Alright, Peter, you’ve figured it out. Now keep it a secret.
Wait, what?
Jesus has gotten himself quite a reputation. It’s no wonder, really, considering all that he has been doing and teaching. But everyone has experienced him from a different point of view, and with different expectations, so in trying to explain who he is, either to convert people to his cause or to get properly angry at him, there are only so many metaphors available. Folks seem pretty familiar with the fire and brimstone preaching and the water baptisms of John, so there are those who see Jesus in that light, or as someone who will continue John’s ministry. Then there’s Elijah, a historical figure who was taken up into heaven in a fiery chariot and was said to be coming again to prepare the way for the long-awaited Messiah. Jeremiah and the prophets were very vocal about the oppressive powers which threatened the right Jewish way of life, the equitable and compassionate and just world God has in mind for all people. And then there are those who walked with him, ate with him, fed the hungry with him. Who might they say he is?
I love telling people I’m a pastor. Especially on days when my tattoos are visible. There were some kids on a stoop down the street awhile ago who I got to sit and chat with one day, and when they found out I am a pastor, they had all sorts of questions: “Do you smoke? Do you drink? Do you cuss? Are you gay?” Because, for many, and for a very long time, Pastors were held to such a high standard we were hardly allowed to be ourselves. The barriers that were up and the pressure that was on made the clergy, and thus the God those clergy claimed to represent, very nearly unreachable. Thank goodness we have learned that people are way more diverse than the labels of our professions and confessions, and that God is often pretty creative. But when y’all met me some seven months ago, and when I met you, we had paperwork to go on, and some expectations and curiosities and concerns. I wasn’t a pastor you’d had before, y’all weren’t a congregation I’d had before. But together we are figuring out what we mean to and for and with each other. Like, the Bible is the paperwork we’ve got on God, written over centuries in lots of different styles and a couple of languages, but God also wrote the paperwork on us, so to speak. It’s an incomplete metaphor, but when we talk about God all of our metaphors are too small.
When Peter claimed Jesus was the Messiah, that was a very loaded, a very provocative word. There is so much expectation packed into that word, not to mention political threat to the Roman authority trying to maintain control over the Jews of Jesus’ day, that it was no small thing to attach that label to Jesus. “Messiah” technically meant “anointed,” prophet, priest, or king. It wasn’t an eternal sort of thing, but an earthly authority granted by God. It was a title the ruling Roman authority had claimed at the edge of a sword and backed up with many soldiers and public executions. If you wanted to live in safety, you served the Roman ruler as your messiah, and any who breathed a word of someone else with that authority was crucified as an insurrectionist.
But when Jesus carried that title, it meant something altogether else entirely. It wasn’t a military power to rule by force. We hear this usually in Advent, that the king we wait for is coming as an infant, vulnerable and dependent. We hear this on Christ the King Sunday, that the throne of our Savior is the cross. Not the typical image one puts to the title of ‘messiah.’
Maybe that’s why Jesus compelled Peter to stay quiet about it. People would be both killed and confused if word got around about his being Messiah.
But that doesn’t change who he was, just means our language is a bit too small. What was it Shakespeare said? “A rose by any other name would smell as sweet”? What about “a Christ by any other label would still save”? Because the person exists before the label we put on them. Or rather, before they are given the label. Labels and positions and expectations exist long before we exist and long after we’re gone. Is the bread and the wine really the body and blood of Jesus, or is it bread and wine, or is it both? Do we have to know what we mean by those words for the things to be what they are?
Just a little confusing. Or rather, mysterious. Inviting, hopefully. In the way that evading a clearly known label means investigation and curiosity are necessary. I’ve just read C.S.Lewis’ “The Horse and His Boy,” and when Shasta the boy asks the voice of Aslan who he is, Lewis describes the answer this way: “Myself,” said the Voice, very deep and low so that the earth shook: and again “Myself,” loud and clear and gay: and then the third time: “Myself,” whispered so softly you could hardly hear it, and yet it seemed to come from all around you as if the leaves rustled with it.” (p.157-159) Like the voice from the burning bush said simply “I AM.” Because when we rely only on our labels to carry us, the labels become the thing we think we’re in relationship with and we forget the one who carries our labels is far more than we can put any two or three words to.
Take parents, for example. For so long we call them “Mom and Dad.” But then at some point they become people. With their own names, and histories, and dreams, and childhoods, and struggles. They can make mistakes. They can need help from time to time.
Or teachers. Or actors. Or members of groups we don’t know or understand. Police are people. Black men are people. Children are people. Politicians are people. Israelis and Palestinians are people. Actual individuals with dreams and hopes and fears and their own histories and ways of understanding the world around them.
And for all of the people, there is the one person of Jesus, who is the one bringing us all together under a rule of love and security and freedom. Who is building a kingdom among us which cannot be beaten even by the gates of hell, no matter how those gates of death and despondency run their battering ram into our very guts. On the rock of Christ Jesus, out of the Rock that is Christ, we are built and carved into relationship with the creator of the cosmos. We don’t really have language big enough to explain who this creator is, just the stories we’ve been given over the generations, just the language we’ve borrowed from halfway around the world, and we do the best we can with the words we have, with the songs we have been given, with the meal we have been commanded to keep together.
So Peter was given the words “you are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.” Some other words we have been given include: Faithful. Merciful. Mighty. Eternal. God who sees. God of the mountains. God of hosts. Righteous judge. Emmanuel, God with us. Each of these names comes from someone’s experience and expectation of a God worthy of our worship and devotion. When we get confused and wonder at who this God is, we look to the cross, we come to the table, we wash in the font. We do not have to know all of the names to be welcomed by the One who, by naming each of us, has claimed us for his own. We do not have to have God ‘figured out’ for God to set us free and walk with us. We do not have to carry on ourselves the ‘right’ or ‘appropriate’ or ‘preferred’ labels, or any labels at all, in fact, to approach the throne of grace and ask for mercy and forgiveness and justice and healing.
Is Jesus the Messiah? Yes. Is the the Faithful one? Yes. Immanuel? Yes. God of grace and mercy and justice and truth? Yes. Crucified and risen? Yes. All of this and so much more. Given and shed for you, the Body of Christ. And the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.
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