A lot of people are running around at loose ends these days. And all of us are not a little uncertain about who we are. We live in a time when others want to define us using political tags—liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat. But to be a follower of Jesus, beloved, means being able to say—I have a self that transcends every label people may put on me. And finding that independent identity, establishing who you are, is the task of a lifetime. Nothing is more important.
Jesus knew that. He too struggled with the problem of identity. The evangelist Matthew tells us that one day he asked his followers–Who do people say that I am? And they came up with a number of labels reflecting the beliefs of their purview. All of those labels had something to do with the radical politics of that time and place. But Jesus, unsatisfied, asked the disciples a more searching question—Who do you say that I am? And Simon, speaking for the rest, burst out with an truly audacious answer—“You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” It was a new apolitical label, unlike all the others. Not a label at all really, but a confession of radical faith. Simon assigned to Jesus for the first time that name we know him by–You are Christ, the Chosen One of God.
And in reply Jesus gave Simon a name too— “Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah…. I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church….” Because of his confession ever after Simon became “Petros,“ the rock. Of course, being human as well as a saint, he wasn’t a rock all the time. He later proved he could be anything but solid. (And the Church whose rock Peter was called to be has often been too soft and too easily manipulated by partisans of various kinds. And we know what we are talking about, beloved.) But Peter was always challenged to be a rock, even when he was a marshmallow. Even in his hour of betrayal, his confession continued to give him his identity. That never changed. He even lost the name his mama gave him, Simon, and became just Peter, the Rock.
Who are you, beloved? We are and have been many things to many people—lover, enemy, brother, sister, comrade, stranger. But we derive our deepest identity from our confession of who Jesus is for us. Whether we follow him or not, he gives an identity to the whole human race. His name divides humanity in two. And his Spirit tells us who we are. If you ask him–Who am I, Lord? —the Spirit will tell you. The problem is that we Americans in this time and place have come to hear that question as—What are you?
In this polarized society we are tempted constantly to define ourselves in terms of our political agenda, whether conservative or progressive—by who we espouse and who we oppose. We let our politics give us our name, not the Spirit of Jesus. The Church has often been little help in our task of transcending our politics, being as politicized as the rest of our polarized society, it is more of a hard place than a rock oftentimes.
But be that as it may, to be a follower of Jesus Christ means to let something more important than politics define who we are. There is more to say about me than how I vote, or what I read, or which network news I watch. All those things are secondary matters—at very least. What is crucial, as always, is the Cross.
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