Who Do You Say That I Am?

People have been asking me about our holiday, and one of the things I’ve found myself saying was – “it was great. Having three weeks made all the difference. It took me a week just to wind down and become human again.”

 

And they knew what I meant by that. I didn’t have to explain.  We all know what it’s like to live life at a pace or in a manner that seems to subtract from our humanity rather than adding to it.

 

Life has this way of reducing us to our function. You have this job, or this role in life, and you know it’s not you. It’s what you do, it’s not who you are. But the demands on your time and your energy drain away a lot of your vitality, and there’s not much left over for the simple business of living your life and enjoying it.

 

A generation ago I could safely have asked how many young  mothers wonder if their life’s been reduced to one endless round of picking things up off the floor, washing, shopping, cooking and putting things away? And how many men wonder if they’re more than just a cog in some big moneymaking enterprise.

 

Today, with both partners working in most cases, it’s even more complicated. And the danger is that we lose something of ourselves and our identity in the middle of it all.

 

It’s only when we get the chance to take the foot off the gas for a week or two that we realise just how hard we’ve been running.  Slowing down for a while gives us a chance to catch up with ourselves.

 

I’ve been known to write the odd poem or two. But poems, like children, are a long time in gestation and hard to deliver. You can’t hurry the process. And I’ve hardly written a thing this year. Partly because I’ve struggled to make the time, and partly because I haven’t had the heart. The last thing I wrote were a few lines after the loss of my mother in January and since then I’ve felt like I’ve got very little to say.

 

But in the third week of our holiday, when we were by the seaside and there was nothing to be done but simply be, I managed to get the pen moving again. It’s not Wordsworth, but it’s a start, and I think it speaks into what our gospel passage is telling us this morning.

 

The Flotsam in the Bay

 

There’s no hurry in a beach walk

it’s an amble, not a stride.

Step out too quickly and you’ll miss

the gifts borne by the tide.

 

The point is not to get somewhere

or clock another mile.

It’s the manner of your travelling

which makes the walk worthwhile.

 

So let your gaze go wandering

as you stroll along the sand.

And when you find a treasure, pause

and take it in your hand

 

and wonder at the choice you’ve made.

Why did this speak to you?

This stone, or shell, or piece of glass –

its shimmer, shape or hue?

 

And why did others pass it by

and leave it in its place?

Because you’re you, and they’re themselves.

Our selfhood is a grace.

 

And grace it is, when we forget

our names along the way.

To find ourselves again amongst

the flotsam in the bay.

 

 

Is it just me, or is it the silent cry of all our hearts that in the middle of everything that life throws at us  we might find ourselves again?

 

Something’s been lost within us. And more than anything -we want to recover it.

 

And the good news this morning is that in Christ, we can recover it.

 

Because that sense of loss, that there’s something we’re missing, is a hangover from the fall.

What we’re missing is that communion with the Father which lets us know who we are. The loving gaze that holds us, and affirms us, and says ‘you are my beloved’.

 

A growing child needs the love of a good family around her so she knows her place in the world, and feels secure.

 

Without God, we’re like a child reaching out and finding only nothingness in return. Left to form our own identity from the scraps of information we can gather,  but knowing all the while that there’s a yawning incompleteness at the very centre of who we are.

 

Augustine wrote that ‘God created us for himself and our hearts are restless til they find their rest in him’. And there’s a reason why that’s his most famous quotation. It’s because it’s true. We feel the lack. We want to rediscover what it means to be fully human.

 

And that’s why I love the fact that Jesus’ preferred self-designation is ‘the Son of man’. Who do people say that the Son of Man is, he asks this disciples in this morning’s reading.

 

He’s called lots of things in the gospels – Lord, Messiah, Son of God, the one who came from the Father. But the title he uses of himself

is Son of Man.

 

Why does he choose that term? Why doesn’t he choose something less earthy and more divine?

 

Well, some scholars think he may have picked it up from the book of Daniel in the Old Testament. Daniel writes: ¹³“In my vision at night I looked, and there before me was one like a son of man, coming with the clouds of heaven. He approached the Ancient of Days and was led into his presence. ¹⁴He was given authority, glory and sovereign power; all peoples, nations and men of every language worshipped him. His dominion is an everlasting dominion that will not pass away, and his kingdom is one that will never be destroyed.

 

That fits with what we believe of Jesus.

 

But it seems that when Jesus uses this term of himself, what he’s trying to get across is that he is the authentically human one. You want to know what it looks like to be authentically human – human as God intended? Take a look at Jesus.

 

You could have had a look at Adam, had you been there, but Adam messed it up. He and Eve had perfect communion with God, and then lost it. Since then, none of us have been authentically human because that central relationship with God has been distorted by sin.

 

There are fine people in the world; good people; loving people. But none of us, not one, is entirely whole. Christ alone is the authentically human one – the Son of Man.

 

But he didn’t come simply to tell us that. He came to help us recover what we lost in Eden – that communion with the Father that flows out into all our living.

 

The work he did on the cross undid Adam and Eve’s choice and its consequences and now it’s possible for you and me to become authentic human beings also, through faith in Christ.

 

Through him, we can have peace and friendship and communion with the father; and from that safe place we can learn what it means to love our neighbour and ourselves.

 

This is why Jesus came – not to lead a political revolution or start a religious war. That’s what Jewish hopes were for the Messiah, and why he didn’t readily accept that title. Messiah he was, but not that kind.

 

No – in his own words, he came to seek and to save that which was lost. And that means us, and everything within us that’s haunted by our own incompleteness. He came to help us find God again; and in finding him, to find also our true selves.

 

And that’s why he’s so delighted with Peter’s insight in this morning’s reading.

 

“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” he asks the disciples. And they have no problem answering that one.

 

Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

 

And these aren’t bad answers. If the public were bracketing him with those kind of men they were at least in the right ballpark. But John, Elijah and Jeremiah were prophets. Jesus was the one they were anticipating. They were sigposts – he was the one they were pointing to.

 

So they’re good answers, but they’re not the whole story. Will the disciples fare any better?  They’ve been with him for a while now. Has anything sunk in?

 

And this is where it gets personal. “And what about you. Who do you say that I am?”

 

I would love to have been a fly on the wall at that one. Everybody’s happy to chip in when they’re talking about other folk. But when it comes to talking about themselves and their own thoughts, they suddenly lose their tongues.

 

How long was it before Simon Peter spoke? A heartbeat? An excruciating minute filled with lowered eyes and shuffling sandals? And when he spoke, did he bellow it out confidently or did he lower his voice as befits a man who’s saying something he can scarcely believe himself?

 

“You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”

 

God’s chosen one. The King from David’s line. The one we’ve all been waiting for. The saviour. That’s who you are.

 

And I think Jesus smiles at that point. I can hear the smile in what he says.

 

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

 

Simon is beginning to get it. He hasn’t understood it all, and in a few short verses we’ll realise how far off the mark he still is. But he’s beginning to get it. This man is the Saviour.

 

And for Jesus – that’s enough of a beginning to celebrate. The faith that Jesus praises here isn’t shiny and polished. Simon’s still clueless about lots of things, and we know how far he still has to fall.

 

And yet it’s this kind of faith, says Jesus, which will build the church and oversee the work of the kingdom.

 

Our faith doesn’t have to be perfect, but it does have to be personal.

 

If you and I are going to be put back together again, if we’re going to become fully human, that’s a particular piece of work God’s got to do IN US.

 

We’ve got to let him save us. From ourselves, our fears, our apathy, our doubts, our guilt and our sins.

 

How can he do that work within us, unless we open our lives to him? Unless we – like Peter – realise not just that he’s the saviour, but that he’s our saviour. Come to rescue us from everything in our lives that stops us from being authentically human?

 

If we nod in his direction, but don’t accept his lordship – we won’t change.

 

If we pay lip service to him out of respect, but keep our distance – we won’t change.

 

If we discuss theology til we’re blue in the face, but don’t acknowledge our need of a saviour – we won’t change.

 

This morning, this very morning, he holds our gaze and says – who do you say that I am?

 

Can you answer him?

 

If you can meet his eye and in your own stumbling, apologetic, grateful way say ‘you are our saviour and my saviour’ – I believe that you will earn a smile. And as you walk with him, and learn to rest in him, you’ll know the blessing of becoming more and more of the person God made you to be.