Proper 16, Year A 2026: Matthew 16:13-20

When I was pregnant with my first child, folks liked to ask my mom what my children would call her. She would just slowly respond…”Grandma”? There’s a newer phenomenon with my generation’s parents where grandparents do a bunch of discerning to decide what they want their grandkids to call them. Which sometimes works. But sometimes, kids who are learning to talk have ideas of their own. My husband calls his maternal grandma, “Ghee”. She didn’t decide on that name, it just happened. And now everyone just kind of calls her that. My youngest has started calling my mom, “Grammy”. We didn’t tell her to. She just does. And in so doing, she has accidentally tied several generations together. My mother’s great grandma was lovingly called “Grammy Owen”. And the only time my paternal grandma went by “Grammy” was when she was tucking us into bed at night. She’d give us a kiss and say, “God bless you. Grammy loves you.”

But we overthink names. We overthink grandparent names; we overthink our kids' names. The baby name book industry expanded into apps where you can link with your partner in a kind of baby name Tinder where you swipe right on names you like. We think that correlation is causation when it comes to picking our kids names, when the research shows it is more about what the child’s name says about the parent and the parent’s education and socioeconomic situation rather than any ability a name magically gives the child.

One of our favorite places to overthink is in theology. And Jesus offers Simon an opportunity to do so on a platter today, when he asks, “Who do you think I am?” I went to our catechism, the outline of our faith as Episcopalians, in the Book of Common Prayer. If you haven’t seen it, it begins on page 845 and is only 17 pages long. It is primarily intended as an outline for instruction, not a complete statement of belief. More like a jumping off point. It is given in a question-answer format in a way where each section builds upon the previous one. So I thought it might ask the question, “who is Jesus?” It doesn’t. Well, it kind of does, but in a roundabout way. In the section on Sin and Redemption, it asks “How did God prepare us for redemption” and answers “God sent the prophets to call us back to himself, to show us our need for redemption, and to announce the coming of the Messiah”. Question: What is meant by the Messiah? Answer: The Messiah is one sent by God to free us from the power of sin, so that with the help of God we may live in harmony with God, within ourselves, with our neighbors, and with all creation. Question: Who do we believe is the Messiah? Answer: The Messiah, or Christ, is Jesus of Nazareth, the only Son of God.

Simon, now called Peter, says that Jesus is the Messiah - the Greek reads christos, or Christ. Both words mean essentially the same thing: the anointed one. So Peter probably actually used the word “messiah” which then Matthew reported in Greek as “christos”. Because Christ is a title, not Jesus’ last name. It’s why I appreciate how Paul uses “Christ Jesus” instead of “Jesus Christ”. It keeps us on our toes and reminds us that to call someone the Christ is not a title to be bestowed lightly.

But you might notice that in this exchange, like throughout all of the Gospels, Jesus doesn’t call himself the Messiah or the Christ. He rarely does so. He uses “Son of Man”. So what does that mean? To figure it out, we go back to the book of Daniel.

Clues scattered throughout the book of Daniel indicate that the author (or authors) belonged to “the wise”, those faithful to the covenant in the time of Antiochus’s persecution, but not advocates of active resistance. As a whole, Daniel encourages and consoles Jews facing Antiochus’s persecution. In chapters 1-6, it provides them with heroic role models who thrive because they remain faithful to Jewish law while serving a foreign king. If you remember anything about the book of Daniel from Sunday School, it’s probably from this section, because this is where you find Shadrach, Meschach, and Abednigo surviving the fiery furnace as well as Daniel in the lion’s den.

But chapters 7-12 is apocalyptic Daniel. It’s where Daniel seems to go off the rails. Those chapters hold out the promise of deliverance in the new kingdom of God and individual resurrection and exaltation for those who remain faithful in the face of persecution. Throughout, the book of Daniel insists on the sovereignty of the God of Israel. It is from this portion of Daniel that Jesus’ “Son of Man” language comes. Daniel has a dream where he sees into the divine throne room, and there is more than one divine throne because there is one that humanity left behind. There is one throne for God and one for humanity. However, there hadn’t been a human who was able to overcome the beast and rule alongside God until now. Here, Daniel sees a figure called the Son of Man, which means “human.” And he rides on a cloud up into God’s presence and then sits down on the divine throne to rule the world. The partnership is renewed and, what’s more, all humanity worships and serves this Son of Man alongside God. And so now you can see why Jesus of Nazareth, when he came onto the scene centuries later, chose this title, the Son of Man, for himself. Jesus was claiming to be that truly human one on a mission to confront the beast. He was tempted to seize power on the beast’s terms. But unlike every human before him, Jesus resisted the urge. And then he went about banishing the beast from people’s lives, and he was teaching people how to rule the beast instead of being ruled by it. (Bible Project)

This information is helpful when it comes to understanding the Bible and how Jesus and his contemporaries would have understood their situation. But none of this is helpful were we looking to answer the question in the way in which we might encounter it today: Who is Jesus? Who do you say that I am?

So then I did what any self-respecting Millennial would do: I googled “who is Jesus?” The AI overview told me that “Jesus of Nazareth was a first-century Jewish teacher and religious leader who is the central figure of Christianity. Christians believe he is the Son of God, fully God and fully human, and the Messiah sent to save humanity. Most historians agree he was a real historical person who lived in Judea and was crucified under Roman authority.” It’s right, but because AI, of course, has no soul, it gave a pretty soulless answer. Then it offered me a video on “Who is Jesus?” from Catholic Central and, of course, the Wikipedia article on Jesus.

We’re given a very well-reasoned theological statement compiled by the best theological minds of the time in The Nicene Creed, which we will recite as soon as I’m done here. The Creed spends its second paragraph - the longest of the three - on who Jesus is because that is the question that caused the emperor Constantine to call the Council of Nicaea in the first place: Is the Christ really and truly the Son of God, or is he some lesser being, an intermediary between God and humanity. But today, we don’t think in terms of essence, substance, and nature as they did at the Council of Nicaea. Those were the philosophical categories of the debate in the fourth century, but not today. (34)

When I was interviewing for candidacy, the last step before ordination that my diocese held between the second and the last year of seminary, they asked for my “elevator answer” for  someone who might ask about my clerical collar - the two sentence version that you can give to someone between the lobby and the hospital floor. Because that’s the length of answer that most people want for most questions. Simon Peter gave what would have been a great first century “elevator answer” when he declared Jesus to be the Messiah. His contemporaries would have known what he meant. But today “Messiah” doesn’t work as an elevator answer. So here’s my elevator answer to the question “who is Jesus?”:

Jesus is the Son of God, fully human and fully divine. He was unjustly killed by the state and rose from the dead, conquering death and changing the cosmos. As a follower of Jesus, I am called to continue his work in making the Earth more like Heaven until he comes again.

What do you think? What would you say if Jesus were to ask you, who do you say that I am?