Sermon: Who is Jesus, and who is the Church? (Aug. 27, 2017)

Pentecost 12A

August 27, 2017

Matthew 16:13-20

Grace to you and peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

            “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asked. “And who do you say that I am?” These questions have been in my head this week as I have continued to process the events in Charlottesville. There were many horrifying things about those events, but one of them for me was seeing white supremacists claiming that this was an expression of their Christian faith – their alleged faith in the same Jesus Christ that I proclaim! I heard a story this week about a former KKK member who said that when he made his commitment as a teenager, he slit his wrist and pledged covenant with the KKK and with Jesus Christ. In the same breath, he swore loyalty to two powers that are completely incompatible, at least in my understanding of who Jesus Christ is. “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks? Well, I don’t think I would be saying the same thing as those guys, yet we both claim faith in Christ! How do we reconcile that? How do we respond – as individuals, and as the Church?

            I think those questions – “Who do people say that I am?” and then, “Who do you say that I am?” – are always important to consider in light of what is going on in our lives and in the world around us. Because although aspects of God are unchanging, God is so complex and expansive that we might see God differently at any given time depending on what is most needful at that moment.  

            And so I ask you today, brothers and sisters: who do people you know say the Son of Man is, and who do you say that he is, today, at this time? Who is Jesus, when racist and anti-Semitic attitudes hit the streets and 1930s-style fascism makes a comeback? Who is Jesus, when our country is as divided as it has been since the Civil War? Who is Jesus, when even people proclaiming faith in Jesus disagree on what that faith implies, to the point of being diametrically opposed in the actions that stem from it? Who is Jesus?

Peter’s answer is that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the Living God. Jesus responds to Peter by telling him, “You are Peter (the word for “rock”), and on this rock I will build my Church.” In other words, Peter’s confession, his declaration of who Jesus is, becomes the basis of the Church of Christ. So clearly, this interaction also has something important to say about the character of that Church, who and how the Church is called to be. Who is this Church that proclaims Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God? This is an especially important question right now, as the Church discerns how to respond to a situation that reveals how very broken, divided, and hurting our country is.

 The first thing we can glean about the character of the Church, is that we are a Church that proclaims Christ even amidst conflicting gods. Let me explain. This story begins by saying, “Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi.” This is not a mundane detail of the story. Caesarea Philippi was a cesspool of sin, most of all, abusive political power and back-scratching, and religious idol-worship. It was named for two powerful political leaders, and it was the center of worship of the god, Pan. The city stood at the base of Mount Hermon, right against a large cliff known as “Rock of the Gods,” in honor of the many shrines build against it. In the center of Rock of the Gods was what was called “The Gate of

"Rock of the Gods" - a shrine to false gods - where Peter
made his confession of who Jesus is.

Hades,” because it was believed that this was where the god Ba-al would enter and leave the underworld. Against this backdrop of political power and religious idolatry, Jesus asks his disciples to state, loudly and clearly, who he is – as opposed to all that! When Jesus calls Peter “the rock,” it is over and against this rock of sinful false-god-worship. “YOU are the rock, Peter!” he says, “not all this mess! You [aka the Church] will be stronger than whatever false gods people are worshipping!”

So why does this matter to us as the Church today? Well, because false gods are still very much a threat to our faith. And no, I don’t mean Ba-al or Pan, I mean much more pervasive and sneaky gods – all those things that claim our attention or loyalty, that indeed pull us away from our relationship with God and from our Christian call to love and serve our neighbor. For example, like in Caesarea Philippi, we are sometimes guilty of putting our faith in political powers. Another common “god” is the god of wealth, putting our trust in money or material things. In light of recent events, the god of power has become pretty clear. We see this in the unnerving threat of nuclear war with North Korea. We see it in some politicians’ unwillingness to do what is right for fear of losing support from constituents or wealthy special-interest groups. We even see it in some church leaders who relish more in the size of their congregation and the influence of their position than in actually acting out the mission of Christ.

Other gods I’ve become aware of recently in my own life are the gods of privilege, comfort and safety. Even as I know that white people hold most of the power in this country – in politics, in academia, in the military, in sports, in the media and entertainment – and that my whiteness affords me a lot of privileges I did nothing to earn, I have a hard time doing anything to change that because those privileges make me very comfortable and make me feel very safe! Why would I want to give that up? And yet I know – they are false gods! I know this because if they were true gods they would bring life to all people, not just to white people like me. And when Peter proclaims Christ at the foot of that Wall of the [False] Gods, he is calling the Church of today to notice what false gods aim to have power over us – to recognize them, and then to proclaim Christ’s power over them!

The second trait of the Church we can see from Peter’s confession is, we are a Church who speaks up. When Jesus asks, “Who do you say that I am?” – if Peter had remained silent, Jesus would not have declared the Church be built upon him. Speaking up was a pre-requisite to forming the Church. Jesus did not build His Church upon silence, or waiting to gather the facts, or weighing consequences – he built it upon boldness, upon willingness to say what is true – even, as we’ve seen, when our false gods might have us say otherwise.

And yet since that moment, the Church has often fallen short of this qualifying characteristic. When the Nazis rose to power in Germany, the Church did very little to stop it, aside from a few people speaking out. In fact, some churches even adapted their theology to be consistent with that of the Nazis, and preached their support of that movement that resulted in millions of deaths. The Church was very much complicit in that dark time in history.

A few decades later, during the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not shy from calling out the Church on her silence. To be silent, he said, was to side with the oppressor. In his famous Letter from Birmingham Jail, he wrote, “All too many have been more cautious than courageous and have remained silent behind the anesthetizing security of stained-glass windows.” In other words, he implored the Church to do what Peter did: to proclaim boldly the mission of Christ into the world, not stay safely tucked away in her sanctuaries, and ignoring the plight of the marginalized outside the doors.

Of course, it would be impossible for the Church to speak out boldly, especially against the false gods of our culture, without the final trait I want to highlight today, which is that, we are a Church who forgives and is forgiven. After Jesus informs Peter that he will build his church on him, he gives Peter what we call the “power to bind and to loose.” It is the power to forgive sins or not. Of course, that power ultimately belongs to Christ himself – what is being given to Peter here is the power to announce it. However the logistics work – it is so important that Jesus gives this power, indeed this gift, to the Church. Because it is a difficult calling, being the Church. It is risky. It pulls us out of our comfort zones. Being the Church is not about coming here each week to find rest for our souls and sing some songs and see our friends and pray. Those are all good things, and often that is exactly what we find here. But the call of the Church is so much more than that. The call of the Church is to boldly proclaim Christ, in word and deed, into a world desperate to know him. It is to look at the political power dynamics, and the false gods, and ways our attention is pulled away from God, and say, “Christ is greater than all of that!” It is to care deeply about the marginalized and the oppressed – the very people that Christ himself cared for – and to serve them, even if it is not in our personal best interest.

That call is so, so hard, and we will definitely fall short. And so Jesus also gave us the continuing promise that in the Church, we would also find forgiveness. He gave us the promise that we could come here, hear words of forgiveness and love and life, and be strengthened to go back out into the world and keep trying. And he gave us the authority to say, “Christ gives this gift to you, too,” to the people who need it the most. All of this is who and what the Church is – speaking up in faith, speaking out against powers that would draw us away from God, and receiving and offering forgiveness. We do all this in faith and hope that all the world would know the love of our living God.

            Let us pray… God our rock, you have called your Church to speak up and speak out against the forces that defy you, and you offer us forgiveness. Give us courage to live out this call every day. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.