August 25, 2002 - Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
Romans 12:1-8
    NRSV KJV CEV
Matthew 16:13-20
    NRSV KJV CEV

“Do You Know Me?”

Several years ago a major credit card company ran a rather clever ad campaign.  It consisted of a somewhat prominent figure in the arts, music, business, literature, what have you, who looked into the camera and asked, "Do you know me?"  Later as the credit card appeared on the screen you saw the name and it clicked who this was.  The face came together with the name, our knowledge was expanded and the question was answered -- "Yes, now I know you."

While the goal of the commercial was to convince you that using this particular credit card put you in the same category as the celebrity, it unwittingly asked a far more profound question.  Beneath the surface of that question are more questions -- questions of self-knowledge, of intimacy, and of perception.  The philosopher Alan Watts once remarked that the most profound questions are often asked in ordinary conversation and language.  "Who do you think you are?  Who started this?  Are we going to make it? . . .  Is it serious?"  {Alan Watts Beyond Theology: The Art of Godmanship, p. 29} "Do you know me?" is right up there, then, and we shouldn't be surprised that the exchange where Jesus asks this of his disciples constitutes the turning point for Matthew's Gospel and for Simon's life.

Jesus begins the exchange by asking what the 'word on the street' is, "Who do people say that I am?"  The disciples' responses reflect their own and the Jewish community's uncertainty about who Jesus is.  "Some say John the Baptist, the others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets."  Their responses tell us that the community, and the disciples, saw Jesus as part of the prophetic tradition -- though how and why seemed still mysterious to them.  They had seen Jesus' actions and heard his words, perceiving in them the same call to relationship and reform that the prophets brought.  They're close, but still not there.  So he asks them a far more personal question, "Who do you say that I am?"

I can imagine that a relatively lively discussion came to a crashing halt right there.  One of those awkward silence moments that all of us have experienced.  Peter, impulsive as usual, breaks the silence with his answer, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God."  At that moment the human Jesus is identified with the "Living God," the source of life and the hope of all creation.  Peter's impulse is a divinely sparked intuition and what we see here is a classic example of God's revelation at work.  This story, then, is about knowledge.  Jesus knows that Peter, at least, knows who he is; which is why he asks the second, more personal question.  What Peter knows isn't acquired from study, but experience -- and it isn't merely human experience.  What Peter confesses is revealed knowledge, made available to him because God desires to disclose God's self.

Peter came to his knowledge because he was attuned to God's working in his life.  One of the wondrous things we discover in this story is that not only are humans empowered to know God, God wants to be known by us.  John Shea recounts a whimsical legend about God's desire to be known in his book, Stories of God: An Unauthorized Biography.

...and God, angered by inaccurate reporting and editorial guesses about who he is and what he is about, hired the human person as a scribe and began to dictate his story.  (It is well known that although God positively fulminates in speech, he has neither the patience nor time to write.)  So for forty days and forty nights God spoke and for forty days and forty nights the scribe scribed.  Finally the last word having been spoken, the exhausted God sat down (the whole time of dictation he had paced).  The scribe finished the last word and stood up with the outrage of someone who has been plagiarized, "But this is my story!" {p. 63}

Shea comments, "What we say of God is not merely Christian code for talking of ourselves.  Rather the reality of God so suffuses the reality of people that to talk of one is to implicate the other.  Our interpenetration by God is so total that the stories of God, no matter how they appear, are never legitimately told in the third person." {p. 63-4}  Simon came to a new, personal, intimate knowledge of the living God and because of it he's a difference person, even given a new name -- Peter, rock.  The story is his story and it changes him.

Peter recognized and acknowledged that he was in the presence of the 'Christ,' the anointed one, the Messiah.  I suppose countless sermons have been written about the political Messiah the Jews were expecting and what they got instead.  It might be more important, though, to remind ourselves of what the promised Messiah was supposed to do.  We heard about it in Psalm 124, "If the Lord had not been on our side . . ."  The Messiah comes to remind us that God is on our side, that there is One to help us to make sense of life, to comfort, and to give peace.  The Psalmist's words take on new meaning as we realize deep within ourselves that, "our help is in the name of the Lord who made heaven and earth."  Now we can put a face to the name and answer that important question -- "Do you know me?"

Peter's answer, however, is more than just for himself.  His recognition helps to form a new community -- the church, those called out. Later Paul would have an encounter with the Christ that turned him around and made him a passionate member of this new community, a community on which he had spent much effort to wipe out.  His appeal to the Romans comes out of his experience and he's asking them, and us, to come to center life in God and then to act out of that center.

Paul's appeal follows the pattern of Peter's experience, and all authentic Christian experiences of Divine Life seem to follow it as well.  It begins with coming to a new knowledge of God and self and then, almost immediately, turns outward.  First one offers oneself up as a "living sacrifice, holy and acceptable," to God.  Another way of describing this is to say that our lives should be dedicated to God and God's ways in every aspect.  Then, and here I love J. B. Phillip's translation, they are not to let the world around them "squeeze them into its mold."  In other words, our living relationship to God should be an agent for change in our culture rather than becoming trapped by it -- a lesson, I'm afraid, that the church has not always learned well.  Finally, as they allow God to transform their lives they should allow God's gifts to emerge and flower for the service of the community and of our fellow human beings.

Paul's words should help us to recognize our own gifts and talents and also to look for the gifts and talents of others.  The community of faith is to be a place where we can exercise, learn, and grow these gifts in service to God and each other.  Most importantly, however, we are powerfully reminded to remember that they are gifts, as is life itself, and we should accept, celebrate and use these gifts in humility.

The experience of community begins when we recognize God's presence among us and answer the question, "Do you know me?"  As Peter's response and circumstance was different from Paul's, so it is for each of us -- and has been in every age.  Each of us must open heart and mind to listen for the question as it comes to us.  As we have listened with the ear of the heart then we can respond from deep within ourselves.  I suppose that is why I find Albert Schweitzer's words so powerful.  Here was a man who looked to the Bible's words that the length of life is "seventy years, eighty if we are strong" and planned his life accordingly.  He spent his first 35 years earning doctorates in music, medicine, and theology and then spent the next 50 or so years (he was more than strong) in service.  In his case this service was as a medical missionary in the Congo.  I leave you with his powerful concluding words of his book  The Quest of the Historical Jesus.

He comes to us as One unknown, without a name, as of old, by the lake-side, He came to those men who knew Him not.  He speaks to us the same word: "Follow thou me!" and sets us to the tasks which He has to fulfill for our time.  He commands.  And to those who obey Him, whether they be wise or simple, He will reveal Himself in the toils, the conflicts, the sufferings which they shall pass through in His fellowship, and, as an ineffable mystery, they shall learn in their own experience Who He is. {p. 403}

"Do you know me?"