Teaching the Faith of the Church: A Sermon for Proper 19

Who do you say that I am? This question that Jesus posed to his disciples in today’s gospel reading has become a favorite question for interviews with candidates for ordination. “So, you’ve learned all this fancy, ivory-tower theology in seminary…You’ve passed your ordination exams…you’ve proven that you can articulate a theologically orthodox understanding of who Jesus is…All that being said…Who do you say that Jesus is?”

It’s not a bad or unfair question to ask. But I do think that it is unfair to expect each person to have some sort of novel, creative, earth-shattering response to the question. For instance, why should we scoff when a candidate says, “In my personal experience, I have found Jesus to be the way, the truth, and the life?”  

And it’s not only candidates for ordination that are faced with the pressure to come up with an emotionally gripping and spiritually profound answer. Search committees ask this question to clergy and bishops as well. And I get it. We want our spiritual leaders to be able to speak, preach, and teach about Jesus in a way that feels personal rather than formulaic. We want to be sure that they know and love Jesus in their hearts as well as their minds.

But over the past few decades, I am afraid that the pendulum has swung too far away from the “what has the Church said about who Jesus is” and towards the “who do you personally say that Jesus is” camp. And really, it’s more like “How does Jesus make you feel?” or “Who do you feel that Jesus is?”

Another place that I see this approach to learning about Jesus is teenage confirmation classes. The current trend is to emphasize the importance of a teenager being able to personally articulate who they understand Jesus to be – and how they feel about it. And I get that… and I agree with it. When I took confirmation class in seventh grade, all we had to do was memorize the Nicene Creed. I don’t recall ever being asked to consider how any of that related to my life, or what it might be like to have a personal relationship with Jesus. And I regret that and would never hold that up as a model for teaching the faith to teenagers – or anyone else for that matter. I would have loved to have been challenged to do more than memorize and regurgitate the Nicene Creed to my confirmation teacher.

But one of the Episcopal Church’s current confirmation curriculums is called  “Confirm, not Conform” (indicating that the youth will not be pressured into conforming to any sort of doctrine). In both cases, it seems that the primary locus of authority has shifted away from the ancient witness of our scriptures and tradition and towards the individual teenager’s personal experience.

So I believe that it is important for us, when teaching the faith, to use the Church’s scriptures and ancient tradition as the foundation upon which we build everything else. Of course I am interested in having folks critically engage the material, asking the tough questions, and finding a way to make a personal connection. That is all part of it. But we have to give folks – youth and adults - a foundational starting point.

I think that is why Peter was able to answer Jesus’ pointed question so well. Peter knew the Jewish scriptures and traditions. And he knew Jesus. And because of that, Peter was able to connect what he knew about the Jewish faith with what he knew about his personal experiences with Jesus, he was able to make the faith claim that Jesus was indeed the messiah whom his people had been waiting for. But Peter had to know the foundations of his faith and what the messiah was before he could claim that Jesus was indeed the one who was to come.

Yes, Peter was impulsive and emotional. But Peter also knew the faith. Later he would end up putting his heart and his mind to good use when he became the rock upon which the Church was built.

A week from today we will begin our teenage confirmation class here at Christ the King. Clearly that was on my mind when I read our gospel lesson for today. A major goal of our confirmation class will be to encourage our youth to think critically about the Christian faith- to engage it on a deeper level spiritually, intellectually, and emotionally. When we are finished with the class this Spring, I want these teenagers to be able to articulate not only who they say Jesus is, but who the Church has said that Jesus is for the past 2,000 years. I believe that there is great wisdom and value in teaching the ancient faith to our youth today.

And I think that there is great wisdom in using Peter as a role model for us as we explore who we say that Jesus is. That’s because in today’s gospel lesson, Peter actually starts off by getting it right. He is the first of the twelve disciples to make the claim that Jesus is the messiah. Now, after 2,000+ years of affirming Peter’s claim about who we believe Jesus to be, it could be easy for us to overlook the profound insight and discernment that Peter showed when he called Jesus the messiah. At that point, Jesus hadn’t even risen from the dead, yet Peter got it. He knew who he believed Jesus to be, and he wasn’t afraid to say so.

But just like when he boldly stepped out in faith and walked on water towards Jesus before losing his faith and sinking, in today’s lesson, Peter starts out strong but ends up being scolded. And that is why I like Peter, and why I thank God for him. When I attempt to step out boldly in faith, but end up making a big mess of things, I have Peter to remind me that I am not alone.

And such is the case for all of us – including our teenagers who will be in confirmation class with me this year. We will all have our moments of insight as well as our moments of failure. We will step out in faith and sink in fear. 

But when any of us finds ourselves drowning in the waters of fear, doubt, or any other crisis, how we feel about Jesus, or what our opinion is of him, or who we feel that he is to us isn’t going to save us. What will save us is the truth about Jesus that has been revealed to us in our Holy Scriptures and passed down to us for over 2,000 years. And the truth is that Jesus, as Peter so boldly claimed, is the messiah, the anointed one whom God sent to save the world.

I can’t wait to go on this journey of faith with our teenagers this year, so that together we can better understand who Jesus is, and what that means for each and every one of us.