Who do you say that I am?

He said to them, “But who do you say that am?”

We have had a week to ponder the question asked of the Disciples and Peter since we encountered the Marcan version of this scene because it was the daily reading for Mass last Thursday. Peter answered that Jesus was the Christ, the son of the living God.

Jesus asks the same question of us. He asks who we say that he is. Who do I say that he is?

Peter had to make an unbelievable leap of faith to answer Jesus. There was no one else to show him the way. We, however, have had countless generations who lived before us who have shown us the way, a church built upon his teachings to show us the way and friends and family who bear witness to the truth of who believe Jesus to be. We take for granted that Jesus is in indeed the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Consider however it is a question we don’t get to answer just one or two times nor is it a daily answer but it is a question that is both continuous and perpetual. If Jesus is the Christ, it is not enough to just answer in words but we have to take action to live a life of holiness in which we constantly move toward union with him. When we turn away or stumble, we can’t let such obstacles divert us from our journey, a journey that will never be completed in our in lifetimes.

Look to the example of Peter. He is the rock our church was built on yet he was oh so very human and his humanity should give us all hope that we too can move through the stages of holiness until we rest in Him even though we will stray, stumble, err, forget or even lie during the course of trip.

Peter backed up his declaration with action. He followed Christ all the way to his own death on a cross, hanged upside down because he did not feel worthy to share the same kind of death as Jesus.

When I was frantically waiting for word from my son who was in Christ Church the day an earthquake leveled the city and caused the Cathedral of Christ Church to collapse into rubble, I know how I would have answered the question if it had been asked of me at that time. But what about today? How would I answer the question today? I know how I would answer the question. We all would answer it the same way. We would acknowledge that Jesus is the Christ. The real question is if we will live our lives out as Peter did as a devoted disciple. Few of us are called to that state of life because it is a reality food needs to be grown, things need to be made, and services need to be provided and so on because the wheel of life has to roll on. If we all sat around expiating, the work that sustains life would be left undone.

What it does mean is God wants to be part of our daily lives. He wants to be invited to sit at the table with us, to go to work with us, to spend time with our friends and us. We owe Him great thanks that we have the freedom to live out our lives in ways that complete his plan for us but allows us free choice to decide our own path. He asks we involve him in our decisions, our actions, our dreams and our plans to and to seek to learn if what we desire is what his plan for us might be. To seek to do his will is how we respond to the question in way that our actions match our words.

Just think of it. The Son of Living God wants a relationship with us. While we will never get it completely right, we can get closer to the kind of relationship we both crave, both Jesus and us, by simply remembering Jesus is the Christ and aspiring to bring his teachings to life through our thoughts, word and actions. The reason we gather together as brothers and sisters of the faith is to remind and encourage each other to not only answer the question of who Jesus is but to model the answer for others. We are told to remember that what we say means little but what we do means everything.