Loaded Question

I can't sleep. I'm going to see the gentlemen of Straight No Chaser in concert tomorrow night, and I'm giddy.

Meanwhile, I realized that I forgot one immensely important detail when I combed through the Gospel in my last post.

"Who do you say that I am?"

This question Christ asks is so simple, yet means so much. What do we perceive Him to be? He's not asking what or who He is, but what Peter says He is.

Jesus can mean so many different things to different people. To some, He serves as a refuge; for others, He is a source of derision or mockery. He has been used for politics and power, love, and for some people, even an excuse for hatred of others. (This can go both ways, liberal and conservative.)

Peter exemplifies all that when he explains the many different identities people had assigned to Jesus. He was called all sorts of things then, and still is today. But he gets it right in the end: "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."

I'll leave you tonight with a question that was once posed to a bunch of college kids at a Sunday evening Mass by my (now former, sigh) chaplain. I had forgotten this moment until reading those words again.

Sure, Jesus wants to know what people are saying. But buried underneath those words, as there usually is with Him, is a subtle challenge. Who does Christ say WE are?

Who are we, anyway?