again with, “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 Holy Father says....” But Jesus interrupted him and said, ”I didn’t ask you what the Pope says. Who do you say I am?” “Well,” continued 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!” Jesus smiled, and just as he gestured for the Pearly Gates to be opened, the Episcopalian added, ”but on the other hand....”

Is Jesus the Christ? Is the One on the Cross God’s Anointed, the One sent by God to challenge the powers of this world to do justice and to love mercy even at the cost of his own life. Is this One God, the One who assumes human form and human life and even human death? Or do we wait for another messiah? Perhaps for a prophet like Elijah or John the Baptist? Or perhaps for the gentle Good Shepherd of John’s Gospel, or for another great teacher of timeless ethical truths? Perhaps, these days, we just expect a Great Cosmic 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.

“[MacFarlane} 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 then to the Cross and the empty tomb. And it is there in the high priest’s courtyard with Peter that we 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 about Jesus than it is to follow Jesus to find out for ourselves. Relying on what the Bible says or what the Church teaches about Jesus is so much safer than to venture ourselves into the high priest’s courtyard with Jesus, so much safer than to dare to walk with Jesus to Calvary. 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 even 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.

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 this morning?

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? And what is our relationship to Jesus?

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? What does Christ mean to you as you begin to consider the life God has given you and the work you are being called to?

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, and about all your barns full of crops or money and about 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 mortal life, or perhaps already beyond it? Who is Jesus and what does his Cross mean for you as you consider the future? Is there a future? If not, then what is the present and who are you now?

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 of mortal life 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, and he had enjoyed 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, 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, towering 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, a sinner for whom Christ died. That is who Jesus is, Bowring sang, and that is who I am.

Who is Jesus? Who are you?


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