It was a survey much like Christ surveyed His people by asking two questions. “Who do people say I am?” and “Who do you say I am?”. Unlike the survey with regard to the possibility of a new chocolate product, Jesus was not asking so that He can conform Himself to what people what Him to be. Instead, He was in a way asking how people can accept Him.
The questions are important simply because they touch on who Jesus is and how much we are willing to acknowledge Him. It is easy to know about God. We can in fact expound a whole treatise on who God is but still have no relationship with Him. As observed in a proverb attributed to the Chinese, “Makers of idols rarely believe in them”.
It is true that purveyor of the sacred can sometimes have little respect for the sacred. It is another way of describing a known experience where familiarity does and frequently breed contempt. Sometimes priests can make fun of the Mass they celebrate etc because of their familiarity with it which begs the question of what they truly believe in.
We can know a lot about God without any personal investment. Hence the question that Jesus posed to the disciples is important. However, the answer to His question is equally important in the sense that there are as many definitions as they are ideologies.
In the 19th century when historical accuracy was the trend, there was a serious search for this Jesus whom historians felt had been obscured by the passage of time. The “real” Jesus seemed to be shrouded by centuries of theological veneer which the Church had painted or glossed over Him. In short, historians felt that the Church had made the real Jesus unrecognisable. The irony within the early scientific search for the historical Jesus was that the rejection of the Christ worshipped by the Church was replaced by a Christ who resembled more of an English gentleman. In trying to strip away the theological layer of who Jesus was, historians ended up with a Jesus that they wanted Him to be. This so-called myth of a pristine past where Christ can be viewed in objective 3-D panorama, a Jesus truly accessible to us, was nothing more than a concept of a Jesus who was already shaped by our scientific prejudice.
Today, we are not that different from that putative 1st Wave of the Quest for the Historical Jesus. We can still end up with a Jesus who mirrors our predilections. We want a softer Jesus, less judgemental and more indulgent of our weaknesses. A type of BBC-Jesus who resembles a cosmopolitan metrosexual and who is not hung up on legalism but is totally one who approves of our lifestyle. During WWII, when Naziism came onto the scene, the German Church was cozying up to National Socialism, the fascist movement of Hitler by putting a Christ who is watered down, passive and rather compromising who signed up to their lifestyle and demanded no behavioural change from them. We too can end with a Jesus who is culturally contemporaneous but Christologically compromised; definitely not the Jesus of the Gospel.
The recovery of Jesus requires more than a knowing about Jesus. In order to follow Him, we need to know Jesus personally; not just a definition or description of Him and certainly not a caricature of Him. The truth about Jesus goes beyond historical interest and accuracy to the person whom we should love. To love Him is to follow Him and to follow Him, the shadow of the Cross looms large. If we were to accept Bonhoeffer’s definition of discipleship, the justification of a sinner is not merely the forgiveness of one’s sin. Instead, justification must include a change in the sinner’s behaviour. Discipleship in Christ necessarily entails the changing of our behaviour.
We must get away from a cosmic rubber stamp in which the Jesus we know is basically a toothless Saviour who does not expect us to change. Thus, the present accent or focus on authenticity has to be more than being right with oneself. Our therapeutic self-assessments like “I am at home with myself” or “I am comfortable with who I am” can be misleading because these are not the same as being at right with God.
This is compounded by a challenge that we face as a modern society. The challenge boils down to the poles that should be kept in tension. One pole is change and the other is stability. Progressives desire change because we need to keep up with the times etc. Traditionalist desire stability because constant change can create anomie, a sense of loss without an anchor. The tension is to hold onto these polarities as we navigate life. But when society is deeply polarised ideologically, we will have a problem accessing the Jesus we should know. At present, on one end of the ideological spectrum, those who claim to be liberal tend to frame opponents especially those who espouse conservative or traditional ideas as harmful and the best way to isolate them is to vilify them for not loving as Jesus would love. All we need is when someone calls us a racist or a sexist or a bigot and immediately we cave in. And on the other side of the spectrum, the conservatives will label the liberals as Marxists or socialists bent on dictatorial control etc.
We live in fear of the political fallout of being labelled. Such is the paralysing fear of labels that prevents us from having meaningful conversation about the Jesus we ought to know and love. To know Jesus personally, it requires that we dare to cut through these ideological noises. It requires silence and an ability to sit down with Jesus. Prayer is essential to knowing Him. It is not just the rote prayer we are taught. To grow in Him, to know the Christ of the Church, the Jesus of history, we must embrace a prayerful and deeply sacramental life. He nourishes us and reaches out to us through His life-giving Sacraments. To know Him, we read His word in sacred scriptures. To know Him more, He must become the centre of our lives, our families, our decisions and our destiny. He cannot be a side-piece. Hence, the question of Jesus’ identity has only one answer which is meaningful for a disciple: He is my all. He is everything to me.
