Who do you say you are?

​I'm Rev. Sam LaDue, pastor of University Lutheran Church (UniLu) in Palo Alto, a small, queer-affirming, Stanford-adjacent congregation that takes the Gospel seriously and itself not so seriously. This Sunday, I tried to get everyone to dance...sort of. It failed spectacularly, which turned out to be entirely ok, and a great  illustration anyway.

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based on Matthew 16:13-20, with Isaiah 51:1-6 and Romans 12:1-8, for Pentecost 13, Year A

A Failed Experiment 
Here's what I tried: I asked everyone to find a partner, face each other, touch hands. Person 1, step toward Person 2. Now, Person 2, step toward Person 1.

It went nowhere. The people who were supposed to step, stepped. The people on the other side...stayed put. People laughed. I laughed. I genuinely expected that, as has happened in most other places where I've done this little drill, people would intuitively move when someone stepped toward them in a close space. Ballroom dancers would recognize this right away and likely make the move immediately (though not always).

Well, what had happened elsewhere didn't happen at all, in this case, and I had to call it what it was, a failed experiment.

The theological point I was reaching for isn't actually about choreography, of course. It's more about how we're bigger than just our physical bodies, and we pretty intuitively will "dance" around and with one another. Like we do when we're moving fast down a busy sidewalk. Or, you know that thing, when you're walking through a busy space, a train station, a full hallway, and your body is constantly and automatically adjusting? Shifting to make room, stepping left because someone stepped right, the whole crowd moving like a single breathing thing? We could claim it's entirely due to literally seeing things, but it's more than that. Many of us quickly and easily sense movement around us without seeing a thing. Nobody calls it out. Nobody directs it. Nobody's thinking about it. And yet somehow it happens, automatic, unrehearsed, all different, and still together. A whole body of being and intuitive movement that is bigger than our individual selves.

That is the sermon, kind of.  Hold that. Both of those things at once: the automatic response, and the variety of it.

Borrowed Choreography

The disciples are with him in Caesarea Philippi. And he asks them something.
"Who do people say the Son of Man is?"

They reach, immediately, for borrowed choreography. The stuff they've been told or heard, categories they already know. John the Baptist, Elijah, Jeremiah. Familiar names. Familiar categories. Moves that already exist, steps they've seen before. And, crucially, Jesus doesn't tell them they're wrong. He doesn't correct a single one of them. All of those answers are, in their own way, reaching toward something real, pointing in the general direction he seems to be trying to orient them.

Then he turns and asks them directly: "But who do you say that I am?"

And Peter (who has literally said almost the exact same thing just a few chapters back, mid-storm, mid-miracle) just. dives right in and says you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.

He doesn't know any special theological dance moves here, as far as I can tell. He's just present. Something comes at him, the full weight of the question, the full reality of the person in front of him, and his body answers. No choreography. Just response.

And I suppose we could stop there. We could say Peter stumbled onto Truth with a capital T, thank you God, let's go home happily knowing that Jesus came here to save us.

But that's not actually good news for us today. Not unless we want to remove our own responsibilities from the full picture. Which, honestly, is a very popular move for people who have co-opted Christianity for things like nationalistic purposes. Handing everything to a divine figure so that you personally never have to account for anything is a very convenient theology...if avoiding accountability is what you're going for.

So let's sit with what else might be happening here.

Bar Enasha: What Are Humans Actually Capable Of?

What if Jesus isn't, initially, asking about himself at all?
He does already know who he is, after all. And, ego stroking doesn't really strike me as his kinda jam.

The Aramaic phrase he uses in that first question, bar enasha, is a tricky one. It's got the potential to be used as an idiom, not just a title. It could mean something like "a human being like this." It's the kind of phrase you could use when you want to point at yourself while also opening the question wider than just you.

So what he could literally be asking is something like: "Who do people say a human being like this is? What do people think someone like this, like me, like us, is actually capable of?"

Now, some scholars will argue he's referencing the Book of Daniel, where a "son of man" like figure appears as something almost beyond human, coming on clouds to receive divine power. That's a real reading. And well supported in plenty of places.

But here's another possibility, especially given that Daniel's own text says "one like a son of man," using that word like to signal something resembling but not quite an ordinary human being: what if Jesus is asking his closest friends what they think your average, ordinary, humble human being is capable of? Based on what people say. Based on what society tells us.

Notice that he's also asking these question in Caesarea Philippi, in Caesar's city. A city built to honor the Roman emperor. A place where the official answer to "what is a human being capable of?" if you were not Roman, was: not much. You've been conquered. You are a barbarian. And we'll remind you of that, lots.

The disciples (who grew up with that messaging in their bones) don't go where Jesus seems to be potentially pointing. They hear "son of man" and go straight for the external, the elevated, the exceptional. The book of Daniel version. Surely he must mean someone especially holy? Someone like the Daniel figure? Because we need someone to take on Rome, and we need someone who's exceptional to do that, right?

I get it. Genuinely. When you've been told your whole life that ordinary people like you are worth very little and capable of even less, when someone uses a phrase that could mean either "ordinary human being" or "exceptional divine figure," you reach for the exceptional interpretation. Because the more ordinary one carries too much weight and gets into how people are actually feeling... It asks too much of you.

But what if Jesus is trying, gently, to pry that story open to get them to consider another possibility?

Tiny Gods in Caesar's City

Think about the other readings that showed up for this particular Sunday (at least, the ones suggested for us in the Revised Common Lectionary). 

Isaiah: Look to the rock from which you were hewn. Not "look to a messiah coming to save you." Look to your origin, the same stuff God created within creation...Which, by the way, is divine.

We are imago Dei. Made in the image of God. Each of us tiny gods, created and becoming alongside the God who is always becoming with us. That is not a metaphor. That is a theological claim about what you actually are.

Paul in Romans: We are many parts, many gifts, but we make up one divine body, a body whose sum is so much greater than its individual parts. All different. All distinct. Still together. Still creating something between us that is larger than any of us alone.

Go back to those answers the disciples gave. John the Baptist. Elijah. Jeremiah. What if they're not wrong, just partial? Each one names someone extraordinary. Someone known for recognizing the divine moving through ordinary human life. Each one is a thread of genuine recognition, a different move toward the same I-AM-ness, the same divine reality. 

And now Jesus is pushing them further. He wants them to think beyond those socialized limits of who's holy and who's ordinary. Beyond who gets to matter and who doesn't. And goofy, often-misunderstood Peter (who by himself certainly does not have the full picture) gets told he gets a key. Whatever he looses or binds on earth is loosed or bound in heaven.

Note: Jesus doesn't just say this to Peter. A little later, he says it to everyone. The key gets distributed. The power does not stay in one place.

That is not a small thing. That is Jesus saying: the capacity to participate in the reign of God is not located in one exceptional person. It lives in multiplicity among all of us. It moves through the whole body- individual, and larger mystical body.

So maybe, just maybe, we're being asked  here not to fixate on Jesus's separate and individual power. Instead, maybe we're being asked to hold up some mirrors. To notice how, like those bodies in crowded spaces, we move separately and yet collectively. And to recognize, in a more intimate way, our own being made in the image of God, and just how powerful that actually makes us. Contrary to everything the current power machine would have us believe.

Take that one in. Really sit with it for a second- because I think we too often don't or avoid thinking about this.

You are made in the image of God. Not egoic, fear-driven, small you. Your fullest, whole-self you.
You are, inherently, as God made you, extraordinarily powerful. Not because you did something special. But because you simply have been made this way.

Despite all the messaging designed to make you keep yourself smaller and manageable and believing that if you just have this one other thing you might be enough.

And we, together, reflect that powerful made-in-the-image-of-God divinity.

The Turning We Can Do

Paul in Romans pushes us to recognize this through words about different gifts, different moves, one body. We are not required to have the complete picture. We are required to bring what we actually have, which is already so much more than we think, and often far more native to us than we've been taught to believe.

Because what we loose, joyfully, lovingly, energetically, even here, even in the shadow of highly controlling forces, is loosed in heaven. Bit by bit. One turn and move and collective response after another. One thread at a time, loosing the reign of God, right here and right now.

There's a song, Canticle of the Turning, whose refrain begins: My heart shall sing of the day you bring.
I am betting that most of us tend to hear that "you" in there as the day God brings. And yes. Absolutely. That's part of it.

But I want you to hear something else in that "you," too. What if the "you" is not only God? What if, when we gather like this (this specific room, this particular collection of imago Dei) we are the "you" who helps bring the day? What if that "you" you're singing is as much the person across the room from you, as it is God? What if the turning comes just as much through us as God, when we show up with our fullest imago Dei selves?

The next part of the refrain goes "Wipe away all tears for the dawn draws near, and the world is about to turn."

Not only because God wills that turn from above. But because you, all of us, this world full of tiny gods becoming, loosed it. Moved it. Brought it. (Note: the "tiny gods becoming is a direct quote from Franciscan nun Sr. Ilia Delio- look her up if you're not familiar. It's a fansatic and important point she makes about our relationship with God, and one another).

The world turned, and turns yet again, in part because we moved.
 
That's the good news. Bring what you have.
We aren’t left to rely on any ol' persons claims about who they say Jesus is.
WE are part of that body, WE are a reflection of who Jesus is. The turning comes through you, me—- us with God.

That's the good news. Bring what you have. We aren't left to rely on anyone else's claim about who Jesus is. We are part of that body. We area reflection of who Jesus is. The turning comes through you, me, us, too.

Go look up and sing Canticle of the Turning, and each time you encounter the word "you"-- think about specific people in your life. See if it illuminates the lyrics in a new way for you.

with joy,
Rev Sam

The reading of bar enasha as idiom rather than title draws on downright contested scholarship by Geza Vermes and Maurice Casey.  I chose to go there via theological imagination, and that's valid, even if it's not historical critical real. We all get to use our theological imaginations, it's a great means to getting to know God better. Also, as I noted above, the phrase about us being tiny gods becoming alongside God is indebted to Sr. Ilia Delio's work on evolutionary theology and imago Dei.