I just want you to know who I am
Sermon for the 10th Sunday after Pentecost, August 21st, 2011
Matthew 16:13-20
May these words and all our thoughts be as a living sacrifice to you, God and Creator of all. Amen.
There’s a song called Iris by a band called the Goo Goo Dolls that has been in my head ever since I first read today’s Gospel, in preparation for speaking with you today. I’ll not be singing it for you but the chorus, sung in that plaintive, late 90s pop music way, is:
“And I don’t want the world to see me;
Cause I don’t think that they’d understand;
When everything’s made to be broken;
I just want you to know who I am.”
*******
I just want you to know who I am.
It’s so basic a desire, isn’t it. That desire to be known, properly and completely, as the person you are. It’s what we seek from our lovers; what we sought from our parents. A good definition of soulmate might be the one who knows who you are and, by that knowing, can bring you to a deeper knowledge of yourself.
I just want you to know who I am. So you can help me know who I am.
It’s really an incredibly risky thing, to make ourselves available to be so known, to give another that kind of power over us. Small wonder that, most of the time, we are actually kind of ambivalent about it. We may say it. We may even feel it. But we guard against it at the same time, even with those we most love and trust.
Perhaps because we are, in ourselves, aware of the flip side of the desire to be known – the desire to know. Not “I want you to know you I am” but rather “I want to know who you are.”
Of course, when these desires are in balance and are shared in a relationship, it's a beautiful and life-giving thing, leading both people to greater maturity and love.
But, people being what we are, mixed motives have a way of sullying that beauty.
I think that these twinned desires are at the root of all the stories about names and naming in the Bible and in many – maybe all? – cultural traditions. If you can name someone, in this mythic sense, you know them and, knowing them, you have some claim to them, some power over them.
Indeed, God’s act of naming is so primal, so powerful that it calls things into being. Being known by God is a precondition for existence. Being renamed by God is to be transformed – or, perhaps, revealed in one’s true nature. Abram and Sarai become Abraham and Sarah; Jacob becomes Israel.
God, alone, is not named. Jacob, become Israel, asks for the name of the one with whom he wrestled and is chided: “Why do you ask my name” and given a blessing instead.
When Moses asked in whose name he was to lead the Israelites, God responded: Tell them I AM has sent you”, reserving the knowledge of God’s name – of Godself - for Godself alone.
God does not need to be known – at least not in order to fulfill God’s nature or purposes and certainly not in a way that would curtail God’s power.
But, perhaps, God desires to be known. You will be my people and I will be your God, God tells Israel over and over again through the words of the prophets and songs of the psalmists.
That is who you are and that is who I am, no matter how many times we are separated from one another.
-----------And then, in the fullness of time:
“Who do you say that I am?” Jesus asks his disciples. “Do you know who I am? No one else understands me. I just want you to know who I am.”
You see, I don't hear Jesus asking this question as a test.
Given how often Jesus himself is set up with questions that are actually traps, I can't imagine him setting up his own friends with such petty tricks. I think the question is genuine – Jesus wants to know where he stands with these people, the ones closest to him. Jesus desires the kind of relationship in which he is known.
And that can feel like a hard thing, for us. What does it mean to know Jesus? To really know him – not to have a christology of Jesus or an ethical commitment to Jesus but to know him? To be, each of us, somehow, in a relationship with Jesus?
“And you”, Jesus asked them, “Who do you say that I am?”
Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the Living God”.
Simon Peter knows who Jesus is. He knows that Jesus is from God and has been anointed by God to do some great work in the world, to benefit God's people. Practically in the next breath (though not in today's reading), Peter will reveal that he doesn't really understand what any of that means but still, at least for that moment, he knows who Jesus is.
And in that moment of knowing, he, in turn, is known by Jesus and his own self is revealed to him:
“Blessed are you Simon, son of Jonah! For flesh and blood have not revealed this to you, but my father in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter and on this rock I will build my church.”
Knowing Jesus means being known by Jesus; means having Jesus reveal yourself to you.
“And you”, Jesus asked them, “Who do you say that I am?”
It's not a trick question – though it is a loaded one.
Tell me who I am and I will tell you who you are.
I will bless you with that knowing.
And I will lay claim to your life.
That is, after all, what real relationships do – what really knowing one another does. As I said before, it is not surprising that we guard ourselves against such intimacy even as we crave it.
Knowing Jesus makes us vulnerable because it makes us known.
Which is why, when Jesus asks us, “Who do you say that I am?” no one can answer on our behalf.
Scholars can teach us helpful theological ideas; prophets can teach us righteous actions; liturgists can teach us uplifting ways to worship.
But, in the end, we have to know and be known to Jesus out of our own experiences and our own identities – inarticulate and ineffable as they may be.
Maybe this is, partly, why Jesus told the disciples not to tell anyone else who he was.
-Because they have to sort it out for themselves.
-Because Peter's answer was not as absolute and clear as centuries of scholarship have made it seem to our ears.
-Because the question was not a test; nor disguised instructions; but simply a genuine desire to be known by those he loved.
And you, Jesus asks, who do you say that I am?
I can't answer that question for you. I can barely answer it for me. What I can do – what we can all do – is take the question seriously.
We can ask it of one another; be brave enough to share our answers, no matter how tentative or how confident they may be. And we can listen for the blessing and for the naming that will follow as, in knowing Jesus, we are made known to ourselves in Jesus.
