A Fourth Church Sermon by Sarah Jo Sarchet

August 22, 1999 | 9:30 and 11:00 a.m.

What Do You Say That I Am?

Sarah Jo Sarchet
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Matthew 16:13–20
Romans 12:1–8

Prayers of the People by Carol J. Allen

“Everyone lived in hope and dread that she or he would be the one called forward to receive a word from God,” writes minister, professor, and author Renita Weems, describing the revivals held in the Pentecostal Church in which she grew up. The Revivals came complete with traveling evangelist who, at the end of each evening would stand quietly, post-sermon, gazing contemplatively over the congregation, until his eyes fell on one particular person, whom he beckoned forward. “This was the highlight of the service,” she writes, “the time to move from the universal to the particular.” Renita remembers vividly the time she was called forward, knees trembling, anticipating the promised word. She recalls sitting perfectly still, trying to avoid the evangelist’s gaze, yet hungry for a word from God. “You, yes you, in the green checkered blouse. Yes you, Come forward. The Lord has a word for your life.” Nervously, she made her way to the front, wondering if the zipper was straight on the back of her skirt. “What’s your name?” “Renita.” “Do you love God?” Yes, sir.” “Do you believe that the Lord can speak to you?” “Yes, sir.” He placed one hand on a Bible, the other on her shoulder. Renita trembled, aware that this was the moment for which every believer waited, to receive a direct message from God. (Excerpt from Renita Weems, Listening for God: A Minister’s Journey Through Silence and Doubt, p. 91–97)

Pentecostal or Presbyterian, are we not all like Renita at one time or another, anxious to be given a direct word from God to direct our paths? Of all the pastoral conversations I have in my office, the most common revolves around the struggle, “I just wish God would tell me what to do. I wish God would speak to me.” After I confess that the crystal ball I was given upon graduation from Seminary is broken, we talk. We talk about who God is, and who we are.

In our Gospel text this morning, Peter and Jesus have just such a conversation. Jesus began by asking, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples came up with a variety of answers: a prophet, Elijah, John the Baptist. Then, as now, popular answers revealed angles of Jesus’ character, but failed to discern the depth and fullness of Jesus’ identity. “Who do people say that I am?” Then, as now, the answers varied: A great teacher, a social reformer, a streetwise revolutionary, a gentle lover of nature, a mystic, a healer. Grains of truth, but not statements of faith. Then, as now, surely there was more.

So Jesus made a move, away from the universal question, toward the particular. He became personal. “Who do YOU say that I am?”

Perhaps Peter felt Jesus’ gaze fall upon him. Perhaps Peter was searching for answers to his own uncertainty. Perhaps Peter had issues of his own and desperately needed a word from God. Impetuous, impulsive, inconsistent, unlikely, Peter took the leap of faith that became the turning point for the gospel of Matthew and the turning point of his own life: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

Like a good day on Jeopardy, or Ben Stein’s money, bingo, Peter nails the answer!

“Blessed are you, Simon bar Jonah!” Says Jesus, “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.”

Biblical commentator Tom Long notes that Peter is, literally, a gifted student: his confession of faith is a gift from God. Faith is not a gold medal in the spiritual high jump, or a sign of our ability to leap to new sacred heights. Faith is a sign of God’s willingness to bend down to us and grant us moments of revelation. Faith is experiencing Emmanuel, God with us. (Thomas G. Long, Matthew, p. 185)

“Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.”

But Jesus didn’t stop there. With his declaration of faith Peter got more than he bargained for, Peter got a word directly from God, a word for his life, a word that changed his life. Listen:

“You are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my church.”

You see, there’s more that comes with the gift of faith than blessing. There’s also identity, and purpose. Listen again:

“You are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my church.”

Suddenly, the conversation is not just about who Jesus is. Now, it’s about who Peter is. It’s as if Jesus were saying, now that you know who I am, you can begin to know who you are, and what you are about.

“You are Peter, and on this Rock I will build my church.”

In Jesus’ spoken language, Aramaic, the words for ‘Peter’ and ‘rock’ are identical. The pun is riddled with meaning. Peter, in some ways the least rock-like of the disciples, is somehow to be foundational to the church. The Roman Catholic Church traces its papal lineage back to Peter. Protestants resist the prominence given to Peter, declaring that it is Peter’s faith, not Peter himself that is foundational. Reformation-era disputes need not be read back into this text, for regardless of how the passage has come to be understood in Church history, it is about Peter and Jesus and a relationship, and an identity and a purpose that sort themselves out from that relationship.

I don’t think this passage is as much about Peter discovering who Jesus is, as much as it is about Jesus helping Peter discover who Peter is, in relationship to God.

When N. T. Wright, served as chaplain at Worcester College, Oxford, he intentionally spent a few minutes with each of the incoming undergraduates. Most of the students were happy to meet him, he recalls, but some were embarrassed and squirmed, confessing “you won’t see much of me, I don’t believe in God.” His stock response was “Oh, that’s interesting. Which God don’t you believe in?” After a moment of surprised silence, the students would stumble out a few phrases about the God they don’t believe in: “a being who lived up in the sky, looking down disapprovingly at the world, occasionally intervening to do miracles, sending bad people to hell while allowing good people to share his heaven.” To which N. T. Wright had another stock answer: “Well I’m not surprised you don’t believe in that God. I don’t either.” Shock registered on students faces, then for some, a knowing look of recognition, since it was rumored that half the college chaplains were atheists. “No, he would continue, I believe in the God I see revealed in Jesus of Nazareth.” (Marcus Borg, N. T. Wright, The Meaning of Jesus, Two Visions, p. 157)

That was the God Peter had seen. Peter had lived with Jesus, studied with Jesus, listened to Jesus’ blessings for the poor and vulnerable, heard Jesus’ challenges to the privileged and protected, witnessed Jesus’ compassion and care and healing, observed and participated in the miracles of abundance and transformation as people were changed by Jesus’ presence and words and ways. He had experienced a God who drew close to God’s people, with love and grace and compassion and hope.

Sometimes I’m like N. T. Wright’s students: sometimes I know more about the God I don’t believe in. Its safer for me to wrestle with doctrine and dogma, theologically jousting the universal themes of faith and divinity. It’s harder and riskier for me to make a particular statement of faith, for those kind of statements must also be about how God has been present to me and who God asks me to be. If I trust in my relationship with God through Jesus, then I have to trust in Jesus’ ways as revelation of God’s will, then and now. If I believe Jesus healed the sick, then I have to be about healing in my own life. If I believe Jesus cared for the poor, then I have to care for the least of these. If I believe Jesus included the outcast, the sinners, the hard-to accept, the undesirable, then I have to learn that kind of hospitality. If I believe Jesus called into question the law, and declared love a higher law, then I have to set aside my own preference for judgement and replace it with a stretching and inclusive love. Who I say Jesus is has to shape who I am and what I’m about.

Confessions of faith are not statements of verifiable fact. To say “Jesus in the Messiah” is not a fact about Jesus in the sense that “he was five feet three and weighed 140 pounds” is a fact about Jesus. The latter statement was open to verification by anybody with a tape measure and a scale. The former statement involves conviction and commitment. To see Jesus as “Son of God” or “Wisdom of God” or “Christ” or “Messiah” means to take seriously what we see in him as a disclosure of God. (Borg, The Meaning of Jesus, p. 152)

And to take that seriously is to let it shape our own lives.

I am not a traveling evangelist who can speak a prophetic word to you. But I can ask you, “Who do you say that Jesus is?” And, perhaps more importantly, “How does what you say about Jesus shape who you are and what you are about? How does your relationship of faith give you identity and purpose?”

To be Christian is to affirm, “Here in Jesus, I see more clearly than anywhere else what God is like.” The New Testament writers try over and over to convey the conviction that Jesus is the image of an invisible God. Jesus is the image of God: in Jesus, we see and know what God is like.” (Borg, The Meaning of Jesus, p. 154–156)

And in Jesus, we see God’s will, made flesh, God with us, in hopes that we might get it, like Peter got it, and live God’s will in our own lives, building the Church and building our lives according to God’s will.

As she looks back, Renita Weems says that of all the scores of evangelists she rose to hear, only one said anything worth remembering. The evangelist’s word for her was both a simple statement and a profound prediction: “Young lady, where you are now is not where you will be next year.” She says that somehow in that moment, in an answer that was both banal and significant, she heard God, and her encounter left her not the same.

What the evangelist, in effect, revealed to Renita was the reality that she was on a journey, a journey of faith, destination unknown, but destination guided by God.

Peter did not leave his encounter with faith the same either. He too was on a journey. He listened to Jesus and learned from Jesus. He followed Jesus faithfully, but not perfectly. He went steadfastly with Jesus to the Garden of Gethsemene, and fell fast asleep. He boldly declared his faith, and just as boldly denied Jesus three times. He journeyed with Jesus to the cross. He experienced the risen Christ, who asked him three times, “Peter, do you love me.” Three times, Peter said “Yes Lord, you know that I love you.” And three times, Jesus spoke a word for Peter: “Feed my sheep.” Peter let his relationship with Jesus shape his journey. And less than a year later, Peter was acting as lead evangelist in the community, sharing and living his faith, building the church as Christ’s body on earth.

The conversations with people in my office are about journeys. The journeys of hearts and minds and souls honestly searching, asking, “How do we know God’s will?” As faith and trust grow, the conversations often move from the universal themes of God’s providence and grace and love and mystery to the particular cares of the person: relationships, jobs, fears, choices, callings, changes, uncertainties.

Friends, I am not an evangelist with the gift of prophesy. But I can tell you with confidence, where you are right this moment is not where you will be next year. Your life will change, your circumstances will change, your hopes and dreams and goals will change.

Let your relationship with Jesus, the Messiah, the son of the Living God, be part of that journey. Receive the gift of faith God offers you, and know that faith comes with more than blessing. Faith comes with identity, and purpose. You are a child of God, called to do God’s work. Let your faith change you, and shape you, and grow you, that God would bless you and use you for God’s purposes.

But how we ask? Paul in Romans 12, begins to tell us about the mysterious ways in which we discover God’s will.

“Don’t be conformed to this world. Be transformed, by the renewing of your minds in Christ Jesus, that you may know the good and acceptable and perfect will of God.”

Know that this world did not give you birth. This world, with its ways, its status, is power, its prestige, nothing in this world could create you, or redeem you, or sustain you. So don’t pattern yourself after this world. Don’t conform to the world’s standards or the world’s ways. Be transformed, by the renewing of your mind, by focusing on the will of God. But how? Through prayer, and worship, and reading and studying Scripture, and Christian fellowship, conversation, and community. By serving and giving, and surrounding yourself with Christians and Christ-like people. By surrendering, not to worldly influences and ways, but to seeking the will of God in all things.

But what is the will of God?

Paul tells us, in so many words, that the will of God is that we search for the depth and fullness of our own identities and purposes. To honestly evaluate ourselves, and be humble. Appreciate other’s gifts. Know that we are all different, and God has made us so. Prophecy, ministry, teaching, encouraging, giving, leading, caring. All are necessary, and no one of us has all of those characteristics. But find and use your gifts, for God is asking you to be the church, Christ’s body on earth. God is telling you, you are mine, be transformed to be like me, and in so doing, discover more fully who I know you to be, and what I want you to be about.

Let God use you in the unfolding of God’s good and acceptable and perfect will for your life.

So be it, and may it be so. For each of us, for all of us. Amen.

Prayers of the People
By Carol J. Allen, Associate Pastor

Creator God, we thank you for the “bodies you have designed for us, the minds you have opened to creative thoughts, the spirits you have filled” with a desire to serve, and so we pray in gratitude for all whom you love.

“Claimed as your own, called into community, gifted with Spirit to carry your Word and your ways” (Glen Rainsley), Gracious God, we pray for the needs of the church, the whole human family, and all the world. Hear our prayer.

Bearer of the Wounded Ones, Comforter, the One who carries us when we are hurt or weary, help us to extend the sense of peace we find here into places of special need through words and deeds.

We pray that churches of all traditions may discover their unity in Christ and exercise their gifts in service of all.

We pray that the earth may be freed from war, famine, drought and disease, and the air, soil, and waters cleansed of poisons.

We pray that those who govern and maintain peace in every land may exercise their powers in obedience to your hopes for humankind.

God, strengthen this nation to pursue just priorities so that the races may be reconciled; the young, educated; and the old, cared for; the hungry, filled; and the homeless, housed; and the sick, comforted and healed. Grant those in emotional distress and relational conflicts the touch of your calm and stabilizing spirit.

Preserve all who live and work in this city and its surrounding communities in peace and safety.

Comfort and empower all who face difficulty or trial; the sick, the differently abled, the poor, the oppressed, those who grieve and those in prison, those who are victimized by violence at home, on the streets, or in the workplace; especially those who are injured, who have lost loved ones or their livelihoods through natural disasters; we remember today those who struggle to save and be saved in the aftermath of the deadly earthquake in Turkey.

Especially, O God, remember the children. Enter into their spirits with your Spirit, strengthen them, give them hope, add to their lives, caregivers who will help them flourish and become all that you have created them to be.

Accept our thanksgiving for all faithful servants of Christ now at rest, who, with us, await a new heaven and a new earth, your everlasting realm, we pray to you, O God.

As a potter fashions a vessel from humble clay, you form us into a new creation. Shape us, day by day, through the cross of Christ, until we pray as continually as we breathe and all our acts our prayer; through Jesus Christ who taught his disciples to say together:* OUR FATHER, …

* adapted from the Book of Common Worship, Presbyterian Church (USA) Carol J. Allen