For Sunday
Proper 16A
Collect
Grant, O merciful God, that your Church, being gathered together in unity by your Holy Spirit, may show forth your power among all peoples, to the glory of your Name; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
Reflection
The two questions Jesus asks are important to discipleship. The disciples have little reason to know this and we have little reason to know why. It is the answers, we might think, that are important. As if Jesus is gathering information or testing them or what have you. But this has far less to do with matters of certainty in response than with answering as an act of faith.
How much of modern Christianity is wrestling with what others say about Jesus? “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” meant for the disciples, the word on the street. And it could mean the same for us. And it could also mean Aquinas and Tillich and Pope Leo XIV as much as your neighbor or the Defense Secretary.
What do we receive as the image of Jesus from others? From the world? From how people talk about him.
Then we have the other question: “But who do you say that I am?”
That is the witness; and the personal declaration. Perhaps one that begins with what others say and blended with one’s own experience, reason, and understanding. Something closer to the truth, perhaps.
It is worth noting that the crowds are mostly guessing. They have a vision of what they think Jesus is supposed to be, shoehorning him into previous embodiments of divine truth. In this way, their answers are both safe and wrong. Peter, on the other hand, seems to shoot for the moon. Something they haven’t seen before and something they don’t really know: a Messiah.
I suspect Jesus is less concerned with whether this is the best answer, like a multiple choice test, but that this is what Peter sees. And this, too, is true.