Who is Jesus?

I bought a Google Home recently – it’s a voice operated speaker that lets you geek out to control your music, lights and find out stuff. It comes with a guide to let you know the kind of questions that you can ask it. One of the questions that it suggests is: “Hey Google, who am I?” Honestly, I was a bit excited about this, because I thought if anyone knows who I am, after using the internet for most of my adult life, it’s probably Google. The answer was less than exciting. Google simply told me: “You told me your name was Richard”, which was way less significant than I’d imagined. Maybe I’ll have to stick to asking this question of friends who know me well to have any hope of getting a decent answer.

I suspect that in today’s Gospel, when Jesus asks his disciples this question, it was probably more than him having an existential crisis during a bad hair day. Many Jews at the time believed that God would send an anointed king who would be the one to spearhead the movement that would free the whole of Israel from its Roman occupation and oppression and finally bring about peace and justice for the whole world. No one knew where or when this anointed king would be born, although many pointed to the writings of the prophets to say that he would be a true descendent of King David and be born in Bethlehem (eg, Micah 5).

The word for this “anointed King” in the Hebrew language was “Messiah” – in the Greek language it was “Christ.” No one could say exactly what the Messiah would be like, or how you could tell when he arrived, but many thought he would be a warrior king who would defeat the pagan overlords and establish a new properly Jewish kingdom of God.

When Jesus asks his question of his disciples, he takes them far away from their normal lives, walking for days to arrive at the town of Caesarea Philippi. He would have known the kind of answers they would offer, but he wanted them to say the answer out loud. Firstly, they offer the opinion on the street – Jesus, you are one of the wild men of old, one of the prophets who stood up fearlessly against wicked leaders to speak and act against injustice.

But Jesus was so much more than just another prophet, as wonderful and amazing as this is. He knew that his followers had grasped this, and he wanted them to own this truth by actually speaking it aloud. Peter steps forward to be the spokesperson for the group: ‘You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.’

Jesus was God’s Messiah. He was not merely speaking God’s word against the wicked rulers of the time, although he definitely did that. He was God’s true anointed king, who would replace them and their corruption, and establish a new kind of kingdom.

Jesus wants us to answer this question ourselves. To speak it aloud ourselves. To own it ourselves.

Peter is the first to make this declaration, so he became the rock at the starting point and centre of this new community of Jesus’ disciples – all those people who have or will give allegiance to Jesus as God’s anointed king. Peter will still make mistakes and he has much to learn, but Jesus doesn’t call the perfect. Falling down and being forgiven is all part of the process of this new community of faith, this new Kingdom of God.

+ Jesus, you are the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Help us to find time today to answer your question aloud – who do you say I am?