Approaching Caesarea Philippi, the disciples have come the farthest north they will go during the Lord’s public ministry. So, from here, they will have to turn south and head towards Jerusalem, where they will see the Lord carrying the cross on which he died. And here, in Caesarea Philippi, in that place far from Jerusalem and where there stood Herod’s temple to the so-called god Pan, that is, a pagan temple built by a Jewish ruler, the Lord drops his question: “Who do you say I am?”
The Lord’s question sets his religion apart from all others. He has made himself the referent of all religious truth. Everyone asks big questions about God, even if they do not name him as such: does he exist and what is he made of, where is he and what does he do, how can we reach him and what if we cannot? The answers to our questions belong to everyone and so have ended up in the world’s religions. But the Lord’s question flips things over: it’s not our questions alone but his question we are addressing.
Nonetheless, as a species, we are seekers: we are always on our way to God, seen in things like our pursuit of excellence, our love of novelties and antiquities, our thirst for knowledge, and our guarding of goodness. These quests are signs of our natural desire for God. And so, we readily affirm the natural truths which people have deduced for themselves and incorporated in their natural religions. This is the Lord speaking to them; through him all things were made, says St John to us in his Gospel.
At the same time, natural religions have their shadows. These the Lord comes to shine his light on, to purify humanity’s experience of itself and lead us to heaven. So it is that natural religions readily take to polygamy, have a high tolerance for murder including infanticide, espouse initiation by bodily mutilation, and subject their adherents to the grim confusion of mythology. The Lord’s question invites to his side all who have deep searching and longing, to strain out these impurities which sit with natural truths. So, the Lord’s question is insistent, asked of each of us: “Who do you say I am?”
We would offer some agreement with the answers people might give to the Lord’s question. Some will say Jesus is just a man; we accept he is man. Some will say he is just a prophet; we accept he is a prophet. So too, they say he is a wonderworker, a teacher, a holy man – and we don’t disagree. But we are those who have looked at his outward appearance and seen God. The Lord is all of those things but more because he is God. The Lord’s sacred humanity has to be seen through to what it reveals: true God from true God.
And because he is the Christ, because he is God from God, that makes him unique in three ways which affect our creed and conduct. First, Jesus’ being the Christ changes our worship. Instead of worshipping what we ourselves can deduce and create, we worship God in Christ and receive his sacraments. We know that nowhere else is such grace conferred so richly. Second, it changes how we suffer. Our cross is more than slow drivers or people who eat with their mouth open. Our cross is the thing in our life which could ruin us: an as-yet unconfessed sin, inevitable sickness, crippling doubt about God, social or economic exposure. These we carry with the Lord Jesus and find help from him in our need. Third, Jesus as Christ changes how we relate to the poor. Everything Christ has told us is of importance, and he has said they are to be helped.
So, here we are with the Lord Jesus in Caesarea Philippi, and he will soon turn south again toward Jerusalem. We have his question before us, “Who do you say I am?” If we make St Peter’s answer our own, take up our cross, and turn with the Lord now towards Jerusalem, we know we shall have life in him who lives forever.
Fr Paul Rowse, OP
Parish Priest
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