A Very Unsafe Question: Matthew 16 13-19: Parish Communion at St Mary’s on 29th June 2008: Usha Hull 

I’d like you to picture this scenario. An family from India comes to this country. They are from a middle-class, educated background, tolerant in their religious beliefs, yet from a deeply spiritual Hindu tradition dating back many generations. The eldest child, a daughter, on reaching her fifth birthday, starts school. There, in a quiet moment, the Christian Sunday school teacher draws her aside. ‘Always remember this,’ the woman teacher says quietly, fervently, urgently even. ‘Always remember that Jesus is God.’

Now in today’s world, such a scenario, of a Christian trying to convert a child from another religion would undoubtedly cause uproar. Perhaps people who are keenly aware of political correctness would throw their hands up in horror. Atheists would rigorously protest. Religious fundamentalists would declare a fatwah. It might make the front page of the Sun. Letters would be written to the Times and the Guardian and the matter would be vigorously discussed on Question Time demanding the teacher be sacked or at least disciplined.

Or so I imagine – and I do have a vivid imagination – for as you have probably guessed, I was that child. I can still remember the look of astonishment on my mother’s face when I told her I believed Jesus was God, but then my mother laughed. ‘No,’ she said, ‘Jesus was not God but he was a very holy man.’ That was her viewpoint, coming from a Hindu background that welcomed and respected all faiths.

The question of who Jesus is, is fundamental to our Christian faith. To me, one of the great and personally hugely comforting things about the Gospels is that no matter how many inconsistencies there seem to be between them, they all seem to portray, without a shadow of a doubt, the same personality. And it is this personality that has fascinated us for more than 2000 years. And true to form, as countless others have done before us, in today’s world we would like to mould him in our own image.

In the Gospel reading, Jesus asks first, ‘Who do others say I am?’ No doubt, today there would be a plethora of answers. Those who are anti-gay would perhaps portray a Jesus who was stern and uncompromising on the subject of morality and gay rights, whereas those of a more liberal bent would be sure to point out that Jesus knew our human weaknesses and yet remained kind and compassionate. Some might say he was a socialist, a revolutionary, or clearly a Liberal Democrat. Yet others that he was an idealist with unobtainable goals. And across the pond, a certain political party in America would be sure to claim him as one of their own, indeed claim that God had spoken to them personally on the matter.

For the disciples too, when Jesus asked this question, it was an easy one to answer. ‘Well,’ they replied, ‘they say you’re pretty weird and wonderful. Like you’re one of the great prophets of old come back to life.

Jesus, however, is leading up to something and then he springs it on them. ‘But who do you say I am?’ he asks. What a question. You can imagine the ensuing uncomfortable silence. It’s a direct and very personal question. A lot of us tend to be embarrassed by such questions, particularly if we are in a group. Perhaps many of the disciples were trying to come to terms with who Jesus was, still trying to figure it out, hoping yet barely daring to hope, while the answer was whispered in the depths of their hearts. They know that once it’s out in the open they’ll have to deal with it. You can almost picture them, refusing to meet Jesus’s eye, hoping he won’t look directly at them, looking down instead at their dusty, sandalled feet.

All, that is, except for Peter, impetuous Peter who is recognisable from our own lives, who replies, ‘The Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’ So there it is, finally out in the open, the true identity of the one who walks among us. And for this, Jesus says to Peter, ‘God has blessed you.’ And he goes on to say, ‘My Father in Heaven has personally revealed this to you, this not from any human source. You are Peter and upon this rock I will build my church.’

As a journalist, I am only too well aware that the written word, the spoken word, the expressed word has enormous power. As a human being I know that the impact of bringing things out into the open is sometimes so great that we spend a great deal of our lives trying to hide behind silence. Many of our relationships are like icebergs, only a small portion of ourselves visible to the outside world, the greater part hidden below the surface in silence, often lost to our conscious minds.

As any bereavement counsellor knows, perhaps the two saddest words in the English language are ‘if only’. ‘If only,’ we say, while my loved one was alive, I had done this, or that. If only I had said how much I loved and cared. If only I had expressed love before it was too late.’

To put things into words, to finally bring them out into the open, to give them expression, voice, substance, form, can be hugely life-giving. And that is precisely what God would like us to do in prayer. Jesus will constantly ask us, ‘Who do you say I am?’ and the answer we give him through our prayer lives defines not only the part we believe God plays in our lives but the extent of our own faith and the way we live our lives.

Who do you say that Jesus is in your life? Is he someone you meet only on a Sunday, someone you meet in a few hymns, a few well structured prayers, someone you meet as part of a well-rationed order? Is Jesus someone you put into a safe compartment of your heart, sticking always to convention? Or do you seek to make him someone who walks with you always, whose teachings are part of the essence of your being, a constant force for love and change, whose spirit will urge you to places you would rather not go, to things you would rather not do?

Because to express love openly also carries with it huge risks. To bring things out into the open in prayer, to reach down into the depths of our hearts and drag into the light of God’s love the things we would rather keep hidden, obscure, unspoken, isn’t safe. Once you start airing things in the clear light of day, all of a sudden, you will find God is asking things of you and who knows where that will lead.

Perhaps He is asking of you change, and change is the one thing that most of us, if we are honest, often try to avoid like the devil. When you try to define what God means to you in your life, all of a sudden, you will find you are looking at the things you would rather avoid, things like the difficult situation in your family life, the barrier in your own life to becoming a better person, the addiction, the bad habit, the sins of omission we would all rather not think about.

So no, it’s not safe. When we tell Jesus in our hearts in prayer who we say he is, we put ourselves on the line by entering into a relationship. And you can’t have a relationship without commitment, without responsibility, without working at it. But it works both ways, too. For in this relationship Jesus walks with us. He is friend, he is comforter, he is healer. He is the source of our true life.

Many years ago, a woman teacher said to me, ‘Remember always, Jesus is God.’ I do not condone the action of a Christian adult trying to convert a vulnerable child from a Hindu background. Neither do I condemn her for we need to see things in context. Here was a woman who believed passionately and fervently that the heathen should be converted. The world she lived in was very different to the world of today.

Our lives constantly bear testimony to the fact that we have a God who works always in the world to bring about right from wrong. What was put to me as a thought when I was but a child, I have spent the greater part of my life trying to figure out

I end with a brief quote from that lovely hymn by Joseph Scriven written in 1855:

‘What a friend we have in Jesus, all our sins and griefs to bear!
What a privilege to carry everything to God in prayer!
O what peace we often forfeit, O what needless pain we bear,
All because we do not carry everything to God in prayer.’

Jesus asks each one of us, ‘Who do you say I am?’

Amen.