A Sermon on Matt 16:13-20

“Who do you say that I am?” Could we find a more fitting question for our society? We spend so much of our lives asking this very question. We ask it of ourselves, and we ask it of one another. “Who do you say that I am?” It starts early, and we take the answer seriously. When I was 5, I had a short little haircut like Dorothy Hamill, the Olympic figure skater. Unfortunately, the haircut was where the resemblance ended. I was a little stick straight girl, with a deep voice. Some kids in my class teased me after I got my hair cut and told me I looked like a boy. I was devastated. I wore pink for a year after that, just to prove to everyone I was a girl. When my dad asked me what color I wanted to have my new room painted, I said pink. And when he painted the ceiling white, I got upset. “No! You said I could have the whole room pink!” I was determined to prove my femininity through the use of the color pink. That is how much I was affected by who people said I was.
As I got older, I got more sophisticated about constructing an identity that allowed me to decide who people would say that I am. In fact, as a society we have gotten more sophisticated about this. Once upon a time, you were what you did, more or less. You were a farmer, or a butcher, or a merchant; you were what your parents were. You knew who others were because everyone from the same class wore the same clothes, and most towns were small enough that you had a pretty good idea who was who. As society got more complicated, people from all these different backgrounds came together and it was harder to tell one class from another. We began to have more control over who people say we are. Today, we decide by what we wear, what music we listen to, what tattoos we have, what car we drive, where we live. We can spend hours setting our Facebook page up just right, with just the right picture on it, trying to control the answer to “who do people say that I am?”
But we don’t control the answer. Just as we are not books for someone else to read, others are not computers for us to control input and output. Relationships are messy, people are messy, and we never entirely get one another, no matter how hard we try. And no matter how much we might like to think that it doesn’t matter to us, it still hurts when someone answers wrong. One commentary I read suggested that we “moderns” are more concerned with the question “who am I?” than with “who do others say I am?” I don’t think that’s quite true. We care what others say about us. We care a lot. There’s a lot at stake when it comes to who others say we are.
Veronica was a woman in her mid-60s who had recently had surgery for lung cancer. The nurses on the unit where I was serving as chaplain told me that she was depressed, but that she refused to take her medications. She was, as they say, “noncompliant.” They asked me to speak to her – maybe a visit from a chaplain could convince her to be “compliant.” I don’t know if they expected me to put the fear of God into her or what, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt for her to visit with someone different, in any case. What I found was a friendly, rather mischievous woman. She sat in a chair near the door, watching everything that happened, a sly grin on her face as she sized up each person who passed by. “That guy keeps stealing my popcicles,” she said. “That woman has it worse than me.” She shared with me that this had been her 41st surgery – she had been through everything from open heart surgery to a mastectomy. She was sick of being in the hospital, and just wanted to get back to her regular care facility. At least there, she said, she could stand the food.
I visited with her for about an hour. During that time, she was talkative and open with me, but that changed, depending on who was in the room. With the lab technician who checked her blood sugar, she was friendly and inquisitive. “Hey,” she said, “did you have open heart surgery, too?” Her sharp eyes didn’t miss much, and she had noticed the scar just at the opening of the young woman’s V-neck scrubs. “Yes, when I was 5,” replied the tech. “Well, then, we match!” said Veronica, with an air of satisfaction. With the young Hispanic woman who changed the linens, she was positively beaming and bubbly. They shared a hug before the woman left. But all of this changed when the doctor came into the room. Suddenly, Veronica’s face became flat, drawn, completely unreadable. She kept her eyes down and to the side, almost never looking him in the face. As he tried to convince her to take anti-depressants, she tried to convince him that she was not depressed. If I had not seen her just a few moments before, I might have sided with him. But now, I was not so sure. Who was I going to say that she was?
Who do people say that I am? “Elijah, John the Baptist, Jeremiah.” The disciples answers make good sense. Jesus works miracles, he proclaims the word of God and the coming of the kingdom. He scolds those in power and calls attention to the marginalized. Jesus’ ministry reminded the disciples, and us, that God has sent messengers before. These answers give a quick history lesson – God has tried time and again to get people to pay attention; God has sided with the poor and the outcast before; God has spent a lot of time trying to get the powerful to listen to what God calls them to be – God cares what people say about one another. But Jeremiah was brutally persecuted, to the point where he begged God to leave him alone; and John the Baptist just died at the hands of Herod. Not only do these answers remind us what God has been up to in the past, but we’re given a foreshadowing of what is to come for Jesus.
After their answer, Jesus doesn’t say whether they are right or wrong, but he changes the question. “Who do you say that I am?” He is now asking the disciples what they think. The “you” in this sentence is plural – he is asking all of them, but only one of them responds. Peter says, “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.” With this answer, Peter gets it right. But even then, does he really know who Jesus is? Does he really understand? The very next passage, which we’ll read next week, shows Peter misunderstanding the meaning of this declaration so badly that Jesus calls him Satan! Poor Peter, even when he gets it right, he gets it wrong. And Jesus cares about what Peter thinks of him. He cares enough to correct it, not only with words, but with actions.
Jesus knows that Peter speaks truly when he says “you are the Son of the living God,” and he knows that Peter doesn’t entirely know what he’s saying – “flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven.” And then Jesus turns the whole scene around. No longer is he asking who others say he is, suddenly he is telling them who they are. Simon, you are now Peter, the rock. Jesus names him Peter, gives him a new identity borne out of this faith, bound up in his confession, in his naming Jesus as God. But that confession is not Peter’s doing – it is God who has worked this faith in him. God cares what people say – God cares enough to send the Son into the world, to live with us and to die with us. God cares enough to send the Spirit into the world, to guide us to faith.
After the doctor left, I asked Veronica what had happened there? Why had her demeanor changed so much with him? “He doesn’t listen to me. I tell him I’m not depressed, but he just doesn’t listen. Maybe he’s right, maybe I am depressed. But I don’t think so.” She looked at me, “What do you think?” “Well,” I said, “I’m not an expert. But I’ll tell you one thing I hear from you that I can name is frustration.” She seized on the word like a life preserver. “That’s it! That’s the word! I’m frustrated! I’ve been here for weeks and I’m not getting better. I’m frustrated!” She seemed so relieved to have a different word, one that didn’t require medication to treat. Once she had a name for it, she began to get power over it. Once she had a name for it, she could assert it, use it, make the doctor see it as the right name.
This is the point in the sermon where I’m supposed to tell you not to worry about what others label you. I’m supposed to say that it’s not about who you are, but about whose you are. And of course, that is true. You are a child of God, first and foremost. Like Peter, God works faith in you. And just like Peter, your identity comes from God. In your baptism, you are named and claimed by Christ. When you come to the table and share communion, Christ is saying to you, “Child of God, I name you. On you I am building my church.”
But it’s also not that simple, is it? It matters what others think of us. It matters that the doctor was calling Veronica depressed. It matters a great deal – once that’s on your medical records, it affects how every single doctor you see from now on treats you. Of course, if someone is depressed, then it’s best to get the medical help for it. But whether it’s the right name or not, it matters! It matters a lot! The next time the doctor came in, he said, “Veronica, I think you’re depressed.” And she said, “I’m not depressed, I’m frustrated! And here’s why! Now, if you have a medication for frustration, let’s talk about it. Otherwise, we’re done with this conversation!” Veronica had something to hold onto in that conversation, and she found that it gave her power, even some freedom, that she hadn’t known she had before.
God cares about this question. “Who do people say that I am?” God wants us to know who God is. God wants us to know so much that God came into the world, became human, lived a human life, and died a human death. God did all of this because God loves us so much, enough to care who we say God is. God did this because he loves you so much, enough to care who you say God is. And in doing so, God gives you a name to cling to. Like Veronica, asserting herself as “frustrated” not “depressed,” you have a life preserver. Like Peter, Jesus has called you by name – a new name, borne out of your relationship with God. Even if you turn around the next moment and screw it up, that name is still yours, and you can cling to it, and you can use it to counter whatever other names are thrown your way.
We have to live in the world, and we are going to care what others say about us. In Christ, we have been given a new name, a new word for ourselves that we can use. We can care what others say, but we can also know that they do not know the whole story. Only God knows the whole story about me, about you. Only God knows what it means that I have been called be a new name. Whatever else they say, I have a name that I cling to. Jesus has spoken to me in my baptism, “blessed are you, Aimee Appell! You are indeed a child of God!”