(Mt 16:13-23).
When Jesus asks the
apostles the big question about himself, he doesn’t ask, “Who am I,” but rather
“Who do the people say that I
am.” He’s not looking for a right answer. He’s looking for real answers from real
people. When it’s a matter of a right answer, there can only be one, for truth,
they say, is not relative. When it’s a matter of real answers, however, there can
be as many real answers as there are real people. Had Jesus asked the apostles,
“Who am I,” he might have had the one right answer about himself up his sleeve
which he was intending to spring on them. We all have asked such a question when
we really don’t want to receive an answer because we already have the answer, but
we simply want to give the answer we already have.
When Jesus, however, asks
the apostles, “Who do the people say that I am,” he doesn’t have the one
right answer up his sleeve which he intends to give them. He simply and
honestly wants to receive real answers from real people. In fact, he receives four real answers about
himself: "Some think you are John the Baptist, some think you are Elijah,
still others say you are Jeremiah or one of the prophets” (Mt
Then Jesus directs a
second question to the apostles: “Who do you
say that I am?” He is still looking for
real answers. Speaking in behalf of the others, Simon declares, "You are
the Christ (the Anointed One),
the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Mt
But immediately after Peter’s
wonderful right answer, Jesus begins to speak openly to his apostles saying, “I
must go to
The super-right answer
Three hundred years later
in the Council of Nicaea (325), the church came up with an even more right answer to who is Jesus of
Nazareth. In the old days we used to
sing the answer in Latin at the creed. Jesus is Deum verum de Deo vero,
(“true God from true God”). He is Lumen de Lumine (“Light from
Light”). He is genitum non factum
(“begotten not made”). He is consubstantialem Patri (“consubstantial
with the Father”). You can’t get a
righter answer than that. But whether we sing it in Latin or recite it in
English, at the end of the day, we really don’t know what the words mean. At most we simply suspect they claim an
extraordinary uniqueness for the son born of Mary.
When Jesus asks the apostles
who do the people say he is, he gets four real answers. But there are many more
than just four real answers to the Jesus question. There are as many real
answers as there are real people. If you
ask a woman or a gay person or a black man who is Jesus of Nazareth, the answer
will be: he is liberator and freedom fighter.
If you ask a social activist who Jesus is, with Dietrich Bonhoeffer he
will answer: he is “a man for other people.” If you ask a staunch
fundamentalist Christian who is Jesus he will answer: he is the only way
without whom there is no salvation. If
you ask a good Lutheran who Jesus is, he will answer with the battle hymn of
the Reformation: he is the one who saves us through grace--through his shed
blood, not through good works. If you ask a good Catholic who is Jesus, he will
answer: he now is his mystical body, the church, whose head is Peter.
My real answer
If you ask me who is Jesus of Nazareth, my answer won’t be that
very right answer from the Council of Nicea: “True God from true God,
Light from Light, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” I’m not
quite sure what that means. For me Jesus is the one who told us those superb
parables about the human journey. That powerful parable about a man who, journeying
from Jerusalem to Jericho, is waylaid by robbers and left half-dead, is passed
over by a Jewish priest and Levite, but is shown mercy by a Samaritan (Lk
10:25-37). Jesus is the one who told us that powerful parable about the
younger of two sons who grabs his share of the inheritance and journeys off to
a foreign land where he squanders his money on extravagant living and
prostitutes, and then returns to his senses and journeys back to the house of
his father, who receives him with open arms, covers his naked body with a fine robe,
puts a ring on his finger and sandals on his feet, and holds a banquet to
celebrate a son who was lost but now is found ((Lk 15: 11-32).
Again, for me Jesus of Nazareth is also the one who
prioritized and simplified religion, when he scolded the Pharisees and teachers
of the Law for being picky about ceremonials like the proper washing of pots,
pans, and copper kettles, all-the-while neglecting the weightier matters of the
law, like justice, compassion and honesty” (Mk 7: 4; Mt 23: 23). Again, for me
Jesus of Nazareth is the one who prioritized and simplified religion when he
told a Pharisee, who was confused by the
maze of 613 major commandments of Mosaic Law, that the one most important
commandment of all is to love the Lord God with your whole heart, soul, mind
and strength, and that the second most important commandment is to love your
neighbor as you love yourself, and that these two commandments cover everything
that the Law legislates and the prophets preach ((Mk 12:28-34; Dt 6:4-9;
Lv 19:18).
Again, for me Jesus of
Nazareth is the one who died on the cross not because God was angry at the
human race for the sins of the first two human beings and needed the shed blood of someone
from the same human race to appease him. No. For me Jesus is the one who died
on the cross because human beings were angry at him because he believed that
religion was worthwhile enough to be taken to task. He took the religious leaders
of his day to task, and that made them angry, and they crucified him for it.
They, not the Father in heaven, killed Jesus (cf. Mt
That’s my answer to the Jesus question. It is not the one from the Nicene creed: “true God from true God, Light from Light, begotten not made, consubstantial with the Father.” That, indeed, might be the one right answer to the Jesus question, but I really don’t know what it means. My answer is a real one. I know what it means, and I cherish its meaning.
The
mischief of Christianity
Mischief can often lurk in the one right answer. Judaism, Christianity and Islam--each has its
own one right answer to the God question, and each has worked terrible mischief
because of it. In the bloody crusades of
the 11th and 12th centuries, Christians persecuted the
Islamic world for not having the one right answer about Jesus of Nazareth. Down
through the centuries Christian Rome persecuted the Jewish community in that
city for not having the one right answer about Jesus of Nazareth. Christian anti-Semitism
wrote such ugly pages of Catholic Church history, especially in the city of Rome,
that Pope John Paul II in April of 1986 entered Rome’s chief synagogue and there confessed the sins
of his church and asked for forgiveness. That was the very first time in 2000
years that a pope entered a synagogue, and some very staunch fundamentalist
Christians condemned the Pope for entering into the “den of Satan”-- their
characterization of the synagogue.
This past Friday, at five in the morning on live
TV, I saw a pope for a second time in history enter into a synagogue. At this moment German Pope Benedict XVI is in
It was an impressive
sight to see Pope Benedict enter into the rebuilt Noonstrasse Synagogue of
The mischief of Islam
Today Islam, through the radical Muslims whom it either
explicitly or implicitly harbors, matches and even supercedes Christianity with
the terrible mischief that lies in its one right answer. That one right answer
is encapsulated in what they call Shahada: a one-line personal profession
of ardent faith that “Only Allah is God, and Muhammad is his Messenger.” For those
radical Muslims that means Islam is the only way, and everyone else is an infidel
and must go. That one right answer of the Islamists fired up two 747’s and sent
them as weapons of massive destruction crashing into the Twin Towers in the World
Trade Center in Lower Manhattan on 9/11, 2001, snuffing out the lives of three
thousand innocent infidels with one grand slam in the name of Allah, ushering
in a brand new age of human history: the age of terrorism. The mischief of 9/11was mountainous; it
contained 20,000 body parts, and it took ten months to haul away
2,000,000 tons of debris.
Another
open letter
In these days of a new pope and pontiff (builder of bridges) the National Catholic Reporter has been encouraging us to write open letters to Pope Benedict XVI. I write one such letter now.
Dear
Brother Benedict, the church has told us many times what is the right answer to
questions not only about Jesus of Nazareth but also about birth control,
divorce and remarriage, open Communion, ordination of women, homosexuality and
sexuality in general. On the day of your inauguration as the 264th
successor of St. Peter you said in your homily, “My real program of governance
is not to do my own will, not to pursue my own ideas [not to listen to myself]
but to listen together with the whole Church.”
Bravo, Brother Benedict! Bravo! You see many people feel that church
only speaks its own right answers but never listens also to our real answers. We
ask that you now make good the promise of your inauguration to listen. I was
happy to see you enter the Jewish synagogue of
Dear Holy Father, listen now to the people of God and hear their real answers not only about Jesus of Nazareth but also about birth control, divorce and remarriage, open Communion, ordination of women, homosexuality and sexuality in general.
Conclusion
A team
Supreme
Brother Benedict, it is not a question about who of the two of us shall prevail and win. Rather it is a question of both of us winning. We each need the other. We need your right answers to guide us. They are answers harvested from sincere people who have the time to think and pray. But you, Holy Father, in some strange way, need our real answers to guide you. They are harvested from us who, though we have very little time for anything else but to live real life, have the Holy Spirit of our baptism thinking and praying in us and informing our real answers. That’s why you, Holy Father, should listen to us just as we should listen to you. And that, indeed, would make the two of us a team supreme.
We are talking about a family problem, for the church is a family. Parents, make a pact with your kids that you will listen to them, if they will listen to your right answers. And you kids, make a pact with your parents that you will listen to them if they will listen to your real answers. That, too, would make the two of you a team supreme.