Confession of Peter [i]
18 January 2026
Parish of Saint Helen’s West Point Grey
Vancouver BC
Click HERE to listen to the Sermon.
As a preschooler our daughter Anna attended Berwick Preschool on the campus of the University of British Columbia. I remember some sort of parent gathering and the staff had prepared lovely name tags for all the parents – but not the kind of name tag you might expect. On each name tag the staff had written the child’s name and the adult’s relationship to that child. Mine read ‘Anna’s Dad’. Some parents were a bit bemused, but I loved it and for many years it adorned my office door at Vancouver School of Theology. I have a suspicion that it’s still tucked away in one of my archive boxes.
“Who do you say that I am?” Well, I’m Anna’s dad as well as David and Owen’s dad. I’m Paula’s husband and Tegan and Brayden’s uncle. Our Anglican ordination rite will tell you that I am a pastor, priest and teacher. I could go on and on, as could each one of us. The answer to the question, “Who do you say that I am?”, depends a great deal upon the relationship between the person asking the question and the person answering it.
Peter and his companions within the inner circle of Jesus have been travelling around with Jesus for some time. They’ve seen him teach; they’ve seen him heal. They’ve seen him engage in conversations and relations with people outside the boundaries of socially acceptable Jewish behaviour of the times. So, when Jesus asks them this fateful question, “Who do you say that I am?”, it’s no wonder that there are different answers – “John the Baptist back from the dead!” “Moses the lawgiver!” “One of the prophets!” “The Messiah, the son of the living God!”
In all these answers the evangelist Matthew is giving us a glimpse into the religious debates that surrounded Jesus’ mission, ministry and identity. These debates fuelled controversies within the earliest Christian communities as well as their opponents and curious outsiders. To this very day there are still controversies about who Jesus is.
But all these controversies and debates, whether in the past, the present and the future, must wrestle with something I shared with in my sermon last week. As my late professor of Christian theology said on the very first day of my very first class in seminary, “When you meet Jesus of Nazareth, you meet God.” I dare say that everything that flows from this statement which I believe to be true and central to our identity depends upon how we understand our relationship with this Jewish rabbi from first-century Palestine who was simultaneously radical and traditional.
From the very beginning there have been Christian teachers who have emphasized the divinity of Christ. Even though Christ comes among us in human form, it is his difference from us that enables him to reconcile us to the living God. In the Gospel according to John, for example, Jesus is the incarnation of the Word, a Greek philosophical term that describes the fundamental pattern of the universe. Jesus knows what his opponents are thinking and carries on his mission with a degree of assuredness. This so-called ‘high’ understanding of Jesus finds its expression in the Nicene Creed with its lengthy philosophical treatment of Jesus in its second paragraph.
But also from the very beginning, there have been Christian teachers who have emphasized the humanity of Jesus. He suffers; he hungers; he sits down with people to eat with them and to talk with them. In the Garden of Gethsemane Jesus can even express his doubts and fears at the path that lies before him. This so-called ‘low’ understanding of Jesus influences, in my opinion, the Apostles’ Creed which tells the story of Jesus in its second paragraph.
But the path of Christian discipleship is more than the recitation the Creeds or any other theological explanation of the mission, ministry and identity of Jesus of Nazareth. Christian discipleship is a life-long journey punctuated by moments where the question, “Who do you say that I am?” is turned around and compels each one of us to ask, “Who do I say you are?”
If I say that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, what does the ‘lordship’ of Jesus mean in my life? Sometimes when I hear the phrase, ‘Jesus is Lord’, I hear the strains of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’ from Handel’s Messiah – majestic sounds that herald a cosmic monarch descending from the heavens to establish a divine and powerful kingdom. I admit that there are times when I would like that very much, but then I see how that image has been usurped by Christian nationalists. It’s in those moments that I remember Jesus our Lord washed the feet of his disciples and, on more than one occasion, spoke of servanthood as the truest expression of discipleship.
If I say that Jesus is my Lord and Saviour, what then does Jesus save me from? Or, as one of my teachers was fond of saying, what does Jesus save us for? Jesus saves us from the sin of the world in order that we can become more fully Christ-like. What is the sin of the world? It’s our desire to be God and sovereign rather than to be who we are, creatures who participate in a web of inter-connected relationships with the human and non-human dimensions of creation. What does it mean to more fully Christ-like? It is to choose to participate in God’s on-going work of reconciliation and renewal, to serve God’s mission rather than our self-interests, to restore right relationships rather than create new rifts in the fabric of human communities.
On Wednesday evening we welcomed somewhere between 75 to 100 of our neighbours who came to hear what may or may not be the future of West Point Grey, Kitsilano and Dunbar. Some were members of our congregation; many were not. But we welcome them because we believe that Jesus is present whenever two or three are gathered in his name. And on this occasion his name is ‘lover of neighbours’.
Every day of the week there are childcare programs that meet in this building. True, they pay rent. We also have scouting groups that meet here. Some were members of our congregation; many were not. But we welcome them because we believe that Jesus is present whenever two or three are gathered in his name. And in those places his name is ‘embracer of the little ones’.
Every week there are people who gather for healing. Some were members of our congregation; many were not. But we welcome them because we believe that Jesus is present whenever two or three are gathered in his name. And in those places his name is ‘healer of our souls and bodies”.
Now when Jesus comes into the neighbourhood of West Point Grey, he asks us, “Who do you say that I am?” Some say, ‘welcomer of neighbours’. Some say, ‘embracer of the little ones’. And others say, ‘healer of our souls and bodies’. And then he asks us again, ‘But who else do you say I am?’
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