Proper 19B
In the name of God, our Source and Christ, our Guide. Amen.
I admit that I have never read the epic novel by Victor Hugo, Les Misérables. But I do have a working knowledge of the story because of the Broadway musical. It was actually the second show I ever saw on Broadway – on my first trip to New York when I was child. And it’s a show that’s been with me ever since. Back then, I would often listen to cast recordings, and try to imagine what the show looked like. For those big, operetta style shows like Les Mis, pretty much the whole show was on the recording, so in my mind’s eye, I would see the show as I imagined it each time I listened. I did this with several shows, but Les Mis was one that actually ended up looking on stage pretty close to how I’d imagined it.
On reading the Gospel selection for this week, my very first thought turned back to Les Mis. I thought of that iconic song near the beginning of the story of Jean Valjean, “Who am I?”. By that point, he’d already been through so much – from the depths of prison to the heights of his new life, under his new identity, when he sees another man being arrested after being mistakenly identified as him, and it leads to a great, personal awakening. As the song makes its climax, he asks himself again and again, “Who am I? Who am I?” – before finally exclaiming his truth. I’m Jean Valjean.
But it wasn’t just about owning his true name – it was about recognizing how all of his experiences of pain and growth had formed him into the true version of himself that had become real. He no longer allowed others to define him for himself. He knew that he wasn’t defined by his lowest moments – not through his failures, or his struggles. Instead, through the journey of his life, he had come to find his truest self by being given grace and compassion. That’s what formed him. And that truest version of himself that he’d gotten to know couldn’t allow another man to suffer for his own past.
In the story of Jesus that we hear today, he also asks, “Who am I?”. First, he wants to know what people outside the inner circle are saying. They call out the names of famous people from the past that he reminds them of. But then he focuses in on them – on the inner circle. “Who do you say that I am?”
Peter, the one who would later deny him three times, says it plainly, “You are the Messiah.” In saying that, he is saying so much. You are the anointed One of God. You are the one for whom we have been waiting. You are the one who will free us.
Now – there’s an interesting question that happens in the field of theology, and specifically Christology (which explores understandings of Christ) – that asks what Jesus knew and when. Was he born knowing he was the Messiah? Did it emerge? And if so, how?
But pushing all of those questions aside, this story is like Jean Valjean’s slow realization of how all that he’d seen and experienced had led him to find the truth. Regardless of what you might think about Jesus’ possible evolution on the matter – if nothing else, this is that moment for the community. They have seen his ministry grow. They have seen the heights to which it could reach. Now, it was time for them to embrace the truth of what that all means.
It's interesting to me to see how art on the subject of “identity” is always mixed up, and often messy looking. It’s usually not a photo-realistic self-portrait. It’s not an image of a driver’s license. It’s usually so much more complex than that.
The image I chose for the front of the worship booklet this week is titled “Fragmented”. It was probably the most orderly approach to art about identity that I could find. Often they involve dark, scribbled lines; mismatched colors getting in each others’ ways; the contents of a brain or a body reaching beyond the body’s limits, that sort of thing. But the more we know ourselves, the less capable we are of seeing ourselves in flat images. It just stops working.
That’s where Jesus goes next. He explains that the identity that they’d seen in him is more complex than their earlier images of that identity might have been. Jesus didn’t deny that the Messiah would be the anointed One of God; the one for whom the people had been waiting; the one who would bring freedom. But he did explain that it was a little more complicated than just that. There would still be some waiting. There would be suffering and rejection before there was freedom. There would be death before there was life.
And not only did their understandings of Messiah have to change, but to follow him, their understandings of themselves would have to change. They would have to think beyond their own self-interests. They would have to choose a more challenging path. If all they could think about was protecting themselves, then they could never find the real protection they so desperately longed to find.
It's still a very radical message today. The world keeps telling us, take up your self-interest. Take up your self-importance. Even take up your arms to defend yourself, because the world is about you, and everyone in it is out to get you.
But Jesus calls us to join him on another path. Take up your cross. Take on some of the burden – some of that responsibility. See yourself as a part of something more than just yourself. Understand that the love of God and our experience of God’s creation is just more complex than we might have hoped. Our truest identities may be complex and feel messy sometimes, but we’re not alone in that. It’s all more complex than we try to think it is. Following the path of Christ isn’t about identifying ourselves with strength and power, it’s about finding the vulnerability and the humility. It’s not about preserving the way it is, it’s about creating the way it should be.
Who am I?
Who are we?
This is who God, through Christ, is calling us to be. And this is who God, through Christ, is calling the church to be.
It makes sense that we would want easy answers – that we would want two-dimensional truth. The world would be a lot easier to understand that way.
But that’s not who we are.
That’s not who we were created to be and that’s not who we’re being
called to be. God formed us in multiple
dimensions. God sees us from every
angle. God created us to be complex
reflections of God’s own complexity. And
God is with us in all of it.
Christ is right there with us, even when we can’t fully
understand. Our job is not to fully
understand, but to strive toward fully loving – even when that gets complicated. Amen.
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