Who am I for you? – joining up the dots

 ‘…But what about you?’ he asked. ‘Who do you say I am?’’ (Matthew 16:15)

Matthew 16:13-20 (Year A: Trinity+10)

This is a famous passage in the Gospel. It marks the profession of Peter’s faith in Jesus the Messiah, the Christ. It was not ‘flesh and blood’ that revealed this to Peter but the Father in heaven. A work of grace. A calling and a trust that would be the rock foundation (the Cephas to use the Greek term for rock and the meaning of the name Peter) on which the early Christian community would be founded (some scholars claim that use of the word ‘Church’ or ekklêsia in the Greek was added later). Immediately following this part of the conversation the Gospel of Matthew moves into a prediction of suffering and death.  This horrified Peter reacted and Peter’s worldly (and all together understandable and human) way of thinking was confronted by Jesus.

The conferring of the ‘keys of the kingdom’ with the use of the rabbinical ‘binding and loosing’ instruction echoes the very same words in Matthew 18:18-19):

Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven. Again, truly I tell you that if two of you on earth agree about anything they ask for, it will be done for them by my Father in heaven. For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.

Matthew 16:18 and Matthew 18:18-19 need to be read together.  ‘Where two or three gather in my name…’ is the essence, meaning, source and destination of the ekklêsia  - literally a ‘gathering together of people’ in the ancient Greek.  Both passages have been cited by Christians through the ages to strengthen a particular emphasis or latter-day arrangement for Church authority and governance. The Primus inter Pares (first among equals) of Peter is clear to most.   But, we would be missing the point of the Gospel if we were to focus on this matter only. Likewise, we would be missing the point if we were to understand the conversation between Peter and Jesus as a type of Viva examination of an academic thesis into the Theological Status of the Son of God (although, clearly, this is important too in its own place and time).
Jesus’ question to Peter ‘who do you say I am’ is essentially a question about what does Jesus mean for Peter. It is about their relationship and how they relate. It is an I Thou dialogue (Martin Buber)
At the beginning and end of every day we can ask the same question of ourselves – Who is Jesus for me today in the events, people, relationships and challenges of the day gone by or to arrive? Where do I know, find, experience, sense, miss Jesus in this feeling, thought, happening, triumph or failure? This is the stuff of discernment and it is a life journey. A writer recently described Jesus as the ‘self-portrait of God in the flesh’. (One might add a ‘self-portrait of God in the flesh of the poor and the oppressed’).


That painting is in front of us every day but we have to join up the dots.