Who Am I?

The scripture referred to is Matthew 16:13-20.

Did you know that the original design of Batman's costume was for him to wear red, a little domino mask like Zorro and rigid bat wings. That was how Bob Kane, the artist, proposed he should look. His creative partner, writer Bob Finger, talked him into the look we have of Batman: all in black and grey disguised by a cowl with pointy ears and a cape. Interesting, right? But does it make any real difference in understanding Batman? No.

Did you know that Batman originally had a gun and used to kill bad guys? It's true. For the first 20 or so issues of Detective Comics where he first appeared, Batman carried and used a gun just like the character who inspired his creation, the Shadow. About 4 issues into his own comic book Batman stopped carrying a firearm. Eventually it became part of his code. Batman did not use or kill with guns. On the rare occasion that he has taken up a gun in the comics, it's been a big controversy. Because Batman hates guns. Now that fact is not a piece of trivia but important to how his character behaves and points to who he is.

Why does he act that way? Because as a boy he saw his parents shot and killed by a mugger with a gun. That's what set him on his path to become the scourge of crime. It's why he became an excellent athlete, why he studied criminology, why he uses his wealth to equip himself with the latest in crime-fighting equipment, and why he dresses up as a fearsome denizen of the night. That is essential to understanding who he really is.

I love trivia about the things I am interested in. But I know the difference between trivia and what's important. And I know the difference between what is important and what is essential. Today's gospel contains a question and an answer that are essential.

Jesus starts with what is important. “Who do people think the Son of Man is?” And the disciples answer with the names of some major prophets, including John the Baptist. The crowds get that Jesus is an important figure in sacred history, possibly a prophet back from the dead. So far, so good.

But that isn't what Jesus really needs to know. He needs to know if his disciples, his students, who have accompanied him for 3 or more years, who have seen his miracles and heard his teachings, who have lived with him and seen his character up close—if they understand who he really is. So Jesus cuts to the chase: “But who do you say I am?”

Was there a pause? Did they look at each other for a few uncomfortable moments, figuring out what to say? If Peter hadn't jumped right in, what might they have said?

We know what modern people say.

“Jesus was a great religious teacher.” Some people like Jesus' ethics. They like what he says about treating others as you wish to be treated and taking care of the poor and sick and the outcasts of society. They like what he says about justice and brotherly love. And Jesus was a great moral thinker. While a lot of his ethics overlap with those of other religions, he goes farther than others in saying we must love our enemy and that we should turn the other cheek. He has inspired people like Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. as well as groups like the Amish and the Quakers. Nobody has influenced moral thought more than Jesus has.

But in order to see Jesus only as a moral teacher folks have to disregard his teachings about himself. You have to ignore what he says about being God's son, about his authority to definitively interpret scripture and speak on God's behalf. You have to excise all his miracles, including his resurrection. Thomas Jefferson did just that, literally cutting those things out of two Bibles and pasting just the teachings Jefferson liked in a scrapbook.

Most people do that when dealing with the question of who Jesus is: pick out the bits they like and leave out what they don't. That means they have to ignore or dismiss some of the inconvenient truths we are told about Jesus in our earliest sources about him. You can only make him a capitalist if you ignore what he said about giving self-sacrificially to the poor and how he excoriated those who serve money rather than God. You can only make him a socialist if you overlook how often he made the protagonists of his parables landowners and entrepreneurs. You can only make him an anti-tax conservative by forgetting that when asked about taxes he said to give Caesar what is Caesar's, namely the money the government mints. You can only make him pro-democracy by blanking out on all he says about the kingdom of God. You can only make him a vegetarian if you are oblivious to the fact that a lamb was central to the meal of Passover which he celebrated. You can only make him a racist if you are blind to his reaching out to Samaritans, Gentiles and other non-Jews. For that matter, most racists who claim to be Christian, like the KKK, have amnesia when it comes to the fact that Jesus was a Jew. I actually had a supposedly Christian man respond to my pointing that out by saying, “You don't really believe that, do you?”

Another way to answer the question of Jesus' identity while avoiding what Peter says is by attributing to him views he did not express, or by twisting his teachings into shapes unrecognizable by people of Jesus' time. People keep trying to make Jesus a member of modern movements. Jesus was not a gun advocate; firearms weren't invented until 1200 years after his time on earth. Jesus cannot be against modern science for similar reasons. Jesus isn't a Democrat, a Republican, a Communist, a Sovereign Citizen, a member of PETA or of the Daughters of the Confederacy.

The problem is that rather than trying to think and speak and act like Jesus, people try to make believe that Jesus thinks and speaks and acts like they do. We each try to create a Jesus in our own image. We are afraid to let Jesus be Jesus.

That was even true 2000 years ago. Right after Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,” he rebukes Jesus for saying he will be killed by his enemies. One would think that the minimal requirement of being God's anointed would be knowing what his mission entailed. But Peter tells God's son that he is wrong. Peter, too, wanted a Jesus who conformed to his idea of what the Messiah should be.

It's pretty obvious what kind of Messiah the disciples expected Jesus to be. Someone like Batman, kicking bad guys' butts. Or more specifically, a holy warrior, like David, who ran the Philistines out of Israel. They expected him to drive out the Romans and set up a physical kingdom of God. They forgot that David was so steeped in war and bloodshed that God wouldn't let him build his Temple. (1 Chronicles 28:3)

So what kind of Messiah is Jesus? First of all, he is, as Peter says, the son of God. As John's Gospel says, “Though him all things were made...” (John 1:3) That gives him authority over everything. He made this world. He made us. What he says about how we should behave, we must agree to and act on.

What did he say? He preached love and forgiveness. He preached repentance and reconciliation. He preached peace and wholeness. He said that we should love God with all we are and all we have, and love our neighbor as ourselves. And then he backed it up. He prayed frequently and worshiped every Sabbath. He studied the scriptures and could quote them when appropriate. He explained them and expanded on them and applied them to everyday life.

He gave to the poor and urged others to be generous in giving to them. He fed the hungry. He taught women, which was unheard of then. He ministered to foreigners and outcasts. He healed countless folk who were blind, deaf, mute, epileptic, unable to walk or had leprosy, as well as those who were mentally ill. On 3 occasions he raised the dead.

The kind of Messiah most people wanted was someone who triumphed over evil by shedding the blood of others. Jesus triumphed over evil by letting others shed his blood. He flipped the traditional script of how you lead and how you win.

So what? Why is this important?

When we follow a leader we become like him. His values become our values. His words become our words. His acts inspire us to act more like him. If, like the original disciples, we acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah, the son of the living God, who was sent to show God's love for the world, to teach us God's truth and to save the world and the people God created, the only logical response is to follow him and become like him.

When I was a kid, I wanted to be Batman. My mom sewed me a Batman costume for Halloween, complete with cape and cowl. I jumped around and struck heroic poses. But I couldn't actually do what Batman does. And if I did, leaping off roofs, chasing criminals and punching people, I would have gotten into a lot of trouble. And the world would not have been a better place for my doing so.

We can do what Jesus did. Christian social workers and councilors and philanthropists can help the poor. Christian store owners and restaurant owners can donate surplus food to soup kitchens and food banks that feed the hungry. Christian teachers and missionaries can make sure girls and women all over the world get the same educational opportunities as boys and men. Christian lawyers and educators and churches can help the foreigners who flee here for help and a better life. Christian doctors and nurses and physical therapists and medical researchers and psychologists and other health personnel can heal and improve the lot of people suffering from diseases. 

There are 2 other groups who can help in all of these areas. One is legislators. Too often politicians identify themselves as Christians by espousing positions on issues that Jesus never mentioned, instead of doing what he clearly said: things like feeding the hungry and making sure the thirsty get clean water and welcoming the foreigner and clothing the threadbare and making sure the sick get cared for and that prisoners are properly treated. Jesus said that these unfortunates are his brothers and sisters and that how we treat them is how we treat him. Lawmakers need to ask themselves about the effects of their legislation on those too poor to pay them back with campaign contributions, the way Jesus said we should invite the poor, the maimed, the lame and the blind to our feasts because they can't pay us back. (Luke 14:13-14) Remember that Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount, “Not everyone who says to me, 'Lord, Lord,' will enter into the kingdom of heaven—only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 7:21) What is God's will? Micah 6:8 says, “He has told you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” Which is right in line with how Psalm 72 describes the ideal ruler: “For he will rescue the needy when they cry out for help, and the oppressed who have no defender. He will take pity on the poor and needy; the lives of the needy he will save. From harm and violence he will defend them; he will value their lives.” (Psalm 72:12-14, NET)

The other group that can help a lot in all of these areas is volunteers. Want to help a certain group of people but don't know how? Google a non-profit organization that ministers to them. Wanna help the hungry? Join one of those food banks or soup kitchens. Join the food pantry at the Methodist church here on Big Pine. Wanna help the homeless? Volunteer at a shelter. There's one run by KAIR in Marathon and one in Key West run by KOTS. Wanna help women? Join the Domestic Abuse Shelter in Marathon or Key West or Samuel's House or the Florida Keys Outreach Coalition. Wanna help children? Join Wesley House or Big Brothers/Big Sisters. Wanna help the developmentally disabled? There's MARC House. How about the mentally ill? There's Heron-Peacock Supportive Living. Or you can work with those overcoming addictions. Or call Bingo or play piano or bring a docile pet that likes being handled to the nursing home. You can be what we used to call a candy-striper at one of the hospitals. Or volunteer to lead Bible studies or lead worship or lead AA meetings at the jail. We especially need people who speak Spanish. One lady donates books to the jail in the name of her son who died of an overdose. There are a lot of ways to serve Jesus by serving others.

Not all of those are Christian ministries. Who cares? As somebody once said, sometimes the most effective form of evangelism is to let folks know you are a Christian and then don't act like a jerk.

Who we think Jesus is determines who we become. If we see him as just someone who believes as we do, approves what we say and do, and supports our pet causes, then that's the Jesus we project to the world: a magnified version of ourselves. But if we, like the first disciples, truly look at what he said and did and try to emulate that, we will reflect a more accurate picture of the one who loved us, lived as one of us, gave his life for us and rose again to begin making all things new.

“Who do you say I am?”

And what are you going to do about it?