That really is the question, isn’t it? “But who do you say that I am?” The reason we are here on this Sunday is because we found here the answer to that question or else we have an instinct that this is the place where we will find the answer to that question. Who do you say that I am? Not Aunt Margie, not Cousin Ray-Ray, you. Not even St. Peter. Peter’s answer was a good one. “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Peter used categories he understood. He drew on his heritage as a Jew and lined it up with what he had come to know Jesus and came up with the right, the correct answer. We buy it, we accept it, we profess it. But it is Peter’s answer. And St. Paul’s answer is correct too. “Jesus is Lord.” Survey said, good answer. Paul answers the question in the categories of Roman society with lords and emperors and kings and princes. So we buy it, we repeat it, for it is right. But it is Paul’s answer. Every Sunday we recite the Church’s answer. Who do you say I am? You are “God from God, light from light, true God from true God, consubstantial with the Father.” Good answer. The Church answers the question in the categories of fourth century philosophy and controversy. It is right, it is correct. However, for us gathered in St. James Church on August 27, 2017 that answer is more of a response to “who do people say that the Son of Man is?” than it is to “who do you say that I am?”
The Bible gives us lots of help in answering that question for ourselves. Jesus provides us with images to help us to come to know who he is. “I am the Good Shepherd.” I like that. It feels right. Psalm 23 “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want” provides us with hope and consolation. I am the Light of the World. I am the Bread of Life. I am the vine, you are the branches. All beautiful images, all good and proper ways of understanding Jesus and perhaps they connect with you. But who do you say that I am?
My personal answer to the question starts with Jesus as God-with-us, Emmanuel. That’s what the angel revealed him to be to St. Joseph in the dream announcing his birth and that is how I have come to experience Jesus in my life. God is not above it all, residing somewhere in the clouds, “glorying in being deef,” as Celie put it so memorably in The Color Purple. No, in Jesus we find God is one of us, another guy on the bus. All that we are and all that we are going through as human beings has divine, has eternal significance because God chose to share human existence with us in Jesus. We are not condemned to figuring out how to deal with war and poverty and HIV and Ebola and racism and violence and immigration and global warming and… all on our own. Because God-is-with-us in Jesus we know that we are caught up in a story much bigger than what we read about in the newspapers, or in the latest meme. No, the human melody is woven into the divine symphony which assures us that since God is with us in God’s time all will be well, all manner of things will be well.
I experience God-with-us most particularly in the Eucharist. When we receive Holy Communion Jesus comes in a very direct way. He is not merely someone who lived 2017 years ago that we remember fondly because of the lessons that he taught. No, Jesus promised that he would be with us until the end of time and the Eucharist is the redemption of that pledge. When we gather around the table of the Lord we are invited into a personal, an intimate relationship. We don’t need to walk the dusty roads of Galilee to have Jesus as a companion on our journey through life. From the experience of the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharist, I find he is with me in so many other ways. For example, Jesus told us “wherever two or three are gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” There’s a few more than two or three here so we can be sure that Jesus is really present in this community here gathered. Jesus said, “Whatsoever you do to the least of my brothers or sister, that you do unto me.” So when I am doing an act of kindness or performing some work of mercy Jesus is really present to me in the persons who I am able to help. Just a few of the ways Jesus is really present.
But perhaps one of the main ways that I feel Jesus is with us is when he taught us to say OUR Father. You and me, Jesus, we are an us, we are together when we call on God. Yep, OUR Father. When we pray, our prayer is joined with that of Jesus since we call on the Father together. I am remembering the prayer of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane on the day before he died. “Father, if it is possible let this cup pass from me.” Father, isn’t there a plan B? If you are anything like me you have prayed some variation of that prayer frequently. Father, if it is possible can’t you make the cancer go away? Father, if it is possible can you do something about the grief and loneliness that I am feeling? Father, if it is possible can’t you help my family? When we pray like that, we don’t pray alone. Jesus is praying right along side of us. “Our Father, if it is possible…” And that is what gives us the strength to add to our prayer the words that Jesus did: “But not my will but thine be done.”
Church, those are some of my answers. What about yours? Your prayer homework for the week is to answer that question: But who do YOU say that I am. If your family is anything like mine, a family history of Catholicism is no guarantee that the faith is being preserved. We only have to look around us to see that some familiar faces no longer kneel beside us. That is why it is imperative that we answer the question for ourselves. Faith is not cultural or social or familial. Faith is personal. Not what others say but who do you say that Jesus is for you? The blessed assurance that I extend to you as you answer that question: Jesus, yearns, desires to be with you. “Ask and you will receive. Seek and you will find. Knock and the door will be opened for you.” Blessed assurance, Jesus is mine.