{"id":5887,"date":"2014-08-16T22:41:04","date_gmt":"2014-08-17T02:41:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/?p=5887"},"modified":"2014-08-16T22:41:04","modified_gmt":"2014-08-17T02:41:04","slug":"who-do-you-say-i-am","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/who-do-you-say-i-am\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Do You Say I Am?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"Pentecost<\/a>For all the Hallelujah choruses, creeds, basilicas and general hoopla that celebrate the name, Messiah, isn\u2019t it, now and forever, the question in our hearts and cultures: \u00a0Who is Jesus?<\/p>\n

In Matthew\u2019s gospel, Jesus asks the disciples, Who do people say I am?<\/em>\u00a0 And they offer a number of names:\u00a0 Some say John, some say Elijah, some say Jeremiah or one of the prophets.<\/em>\u00a0 And then Jesus asks, Who do you say I am?<\/em>\u00a0 And Peter blurts:\u00a0 the Messiah!<\/em>\u00a0 And then:\u00a0 Jesus blesses him for the revelation; names him the Rock on which the church will be founded, and tells him, for Pete\u2019s sake, to hush it up.<\/p>\n

\"Pentecost<\/a>Messiah is a dangerous name, he knows.\u00a0\u00a0 And in indescribable ways we still know that name to be dangerous, though perhaps we consider it more dangerous to us, and to general sanity in the culture, and to conventional churchiness, than to God.\u00a0 Perhaps the name is hard to say because we don\u2019t really expect a Messiah anytime soon.\u00a0\u00a0 Or perhaps we can\u2019t bring ourselves to invoke such a profound altering of life\u2019s possibilities, as a Messiah would bring.<\/p>\n

\"Pentecost<\/a>In these days of rioting in Ferguson, MO, after the death of young Michael Brown \u2013 in these days when we aren\u2019t clear in our national mind whether that death was a breach of justice or an appropriate police action \u2013 in these days, when people of color in America experience this tragedy over and over, without any change in the way order is administered among us \u2013 in these days, there is a longing akin to the longing felt in Jesus\u2019 era in Caesar\u2019s order, for a new order.<\/p>\n

That very longing, that agony of tense living through days encrusted with salt tears and blood in the streets, was real when Moses was born in Pharoah\u2019s empire.\u00a0 The story bears a similar outline to Matthew\u2019s story of the revelation of the Messiah, and the two stories are to be read this week.<\/p>\n

\"Pentecost<\/a>Pharoah feared an uprising, and ordered the midwives to kill male babies to prevent a Messiah\u00a0 (for that is really what Moses was) from arising. The Hebrew midwives, Shiphrah and Puah, resisted.\u00a0 What courage!\u00a0 For, if found out, they would have paid dearly, and their families, too.<\/p>\n

They let male babies live.\u00a0 And so the child Moses, like the Baby Jesus, was a hidden infant.\u00a0 At age two, when he can no longer be hidden from view, his mother puts him in the Nile in a basket, and Pharoah\u2019s daughter fishes him out, saying, Look, here is one of the Jewish boys<\/em>\u00a0who\u00a0didn\u2019t die,<\/em> and she takes him into Pharoah\u2019s palace and raises him as her own son.\u00a0 What courage!\u00a0\u00a0 Why is she not a Named Saint?<\/p>\n

\"Pentecost<\/a>She engages Moses\u2019 own mother as his nurse.\u00a0 Together, these two women raise up a man who will deliver his people from bondage.\u00a0 What an extraordinary household!\u00a0 In it they teach him what he must know to become Moses. \u00a0They form his heart for his own people and his soul for naming the suffering of his people.\u00a0 Episcopal Bishop Michael Curry, in his book Crazy Christians<\/em><\/strong>, points out that Exodus honors a household of two women joined in raising a child for God \u2013 and by this sign all same gender couples raising children are blessed as families.<\/p>\n

Here then are two readings about moments that point to a new order. \u00a0Both call for the courage to resist the present order as unjust. \u00a0And each moment is very aware of God\u2019s messianic hope, and of grave danger.<\/p>\n

\"Pentecost<\/a>In Matthew\u2019s story, Peter is Pharoah\u2019s Daughter, fishing the name Messiah out of the river of possibilities.\u00a0 Peter and the disciples will midwive the birth of Jesus\u2019 spirit into new bodies and into a new era.\u00a0 The raising of Jesus was done by his mother, who sang her fierce song dedicating his soul to the scattering of the proud, the felling of the mighty, the emptying of the rich and the filling of the hungry, before his birth.\u00a0 She was joined in raising him by the Archangel Gabriel and Joseph, in houses where Joseph contrived to hide him.<\/p>\n

Moses and Jesus each had several occasions of naming and revelation.\u00a0 And still it is difficult for us to name them.\u00a0 Each, in our own time, is difficult to name as well.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Part of the difficulty is that when we name them we have to name ourselves. \u00a0Do we deny having faith? \u00a0Do we have faith? \u00a0Are we free?\u00a0 Have we courage to cross the waters of death?\u00a0 Are we in, or on the way to, the kingdom?\u00a0 Or are we in bondage here? \u00a0Will we walk away from the body of Michael Brown in the street \u2013 or will we find some way to raise him?<\/p>\n

\"Pentecost<\/a>Who do you say I am?<\/em>\u00a0 Michael Brown, in death, is asking us that, as are the people of Ferguson, MO. \u00a0As are the people of Syria, Iraq, the Yazidis, the Kurds, and yes, Isis.<\/p>\n

We are all mothers of God, <\/em>wrote the German medieval mystic, Meister Eckert, for God is always waiting to be born.\u00a0 <\/em>And he meant this for our times of conflict and terror, and for the bringing forth of a new order. \u00a0He did not mean this as a Christmas greeting.\u00a0 He meant this.<\/p>\n

Our desperation for deliverance, and God\u2019s responsive moments of birth are eternal and eternally recurring, and they ask us to name them.<\/p>\n

So:\u00a0 What Exodus are we willing to make? \u00a0What Kingdom do we want to enter?\u00a0 Where are we now?\u00a0 And where are we heading?\u00a0 Who do we say Jesus is?<\/p>\n

__________________________________________________<\/p>\n

Illustrations:<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

1. \u00a0Poster. \u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Google Images.<\/p>\n

2. \u00a0Poster, Names. \u00a0<\/strong><\/em>Google Images.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

3. \u00a0Demonstration in Ferguson, MO. \u00a0Google Images.<\/p>\n

4. Moses in the Bulrushes<\/em>. \u00a0<\/strong>Drawing. \u00a0Google Images.<\/strong><\/p>\n

5. <\/strong><\/em>Sura-Europos Synagogue, Syri<\/em>a.<\/strong> \u00a0Before 245. \u00a0Shiphrah, Puah, Jocheved, Miriam, Pharoahs Daughter and the infant Moses<\/em>.<\/strong> \u00a0Mural. \u00a0Vanderbilt Divinity School Library, Art in the Christian Tradition.<\/span><\/p>\n

6. \u00a0Moses in the Bulrushes.<\/strong><\/em> \u00a0Drawing. \u00a0Google Images.<\/p>\n

7. \u00a0Michael Brown in death,<\/strong><\/em> Ferguson, MO. \u00a0Google Images.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For all the Hallelujah choruses, creeds, basilicas and general hoopla that celebrate the name, Messiah, isn\u2019t it, now and forever, the question in our hearts and cultures: \u00a0Who is Jesus? In Matthew\u2019s gospel, Jesus asks the disciples, Who do people say I am?\u00a0 And they offer a number of names:\u00a0 Some say John, some say […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2483,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bites"],"yoast_head":"\nWho Do You Say I Am?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"For all the Hallelujah choruses, creeds, basilicas and general hoopla that celebrate the name, Messiah, isn\u2019t it, now and forever, the question in our\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/biteintheapple\/who-do-you-say-i-am\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta 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