"The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 16, Year A)"

August 24, 2008

Matthew 16: 13-20

“When I was a child,” writes Paul to the Corinthians (and this is not from one of today’s readings), “I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways.  For now we see in a mirror dimly; but then we will see face to face.  Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known.”

When I was a three or four year old, as my mother will tell you, I did what most three or four year old children do: I asked questions.  “What is this?   What are you doing? Why?”  It’s part of our development that we wonder; it’s part of the way that we begin inching ever so slowly toward independence—developing the confidence to be a part of a strange world. 

From this came a time through primary school and into secondary school when I completely accepted that knowledge was the imparting or absorbing of facts.  I would read the book, listen to the teacher, study what I needed to know, take the test, and call myself a little more educated.  And the system seemed to work for a while until I began to realize that knowledge wasn’t all about accepting what other people told me.

Eventually I was introduced to the scientific method, which began to shift me toward knowledge as new discovery: not simply regurgitating what had already been discovered, but searching for answers to questions not previously asked.  And the more I discovered, the more questions there were to ask.  Becoming familiar with this process prepared me for the critical thinking necessary for higher education and beyond.

And I’ve heard accomplished academics, people with doctorates and high level masters’ degrees, say that the more they learn, the more they probe into their field of expertise: the more in turn they realize how much they don’t know.  Education, counter-intuitively, sometimes reveals darkness as much as it uncovers light.

Religion can be an awful lot like our progression of learning.  Many of us come to religion because we think that we need answers and that religion can give us those answers.  Why are we here?  Why do we suffer?  Why do we die?  And then we find out that religion doesn’t really answer those questions as we expected.  We struggle with how God lets a righteous person like Job suffer, or lets Joseph, one of his chosen people Israel, get sold into slavery.

At this point some people get turned off from religion and abandon it altogether, and some people treat it more rigidly—determined to tease from it clear, definitive answers that put all doubts and uncertainty to rest.  When our presiding bishop was here last summer, I stood up—a member of Generation X—and asked how the church might better respond to the peculiarities of younger generations.  Her response was a question; “how do you think we should respond?”

I wanted a definitive answer and got a question instead, which upon reflection may actually have been more substantive, more valuable, and more real than any answer would’ve been.  Perhaps our presiding bishop knew something of the wisdom of the Judaic tradition: that a good rabbi always answers a question with a question.  Maybe Jesus was being a good rabbi when he asked in today’s gospel account, “Who do people say that I am… Who do you say that I am?”

There’s a part of me that wishes he’d been more straightforward, sitting everyone down and saying to them, “now I want you to know: this is who I am; this is why I’m here.” And out of all the gospels, I’d expect this particularly in Matthew’s account with its emphasis on teaching.  These past few months we’ve heard the Sermon on the Mount and a lot of parables about the kingdom of heaven that perhaps raised as many questions as they answered. 

And now it’s time to hear the bottom line, or as we say in homiletics: the application.  How is all this relevant to us here and now?  What are we supposed to do with this information?  What has following Jesus meant?  How do we justify it?  Jesus would’ve probably gotten points deducted in a homiletics class because he wasn’t known for giving applications—“this is what I want you to do with this idea…”  He preferred to let ideas ruminate, to let people imagine, discern.

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”  And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”  Notice Jesus doesn’t tell them they’re right or wrong; he simply asks them, “Who do you say that I am?”  Peter exclaims, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God,” but again Jesus doesn’t say he’s right or wrong; he says “Blessed are you, for flesh and blood has not revealed this, but my Father in heaven.”

We are left to read between the lines and may reasonably deduce that Jesus is, in fact, the Messiah, even though at this point he hasn’t said so directly.  And Peter’s getting the answer right doesn’t really seem to be the point of the story, especially given what we know about the rest of the gospel: that Peter more often seems to get things wrong than right.  (And this makes it even more peculiar why Jesus chooses Peter as the rock on which to build the church). 

There was an ancient school of thought called Gnosticism that made its way into some pockets of the church.  One of its premises was that those who are truly faithful progress along a continuum of knowledge about God, and in doing so they become holier, closer to salvation.  The church eventually declared the Gnostic movement heretical, partly because of the church’s steadfast insistence that faith is not a progression of knowledge, but openness to God’s revelation. 

Perhaps to the surprise of a whole category of un-churched people today, the church essentially declared itself agnostic: not confined to the categories and limitations of knowing.  A Lutheran pastor with whom I did Clinical Pastoral Education reminisced about visiting a patient’s room and introducing himself, only to hear the patient say, “Well thanks, but I’m an agnostic.”  To which the pastor replied, “And what, you think I’m not?”   

What emerges for me hearing today’s gospel account isn’t that we’ve gathered one more piece of the puzzle in our quest toward somehow understanding, toward getting a grasp on what may be unfolding.  What emerges for me, rather, is that God is revealing God’s self to us in ways that defy explanation, and which may even seem downright confusing and unrealistic. 

Jesus doesn’t affirm at this point that he is the Messiah, and he even quite explicitly tells the disciples not to tell others he is the Messiah.  Perhaps Jesus is concerned that people already have too fixed an impression of what the Messiah is supposed to be, and that he is not exactly going to fit that conventional definition.  But more important than what Jesus doesn’t say is what he does say here: “Flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”

God’s revelation is different from conventional knowledge.  God intrudes upon us and reveals something so profound that it simply can’t fit into our categories of learnedness.  “Who do you say that I am?  Am I really what people expect when they look for the Messiah, the anointed one, the Christ, the next King David who’ll restore Israel to its mythological glory days?  Me: a lowly carpenter from Galilee who runs around with such simple, dense, uneducated fishermen?”   

When I was a child I played like a child, imagined like a child, dreamed like a child.  I thought things were possible that I would later write off as absurd.  When I became an adult I tried to understand, became frustrated when I couldn’t understand, and doubted when my mind got in the way of understanding.  And there were those pesky answers in the form of questions.

But following Jesus is transforming me back into a child.  Jesus says “let the little children come to me,” or “whoever does not enter the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” One day as Paul says I’ll see things as an adult; I’ll understand.  For now, I put my trust in God, in God’s grace.  I trust like a child.  I open myself to those things that don’t fit into adult categories of knowing. “Flesh and blood has not revealed this, but my Father in heaven.”

There is an Easter story that comes to mind.  “On the first day of the week, two of Jesus’ followers were going to a village called Emmaus, about seven miles from Jerusalem… While they were talking and discussing, Jesus himself came near and went with them, but their eyes were kept from recognizing him…. As they came near the village, he walked ahead as if he were going on.  But they urged him strongly, ‘Stay with us for evening is at hand…,’ so he stayed.”

“When he was at table with them, he took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to them.  Then their eyes were opened and they recognized him; and he vanished from their sight.  They said to each other, ‘Were not our hearts burning within us while he was talking to us on the road, while he was opening the scriptures to us?”

“And who do you say that I am?”

Amen.