Jesus has been teaching and healing
back and forth across Galilee,
and he
takes a break.
He prays alone,
trying to understand what's going
on,
trying to understand himself,
seeking to discern what God wants of
him.
Then he asks his followers,
“Who do the crowds say that I
am?”
___________________________________________
After Jesus hears what
they report,
he asks them another question:
“But YOU—who do YOU say that I
am?”
Peter answers, “You are God's Anointed One.”
He answers out of his
understanding of himself at this point in time.
Having seen the healings and
heard the teaching,
Peter is confident about Jesus and his Way,
though
later events will shake his
confidence.
___________________________________________
Today the question
comes to each of us:
who do I say that Jesus is?
The answer will depend on
who we think we are, our own identity.
Most of us go through an identity
crisis, often more than once—
as teens, as young adults, in marriage,
in
mid-life, at retirement,
at the death of a parent or a child or a
spouse.
We get to a place where aren't sure who we are any more.
We know
we are changing.
We try to figure out who we are now.
We feel fragile and
vulnerable.
___________________________________________
Especially when
we're going through a transition in life,
you and I, as believers,
can be
grateful to God for the gift of faith
that shapes so much of our
understanding
of ourselves and the world.
Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi
was not a believer;
he was agnostic.
He wrote about what he saw in the
concentration camp:
“In the grind of everyday life the believers lived
better.
Catholic or Reformed priests, rabbis of the various
orthodoxies,
militant Zionists, naive or sophisticated Marxists,
and
Jehovah's Witnesses—
all held in common the saving force of their
faith.
Their world was vaster than the world of us unbelievers,
more
comprehensible.
They had a key and a point of leverage,
a place in heaven
or on earth
where justice and compassion had won,
or would win in a
perhaps remote but certain future.”
For us, being Christian is at the core of
our identity.
___________________________________________
But identity—who
we are—changes over the span of a lifetime.
Like Peter, we may have the right
answer at one time
and run away from it later,
only to grow in
understanding and commitment
as time goes by and life
happens.
___________________________________________
Jesus wants to know
what we think of him today.
It's not just dogma or doctrine.
He wants to
know if we will follow his Way.
Will we take up our crosses, the daily grind
of ups and downs?
Will we deny our own selfishness
and put others and
their concerns at the center of our
life?
___________________________________________
When Jesus asks us, “Who
do you say that I am?”
he shows us who we are.
We begin to see our
relationship to the world
and our purpose in life.
We have an awesome
capacity to take hold of our own lives
and give them away.
No one can ever
take our place—
we are the only ones who can be us.
And all of us humans
are equal in this freedom
to live our lives,
give ourselves,
speak the
unique word that is in us.
The self-gift of a poor, broken-down janitor
is
as valuable to God
as the self-gift of a president or a CEO… or a
bishop.
___________________________________________
Jesus asks us, “Who do
you say that I am?”
Being Jew or Greek, black or white, slave or free,
old
or young, male or female is not significant.
What is significant is our
freedom,
that gift that reflects that we are made in the image of God.
We
can deceive ourselves
with thinking that our foremost task in life
is
somehow to make a difference,
to have done something
that no one else
could possibly have done,
to be irreplaceable.
But the only difference we
really make in this world,
the only thing that we can do that no one else can
do,
is take ownership of our lives
and give them away.
This we do in
our commitments, our promises.
Getting married.
Taking a job.
Raising
children.
Caretaking for a parent.
Registering to vote.
Volunteering at
a soup kitchen.
Protecting the environment.
Donating to disaster
relief.
Each free commitment we make is out of love,
an emptying out,
a
giving away of our very self.
Through those gifts to others
we discover
who and what we are.
We learn to love, to believe, to hope.
We do not
cling to our life;
we give it away,
and in giving away our time,
and
our energy,
and our resources,
we save our lives.
And we find ourselves
following Jesus on the Way.
Amen.
--
Holy Spirit Catholic
Community
Saturdays at 4:30 p.m./Sundays at 5:30 p.m.
at 3925 West Central
Avenue (Washington Church)
www.holyspirittoledo.org
Rev. Dr. Bev
Bingle, Pastor
Mailing address: 3156 Doyle Street, Toledo, OH 43608-2006
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