The Very Rev. Randolph Marshall Hollerith: “Who Do You Say That I Am?”
In the name of the Father, and of the son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen
Some years ago, I lead a two-week pilgrimage to Turkey, following the footsteps of St. Paul as he spread the early church. It was a great trip, and when I returned home, I discovered that I had taken more than 1,500 photographs. As I began to sift through those pictures, I started to see a pattern emerging. The older something was, the more pictures I took of it. Byzantine crosses in the caves of Cappadocia as early as the 2nd century, the tomb of St. John, the outdoor theater where Paul preached in Ephesus, gold coins from the time of the emperor Constantine. Looking over my pictures, I realized I craved getting as far back in history as I could. It was a craving to touch and experience the things and the places closest to the time of Christ and his disciples. It was as if the older something was, the closer I hoped I could get to Jesus. I wanted to peel away the layers of 2000 thousand years of history between my Lord and me.
But although I learned a great deal on the pilgrimage, the truth is, you won’t find Christ by looking backwards. Of course, history can teach us something about the historical Jesus, but our Lord isn’t an historical remnant trapped by the passage of time and the ruins of history. Rather, Jesus is the living Christ, not part of the dust of history. Jesus has risen from the dead. He is alive and well, and with us right now, right this very minute. That’s essential to our faith.
In our gospel lesson for this morning, Jesus stops in Caesarea Philippi for a conversation with his disciples. Jesus wants to know if they have figured out the essential truth about him. He asks them, “Who do people say that I am?” The disciples tell him what they have heard from the crowds. Some say he is John the Baptist, others say he is Elijah, and others that he is Jeremiah or another of the great prophets. Jesus then puts the question to them directly, personally, “But who do you say that I am?” It was a powerful question full of implications that are not obvious to us as modern readers.
You see in Jesus’ day; Caesarea Philippi was a place rich with meaning and history. Thousands of years before Jesus, it had been the site of a powerful Baal cult. In Hellenistic times it was called Paneas, the city where people came to worship the god Pan. And now as a Roman city, it was the location of a great temple dedicated to the worship of the Caesars. Standing in this place with so much history, Jesus wanted to know if his disciples could see the truth about him when they were surrounded by so many other allegiances, so many other gods. It was Peter who found the courage to speak – “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
In that one simple sentence Peter was bold enough to declare that when all is said and done, when the cults of Baal and the worship of Pan and the temples to the Caesars are all long gone, footnotes of history, Jesus the Messiah will live and reign. In that one simple sentence, Peter declares that Jesus is not just a man in history but God’s Son who fills history.
Tomorrow marks the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington. I was born in Washington, DC a little more than a month after the original March in 1963 and a little more than a month before the assassination of JFK. I think my parents always associated both events with my birth. They saved the front page of the Washington Post from August 28th and November 22 that year, gluing them into my baby book. Whenever anyone would ask my mother where she was when King gave his “I have a dream” speech, she would say “I was in bed eight months pregnant with Randy.” Or if she was asked where she was when President Kennedy was assassinated, she would say – “Why I was out pushing Randy in the baby carriage.” And like many who grew up in the shadow of these two events, Dr. King’s Spirit-filled, improvisational, “I have a dream” speech is ingrained in me, his words as important and familiar as, “We hold these truths to be self-evident” or “Four score and seven years ago.” Words that are not just part of American history but words that speak to America herself, both her successes and her failures.
Yesterday, thousands of people gathered again at the foot of the Lincoln Memorial to honor what took place there 60 years ago. Unfortunately, many of the same issues we struggled with then, we still struggle with today. Sixty years later we are still confronting some familiar issues – poverty, white nationalism, state laws designed to make voting more difficult, book banning in schools, a backlash against minorities, the courts reversing course on affirmative action. Things are better than they were in 1963, but there are increasing fears that we are no longer moving forward but backward when it comes to the vision Dr. King gave us.
For those of us who call ourselves Christian, who care about the state of our nation and Dr. King’s dream, it seems to me to be critically important how we answer the question Jesus asked his disciples in our Gospel for this morning – Who do you say that I am? Because just like the disciples at Caesarea Philippi, we too are surrounded by other God’s, false Gods, false messiahs. I like to call them – Fake Jesus. Fake Jesus comes in many forms. There is Prosperity Jesus who wants to convince us that if we give enough money to the church then God will bless us with health and wealth. Essentially, Prosperity Jesus came to help us get wealthy. There is Judge Jesus the hardcore moral teacher who is all about obedience and law keeping while holding over our heads the constant threat of eternal damnation. There is what Daniel Darling calls American Jesus who is a conservative talk radio fan, always loyal to the United States, and carries a firearm for self-defense. And, of course, there is Self Help Jesus, the wise and inspiring teacher who only came to help us find personal fulfillment.[1] All of these and many others are examples of the ways in which our answer to Jesus’ question, “Who do you say that I am,” can be limited, twisted, and perverted from the Gospel good news.
Martin Luther King said that Jesus Christ was, “an extremist for love, truth and goodness.” He didn’t come to make us wealthy or happy. He didn’t come to punish us for our sins, or to wrap himself in the American flag. He came to save us from ourselves and to teach us how to walk the way of love.
There are powerful forces in our country right now that would achieve their ends by dividing us, tribalizing us, ripping apart the fabric of our society through prejudice, hatred, and fear. But that is not our way, that is not the way of Christ. So how do we march forward and continue the work to make Dr. King’s dream a reality? We recommit to following the Jesus of love who sees the ultimate value of every human being and demands that we do the same, whether they are our best friend or our worst enemy. We recommit to following the Jesus who seeks and speaks the truth, standing up for justice, naming the lie, calling out and refusing to accept anything that demeans, degrades, or devalues another human being, no matter what they look like, what they think, or who they love. We recommit to being the hands and feet of Christ in the world, striving to create and lift up goodness wherever we find it.
In closing, I leave you with something Bishop Curry wrote some years ago. “As we join together to worship God our Creator, it’s about the dream. As we engage in evangelism and invite others to share this faith, it’s about the dream. As we proclaim the gospel and reach out to serve others, it’s about the dream. As we summon forth movements for justice and peace, it’s about the dream. As we join with others to build a better world, it’s about the dream—the dream of the love of God ruling and transforming our lives and, in so doing, the life of the world.”[2] Sixty years ago Dr. King powerfully explicated this dream and when all is said and done, for me, it is still the only dream that matters. Amen.
[1] Justin Dillehay, July 15, 2015, Christian Living Review, Daniel Darling, The Original Jesus – Trading the Myths We Create for the Savior Who Is
[2] “Crazy Christians: A Call to Follow Jesus” by Michael Curry, Katharine Jefferts Schori