Confession. Renewal. Living Faith.

“Who do you say that I am?” 

Peter’s response to this question is the foundation for living faith.

Since responding to the call to become a disciple, Peter and the others have witnessed profound things. Each of them has departed their various professions to follow a new path: not quite knowing the direction it will lead, and in the process leaving behind the familiar understandings of who they are, how they relate to others, where they are going, and what might be possible.

It would be difficult to overestimate just how significant this is for a group of fishers, carpenters, and tax collectors. Yet, when summoned to follow, each steps out.

This trust grants them a front row seat as many people are healed through miraculous encounters with Jesus. Now, Jesus turns and confronts these followers with a question… At first, he asks what they have heard around town—and the disciples rattle off all sorts of information they’ve learned.

Along with this group of disciples, we religious-minded folks can tend to be like this. We like to learn about things, perhaps especially true for Episcopalians. Curiosity is a good quality—which can even be deeply edifying for our spiritual lives. If we’re honest though, I think sometimes the details surrounding religious life can take the form of entertainment, or even distraction.

There are many decisive moments that take place over a life of faith. And at the time we face one, all of the information we've accumulated to that point will only get us so far. So, every-so-subtly, Jesus shifts the question posed to his followers: because he’s not just interested in what they have learned, the thing he’s really after is what they know. 

What have these years together imparted? What do they know deep in the marrow of their being? 

This kind of knowing comes from lived experience, from real encounter.

Years ago, when I first entered a process of discernment toward ordained ministry here in the Diocese of Washington, I sat at a large table surrounded by the committee that determines whether or not someone enters into formation for the priesthood.

Towards the end of the interview, one person asked, “Who is Jesus to you?” And with ten pairs of eyes on me, waiting for my response, I wanted so badly to tell this group of important people all the very important things I had learned. I thought about what information I could share to impress them, maybe even quoting a few verses to really sell things. Then of course, I quickly thought of all I didn’t know, and just how much I wanted to keep all those things hidden to myself.

At the time, I was working in non-profit advocacy during a tumultuous political season, and I was also wading through the process of divorce. Personally and professionally, those were some difficult days. So, drawing from what was happening in my own life, I made a confession to them of what I knew to be true, “Jesus is liberator” and “Jesus is healer.”

Truthfully, in nearly every season of my life, before and after this moment, my answer to that question has shifted and changed. It continues to take shape even now, and I pray it continues to do so more and more over whatever years and circumstances lie ahead. 

Who Jesus is to us will surface again and again over a life of faith, just as surely as our living will continue to present unforeseen obstacles and hardships. And whether those decisive points come at the prompting of God's Spirit or from the realities of our human lives, they will surely come. It is inevitable.

It’s rarely the case that these kinds of questions surface when we are smooth sailing through life. 

In those seasons—when things are going well enough along—we have a rather impressive ability to put off all sorts of things surfacing on the backburner of our consciousness. As the poet Pádraig Ó Tuama puts it, one of ‘The Facts of Life’ would seem to be that we “will avoid questions most urgently in need of [our] attention”—for which there’s a perfectly reasonable psychological purpose. In the fullness of our days, we easily focus on what’s most pressing and maybe even ignore the non-essentials… Until, of course, we can no longer pretend otherwise.

The questions life and faith asks of us don’t simply go away. And until we learn to listen to whatever voice calls us into living more fully, they will surely not permit us to move forward. I don’t know about you, perhaps this is just not the case, but this is surely the way things tend to work for me. 

Each of us must respond for ourselves. Information will only get us so far. And our spirits demand something to sustain us through, something deeper.

Jesus asks, Who do you say that I am?

A lot of the time, it seems Peter doesn’t know very much. There are just a whole lot of things he doesn’t know—and over the days of his discipleship he will stumble and get things wrong, time and again. Just like any other would-be disciple, he doesn't know all of the answers—but fortunately you do not need to know all of the answers to know God.

Even though total certainty often evades Peter, he still responds with certitude and conviction—even if it's just for a fleeting moment. Because everything he’s seen and all of the things he’s participated in himself crystallize what he knows. And from that place flows forth a confession of faith: there is a living God, he proclaims, who brings salvation to our living reality.

With this, Peter is granted power to exercise the very authority of God: binding and loosening on earth and in heaven, doing just as he sees Jesus do. And this authority that is entrusted to Peter to act as an agent of God—performing even “greater things”—is the very same authority imparted to you and I. To let ourselves become conduits of who God is.

This is just what “living faith” looks like. And it is what Paul encourages when he writes to the church in Rome: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God…”

God's desire is to move through each one of us: healing and renewing our lives, and in turn bringing the same to everyone around us. And the possibility for that transformation begins in discerning and then confessing who God is—to one another, and most importantly to ourselves.

Who is Jesus to you? You are imparted with a knowing and a gift, which only you have to offer. What truth then do you know, and how might you offer it to be of use?

As "living sacrifices," may each of us lift something true from what we have been entrusted with: so that though our lives the power of God might move more freely.