Who do you say Jesus is? 

Reflecting on Matthew 16, Fr. Seb considers the identity of Jesus as the Messiah and how recognising Him as the Son of the living God reshapes our faith, our mission, and our life together as the Church. Reflection on the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 16, verses 13-20

 
‘But who do you say that I am?’ This is the question of all questions, and it is the question Jesus puts to his disciples in our Gospel reading today – ‘But who do you say that I am?’
 
It is – if you like – the foundation question on which all else follows because knowing how to approach this question of who Jesus is sets the tone of the faith we live and proclaim, and how, as the body of Christ, we establish God’s kingdom on earth.
 
So, who is this Jesus? It’s a question people have been grappling with ever since it was first asked by Jesus Himself. For the first several centuries of the Church’s history, many intellectual disagreements and squabbles played out precisely over this question. And today the public consensus over who Jesus is, is varied and confusing – the most important questions often are.
 
If you asked a random group of people who they thought Jesus is I imagine you would be given answers ranging from a teacher, a prophet, a guru, a good man, a madman. You may even encounter the view that Jesus was simply a fictitious figure who didn’t really exist, despite the opinion of New Testament scholars standing overwhelmingly against such a view.
 
Recall, though, that Jesus first asks the question with people in general in mind: ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ He then makes the question personal: ‘But who do you say that I am?’ In other words, we have heard what the common run of people might offer as an answer, but what about you – you who are closest to me – surely you have a clearer grasp.
 
Perhaps you can imagine yourself standing among the disciples as Jesus pushes for an answer that can adequately capture what it means to walk with this one whom the disciples were to come to know to be the holy one of God. What would your response be if Jesus asked you that question?
 
Have a think…
 
It is of course Peter who rises to the challenge and responds boldly, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ Through this Petrine affirmation of faith what is being expressed is at the very heart of what it means to be a Christian: to know in complete trust that to be in the presence of Jesus is to be in the presence of Almighty God.
 
And Jesus answers Peter: ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.’
 
And of course, we know from tradition that in the building of God’s Church St Peter was to meet a martyr’s death, crucified like his Lord, only upside down.
 
When God’s love flows through the channels of human sin it enters fully those places of darkness and brokenness to heal and restore them. But that means that the life of discipleship is not always easy. It means sacrifice and hardship. It means walking with Christ through suffering, death, and into new and everlasting life.
 
The trap Christians can sometimes fall into is grasping Jesus only in his splendour. But that is to not fully know what it means to affirm with Peter that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.
 
Jesus is always a juxtaposed kind of figure. He is two seemingly different ideas side by side in the one person. He is the Christ, he is the holy one of God, yet he is also the one we find hung on a cross around the year 30 AD, outside Jerusalem in an awful place called Golgotha, where criminals were sent to be crucified, in an experience that was lonely, humiliating, and agonizing. Isn’t there a kind of absurdity to this, yet this is Jesus, the Christ whose lordship takes him into the darkness of crucifixion and death, which he overcomes in the light of resurrection.  
 
And knowing who Jesus is – who Jesus fully is on account of all this – must then shape the entire tone and nature of our faith. It means that by our discipleship we enter a new reality whereby we are not conformed to this world but summoned to something radically different.
 
We follow the direction of Almighty God who in Jesus enters our existence at the lowest point, and in the world’s deepest dysfunction, so that the light of God may be found even in those places.
 
And the mission of the Church is to continually enable this work of salvation as the Body of Christ in our rich variety. We do this through our prayers, through our worship, especially in the Mass, through our community engagement, and through our hospitality.
 
So, a few questions for us: in affirming who Jesus is will you – like Peter – embrace the totality of what discipleship means? And having done that how might you more fully play your part in enabling the saving mission of God’s church?
 
Our gifts differ according to the grace given to us. How might God be calling us to be faithful, generous, hospitable, and pastoral as we respond with Peter to Christ: ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.’
Amen