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Strange Exchange Part 1
Sermons from Commons Church. Intellectually honest. Spiritually passionate. Jesus at the centre. Since 2014.
Welcome to the CommonsCast. We're glad to have you here. We hope you find something meaningful in our teaching this week. Head to commons.church for more information. Welcome to Commons Church, and welcome to season seven.
Speaker 1:I know this is not quite the fall launch that we are used to around here. September is our birthday at Commons, and we believe that celebration is sacred, so we usually lean into this time of year. Coincidentally, my son just turned seven. He's a year older than our church, and we did our best to celebrate him pandemic style in our family. But even in the midst of everything that surrounds us right now, we have so much to celebrate and be thankful for as a family and certainly as a church community.
Speaker 1:We can adapt, and we can move online for worship. We can wear masks to protect each other as we gather in person. We can continue to trust that God is near and invested and present to each of our stories alongside this larger story of Commons Church. However, today, we begin our new season with a series we've called a strange exchange. And one of the things that I have always found fascinating about Jesus is the way that he often seems to find a way of getting around our defenses.
Speaker 1:Dietrich Bonhoeffer once wrote that Jesus often seems not to understand what people are asking of him or to miss the point of their questions perhaps intentionally. And then he speaks with a freedom not bound by logical alternatives. Do not be afraid of this freedom, he writes, even when it appears as the negation of all order, piety, and belief. What Bonhoeffer is saying here is that when Jesus felt like social conventions were stifling conversation, Or when expectations were getting in the way of real dialogue, he just ignored them. You know those people.
Speaker 1:Right? They say, how's it going? And you say, fine. But they say, no. Really, how are you doing?
Speaker 1:I mean, those people are the worst. Am I right? You know, I'm trying to go through the motions here, and you're actually trying to get to know me. By the way, don't even pretend like you don't feel like that sometimes. But this is actually a big part of what I love so deeply about Jesus, that he continues to push past our niceties.
Speaker 1:He challenges our conventions, particularly when he comes face to face with us. And so maybe in the season where we are getting used to speaking through masks or screens or plexiglass barriers as it were, going back to those face to face encounters with Jesus, the moments where he asks questions of us. Perhaps this is as good a place to ground our new season as any. And so for the next seven weeks or so, we are going to look at the moments where Jesus asks the questions, and we're gonna see if those encounters can reveal something surprising about us. First though, let's pray.
Speaker 1:A God of all good questions, who comes to us, who invites us to discover ourselves in conversation with you, who reaches in past the fog of convention that often clouds our minds and cuts through to the heart of the matter by asking us hard, good, loving, graceful questions. May those questions teach us how to challenge our assumptions, how to think truly about ourselves, how to know who we are in the light of your goodness and grace. And then God, may those questions make us curious about each other. As we become fascinated with the people around us, as we learn to ask good questions of those we encounter. May we get to know them in new ways, and may your spirit show up in the space between us.
Speaker 1:In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen. Okay. Today, we're gonna start in Matthew. Although, actually, this is a story that appears in all three of the synoptic gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
Speaker 1:And even this simple fact that this moment shows up in all three of these gospels tells us that this was very likely a very important story within the early Christian communities. I mean, all of these stories were being passed around and written down and preserved for us, but everyone, it seems, knew this one. So let's start by reading from Matthew today. We're gonna go to chapter 16, and we're gonna start in verse 13 in a moment. But to set the stage here, Jesus has just fed 4,000 people with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish.
Speaker 1:Now this is one of his favorite moves. You might remember this one from two chapters earlier where Jesus fed 5,000 people with five loaves and two fish. But setting aside the practicalities of how something like this happens and whether these are intended as stories of supernatural food production where loaves and fish multiplied, or whether they are intended as stylized stories of supernaturally inspired generosity where crowds of strangers spontaneously responded to care for each other's needs. This is one of Jesus' favorite miracles. And I think we should pay attention to that.
Speaker 1:That Jesus doesn't divide the human experience into the physical and the spiritual. He embraced the human experience as an integrated whole. He actually gathers up his disciples in Matthew fifteen thirty two and says to them, I have compassion for these people. They have already been with us these three days, and they have nothing left to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry.
Speaker 1:What do you think we should do? By the way, the word compassion there is the word in Greek. This is a word that comes from your guts, literally. Your was your bowels or your entrails, your viscera, if you look it up, which is where we get the word visceral from. We feel it in our gut.
Speaker 1:When the Greeks wanted to talk about their compassion and really caring for someone, for them, it was visceral. They felt it in their guts. Except that here, with Jesus talking about having compassion on these hungry people that have not eaten, I think you could make a strong argument that he's actually saying something more like, I feel hungry for these people. Or I feel hungry with these people. What should we do?
Speaker 1:Which is, I think, just a really great reminder for us about what the way of Jesus actually looks like between us. It's not charity. It's not good works. It's not sharing your leftovers with those around you. It is actually feeling for each other.
Speaker 1:And feeling with each other, it's learning slowly that all of us, we are in this together, which is for free because that's not our story today, but it is important because it does set the stage for the conversation that follows. Wherein Matthew sixteen thirteen, we read that after they had crossed the lake, when Jesus came to the region of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, who do people say the son of man is? And they replied, some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets. But what about you? He asked.
Speaker 1:Who do you say that I am? Now, we want to work our way toward the answer that follows. And what Jesus is possibly trying to pull and draw out of his disciples here with this question. There are a couple things first. To start, I can really feel with Jesus here in this moment.
Speaker 1:I mean, no one wants to be mistaken for someone else unless you're mistaken for a celebrity, I suppose. And that's sort of along the lines of what the disciples are suggesting here. They respond. Some say John the Baptist back from the dead, apparently. Big deal.
Speaker 1:Others say Elijah, they submit. Kind of a big deal since in the Hebrew scriptures, Elijah was taken up to heaven by a chariot of fire, which is definitely a good option if you wanna make an exit with a bang. Still others suggest Jeremiah or one of the prophets, and again, not as dramatic as the first two, but certainly a suggestion that the crowd thinks Jesus is a big deal. And remember, this is coming directly on the heels of Jesus feeding 4,000 people with a few scraps of food, so these kinds of celebrity comparisons probably make sense. I remember back when I first moved to Calgary all the way back in 2004, I was in my mid twenties and having lunch at an Earls here in town.
Speaker 1:I am 42 today, but we all know that I could still pass for mid twenties if I wanted to and if I shaved my beard. So try to imagine me actually in my twenties, and you're basically picturing a child right now. But this group of young early teen girls approached our table, and the bravest among them offered a napkin to me asking for my autograph. Now not wanting to disappoint, I agreed, obviously. I mean, let's see where this is gonna go.
Speaker 1:And so as I prepared to sign, I asked, who do you think I am? And she offered, well, you're one of the Moffitts. Now you if you don't remember the Moffitts, I don't blame you. Although they do occupy their own slice of Canadiana, particularly here in Calgary where they are from. But the Moffitts were, for a brief time in the early two thousands, a Canadian boy band.
Speaker 1:There's a photo to jog your memory. And apparently, this young woman thought this was me. Oh, to be fair, that's not all that hard to imagine since this actually was me. And by the way, when I was looking through old photos of myself, I found one of me pretending that I was in a boy band. Remember Guitar Hero and how everybody loved that game, and then all of us collectively one day just forgot about it.
Speaker 1:Anyway, this is a really interesting moment here in Matthew because as much as Jesus wants to get to the question of what his disciples think about him, I think he probably does want to know what everyone else was saying about him too. I mean, sure, he's Jesus, and it's flattering to be mistaken for a prophet or a Moffat as it were. But imagine doing all that Jesus has done. The miracles he's performed, not because he's looking for attention, but simply because he really does care about people. And yet people are still confused about who he really is.
Speaker 1:Mean, there's got to be something lonely in that, doesn't there? When you care for someone or you check-in on someone and they don't seem to understand what that costs you. And I'm not saying you stopped doing it because you weren't doing it for the kind of pat on the back that we're talking about here, but it doesn't mean it doesn't begin to wear on you either. So when the scriptures talk about Jesus withdrawing to lonely places to pray, this is often the kind of scene I think about. Not just lonely in the sense of being alone, but maybe lonely in the sense of prayer, perhaps being the only place that Jesus sometimes felt fully known.
Speaker 1:And I think I can get that. In fact, I think Jesus asking his friends if he is misunderstood is one of the most relatable moments in the gospels. But Jesus isn't done here yet because then he asks, and you, who do you say that I am? Now, this one is interesting because Jesus starts by asking a sort of arm's length question, who do people say the Son of Man is? But then, as he gets to what he really wants to get to, he pulls it in closer by saying, okay, but you, who do you say I am?
Speaker 1:And there's at least a couple things going on here. You've got this shift from the son of man, that title to the more personal I, and you've got the shift in emphasis that's happening here. Where the you, as in who do you say I am, has been moved up in the batting order, so to speak. You see, in Greek, you can kind of put your words together in whatever order you want, And that lets you emphasize certain things by putting them at the start of your sentences even if that doesn't really make much sense in English. In Greek, word order doesn't factor into sentence structure the same way that we're used to in English.
Speaker 1:And so what we have here is this dynamic where Jesus asks a pretty straightforward question about public perception. What are people saying about the son of man? And there, it's it's the question. It's the interrogative that leads. But then as he pulls in tighter with the follow-up, this time he actually starts with the subject.
Speaker 1:And to get that in English, you kinda have to break it up and say something like, and you, what do you say about me? But the idea here is that both sides of this relationship are being pulled into tighter focus as the conversation unfolds. And we go from what do they say about the son of man to what do you say about me? I think that's intentional. I think Jesus is doing this on purpose.
Speaker 1:In fact, I think we do this all the time in all of our conversations where we sort of ease our way toward what we really want to know. Look, I have coffee with people from the community all the time, and most of the people that book a coffee with me have something that they want to get to eventually. Maybe a question they want to ask or something they wanna share, but it's the rare person who sits down, takes a sip, says exactly what is on their mind. Because that's not how we talk, is it? We work up to it.
Speaker 1:We feel each other out. We make sure that we're safe here in this conversation before we open up. And I think this is actually happening on both sides of this really important conversation. See, Jesus wants to know what his friends really think. Jesus wants to know if his disciples are really actually starting to get it.
Speaker 1:Remember, just before this, Jesus has fed 4,000 people with some leftovers. But if you go back and you read that story at the end of chapter 15, it's like almost no one there even notices. I mean, they just keep passing. They just keep sharing. They just keep eating as if nothing remarkable is happening in front of them.
Speaker 1:So maybe Jesus is just legitimately starting to wonder if anyone is actually truly paying attention. And so here in a quiet moment away from the crowd when no one is watching, Jesus turns to his friends. Those he trusts, but he still starts at the edge. What are people saying about me? Are they paying attention?
Speaker 1:Do you think they're starting to get it? And then when they answer, when his friends respond, well, they are paying attention. I mean, they're getting closer, but maybe they don't quite understand yet. Maybe then it's now that he asks what he really wants to ask. And you, what about you?
Speaker 1:Do you guys get it? Do you see what's happening? Do you know who I really am? And, yes, of course, in one sense, this is a profound theological moment. Peter is about to declare Jesus the Messiah for the first time anywhere in the gospels, but at another level, this is a profoundly personal moment for Jesus.
Speaker 1:I don't know about you, but I have this tendency to sort of put Jesus up above the frame as if he was somehow above the insecurities I sometimes feel in my relationships. But if you think about this moment, you realize he's about to put years of friendship and investment and meals and conversations on the line here. He's about to ask, what do you really think about me? And maybe you've had that conversation with a friend. Because it can be profound, and it can be beautiful, it can be heartrending, and transformative all at the same time.
Speaker 1:But the reason those kinds of moments are so significant for us is because those moments can be so fragile. And imagine after all this time, all the parables and miracles and teaching and listening, imagine Peter had said something like, I don't know, Jesus. I mean, we like you, but to be honest, you're kind of strange. And to be fair, Jesus is kind of strange in the best kind of way, but here, it feels like he really wants to be known. And that's a pretty important moment for us to see, I think, that sometimes to be known, we have to be willing to ask to be known.
Speaker 1:And look, that can be scary, that can be vulnerable, that can be risky, but good questions often are because they invite us to see through someone else's eyes. But what about Peter? I mean, Jesus asked, who am I to you? And Peter says, you are the Messiah, the son of the living God. But think about this moment from Peter's side for a second.
Speaker 1:I mean, he's been with Jesus for a couple years now. He's been following him around, listening to him teach. He's seen things that he can't explain up close. I mean, he's left his home and his job and his family to follow Jesus. So this is not the moment where Peter decides that Jesus is the Messiah.
Speaker 1:I mean, I don't know exactly when that happened, but maybe it was the first moment that he left his fishing net to follow him. Who knows? But this is the first time he's actually said it out loud. I think that's meaningful too. I think sometimes we realize things, and we come to understand things, and we carry things within us for a very long time before we ever allow ourselves to name them out loud.
Speaker 1:And I can imagine Peter holding these words in his mouth many times before, maybe around fires and over meals and walking down dusty roads, sitting in crowds, listening to Jesus unfold the kingdom of God for him. I bet Peter had had these words on the tip of his tongue a thousand times before but never found the courage to put his breath behind them. Because, I mean, honestly, what if he does? What if Peter has put all of this time and all of this effort in, left everything behind, and what if one day he turns to Jesus and says, you are the Messiah? I mean, we've been following you around for a while now, but let's get this on the table.
Speaker 1:Let's just say what we're all thinking. And what if Jesus says, woah, hold your horses, pal. I never said that. I mean, what if everything Peter has been banking everything on wasn't real? Can you imagine how devastating that would be?
Speaker 1:Of course, maybe you can because maybe you have, and maybe right now you're holding on to things that you're not quite ready to talk about yet. Because maybe you are waiting for someone to ask you the right question, to give you the opportunity to disclose yourself. Because this is what good questions in the right moments can do for us. They can allow us to ask for the kind of encouragement and perspective that we need to hear, and they can help us create the context for those around us to be honest and vulnerable with us. We think with the very idea of God stepping into the human story and then allowing his friends the space to name what was really going on.
Speaker 1:See, I think this is the reason that Jesus asks so many questions in the gospels, 307 by one count. I think it's the reason Jesus answers so few questions directly in the gospels and the reason Jesus tells so many open ended stories instead. Because Jesus seems to understand the power of the space between us and the significance of allowing ourselves to be known in that exchange. So good questions are about more than the answers. They are about being known.
Speaker 1:And if God is anything, God is infinitely curious about you. And all of a sudden, the question, who do you say that I am? It changes. It's no longer just a quiz to pass or fail. It becomes this invitation to self disclosure before the divine.
Speaker 1:Becomes the chance for Peter to say everything that has been bursting inside of him and that right there, that is the beginning of faith for all of us. To hear the question, who do you say I am is to believe that God wants to hear what you might say. It's the trust that God is interested in what you think. It's the confidence that God actually wants to experience somewhere deep in God's guts everything that you are going through right now. I think all of us have become more acutely aware in this season of distancing that it is really hard to hold on to things on our own.
Speaker 1:It's hard to hold on to hope alone. It's hard to hold on to joy by ourselves. It's hard to hold on to faith. It's hard to hold on to our sense of self without the people that we trust to ask us about how we're doing and who we really are. We're trusting that God is curious about us.
Speaker 1:This is what should make us fascinated with each other. It should become what motivates us to check-in with each other, what moves us to be vulnerable with each other, what teaches us how to create space with our questions for each other to be known, particularly when we feel like we're on our own. And when we finally learn to ask good questions like Jesus, to create the space for someone to disclose themselves before us without penalty. Well, then we begin to create the ground from which our encounters with the divine are born and renewed all around us all the time in all of our conversations. May you trust that God is curious about you, about what you think and you feel, how you name God in your life.
Speaker 1:May you offer yourself vulnerably in response to God's questions, and may you then ask good questions in return. May you trust that the more fascinated you become with those near you, the more connected to the divine curiosity of faith you will be, and the closer you will be drawn to the God who is always fascinated with you. Let's pray. God of all good questions, who is creating space right now for us to disclose ourselves? Would we understand that you are not here to interrogate us or to test us, but to welcome us?
Speaker 1:To create space for us to speak and be vulnerable, to be free, to express ourselves to you, and then to ask our questions, to bring our fears and our doubts, our personality, and everything that we are before you to know that we are loved in the midst of it. And then to take that same divine curiosity out into all of the relationships that we occupy, to ask good questions that create safe space for others to disclose themselves to us without penalty, to become fascinated by all of the creativity that you have embedded in all of the people that surround us all of the time. God, may we ask good questions as we follow the way of Jesus. In the strong name of the risen Christ, we pray. Amen.