Peter has his ups and downs in the Gospel, like all disciples, but this is his defining moment. “You are the Christ, the Son of God.”
It’s been pointed out many times that Jesus’ question here is the very center of Christian religion. “Who do you say that I am?” Everything follows from your answer. If you answer that question like Peter, you’re a Christian.
From the four Gospels, through the Acts of the Apostles and the New Testament Letters, through the Book of Revelation, and all through the early Church writings, we find the central preoccupation to be this same question: who Jesus is. The inspired Biblical writers and the early Christians were careful to record many things that Jesus did and many things that Jesus said. But even more so, they were concerned with proclaiming who Jesus is. His dying on the Cross is redemptive because of who He is. His Resurrection from the dead is the natural outcome and demonstration of who He is.
Get that wrong, and the rest of it matters little.
In this passage from Luke, Jesus begins the conversation by asking “Who do the crowds say that I am?” Apparently then, as now, there were a lot of answers floating around. Some said John the Baptist, or Elijah, or some ancient Prophet returned to life. We hear different answers now. But his next question is the one that matters: “Who do you say that I am?”
This is personal. It will always and only be personal. We can share our faith with others, we can pray for conversion, we can educate and prepare ourselves to give account of the hope that is in us. We can bring up our children along the ancient paths and give witness and example to the power of Christ in our lives. But after all that, this is a question you can only answer for yourself. “Who do you say that I am?”
“Well, I was raised Catholic, went to Catholic school or Sunday school, and my parents and teachers taught us that you are the Second Person of the Trinity, incarnate of the Virgin Mary, etc.” “Okay. Who do you say that I am?”
“Well, different people and cultures have different beliefs, but I think that if you try to be a good person, and help others, and be kind, then that’s what matters.” “Indeed, it is nice to be nice. But who do you say that I am?”
It’s the undodgeable question. Jesus asks you, as he asked his Apostles, and you’ve just got to answer. Maybe you can say with Peter, “you are the Christ, the Son of God.” And everything that goes along with that: “You are the Lord of my life, and nothing in my life is outside your Lordship, and even though I fail every day I would die before I gave up on your promise.”
Maybe if you’re honest the answer is, “I’ve done the whole Catholic life, received communion, been confirmed, gone to Mass, prayed a rosary once in a while, but the truth of the matter is that you’re just sort of an idea to me. You’re someone I’ve heard about, like Abraham Lincoln, but not someone I personally know, like my next-door-neighbor. I go through all the motions because it sort of feels right, but the truth is it’s kind of like belonging to a club.”
For a lot of people, the answer is “You’re whomever I say you are. You’re whatever I want you to be. I have an idea of what I want out of religion, and I’m going to shop around until I find it. I have a list of things I choose to believe, and I’m going to check around and join whatever church agrees with me. I’m going to look for a church that’s a good fit, since I’m absolutely perfect and can therefore assume that the truth will never rub me the wrong way.”
And maybe your most honest answer is simply, “I’m not sure. I wish I was. Help me.” And that’s a much better answer then you might think. The Holy Spirit can work miracles with that, as long as you don’t give up.
I want to offer a few observations about this all-important question. The first is that it isn’t enough to answer with words. You have to answer with your life. Just like Peter, we have our ups and downs when it comes to this. But in the end, Peter answered definitively and he answered with action. He gave his life rather than deny Jesus again as he had before. Christ said, ‘there will be many who will say to me Lord, Lord, as they fall into the pit.’ As soon as you say that Jesus is Lord, you are on for changing your life. Right after Peter’s confession, Jesus says to them all, “If you want to be my disciple, deny yourself, take up your cross every day, and follow me.” You got that? Every day. It’s not something you do once and then go about your life. You aren’t His disciple because you say you are. You’re His disciple when you take up your cross and follow him. Are you still going to fall and sin? Yes. But you don’t give up. You pick yourself up, go to confession, and get back in the fight. Accepting Jesus as the Christ, the Lord, the Savior, is something you do every day by taking up your cross and following Him.
The other observation I’ll offer is about following Christ as an individual versus following him as a community. You know, some Christians really emphasize the importance of your own personal individual relationship with Jesus Christ. Other Christians really emphasize the importance of membership in the Body of Christ, the Church. Well, questions of emphasis aside, we really can’t pick one or the other. They are both essential. If you don’t have a personal relationship with Christ, then membership in the Church is empty and meaningless. Like someone said, sitting in church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than standing in the garage makes you a car.
But hold on a second, because a strictly individualistic Christianity is not Christianity at all. It’s never just about “me and Jesus.” Jesus called people together, he called them into His Body, branches on the true vine, sheep of the one fold, members of the one Body. He made it crystal clear that you cannot serve Him without serving your neighbor, and especially the “least of these.” He said I am with you wherever two or three or gathered. He was known to them in the breaking of bread, a fundamentally communal activity.
So we can’t choose between a personal relationship with Jesus, and membership in the community of believers. They come together.
The point I’m trying to make about individualism and community is actually summed up perfectly in the first sentence of our passage from Luke’s Gospel. Luke reports that, one day, “Jesus was praying in solitude, and his disciples were with him.” Come again? But we can see the truth in that seeming contradiction. We are surrounded by community, but at the deepest level of your soul there is a place where it’s just you and the God who is creating you. This is the place where we alone give answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?” But that very answer necessarily places us in a community of disciples, many members of one Body.
Since we’re at Mass, the last thing I’ll offer is to apply this to our worship. In the prayers already said today, and especially in the Eucharistic prayers to come, real participation means praying alone in the presence of others. If you pray intensely and devoutly but you are not, at heart, one with the Church, if it’s only about you and Jesus and these other people are at best a potential distraction, that’s not Christian worship. But on the other hand, if you’re saying all the lines and going through all the motions, fully participating in the ‘group activity,’ as it were, you still have to ask “am I actually praying?” Sometimes I wonder how many people at Mass, in any given moment, are really actually praying. Probably we all have lapses. Not many people can spend an hour in uninterrupted, undistracted prayer - hardly anyone, I think! So I wonder sometimes how we all do overall. Are you sort of watching and listening to the Mass, or are you praying the Mass? That’s the difference between an audience and a congregation. And by the way, don’t think for a second that priests don’t have to ask that question too! I have to check myself often: am I reading lines out loud off the page of a big red book, or am I praying? Even when we pray together, there is a place deep within the soul where we are alone with God.
This is our local portion of that community, our little branch of the vine, gathered to break bread as He commanded us. Having no merit of our own, we will offer His Body and Blood, we will raise the Chalice of Salvation and call on the name of the Lord. Let’s not just watch and listen, but pray.
In solitude.
Together.
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