Who Is Jesus? Living as the Body of Christ | Lakeside Light Podcast

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Let us pray.

Lord our God, your name and your word are exalted above everything.

We are listening for your word, and we are looking for your light.

By the power of the Holy Spirit, renew our minds and hearts so that we may discern your will and respond in faith.

We pray in the name of your Son, our Savior.

Amen.

The first lesson this morning is from the book of Romans, chapter 12, verses 1 through 8.

Romans 12:1–8

I appeal to you, therefore, brothers and sisters, on the basis of God's mercy, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your reasonable act of worship.

Do not be conformed to this age, but be transformed by the renewing of the mind, so that you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.

For by the grace given to me, I say to every one among you not to think of yourself more highly than you ought to think, but to think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith that God has assigned.

For as in one body we have many members, and not all members have the same function, so we who are many are one body in Christ, and individually we are members one of another.

We have gifts that differ according to the grace given to us, prophecy in proportion to faith, ministry in ministering, the teacher in teaching, the encourager in encouragement, the giver in sincerity, the leader in diligence, the compassionate in cheerfulness.

Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

And they said, Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.

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

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

And Jesus answered him, Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed to this to you, but my Father in heaven.

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.

I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Then he sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah.

For the word of God in Scripture, for the Word of God among us, and for the Word of God within us.

Thanks be to God.

Let us pray.

O God, may the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you.

O Lord, our rock and our Redeemer.

Amen.

How do people describe Jesus?

Who do they say that Jesus is?

How do they say it?

What words do they use?

What actions?

What stances?

Have you ever heard somebody talk about Jesus and thought, who?

And what about you?

Who do you say that Jesus is?

What about us?

Who do we say that Jesus is?

Churchy Treasure Anne Lamotte recently appeared on Amy Polar's podcast, Good Hang.

Did any of you listen to this episode with Anne Lamotte?

Okay, a few of us did.

Anne Lamotte, you know, she's an author, she's uh been in the mix for a while, but she has this way of describing Jesus, um, where she describes him, and she's described him multiple times this way in writing as a stray cat.

Um So here's here's one of her original writings on this.

She was at a really low point in her life, and she writes, I did not mean to be a Christian, but I never felt like I had much choice with Jesus.

He was relentless.

I didn't experience him so much as the hound of heaven, as the old description has it, as the alley cat of heaven, who seemed to believe that if it just keeps showing up, yuling outside your door, you'd eventually open up and give him a bowl of milk.

In the podcast, she says, You feed a little straight cat, right?

And it's not a straight cat anymore, is it?

You probably own a cat now.

She's like, I'm not stupid.

I know you feed a cat, it becomes your cat.

So here's Jesus, she writes, sleeping on my bed every night and stepping on my chest at dawn to play a little push-push.

I resisted as long as I could, she says.

But I was tired and vulnerable, and Jesus won, and I let the cat in.

And this is what I said at the moment of my conversion, except for this is not exactly what she said.

This is not appropriate for the pulpit.

I said, forget it.

Come in, I quit.

He started sleeping on my bed, and it wasn't so bad.

It was even pretty nice.

He loved me.

He didn't shed or need to have his claws trimmed, and he never needed a flea dip.

I mean, what a savior, right?

Then when I was dozing, tiny kitten that I was, he picked me up like a mother cat by the scruff of my neck and deposited me in a little church across from the flea market in Marin's ghetto.

And that's where I was when I came to.

And then I came to believe.

Who do you say that I am?

What if Peter had said, Rabbi, you are the Alicat of heaven?

Of course, Peter did not say that.

Or at least not exactly that, right?

Matthew describes Jesus and his disciples at this point at the gospel, and there on the outskirts we find out of Caesarea Philippi.

Jesus at this point has been making a splash, right?

He's been stirring up controversy, and he's curious.

He asks his disciples, what are people saying about me?

Who do people say that the Son of Man is?

And it turns out people say all kinds of things.

So his disciples tell him, they say, some of them, that you're John the Baptist, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or any of the other great prophets.

And then, of course, Jesus says, And you?

What about you?

Who do you say that I am?

And Peter, because of course it's Peter, is the first to answer, and he says, You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.

Something about this statement tickles Jesus, right?

And Jesus calls Peter blessed.

Blessed are you, son of Jonah.

And then he calls this answer inspired, right?

It is inspired by God, and then Jesus says, You are Petros.

You are Peter, and on this Petra, on this rock, I will build my church.

Or in Aramaic, it's the same word.

The same word.

You are Peter, and on this Peter, I will build my church.

On this rock.

This is only, by the way, one of two times in the entire Gospels that the word church, ecclesia, is mentioned at all in the Gospels.

A ton in Acts.

Don't worry about Acts.

It's only mentioned twice though in our Gospels.

And so our ears should perk up.

We should be paying attention.

And friends, ears have been perked up on this for millennia.

What exactly is Jesus referring to?

When Jesus refers to this whole rock idea, is it Peter himself?

Will the church be built on Peter and his leadership?

And by the way, does that mean that Peter now holds the keys to heaven and there's apostolic succession that will pass down those keys from generation to generation in the form of one interpretation, the Pope, right?

Or maybe is it his words?

Will the church be built on Peter's declaration, his statement of faith?

Perhaps we will build the church on any time someone makes a verbal claim, right?

States that Jesus is Messiah, the Son of the living God.

This dichotomy is an oversimplification of how history played out a bit on this particular verse.

It's Peter the man, Peter's statements.

But either way, it's worth flagging.

Let's talk a little bit about the context of this story because Matthew and Mark, in their Gospels, they both make it clear that this conversation is not happening in a void, right?

It is happening on the outskirts of Caesarea Philippi.

It is happening on the horizon in the background of this grand palace built by Herod's son Philip.

This palace and these lands that are dedicated to the Roman Empire.

At this time, within walking distance of the lives of these disciples, no place could better symbolize the ways that Herod and the authorities of the day and of their region have chosen to bow to Caesar and to the Roman Empire.

It is in the shadow of marble columns that Peter declares that Jesus is Messiah, right?

The anointed one.

And of course, the anointing here is how the people of Israel had inaugurated their kings into service for generations.

In the face of Roman power, Peter declares, you, Jesus, are our king.

And Jesus affirms this, right?

Jesus tells Peter and tells everyone within earshot that Peter is right.

Power will change, it will shift.

From Roman marble to a new kind of rock, a new kind of cornerstone.

Peter and his statement will be foundational to an ecclesia, a church, an assembly that intimately connects heaven and earth, up and against the marble of Rome.

But of course, as we know, Peter's idea of this power shift into Jesus' hands, and Jesus' idea of this power shift are very different ideas.

It is in the very next scene, you may know this, you may remember this, right?

In the very next scene, Jesus will tell his disciples that he will be killed.

Which is not so kingly.

And it is in this next scene that Peter will respond to this news by saying, God forbid it, Lord.

When Peter says, You are the Messiah, he is imagining something very different than what Messiah will come to mean to Jesus and to us.

So whatever Jesus is affirming in Peter, and in this moment, it is certainly not a thorough and complete correctness of Peter's belief system, right?

Peter does not have things figured out.

Even when Peter does manage to say the right thing, he doesn't even know what he's saying, while I do not buy that Jesus chose to build his church on one specific guy who then gets to pass those keys down to the next guy until that guy dies, and then the next one.

I mean, this is a hot take, I know, for you guys coming from Protestant pulpit.

While I do not buy that this scene is the beginning of Jesus' affirming a church being organized under the papacy, nor do I think it's as simple as Jesus telling us the church must be built on saying the right thing at the right time, making the right declaration of faith in the right way in front of the right people.

Or at least not only that, right?

Instead, Jesus begins to build his church, his ecclesia, on something so much messier and richer than that, right?

He builds his ecclesia on Peter and on a group of friends who do not even know what they're talking about.

He builds it on a group of followers who will mess up, and they will mess up in much bigger ways than simply misunderstanding Messiah.

But he will also be building his church on a group of friends, a group of disciples who ultimately do remain loyal.

A group of people who decide not to bow to the political winds of the moment, but hold fast instead to this profound relationship that they've discovered.

People who will ultimately grow and change, people who, as they live into these early days of being ecclesia, will bind and loose in ways that are wildly and challengingly different, that are open, that are trying their best to push past any barriers of class or race or geography, right?

They will begin by bringing in the likes of Saul, who was persecuting them and becomes Paul, the likes of Roman centurions and Gentiles, Greek and Jew, right?

And the Marys and the Lydias and the Dorcas and the Junias and everyone in between.

This openness, by the way, will be part of what Paul stands on, this rock that he writes about in our letter here, and in the Corinthians letters, and that we are going to quote in just a bit.

We are, who are many, one body in Christ, and individually members of it, with different gifts.

Ultimately, Peter and the other Christians' statements of faith will be more like what Paul describes in this passage, right?

A living sacrifice, a lifetime of service and commitment.

A few days ago, this past Wednesday night, eight of you told us who you say that Jesus is to you and to our church.

Not one of you declared Jesus to be a stray cat.

But instead, your incoming elders and deacons did describe Jesus and God in ways not unsimilar to that, and described Ecclesia in so many beautiful, rich, different ways, ostensible and undeniable.

Church is a place that holds hope so that hope can be shared.

Church is reflecting the heart of Christ who continually reached out with compassion, grace, and love.

Those are a few of the things that were shared, and so much more.

Y'all, trust me, God has called such a rich, wise, funny, open, curious, capable, uh, humbling group of leaders to step into these roles just as God has continually done in the life of this congregation.

No night is more inspiring than when we hear everyone share their statements of faith.

And by the way, I sit the whole time going, I can't believe these people are willing to listen to me for like over ten minutes and more.

Talk too long on each Sunday.

It's amazing.

And in a few minutes, this group will remember who they say Jesus is and who we as a community say that Jesus is when they answer their ordination and installation questions.

In fact, that will be the first question they answer.

All the other questions are a waterfall from that.

And our God will continue to build the ecclesia, the church, the assembly on that.

God will continue to build on that.

And the statements will be part of that.

The statements, yes, words matter, but more than that.

Something both deeper and truer and less perfect than something that a simple statement could ever capture.

Loyalty if mixed with questions.

Love if tempered by the realities of life.

Acceptance, if perhaps on occasion reluctant acceptance, like the acceptance of a stray cat.

God will build God's church on that.

Ultimately, God will continue to build our church on the faith and trust of an imperfect people who have neither perfect lives nor perfect understandings, but who are willing to serve as Christ did to the best of their ability, prioritizing grace and love and relationship and prayer and commitment, and resting that commitment on a bedrock unlike any other rock offered in our world, unlike the marble offered by the powers of our world.

Who do you say that Jesus is?

Who do we as a community say that Jesus is?

May our words answer that question well, and may our lives answer it even better.

Amen.

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Have a great week.