Who Do YOU Say That I Am - A disciple is one who follows Jesus
We continue to explore the journey that is becoming a disciple. The journey is a lifelong one, with twists and turns and cutbacks that have us revisit certain spots again and again. This week, we begin a two-week exploration of what it means to be a disciple who follows the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
I want to set the stage for our Gospel text from Luke. These key moments in the story of Jesus follow immediately on the story of the miracle of the loaves and fishes. So imagine that Jesus has been with a hungry crowd of thousands where a miraculous feeding happened, and he has gone away for some prayer time and recovery with his disciples.
He asks them to weigh in about what the crowds are saying...you know, the crowd that has just heard him preach and experienced a mass-miracle. And they offer some answers. But it’s as if the answers they offer aren’t hitting the mark with Jesus, and so he redirects the question to them – who do YOU say that I am?
And Peter, beloved and eager-to-please doesn’t miss a beat – you are the Messiah of God.
Jesus goes on to give the disciples a warning about how right they are and how hard it will be to follow him. It’s not really a pep-talk, more foreboding.
Then, just in case it wasn’t enough, Jesus heads up another mountaintop with Peter, John and James, where they witness Jesus all glowy and white along with the Elijah and Moses. And in case what they see is not enough, they hear the voice of God – this is my son, listen to him.
I feel like Jesus is helping the disciples to focus in, helping them begin to think deeply about what it is they are doing, why they are following, what words they use to describe who he is in their lives.
Let’s hold on to that as a backdrop – a snapshot of what the first disciples experienced when faced with the question, “Who do YOU say that I am?”
To be a disciple is to follow the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
To be a disciple is to formulate an understanding of who this Jesus is, why we follow, and what that means over the course of a lifetime.
And over the course of a lifetime, to be a disciple is to be shaped by our following of the life and teachings of Jesus Christ.
To be shaped.
Like canyons carved out by seasonal rushing waters.
To be smoothed out like a stone on the shore of the ocean.
To be shaped by a lifetime of our experience of Jesus the Christ.
I am a runner.
(That’s hard for me to say, and I always have to take a deep breath to say it…to claim it and to recognize it.)
In spite of my great affection for sitting in a chair or on a couch our lounging in a hammock, in spite of the fact that I can barely sustain a sub-11 minute mile over multiple miles, I have discovered that if I put my running shoes on, I can run. And as I run, I become a runner.
With each passing run, each passing season of running, I am changed more and more into a runner. It’s not just that my body changes. My heart and spirit and my mind are changed too. I understand what it means to run, what it means to push myself, how my respiratory system and my skeletal system and my muscles work together, what it means to feel endorphins fire, what it means to care for my muscles so that I can run the next day. I understand more and more with each passing run the value that running has to my well-being, body and soul.
I am being transformed each day.
Into a runner.
Because I started to run and kept running.
I think this is a good metaphor for discipleship.
We become disciples of Jesus Christ by taking the first step.
And each day as we keep making choices, keep orienting ourselves toward Jesus, deepen our understanding of what it means to let Christ be Lord of our lives, we become daily more and more a discipleship.
As we get to know God through the fully human and fully divine Jesus,
as we begin to follow Jesus’ examples one by one,
as we begin to have experiences of “seeing” the presence of Christ,
perhaps through the Spirit, in our lives,
as we go out and reach others, we are shaped.
Changed.
Made new.
We become.
I am struck that in our passage for today, Peter answers with the “right” answer…but there is still the need for stark truth-telling and even a glimpse of Jesus’ place in God’s order. It is like they have to keep experiencing the truth in order to keep growing their understanding.
As good Jewish men following the Rabbi Jesus, they would have been very familiar with the words of the prophets, and so the Jeremiah text gives us a glimpse of what God has intended – not merely allegiance but CHANGED HEARTS.
The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant that I made with their ancestors when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt—a covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, says the Lord. But this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. No longer shall they teach one another, or say to each other, “Know the Lord,” for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, says the Lord; for I will forgive their iniquity, and remember their sin no more.
The LORD God is explaining that there will be a new way of embodying the covenant between God and God’s people. There will be a way for God’s law to be part of who we are and how we live each and every day. There will be a way that our love and commitment to God and God’s love and commitment to us will be “written on our hearts.”
This is the power of Jesus who walked through the dust, ate food with his friends, laughed and cried, lived and died and showed us eternal life. And that is an example we can live into because it is an example of how to live in the flesh in this world.
This is our call to become.
To become a disciple of Jesus Christ – not for our own transformation alone though, but so that the world is transformed.
May it be so.
Amen.
Our work in weeks to come is to answer Jesus’ question – who do YOU say that I am?
That is vulnerable space, because we need to be able to say it not just to ourselves, but sometimes to others. We need to be willing to sit with our answer, and let it work on us. And we need to let our answer work on us.
Will you prayerfully sit with this question this week?
Jesus looks at you and asks, “Who do you say that I am?”
Jesus looks at you and asks, “Who do you say that I am?”
Sources: At Faith, we have embarked on a sermon series based on the book, Becoming a Disciple: a lifelong venture by Adolf Hansen and colleagues.
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