Sunday, August 23, 2020

Not a Feeling Question: Who Do You Say that I Am

In our prayer for the pandemic era - Jesus stills stormy frantic hearts. Many of us connect who Jesus is with feelings - experiences of relief, connection, challenge. I am not sure that the sacred storyteller of Matthew is having Jesus ask us a feeling question. Nor is it a why do you like me question, but the life saving invitation of: who do you say that I am? 

Simon Peter excitedly answers - You are the Messiah, You are the big deal chosen hero who is gonna fix this chaotic storm of death and anxiety. Please do it now. This is Christ Church. Christ is the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew and Aramaic word we heard transliterated as Messiah. Saying Christ Jesus is like saying Queen Elizabeth - it is a role and a title, not a surname (or a curse word). Messiah, and therefore Christ, It sort of means oily head - as in one who has been anointed on their forehead by an ancient sacred rite One that marks an individual’s loyalty to God. Usually this is with olive oils steeped in resins and essential oils - what we would think of as chrism. This anointing is something you could see and smell. 

The Hebrew people hardly ever were a safe and sovereign nation. Their biblical history is one of constant threat and entanglement with the cruel grind Of this empire and that. Exploitation, despotic manipulation, humiliation, lies, death and destruction were constant. So too were the various hopes for a fix, a change, a messiah, a superhero to rise up and powerfully save the day. Powers that be don’t like messiahs. It was a dangerous nametag to be marked with. Some imagined a savior who would return everything to self-governing sacred order and conservation. Others dreamed of the One who would push us into a moral reckoning and the establishment of a just society for absolutely everyone. Messianic hopes were as varied and intense as the pandemic ending visions and conspiracy theories and strategies that circulate these days. Even the denials of the pandemic are in their own way a hear no-see- no evil shade of messianic hope. 

There is almost no part of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth that matched any concoction of what his contemporaries were expecting in a messiah. So, of course, there were questions, and we are still wrestling with them. The paradox of Jesus being salvific through less violence, and his requiring our dutiful way of love for all to participate in this rescue - it isn’t the easy bake recipe we were searching for. 'Who do you say that I am?' is an invitation to consider:  how does Jesus change everything? How does he save? Plenty of people have been radical revolutionaries, or sacred healers, or sage prophets, or controversial rabbi’s. But I don’t know any of them by name or in my heart. 

It is the holy self-sacrificial servanthood of Jesus is his messiah-ship. It is the love That holds fast even as it is crushed by the weight of the falsehoods of the powerful and shamed by the bullying terror of the cross. So the question 'Who do you say that I am?' isn’t about memorized answers, it isn’t about our wish list so much as it is a challenging invitation. Do you get that this is not about a superhero swooping in and making everything easy? Jesus is your Christ - your messiah - not because he is yours, but because you are his. 

He gives us not blindfolds or battle plans but his way, truth, and life. I wonder - who do you say that Jesus is? If you haven’t ever been asked that before - give it some time…. But spend some time with the question. Journal or craft or research your response. 

Furthermore, what does it mean that the name of this congregation is Christ - that our name is ‘’Expectations-turned-upsidedown- Healing-feeding-learning-servant-leadership- Marked-by-God Church”? Christ Church, Ridley Park is many things but all of them should be one with Christ Jesus. The best of them should be informed hopeful and lifechanging for the last, least and lost. What does the name of Christ - Messiah Jesus - say about who we are called to be in this pandemic era? 

To hold to Jesus as messiah - the christ means to find ourselves in the company he would keep, the love he lived into, the servanthood he practiced. What if the rescue someone is looking for is the ways of Jesus they encounter in you? Jesus stills the storms, Jesus rocks the boat. Hear him ask your whole life The question once more: Who do you say that I am?

CCRP  #diopalove

No comments:

Post a Comment