William H. Willimon - "Who Do You Say That I Am?" (August 22, 1999)

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-	The third reading is from the Gospel according	0:05
	to St. Matthew, the 16th Chapter.	0:07
	Now when Jesus came into the district	0:15
	of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples,	0:17
	"Who do people say that the son of man is?"	0:20
	And they said, "Some say John the Baptist,	0:24
	"but other Elijah, and still others, Jeremiah	0:27
	"or one of the prophets."	0:31
	He said to them, "But who do you say that I am?"	0:33
	Simon Peter answered, "You are the Messiah,	0:37
	"the son of the living God."	0:40
	And Jesus answered him, "Blessed are you Simon,	0:42
	"son of Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed	0:45
	"this to you, but my father in heaven and I tell you,	0:48
	"you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church	0:53
	"and the gates of Hades will not prevail against it.	0:57
	"I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven	1:01
	"and whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven	1:05
	"and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven."	1:09
	Then he sternly ordered his disciples not to let anyone	1:14
	know that he was the Messiah.	1:17
	This was the word of the Lord.	1:21
	Thanks be to God.	1:24
-	Thanks be to God.
-	It was exam time and	1:33
	Jesus gave a one question	1:36
	examination of his disciples.	1:38
	Who do you say that I am?	1:43
	And only one of his disciples got it, Peter.	1:47
	You are the Messiah, the son of the living God.	1:52
	One of the things you learn to love about students	2:00
	is when they are giving the exam,	2:04
	when they are questioning you	2:10
	because sometimes students don't know any better	2:13
	than to ask such basic,	2:18
	fundamental questions.	2:22
	The younger the student, the better.	2:26
	And sometimes they are these basic questions	2:29
	that maybe we thought we answered a long time ago	2:34
	and have settled down with some comfortable answer,	2:39
	or maybe it's a question that we stopped asking	2:43
	a long time ago because we were afraid	2:48
	there wasn't really an answer.	2:52
	And sometimes students don't know any better	2:56
	than just to ask.	2:59
	A student asked me to explain to her the difference	3:02
	between Christianity and Judaism.	3:07
	She's in love with a law student who's Jewish	3:11
	and they're thinking about marriage, and how will they deal	3:15
	with the difficult differences?	3:20
	I assured her that I had known people who marry lawyers	3:25
	and they go on to have happy marriages.	3:28
	(congregation laughing)	3:30
	Just kidding.	3:35
	(congregation laughing)	3:37
	The differences that trouble her are the differences	3:38
	between two disparate faiths.	3:41
	Well, we discussed rituals, of festivals, beliefs,	3:44
	and then she asked a fundamental question.	3:48
	"When it comes down to it," she said,	3:53
	"What is the one thing that makes	3:55
	Christians Christian?"	3:59
	The answer is not potluck dinners or WWJD bracelets	4:05
	or pushy preachers. The thing that makes us	4:10
	Christian is Jesus.	4:15
	Jesus Christ is Christianity.	4:19
	Other faiths have love, other faiths have beliefs	4:26
	about the good and the true, but	4:30
	Christianity has Jesus.	4:36
	If God had kept aloof from us, if God had only given us	4:39
	the book, we would have the bible,	4:44
	but we wouldn't be Christian, we would be another	4:48
	noble philosophy of life or a system of ethical virtue,	4:52
	but what God did,	4:58
	we believe, is to come among us	5:01
	in the flesh as a Jew from Nazareth named Jesus	5:05
	or more Hebraically, Joshua,	5:11
	a name which means God saves.	5:15
	We believe that the peculiar way God saves	5:20
	is Jesus.	5:27
	It's our astounding claim that when we look at this	5:31
	Jewish carpenter's son from Nazareth, we see as much	5:35
	of the almighty God as we ever hope to see,	5:39
	this one who was born strangely and lived briefly	5:44
	and died violently and rose quite unexpectedly.	5:49
	This one is	5:54
	the great revelation of God, is God.	5:58
	Now we can sympathize with those folk who look at Jesus	6:04
	and see only a noble teacher	6:08
	or a great, moral example	6:12
	or a wild-eyed proto-Marxist revolutionary.	6:15
	After all, from the very beginning, from the very beginning	6:20
	as today's gospel reminds us who Jesus was	6:24
	and what Jesus was about	6:29
	was not self-evident.	6:33
	There were people who stood face-to-face with Jesus	6:36
	and said this is God incarnate,	6:39
	but there were many more,	6:45
	many more who said this man is nuts.	6:49
	So from the very first,	6:54
	from the first that God	6:57
	came to us as Jesus, it meant that lots of people	7:00
	just didn't get it.	7:04
	Jesus frustrated people's expectations	7:07
	for how a messiah was supposed to be and supposed to act.	7:11
	Jesus had a way of not directly saying who he was	7:16
	and today's scripture, after Peter gets to the point,	7:21
	"You are the Messiah, the son of the living God,"	7:26
	Jesus tells him, "Well, don't tell anybody about it."	7:28
	You wonder why.	7:33
	Scholars say well, maybe Jesus wanted more time	7:35
	to keep laying out his program	7:38
	and how different he was	7:42
	from conventional Messianic expectation, maybe.	7:44
	Jesus didn't walk around with a sign on him	7:50
	saying son of God.	7:52
	Messiahs were supposed to have power.	7:56
	They were supposed to take charge and they were supposed to	8:00
	set things right, fix all of our problems, but	8:02
	Jesus refused to stiff arm anybody	8:09
	into following him.	8:12
	He refused to dominate, he refused to take up arms	8:15
	or seize political power.	8:19
	No wonder that looking at Jesus' life,	8:24
	many people would say that Jesus	8:28
	is one of history's most noble failures.	8:31
	Sometimes when alumni ask how many students	8:38
	do you get out on Duke Chapel on a Sunday morning?	8:42
	I say, "Probably a good deal more than Jesus	8:46
	"got for his sermons."	8:49
	It wasn't just that God came to us,	8:54
	it was that God	8:59
	came to us as Jesus.	9:00
	He just didn't look like we thought God was going to look.	9:05
	He didn't act like we thought God ought to be God.	9:08
	Eventually, Jesus was executed	9:15
	for doing the things he did	9:20
	and saying the things he said.	9:24
	He wasn't killed for walking around saying,	9:27
	oh, by the way, I am God.	9:30
	No, Jesus was killed for	9:36
	being Jesus.	9:41
	He was killed for saying things like, "This is God's way,	9:43
	"the poor are precious and the rich are in big trouble."	9:48
	That's why we asked the counter tenor today	9:55
	to sing the anthem in Latin,	9:57
	thinking that if we sung it	10:01
	in Latin, then maybe you wouldn't get it.	10:03
	Those are nasty things to say to a bunch	10:07
	of people like us.	10:09
	He's filled the hungry with good things	10:10
	and rich people, he has sent empty, away.	10:13
	Jesus said things like that all the time.	10:18
	He said, "Caesar isn't God, despite the claims	10:21
	"of his spin doctors."	10:25
	Not everybody who cries Lord, Lord	10:27
	is gonna get into the kingdom.	10:30
	In fact, speaking of the kingdom, whores and tax collectors	10:33
	are gonna get in there before you do.	10:36
	You just don't say things like that to people	10:41
	and get tenure.	10:43
	(congregation laughing)	10:45
	And Christianity, being a Christian	10:48
	is about following Jesus	10:52
	and doing the same things he did	10:57
	and saying the same things that he said.	11:00
	Certainly, we don't all succeed.	11:06
	You can read today's Gospel as	11:11
	a astounding success	11:15
	that like, Peter got the point or you can read	11:17
	today's Gospel as well gee, 11 other disciples	11:21
	didn't get the point.	11:26
	It isn't easy following Jesus because he's Jesus.	11:30
	He warned us upfront that his way was narrow.	11:36
	"A lot of people who put their hand	11:41
	"to the plow look back," he said.	11:42
	Time and again, Jesus said things we wish	11:47
	he had not said.	11:51
	I don't know what he was getting at when he said,	11:54
	"Hate your mother, hate your mother-in-law."	11:58
	I don't know what he meant when he said,	12:04
	"You want to follow me?	12:07
	"Great, go sell everything you have	12:08
	"and give it to the poor and follow me."	12:10
	Well, to be honest, I know what he meant,	12:15
	but I don't like it.	12:18
	For most of us, it isn't that we've listened to Jesus	12:22
	and found him incomprehensible,	12:25
	it's that we've listened to Jesus	12:30
	and we found him darn difficult.	12:31
	So somebody came out of the chapel one Sunday morning	12:36
	after the service and said, "I know that you would never	12:38
	"want to hurt anyone with something you said	12:42
	"from the pulpit, but I was really hurt and offended	12:45
	"by what was said today."	12:48
	For just a moment, I stepped back and I said to myself,	12:50
	"I wonder where you would have gotten the notion	12:54
	"we don't want to hurt you."	12:56
	(congregation laughing)	12:58
	Lady, this thing is about Jesus.	12:59
	It's gonna get bumpy along the way, okay?	13:01
	Being Christian is about that challenging	13:09
	lifelong struggle to be friends with Jesus	13:12
	and it isn't easy.	13:17
	That's why we began this service	13:17
	with a confession of sin.	13:19
	We don't always get it.	13:22
	We can't always follow him closely.	13:23
	It's about that journey,	13:28
	it's about the struggle	13:33
	to be friends with Jesus and maybe more difficult,	13:34
	to risk letting him be a friend to us.	13:39
	It's about a relationship.	13:46
	I think it was Richard Niebuhr who said that conversion	13:50
	into this faith occurs	13:54
	when the God whom you thought was your enemy,	13:58
	an enemy to be feared,	14:03
	is really found out to be the friend	14:07
	to be loved.	14:12
	We love God	14:15
	because we believe that God first loved us	14:18
	in Jesus,	14:21
	so Christianity is not first an adherence	14:25
	to a set of great ideals, of ethics.	14:28
	It's not the ability to comprehend a system	14:34
	of great ideas, philosophy,	14:37
	it's a way of life,	14:42
	it's a way of walking behind Jesus,	14:43
	trying to keep up with him, being in relationship	14:48
	because we really believe	14:53
	not only that God came to us and that God spoke to us	14:54
	and Jesus, we believe God is with us,	14:58
	with us.	15:04
	If Easter hadn't happened, who would still	15:07
	think about Jesus?	15:11
	Much of his teaching was unoriginal, his inheritance	15:14
	from the faith of Israel.	15:17
	He wasn't particularly effective in getting his program	15:21
	across to his followers,	15:23
	but when he came back to us,	15:28
	oh, even from the dead,	15:30
	we then say that Jesus,	15:36
	who he was, and he taught, and what he did	15:38
	had been vindicated by God.	15:42
	That's what those early Christians meant	15:45
	when they exploded into the world shouting,	15:48
	"Christ is risen, he is risen indeed!"	15:51
	Easter was like God reaching in and saying to us,	15:56
	in case you've ever wondered	16:01
	whether or not Jesus was truly,	16:04
	truthfully revealing my will for the world	16:08
	with all of his talk about forgiving enemies	16:13
	and loving the unlovable and reaching out to the lost,	16:16
	well, be assured this is exactly the way I see it.	16:23
	When Jesus speaks, I'm speaking.	16:28
	When you look at Jesus, you're looking at me.	16:32
	When you pray to Jesus, you're praying to me.	16:34
	The one who hung the sun and flung the planets	16:40
	in their courses, this one	16:45
	has come among us in Jesus.	16:49
	Now I know this seems an astounding assertion	16:55
	to those who have not experienced it,	16:59
	but Christians really believe that Jesus is present with us,	17:03
	walks with us, is closer to us even	17:09
	than we are to ourselves.	17:11
	This summer, I've been rereading Augustine's Confessions.	17:16
	Someone wrote a book recently entitled	17:21
	Augustine and the Invention of the Modern Self.	17:23
	"Augustine with his searching, relentless gazing upon his	17:29
	soul invented the modern sense of the self,"	17:34
	the scholar says.	17:39
	Augustine wanted to find out about the world.	17:42
	How did he found out about the world?	17:45
	By rummaging around in himself.	17:47
	We modern people are accustomed to that.	17:50
	We say look in yourself for the answers.	17:53
	We got sophomores who wander around saying	17:56
	I'm trying to find myself, I'm trying to discover myself.	17:58
	And we owe this, says this scholar, to old Augustine,	18:03
	who in the 4th century picked through his own soul	18:07
	for a couple of hundred pages,	18:10
	but if you read	18:16
	the Confessions, you find out that's not quite right.	18:17
	Augustine begins by saying, "I'm going to tell you	18:22
	"the story of my life," but after a few pages,	18:25
	you realize this is just a sly way of saying	18:30
	I'm gonna tell you the story of God's life.	18:33
	You become aware that Augustine is saying less	18:37
	of I and me, and my, and much more of you,	18:39
	thou, God.	18:44
	Augustine says during his youthful indiscretions,	18:48
	during his climb up to the top of the academic ladder,	18:54
	he said, "I thought I was, I was desiring,	18:58
	"and I was looking, and I was searching,"	19:01
	but when he was converted, he realized surprise,	19:03
	it was God that was looking and searching for him.	19:07
	He says, "I was searching everywhere for you oh God,	19:13
	"only to find that you had been searching	19:18
	"everywhere for me."	19:22
	That's a presence I'm talking about	19:28
	the Christians learn to name as risen Christ.	19:33
	So we say a prayer, we break open a loaf of bread,	19:39
	we have a sip of wine at the Lord's table	19:44
	and we really believe Jesus is with us.	19:49
	In fact, Jesus said if just two or three of you	19:53
	will show up on a Sunday, I'm there.	19:56
	And there are many more than that here.	20:02
	So what makes Christians Christians?	20:06
	It's Jesus.	20:10
	We're here not because like the rest of the country,	20:13
	we're searching for more meaning in our lives	20:15
	and we discovered Jesus.	20:18
	Rather, most of us were minding our own business	20:22
	and from out of nowhere, he found us,	20:24
	or we were just biding our time, we were trying	20:29
	to make it through the Sunday service without dozing off	20:31
	and he grabbed us, or we stood and we just were gonna sing	20:34
	a hymn and only to sit down after the last note	20:37
	saying I believe.	20:41
	You really are Messiah,	20:49
	son of the living God.	20:52
	It's all about Jesus.	20:58

Item Info

Title:

William H. Willimon - "Who Do You Say That I Am?" (August 22, 1999)

Description:

Sermon start time: (Part 1) 1:33. Sermon end time: (Part 1) 21:05.
In this sermon, the preacher emphasizes that Jesus Christ is Christianity, and Christianity is about having a right relationship with God and a Christ-like life. (Abstract created by Duke Divinity School staff.)

Permalink:

https://idn.duke.edu/ark:/87924/r46m33j91

Date:

August 22, 1999

Speaker:

Willimon, William H.

Liturgical Calendar:

Ordinary Time

Biblical Book:

Matthew

Chapter and Verse:

Matthew 16:13-20

Subject:

Contributor:

Duke University. Chapel

Identifier:

UA.17.01.0003 CS-0973
ref10103_ocb
uachapelsermaud
duke:320308
dcrau001617
ark:/87924/r46m33j91
8f8c0f67-02a5-42c7-948d-50a216a789c3

Digital Collection:

Duke Chapel Recordings

Source Collection:

Duke University Chapel recordings, 1954-2005

Related Resources:

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Language:

English

Location:

United States
North Carolina
Durham (N.C.)

Format:

Provenance:

The Duke University Chapel Recordings were transferred to the Duke University Archives beginning in 1970.

Rights:

Limited Re-Use

CC BY-NC 4.0

Rights Note:

This recording may contain 3rd party materials, such as music or readings that are therefore not covered by the Creative Commons license indicated here. For more information see https://library.duke.edu/rubenstein/research/citations-and-permissions.

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William H. Willimon - "Who Do You Say That I Am?" (August 22, 1999)

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1. William H. Willimon - "Who Do You say That I Am?" (August 22, 1999)

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William H. Willimon - "Who Do You Say That I Am?" (August 22, 1999)

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