Christian Pathway

This is the biggest question anyone can face as a Christian. I think we will all have to answer this question.  Every single man, woman, child, whatever, will have to answer this question; Christians certainly will

Jesus has taken his apostles on a little downtime. Caesarea Philippi is far north of Galilee, at the foot of Mount Hermon, about 20 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. It’s away from the crowds, away from Pharisees, all the pressures.  He isn’t known; nobody is mobbing him, etc. It’s as far north as he gets.

So he uses this pause to ask his group, who have seen him do a lot of things- water into wine, cast out demons, heal people, calm a storm; the list is long. 

So, during this pause he asks them…”

‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ 

Jesus refers to himself here as the Son of Man.
God calls Daniel and Ezekiel that; Jesus calls himself that a lot! He calls himself Son of Man about 80-100 times. I think he means it here to say I am a son of a man, ” i.e., the human part of him; he’s referring to himself as the human part of him.

He’s avoiding the term son of God; he wants them to say whatever they think.


They reply

‘Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ 

So, this is people doing what people do: they reach for the reference points they already have. They hear Jesus, see what he does, and try to fit him into categories they understand — maybe he is like John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.

Then he gets them to the actual question,  the real pivotal question all of us have to answer as Christians.



¹⁵ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ 



Who do you say that he is here today?  
Who do you say he is?

Important question

However

In our story

¹⁶ Simon Peter answered, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 

Simon Peter gets a lot wrong; he denies Jesus three times, attacks the guard when he’s about to arrest him, refuses to let Jesus wash his feet, etc, etc.; he’s rash; he jumps in. 

But here he reveals his heart, what he knows inside, and today, today he gets it spot on.

You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ 

And Jesus says, ‘Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven. 

That is to say God put that fact in his heart

As a result of that certainty Jesus then renames him

¹⁸ And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it. 

This is like God renaming Saul Paul. It marks a new stage, a phase, a recognition of the transformation God has made in you.

Then he asks them not to say to anyone that he is the messiah, simply because the rest of the world will go mad, as the Messiah for Jews is a loaded term: Military  Messiah • Priestly • Prophet • the start of the apocalypse. All of these things would have caused an uproar and led to the end of his ministry. So he couldn’t have that term said, and none of the messiahs people were getting upset about would have been the messiah he actually is.

The world was not ready for him, a messiah who conquers by dying.

This is why Jesus calls him  his rock, his kepha Aramaic fpr rock

This is the kind of certainty upon which Jesus will build his church.

Here’s the thing….

As with all questions in the Bible, it gets asked of the characters in the story, but for us reading it, learning about Jesus, praying to him, worshipping him, loving him, feeling him inside us m and his love in our lives. It gets asked of us.

This is the question that is the fault line of our faith: who do you say he is?

Not here, not now, but when you examine your heart, and what you know at the level of the deep magic, as c.s lewis called it in
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  At the point of the truth of all things, the way, the truth and the life.

Is he the word

is he a truth among truths or the truth

But here’s the thing becoming “his” means that he is in you and you are in him, and when you are his you become one the physical parts of Christs body, through the holy spirit that lives in you. 


So if Christ lives in us then We  the church are Christ’s body on earth.

Being part of that, what does that look like, it means we all have a role to play.  The spirit finds our role in this body, and nothing is more or less? Losing one is like asking your left leg to do without a pancreas?

I’m paraphrasing Paul here, and, as usual, he does it rather better.  Most people when they tackle this reading head for the description of your talents,  however the pre amble for this is often passed over?

12 Therefore, I urge you, brothers and sisters, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship. ² Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

So you do as in our gospel reading and then you know who jesus is and say it and mean it.

The result of that is that we trust him

The result of that is that, in view of God’s mercy,  we offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God—this is your true and proper worship

So we worship him here today, but actually the worship he wants is our lives, daily mundane lives given to him because, as Peter said

He is the Messiah, the Son of the living God

Amen