CLICHE OR CONFESSION?
Matthew 16:13-23
September 8, 1974

Christ. - dmmaf. . .Savior. . .Sonof God. . .Son_of Man. . - omomernnGered. . .
Rabbi. . .Teacher. . .Master. . .King of the jews.\ -Swinburne called him “i
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( "the pale Galilean") » emore recently he has been called Superstar: “Sal

de power=w i oleowe name bet angele procmateetaht : baime=tortethencoeye |

divebormemd crown him Lord of all:" is the way the favorite hymn puts it.

Who was ne?) Or is it present tense?| Who is_he?\ Does it navrere | pees
it really matter what you believe about this nan? \ Does it make any difference
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by what name you call nim: |or by what particular set of intellectual categories

you define him?

Coming at it from a slightly different perspective, is this the time --

all things considered -- to be discussing what the theologians call "Christology'?
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Wouldn't it make more sense, and be more politic, to smooth off the cutting
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edge of particularity regarding Jesus Ato confine ourselves to safer generalities:
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to find that_common ground we share with all religions, and all men_of good will

for that matter?

There is a part of us that wants to answer in the affirmative ‘ We've had
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enough of Christian arrogance and parochialism and geeulaaialiy nt : F
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We've had enough of theological imperialism that simply dismissed the wisdom
& One Ca tperiaiis See eae oem

and beauty of other religions in years past. \ re is not, obviously, the time in

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history to isolate ourselves behind walls of doctrine -- in a culture and a
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world that is already walled off and divided enough,

—_

And yet, if our experience in the erstwhile Ecumenical movement has taught
us anything it is that unity and common mission result not when people try to
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reduce their differences by the least common denominator, but when they stand howe rtly \
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confidently in their own traditions.
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Presbyterians are far better able to join hands with Methodists, Lutherans
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and Catholics when they. know why they are Presbyterians, rather than shrugging

——

off their particularity as inconsequentiat.\ Honest boon 3) creative dialogue

happens between Christians and Jews \\ christians and Marxists -- not when we try

——

to demonstrate that we're really not that different after all, but when all

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parties affirm and live their own particularity.
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Does it matter what you call the nan? \ ts the cutting and sometimes
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abrasive edge of the incarnation important for modern christians? | Of course

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it is -- now as never before a culture that is fond of the sentiment that
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it doesn't matter what_you believe so long as you believe something, it is

imperative that Christian people know who they are -- and why they are who they
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are,\\ ana that leads us back across the centuries to an incident that happened

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when this man turned to his twelve friends and asked:}"Who do you say that I ant" |
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Let's ceconstruee.| It happened at the apex of his career, just before it
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took a sharp turn downward on the long road of humiliation, suffering and
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death.\ The crowds at this point were still with him:\ people were literally

—

flocking to see and hear the words of this new Rabbi out of Nazareth.\ What

opposition there was, was confined to the cities, surfacing in the form of an
= — — —

occasional Scribe or Pharisee who sought him out in order to gather_evidence
——— =e —

and report it to the authorities. \But in terms of popularity it was the high

point in his life,

And so one day when they were in the vicinity of Caesarea Phillipi

he took a reading: How are we doing?\ what are people saying about me?\ Who

—=-

do men say that the Son of Man is?" }The disciples reached immediately into

their collection of superlatives: \'Some are saying John the Baptist (put better

yet some are comparing you favorably with those heroic luminaries out of our past --
—— —

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Elijah -- Jeremiah".\That, by the way, was a very high honor men
ordinarily do not enjoy that kind of compliment until after they are_dead
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and gone. | what it tells us is that people were reacting very favorably to

Jesus -- even though their superlative comparison with Elijah and Jeremiah
—_—

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quite missed the point. \ sesus, apparently, didn't respond at all to the

chatackerishic 4
report.\ Instead, he did something very significant.\ He turned the question
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to them, \It's one thing to report on what other people think to read all

the books, to check all the authorities, to know all the proper quotes \ It is

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an entirely different thing to be compelled to answer personally: | to_make

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personal testimony. ("But you - who do you say that I ent" )
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Peter ansvered { "You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God".]| That

was what he was looking cor. \ rag any of them seen the truth_yet:| had any

broken through to that secret he was carrying in his neart?\ And so he said;

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(‘atessea are you Peter: you couldn't have figured that out by yourself: \coe has

revealed it to you.\ 1 am the one who was promised:\t am the fulfillment, "

———

If they knew that -- that he was the Christ - the Messiah -- they were
gregare A ;
weedy to understand that he must suffer and die.\ And so Jesus began to lay out

before the twelve what he saw in store for hinselt.\ And again it was Peter,
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blurting out ("God forbid, Lord, fis shall never happen to you.) the

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breakthrough hadn't lasted very long. \ ror one fleeting moment in time Peter had

seemed to understand, but now, with this brave but mistaken reaction revealed \ 1 wet
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Cake View whut

that he did not yet comprehend the essential thing about the christ | namely,
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a love big enough to suffer and dic. JeGsttuti@iethedough—er-Peter-et—theb-menent ,

——————

Toverer= ir Lae hth or hy vie eieer= 6etuhehindemeniakesh"

Now that is a very important New Testament incident for a number of

reasons ‘lentes among them the fact that the question Jesus asked: 4>aDu

segues’ «and Peter's momentary confession '‘@oumaa=OnESEDyEe

Seamne—thenbimkegeGed"' have been at the heart of the Christian experience
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in every generation, | It is a question that will not be ignored.| And more to
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the point, it is a question that will not be answered by referring to what

other people si a do you say that I am?"

The dilemma for me in this text, is that the issue that is here so very
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important -- the individual's response to Jesus Christ -- is simply not much of

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an issue any more.\ This Central Christian affirmation -- this confession that
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Jesus himself called a revelation of God -- is in our day, I would submit,
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little more than a cliche,
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Partially, I suppose, it is a result of living 20 centruies after the
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fact -- in a civilization heavily influenced by Christian eradition\ It is a
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little difficult to sense the importance of a personal response to the

question: (‘who do you say that I an'!Yin a culture that baptizes everybody
with piety, + @ssumes Xk ever » a Onnbw..-

Partially, I suppose, it is a result of knowing -- as Peter did not --
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how the story ends.| We know about Easter.\Peter hadn't been there yet. - | oe

Wold Seow opire *

And so, I submit -- the confession becomes a cliche.\ The radical impact
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of the events reported in the New Testament doesn't get through to us.} When
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Peter says: ("You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God",\instead of gasping
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in astonishment we retort] "Big deal: doesn't everybody know that?" |
——_—

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By conscious, disciplined act of will we have try

to stand where the disciples stood. Helmut Thielicke observes: ("eter feels
himself driven to a confession the madness of which hardly hits us anymore

because, in the meantime, the words have become all too familiar.\ But at the

time the confession was uttered, it must have been a powerful shock to those who

heard ren | (How to Believe Again P42)

are sEaeR @ur life-long familiarity with the Gospel mey=hevre he s
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softened its radical clains| the New Testament consistantly portrays a man

to whom people responded in one way or another \ Again Thielicke puts it
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almost poetically: ("wherever the Savior shows up everything, including the

is aroused +
opposition swings into action.\

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hate springs up in the Elder Brother . there are men who find peace through

him, but Judas too goes to work" (P39)

Jesus himself ruled_out_the option of not responding to nin.\ Here he

asked the disciples directly what they thought\ But at other times his behavior
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literally forced people to react | When he healed the sick, he also forgave

their Sins -- Gimttbepim@tsithGhieespiwemp: he claimed that in him the Kingdom

of God was present among men. \ A first century Jew simply could not hear those
oo ee —_—— os

things -- see those things -- and not react .
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Today with the exception of some young people who are happily rediscovering
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the appeal of the man -- SATE TORS 5 the universal response to Jesus
ee ee ae cee |

Christ is a blase_shrug of the shoutders. | If there is one thing the world seems

——

to be saying to the church, it is this:|"Whatever you are claiming about Jesus
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in your esoteric doctrines and old creeds, it just doesn't matter very much,"

And all too frequently that is precisely what the church says back to the
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world "you're right: \it's not very_important \wera like you to_join our
organization: | support our building pro ject :\cook in our kitchen and serve on
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our committees -\ut let's not get bogged down in semantics j\et's not allow
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Jesus Christ to get in the vay", |
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That,it seems to me presents the modern church -- and modern_Christians --
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with the most important task of all, if we are not to be assimilated and
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reduced right out of existence in the next generation;| to be honest about
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Jesus Christ: temebeemeueticommieuimensie: to wipe the theological slate clean

Ss

He awakens homesickness in the prodigal but yo”

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and stand with Peter as that piercing question is asked: |"But who do you

say that I an?" |

I am not suggesting that every person who calls himself a Christian
—y — —

must be able to articulate a theology of the incarnation that would satisfy

an examining board of seminary professors \ In fact, I would suggest that @povr
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approach to @® Christian faith is often times too cerebral -- too acadenic.\ Too
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often we equate faith with understanding:\ being a Christian with agreeing to a
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list of doctrines.\ William Temple once observed that a man who claims to

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understand the relationship of amumiey to divinity in Christ shows that he

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doesn't know what is meant_by an incarnation. wt are wt talkin sole! 4 cet

underskamdiny - esr aE

Samedcige themes PD net Sr ners ae ae es oc hpsye Eee

Where to begin then? \ where do we find the words and ideas through which
to express our convictions about Jesus Christ and to affirm the particularit
p p y

of our faith?
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Elton Trueblood suggests that we must go back beyopd the creeds of the
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church, beyond all the phrases we have learned and begin, simply, with what we
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Page. (Look at the evidence") he advises. Time is dated on the basis of the
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birth of Jesus Christ. \ mat is a fact Wee have been dramatically changed
Pn ere

by him and the power he let loose in “in hiatoty: not just a few, but millions upon
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millions of lives ‘\ That is another fact \ History has been changed. . .when

you consider the whole expanse of history Karl Marx is not sufficiently

revolutionary even to be mentioned in the same breath as Jesus christ\\ That too
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is a fact.

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Following that line of reasoning a whole new school of theologians nt of (eadi-,

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are insisting today that personal Christian faith begins at the point of von a .
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confronting and understanding and affirming the humanity of christ { I
believe they are correct .\ orthodox doctrine insists that he was both man
ey a ee]
and Gods) human and divine.\ But all too often his humanity -- his commoyality
with us -- is a casualty of our theologizing.
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The New Testament begins with «| He was not, as we sometimes seem to
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believe, an insertion from outside history -- but one born in history -- like
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everybody cise. \ nis genes and chromosomes and cells were not fakes, but the

real thing.\ In Matthew's and Luke's accounts long _geneologies trace his ties

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with the human family back to Abraham and Adam and goa\\ This was not, they were
— [—— ——— — —— Ss

saying, a divine being coming out of no where, but God coming into the life of
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the world through the ordinary life of an ordinary first century Jew.

The uniqueness of Jesus Christ is precisely here.\ ts the life of a man

God did something new.\ This life -- became the way God chose to reveal his
—— =a = aE

love to all nen: | this life became the normative human life, | In all his freedom

and integrity and compassion, Jesus Christ was God acting in history -- and at
—oF ead —e EES

the same time a man living life as God intended for all men to live.
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Regardless of what else we want to say about Christ, may I suggest that
—— —

an authentic confession begins with the fact that he was one of us.| Every feeling
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you ever had was experienced by sesus \Every fear of death you ever felt - was
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felt by him.\ He got tired and angry and disappointed and ©. tented as you and
—_— as a aS as

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I do. \\when they crucified him it hurt -- and as he died he too wondered why
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God had abandoned him.

——

Cliches have a way of disappearing when we finally acknowledge that this
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man - about whom so much has been written and said - was one of us.
— Coy — SS

There is a pop song that goes, \'"Put your hand in the hand of the man from

galitee") And the real significance of that affirmation is that the hand of
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Jesus does not lift us out of this "vale of tears" but rather is scorched and
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scarred by life along with our own.
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That's what Peter did not know ne did not yet see that this man, in
—— SES (ee =i

whom God was acting, would go all_the way with him and for him. \ te did not yet
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know about a love that suffers and dies in order to express itself. ev UAL do.-.

John Baillie, in an essay exploring the various theologies with which
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men have described Jesus, summed up in these words:
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| "Tt do know that it is the constraint of Jesus Christ from which I
—= os ey

find it most impossible to escape.\ I just cannot read the Gospel story

SS

without knowing that I am being sought our in love. \ .z am not now arguing.
I am only confessing"| (A Reasoned Faith. P118-119)

So it is for us.\Our response to Jesus Christ is called out of us by
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that Love:\not intellectually -- out of our minds \ but out of our hearts.
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We may not always fully understand \\ite may not be able to explain. \ In the

Presbyterian tradition one becomes a church member, not bq reciting an elaborate
— (ana wre Wave @ pnobli dade
theological formula -- but by responding to Jesus Christ - in an eloquently
ee rey oo

SSS
—

simple, personal confession:|" I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior -

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i trust him - I intend to follow him",

And we remain in Christian faith, I would suggest, on that same basis | ny

going back daily to that incident near Caesarea philip \pack past all the

cliches - all the creeds - all the ecclesiastical trappings - and confronting

the man sesus \"wno do you say that I am?" | ana confessing, in whatever words

we have, \"You are the Christ - you are what life means to me-\you are my teacher -

——

my friend - my companion - my rane nd you I would follow". Amen.
aay Ess =a eg ==

Father, break through our cliches, our comfortable and wordy
theologies, and help us to see Jesus, our brother, who lived, as one of

us and died for us. Amen.