Jesus gives Simon a new name: Peter.  In Revelation, Jesus tells us all the victorious will receive a new name (Rev. 2:17).  We haven’t received that name yet.  That name is a mystery, still; meanwhile, Jesus has already given us a new name: we are Christians.  You and I don’t have that name because we happen to be here this morning.  We don’t have that name because we sometimes wear a cross pendant.  To be given a new name is a powerful thing.  It really is a change, a new belonging, a new identity, new possibility.  It is a life changing name.

The disciples have already worshiped Jesus as the Son of God (14:33).  They know Jesus belongs to God, somehow has come from, been sent by God, authorized and empowered.  In ancient times in that part of the world, those in highest authority were often referred to as son of god.  Son of God was one of the titles of the Roman emperor.  When they worship Jesus as the Son of God there in the boat on the lake, the disciples are honoring him, but they aren’t yet seeing him for who he is.  Seeing Jesus for who he is: there’s the key; that’s the crux.

He asks.  This is the question everyone must answer, that everyone will have to answer, knowing that God knows every heart.  Jesus first asks what others are saying.  People even today will agree that Jesus was an incisive, insightful student of the Jewish law.  There are those who affirm that Jesus was a prophet—Muslims do!  Some people hear him as a strong voice for God, a critic of the privileged and powerful.  A few would regard Jesus mainly as a mystic, offering the way to a mystical experience of God—wordless, deeply interior, deeply personal: nearly impossible to communicate or share with anyone else.  That’s the problem with mystical experiences: they’re great and all for you, but your experiences don’t do the rest of us much good; Paul had something to say about that when it came to the mystical ecstasy of speaking in tongues (1 Cor 14:1-2).  To seek a mystical connection with God is to seek what cannot be shared with others.

People you know acknowledge that Jesus lived, said things, maybe even did some stuff.  If you pressed them about the miracles or the resurrection, you know you’d encounter reluctance, a drop in interest, then hostility.  People would rather avoid lengthy conversations about Jesus, including us.  Jesus is a conversation stopper.  There are those out there who might be willing to say Jesus is worthy of emulation, but supernatural savior? God incarnate? the only way to God?  For more and more even in churchy places, the value of Jesus is as a moral teacher, teaching a good way to live with others, to live here on earth, focused upon this life, bringing the kingdom here, now.  What Simon Peter and the rest wanted from the Messiah was a reordered world here, now.

A moral example?  Sure.  A teacher of morals?  Absolutely.  The evidence for that is obvious.  When it comes to evidence for the miracles, or evidence for the resurrection, everything hinges upon what people regard as evidence, as good evidence, sufficient evidence.  The Gospel writers understood this: Matthew and the rest take pains to make the case for Jesus.  If what they have written is true, then each makes a stunning case, a conclusive case.  If what they write is true.  Truth requires evidence.  No truth without evidence, proof.

You and I have evidence: we wouldn’t believe without it, wouldn’t be sitting here, today, without evidence.  It’s the same evidence Simon had that prompted his answer to the question we all must answer, the question everyone will have to answer: Who do you say I am?

Messiah?  It’s an important, beautiful, holy, and saving thing for Simon Peter to make his confession, but does Jesus himself ever claim to be anything more than a student of Torah, a prophet, a mystic, a moral teacher?  Haven’t we made more of Jesus than he ever claimed for himself?  When Jesus was speaking with the woman at the well, “The woman said, ‘I know that Messiah’ (called Christ) ‘is coming. When he comes, he will explain everything to us.’  Then Jesus declared, ‘I, the one speaking to you—I am he’” (Jn 4:25-26).

The religious authorities knew who Jesus was claiming to be.  Most of them didn’t believe it, some seriously wondered.  John says of the religious powers that “they tried all the more to kill him; not only was he breaking the Sabbath, but he was even calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God” (Jn 5:18).  If almost no one outside the circle of priests and Torah scholars understood what Jesus was saying, those inside did.  Again, John carefully kept the words of Jesus: “‘Very truly I tell you,’ Jesus answered, ‘before Abraham was born, I am!’  At this, they picked up stones to stone him” (Jn 8:58-59).  What did he say that was so horrible?  That he existed before Abraham?  That was ridiculous.  They could laugh him to scorn for that.  No, it was for something in what Jesus said that we may not hear, but that they heard loud and clear: “before Abraham was born, I am!”  Moses asks what he shall say when the Israelites ask who sent Moses to them with the message of freedom, salvation, of power, hope, and promise; God tells Moses to say to them, “I am has sent me to you” (Ex 3:14).  I am.  He who is.  God.  By his own words, Jesus claims to be God.  This is madness or salvation—your answer depends upon your evidence, just like Simon Peter.

The words of Jesus tell us who he is.  People now as then hear what Jesus says, hear what we say about Jesus, and find reasons to dismiss it.  They are not about to identify Jesus with God.  Jesus was sent by God?  Okay.  Jesus spoke for God?  Well . . . maybe.  But to say Jesus is God?  Except how are we talking about God, now, when Simon Peter’s confession was only that Jesus is the Messiah?  The Jews knew God was God, God was one; they also knew the Messiah was a man.  Here Jesus the man is, saying he is God, equal with God.  The distance, the gulf, the chasm, is crossed, in him.  Madness, or salvation.

John gives us one more piece of the puzzle.  Again in controversy, heated, angry argument with the religious authorities, the very ones who most ought to have known him, recognized, acknowledged, and welcomed him, Jesus says: “‘I and the Father are one.’  Again his Jewish opponents picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, ‘I have shown you many good works from the Father.  For which of these do you stone me?’ ‘We are not stoning you for any good work,’ they replied, ‘but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God’” (Jn 10:30-33).  No one rejects Jesus for the good works, the moral example.  The religious authorities hear what Jesus says.  They understand his words.  They cannot believe what he says.  Many hear, and do not believe, though some do.  God and man, eternally separate, or, in Jesus, man and God together for eternity.  Madness, or salvation.  What evidence do believers have that others do not have?

Jesus does not hide who he is, as if he could.  He tries!  He tells his disciples, on several occasions, even in what I read to you today, not to tell people what the disciples know, as if there were something for which they needed to wait, as if the time had not yet come.  That connection between Messiah and God needed something more to become clear, something compelling, transforming: irrefutable, conclusive evidence.

So, how do we know Jesus is who he says he is?  You do know.  But how?  The same way Simon Peter knew.  “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (16:16).  Simon spoke from his heart what his mind knew, what his spirit had been whispering to him all along.  The other disciples knew the truth of it, too, felt the truth of it, yet one doubted and another betrayed.  The pulpit Bible, open there on the Communion table, has been on the same page for months: the page on which Peter makes his profession: the rock upon which Jesus builds his church.

It’s not as if Peter had no evidence for what he says!  They have all been together all this time, have seen what Jesus has done, heard what Jesus has said.  Yes, one prophet or another had performed one miracle or another, one sign or another, but no prophet yet had performed all these signs, as Jesus had.  Jesus spoke as more than a prophet.  Messiah!

But that was an elusive term.  All the disciples, even the doubter, even the betrayer, believed Jesus was the Messiah, and each had a slightly different understanding of what that meant.  Son of God was an elusive term: so, too, Messiah.  Who was the Messiah?  What was he supposed to be, supposed to do?  A deliverer.  The Anointed One, but kings and priests were anointed (typically by prophets).  The anointing was the official sign of having a special calling from God, of being set apart for a special, holy, purpose.  Yet Messiah meant something more, more than a king, more than a priest, more than a prophet.  Moses had spoken of one who would come after him (Dt 18:15).  The psalms sing of this one (see, for example, Ps 2 and 22); the prophets had alluded to him (Micah 5:2, Zechariah 12:10, Daniel 9:25, and, above all, Isaiah 7, 52, and 53).  He was the one who would bring freedom, purification, truth, and healing from God.  How this world needs all that!  How humanity needs it all!

The only one who could truly cause freedom, cause purification, the only one who could bring truth and give true healing from God was God Himself.  No man in and of himself had that power, anointed or no, yet it was man who needed freedom, purification, truth, and healing, who needed redemption.  Man who most needed it could not accomplish it.  God who did not need it could.  All this was understood, agonizingly plain.  Who would have imagined, though, that God Himself would bring these blessings, this grace to us, as a man, bone, blood, flesh, sweat, tears, laughter, temptation, and all?  What man could not accomplish in himself, God Himself accomplished, as a man.  Incredible!

People know about Jesus, but he has not been revealed to them, yet.  If he is revealed, he is revealed by God.  If he is revealed to you by God, then you have been blessed, for God has touched you, spoken to you in your inmost thoughts and moved your inmost emotions: He has held you close and said “let there be light” in your soul; the light is Jesus, the love of God.  We speak of longing for the feeling of the presence of God!  If you have faith, beloved, you have the presence of God!  Blessed are you.

People want evidence, need evidence.  That’s understandable; that’s human.  There is certainly good evidence both that Jesus existed and that he indeed is who he says he is, but none of it convinces anyone: there’s the barrier, the maddening obstacle, the mystery.  God gave us minds, but our minds are clouded: we cannot think our way to God.  God gave us hearts, and our hearts are clotted: we do not feel our way to God.  Something blocks the way, until God removes it, until revelation comes, the revelation that is “not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God” (Jn 1:13).  The conclusive evidence is revelation: the loving embrace of God, speaking His Word into you for life.  Faith.

Paul tells us “If you declare with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Rom 10:9).  That confession has life-changing consequences.  Simon Peter’s confession, the revelation of God to him, had life-changing consequences.  We are changed.  We don’t change ourselves.  God changes us.  We don’t give ourselves a new name.  He gives us a new name: Christian.  The Messiah, Son of the living God, anointed with the Holy Spirit, comes to us, anoints us with that same Spirit, by which we know who Jesus is: by the Spirit, with the Spirit, in the Spirit, unto God.  That same Spirit is at work, still, even today, even here and from here, in you and through you.  Amazing grace!  Wonderful words of life!

And to Jesus Christ, who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests of his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.