Loving God, you reveal the depth of your love for us through your Son, Jesus, and invite us into abundant life through him.  Continue to work in us by the power of your Holy Spirit, leading us into the life that truly is life; through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

    As we hear about Jesus in the gospels, there are a number of different occasions where Jesus does some pretty amazing things.  And quite often, we hear people asking the question, “Who is this guy, anyway?”  “What sort of man is this, that even the winds and the sea obey him?” (Mt. 8:27) “Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?” (Mt. 11:3) “Who is this” Jesus? (Mt. 21:10).

    Well, in today’s gospel the table is turned, and Jesus is the one asking the questions.  The first question he asks is not that hard.  It is simply, what have you been hearing?  What are people saying about me?  As it turns out, most people seem to think that Jesus is some sort of prophet – kind of like John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah.

    However, Jesus’ next question cuts right to the heart, both for the disciples and for us.  “But who do you say that I am?” (Mt. 16:15).  Who do you say that Jesus is?  Of course, we have Peter’s answer to the question: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Mt. 16:16).  As it turns out, the words are correct, but Peter doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what this actually means.  We know this because of next week’s gospel where Peter is dead set against any sort of suffering and death on Jesus’ part.  And so, Peter doesn’t really understand what Jesus’ identity as Son of God and Messiah is actually going to mean.

    Really, this shouldn’t be all that surprising to us.  After all, do we have a clear sense of who Jesus is and what sort of an impact his identity has on our lives?  The thing is that what we believe about Jesus has consequences for how we live our lives.  When we confess Jesus to be our Lord and Saviour, that has an impact on how we live.  When we know that Jesus is the Son of God and are aware of how he demonstrates God’s love for us, that absolutely affects our relationship with God and our interaction with the world around us.  At the same time, we are likely to live far different lives if we simply see Jesus as a historical figure or a teacher.

    The question that this gospel raises for each one of us today is who we say that Jesus is, and what impact that has on how we live our lives.  In fact, a particularly good question to think about is how you would describe Jesus to somebody who had never heard of him?  How would you talk about him in a way that they could understand?  What are the things that would be important to say?

    The thing is that there are plenty of short answers to who Jesus is that we can find in the Scriptures.  There is today’s gospel – he is the Messiah, the Son of the living God.  He is Emmanuel - God with us.  He is Son of God and Son of Man.  He is the King of the Jews and the light of the world.  Jesus is Lord and Saviour.  He is the crucified and risen one.  All of these things and more help to describe who Jesus is.  However, all of these different names and titles wouldn’t really help somebody who had never heard of him.

    At the same time, we have in the book of Acts a number of different stories that include how Jesus was introduced to people hearing about him for the first time.  One of the shorter summaries is found in Acts 10, as Peter introduces Jesus as the Messiah (or anointed one) and Lord of all.  Peter describes how God anointed Jesus with the Holy Spirit and with power and how he went about doing good and healing people.  He speaks as an eye witness and describes Jesus’ crucifixion and how God raised him from the dead on the third day.  He talks about how Jesus ate and drank with them after he had risen from the dead and commanded them to preach to the people and let them know that Jesus will judge the living and the dead.  He concludes by saying that just as the prophets said, all those who believe in Jesus receive forgiveness of sins through his name (Acts 10:34-43).

    So... would a summary like this work today, or would you need to use different language to describe Jesus?  I’m going to leave that with you as a bit of a hanging question as we consider for a moment what effect it has on our lives when we believe and say certain things about Jesus.

    For example, if we confess that Jesus is Lord, what does this really mean?  In fact, what does it mean to have a lord?  If somebody is your lord, how would you relate to that person?  Any thoughts on that?... It is possibly a bit of a historical term, but you would likely serve them and honour them and give them their due.  If somebody is your lord, don’t you belong to them along with all that you have?  Of course, this is not to say that we are somehow enslaved to Jesus.  However, if he is Lord of all as the Scriptures say, then all people actually belong to him with all that they have, and all things in heaven and on earth are ultimately under his rule.  And so, when we confess that Jesus is Lord, our lives reflect the fact that we belong to him.

    As another example, what does it really mean when we confess that Jesus is our Saviour?  A saviour, one would think, has saved you from something, right?  And so, what has Jesus saved us from?...  In the Small Catechism, Luther always talks about sin, death and the devil.  And so, having been set free from the power of sin, we don’t need to continue to live with our guilt or to remain enslaved to things that cut us off from God and from the people around us.  Having been set free from death, we don’t need to live in search of perpetual youth or to live in fear and in denial of death.  Having been set free from the power of evil, we can instead live knowing that the name of Jesus and faith in him is more powerful than any evil we might encounter in this world.

    One more to think about: What does it really mean when we confess that Jesus is the Son of God?  It seems to me that this title, more than any other, communicates to us the depth of God’s love for us.  For Jesus, in spite of his status as Son of God, gave himself to be born and live and die as a human being.  This is the means that God used in order to give us salvation, resurrection and eternal life through Jesus.  This is the way that God restored our relationships, both with God and with one another.  This is the way in which God shared our humanity in order that we might share God’s divinity.

    And so, when we confess that Jesus is the Son of God, we are acknowledging how great God’s love for us really is.  When we confess that Jesus is our Saviour, we are acknowledging that he has the power in our lives rather than sin, death and the devil.  And when we confess that Jesus is Lord, we are acknowledging that all that we have and all that we are belongs to him and serves him.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life (Jn. 3:16).

Thanks be to God!  Amen.

Lectionary 21(A)                                Matthew 16:13-20
August 24, 2014
St. Luke’s Zion Lutheran Church
Pastor Lynne Hutchison

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