Today we get more of Jesus. In Matthew’s narrative, this is the turning point. So far the Lord has journeyed with His disciples, eating, drinking and sleeping in the open. Surely they must have been impressed and know who He is. But as if to test them after all these months of journeying together, with them experiencing Him performing miracle after miracle, He asked them about Himself. One would have thought that the disciples should already know that He is more than the son of Joseph. Their answers, not surprisingly, revealed a facet of human relationships and experiences. One can be with someone and yet not know who the person truly is. It was Simon who confessed again that Jesus is the anointed Son of God.
Today we hear Jesus calling Simon, Peter for the first time. Peter, the Rock, not Dwayne Johnson, will be the foundation that Christ will build His Church upon. Given the key to the Kingdom of Heaven, Peter will now play a central role, as head, of the early Christian community and will be the spokesman for the Church.
What has this to do with us today?
Through Peter’s confession, the Church is grounded in the faith of the Apostles. The Preface for Peter and Paul reads: “Peter, foremost in confessing the faith. Paul, its outstanding preacher. Peter, who established the early Church from the remnant of Israel. Paul, master and teacher of the Gentiles that God has called”. Our faith is inextricably linked to Peter’s confession and subsequently to his successors in the Church that Christ has founded.
Peter’s confession highlights the central role that he and his successors will play in the Church engaging the world at large. The question that Christ asked of Peter, resounds throughout history. That moment did not just end in time as if the question was asked there and then. Jesus continues to ask this question at every age and every turn of the century. “Who do people say I am?”. The answer must come unequivocally from the Church, notably through Peter’s successors: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.
Hence, we cannot ignore this question of who Jesus is if we are to be His Church. But this is on the larger scale, that is, it is the big picture about who Jesus is and who Peter is for the Church. The question that Jesus posed to the disciples may be ecclesial but it is also personal and it has implications for an issue that will increasingly affect us.
The question of one’s identity has come to the fore these days. Central to a person’s well-being is self-definition but it is not a stand-alone issue as it appears for many today. In these days of identity confusion, a person identifies himself or herself in a manner which requires society to come to terms with whatever a person calls himself or herself. It may come across as respecting a person’s right but it is not. Identity does not revolve around one’s own self-definition because who we are is always in relation to others. This means that there are truths which cannot be changed according to fads or fancies. It cannot be that the world must kowtow to my “truth” as if I alone define it.
Truth about who I am plays a central role in my identity and therefore self-expression. It means that if I know who I am, then I should be able to act accordingly. Apart from acting, identity also gives us a sense of belonging. For example, given an identity, one’s story does not get buried and one’s experiences are not lost or forgotten. Reality TV which we are all accustomed to is not just a form of personal story telling but it actually reinforces the need for “identification”. Yet, despite this drive to be special or unique, we also long to be a part of something bigger than who we are.
The sad result of identity as self-expression is not unity because the basis of identity politics is not really inclusion but rather a demand that one should be respected just because one has these experiences or that one belongs to a self-defined group. I define myself as this and if you do not accept this definition, then you are a prejudiced bigot, a racist or a fascist. It makes for difficult conversation because there is a reduction of who a person is to details such a race or ethnicity, gender or gender expression and sex or sexual orientation. It is very easy to fall into this kind of victim-trap. In Portugal, at Porto, a group of us experienced a truly bad service in a restaurant. Very quickly some of us concluded that the waiters were racist. Such labels like sexists, racists, fascists are not far from our lips these days.
The challenge arises when “feelings” are regarded as sacred. Then the assumption is that people will not be able to handle truth or reality. Thus we embark on this sad journey of trying to make sure that people are not offended. Operating at the back of our mind is the command to love and that if someone were offended, the guilt will set in that we have failed to love as we should have. The Apostle Paul told the Ephesians that we should speak the truth in love which means dispensing or shying away with the truth is never an act of love or charity. We should state the truth without pride, rancour, arrogance and condemnation. It is easier said than done but the demands to be charitable cannot overwhelm our responsibility to bear witness to the truth.
Actually, the greatest truth of our identity lies in how closely related we are to God. To navigate the confusion of who we are, JPII used to say that the truth of who we are is best illustrated by the knowledge of who God is. We are not reducible to our identity like skin colour or sexual orientation. Who we are is to be the image of the God who created us through Jesus Christ. Thus, the clearest picture or image of the Father is Jesus Christ the Son and anything else, a miracle worker, a guru, a liberator, a healer, a rebel are merely descriptions of what He can do. In today’s Gospel, only when Simon realised the truth about Jesus and acknowledged Him to be the Christ that he himself was able to come to fullness of truth about himself as the Rock. In an era where society is trying to know itself, the best knowledge of ourselves has to come from personally knowing Jesus Christ as the Son of God, the one who has saved us and to grow in His love and image. Today, the concern of identity politics is perhaps the best impetus for the evangelising mission of the Church. To know ourselves better, get to know Christ the Lord. To know ourselves best, proclaim Christ as the Saviour of mankind.
