8/23/26 Who Do You Say?

1:38 Praise to you, Lord Jesus Christ. May you have a seat. So this might sound strange coming from me, but I, as someone who, like, we record things and put things on the internet. But here's my, this is one of my, kind of my takes when it comes to opinions. And one of the takes is this. I don't think that anyone really needs to share all of their thoughts. Again, here we are recording this and putting this on the internet. But I have, yeah, my perspective is this. I think that we might be in a place right now where kind of communally or culturally, we think that every thought we have must be shared. We think that every opinion we have must be shared. Or even this, we think we have to have an opinion. I remember years ago, I don't know if I've mentioned this before, but years ago, just this last week, I was talking with some people about the OJ Simpson trial. If you remember that, I think from the 90s. And I remember after the whole verdict, after everything happened, everything went down, he was acquitted.

2:34 People asked me, people just talked about this. They asked me, they said, what do you think? Do you think he was guilty? Do you think he was innocent? And I remember it, like I wasn't trying to dodge this. I was just like, well, I don't know. Like, no, no, you got to have an opinion. And I remember saying this at the time. It's like, I didn't follow the court case. I followed the headlines, but I didn't watch all of the evidence brought forward. I actually don't know enough to have an opinion. I think that that's where sometimes where we're at, right? We think we know we have to have an opinion and then we also have to share our opinions. I don't think we do. I think that maybe we have too many opinions and maybe we share those too freely. That being said, there is a time when an answer is required. There is a time when I have to actually say what I think. There's a time when I have to give an answer. Another way to say it is there will be a moment or many moments in every one of our lives when we are at our Caesarea Philippi.

3:45 In the gospel today, right, that's what happens. It's Matthew chapter 16. Jesus has taken his disciples up to Caesarea Philippi, which is this long journey, 29 miles from Jesus' kind of base of operations at Capernaum. They walked almost 30 miles to Caesarea Philippi, and then And he asks them this question. Who do people say that the Son of Man is? Here's the opinion. What are the opinions of people? And then Jesus looks at them and says, okay, now this is the moment where you have to answer for yourselves. And he asks them the question, but who do you say that I am? Every one of us has a Caesarea Philippi. Every one of us will have multiple Caesarea Philippis and where we have to give an answer. Now, sometimes that's gonna be a direct question and sometimes it's just gonna be, this is a situation where we have to say something. So I came across this. I thought it was pretty funny. Mother Miriam. Mother Miriam is this elderly nun. And she was telling the story about how before she was a nun, before she was a Catholic, she loved Jesus, she was a Christian, and she needed a job.

4:40 And so she saw in want ads that there was a diner that was hiring waitresses and no experience required. And she says, well, I qualify. So she went in and she says, I need this job. And I'm qualified. I have no experience. And they said, okay, you're hired. And she said, well, wait, just let me test it out first. And so she did really hard work, but she gets the job. She starts working at this diner. She said it was in a, we would say these days, we would say in a sketchy part of town. She, for whatever reason, used the word raunchy, which I think it was interesting. She said in a raunchy part of town, we'll just say sketchy, sketchy part of town. And she said the wilder waitresses were kind of, she used the raunchy word, sketchy. She said a lot of them were drug addicts. A lot of them had been in prison. They were kind of rough people. And she said at some point she realized that all of them took the Lord's name in vain. Like they were all saying, you know, Jesus Christ as a secular curse word. And she said, I don't know what to do about this. Like, I can't correct them. If I correct them, that's not going to go well.

5:32 And so she just prayed about this. Like, God, do you want me to say something? And what should I say? So finally, after, you know, a long time, and she'd got some rapport with these women. At one point, one of these young women, she took the name of Jesus, Jesus Christ. And now Mother Miriam, but then just, I think Rosalind said, oh, I love him. Like, Rosalind, who do you love? She's like, Jesus, I love him so much. And they were like taken aback by this. And they said, oh, did we offend you by saying his name? She's like, no, not at all. I love hearing his name. I love him so much. I love him with everything. Say his name as much as you want. And they kind of were, you know, kind of, okay. It dimmed a bit. But she said, it all came to a head one day. The diner was packed. So many, so many customers. And across the entire diner, she hears this one waitress just shout out in anger the name of Jesus Christ. So from the other side of the diner, Mother Mary, or Rosalind, just cries out, I love him, I love him so much.

6:29 Say his name as much as you want. I love him so much. She said they never took the name of the Lord again in vain again. It was one of the situations where that was, in some ways, that might have been her Caesar, Rea, Philippi. And the moment where she had to actually say, she had to say, who is Jesus? For her, he's the one I love. and she was called in that moment she just felt moved by the holy spirit right to give an answer and i think again every one of us there will be a moment when we have a caesarea philippi a moment where we have to answer for ourselves because there's the answers of those around us right there in the gospel there's the answers of those around us what do they say they say well john the baptist jeremiah one of the prophets what they're saying is basically uh who do they say i am jesus well you're you're a prophet you're a teacher, you're a holy man. And those are all good things, right? But they're not enough. Because Jesus in some ways is a prophet, he's a teacher, he's a holy person. But every one of those answers is fascinating because every one of those answers is not, none of those answers are a rejection of Jesus, but every one of those answers is a shrinking of Jesus. They're getting Jesus wrong and they're not getting the fullness of who Jesus is. So I was fascinated by this.

7:46 There was a sociologist, I maybe mentioned it before, his name was Christian Smith. Christian Smith used to work at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill. Now he works at Notre Dame, or I think he just retired from Notre Dame. Christian Smith did this nationwide survey of the spiritual life of American adolescents a number of years ago, maybe 20 years ago. And what he discovered was he said that regardless of how these adolescents were raised, whether they were raised Christian, mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, Jewish, or even just kind of agnostic atheists, he said all of them, well, the majority, all essentially believed the same thing. That no matter how they were raised, they all kind of believed in this, you might even just call this like an American theism. Actually, he didn't call it American theism. He called it this. He called it moralistic therapeutic deism. Because he discovered that he was talking to these teenagers that the God they described, again, whether they were Jewish or agnostic or Christian, had these kind of five qualities, or the beliefs had these five qualities, and this was moralistic therapeutic deism.

8:45 Number one is God exists. There's a God who exists, and he created and ordered the world. He watches over human life on earth. So it's just kind of like, that's the deist part, right? He started the world, and he kind of just let it go, let it go. Number two is God wants people to be good, nice, and fair to each other as taught by the Bible and in most world religions. So God wants you to be nice. Don't be a jerk. Number three is the central goal in life is to be happy and feel good about oneself. Again, this is what every virtually, this is the American religion. Again, whether you were raised mainline Protestant, evangelical, Catholic, agnostic, Jewish, central goal of life is to be happy and feel good about yourself. Number four is God does not need to be particularly involved in anyone's life unless he's needed to solve a problem. So he's kind of like your on-call ATM slash paramedics slash psychotherapists.

9:40 And tenet number five is good people go to heaven when they die. With the assumption that we're all basically good people except like for Hitler. So basically everyone goes to heaven when they die. As long as you're a good person. As long as you were not a jerk. And this is what Christian Smith called moralistic therapeutic deism. And again, if you look at this, you think, oh my gosh, that is American theology. That is what we believe in the West.

10:10 But that's not what we believe as Christians. I mean, there's some overlap, of course, in there, but that's not the faith of the Bible. That's not even the faith of the Bible and the church. So how do we get here? This is the big question. How did we get to this place right now where, for those who believe even, those who actually claim God, they would say these five things are probably at the heart of what they believe about who God is. The question actually, another guy from Notre Dame asked a question. He said, you know, it's fascinating. Here is this generation of adolescents and now adults.

10:45 Didn't they receive the faith? Didn't they receive the Christian faith from their parents? Didn't their parents hand on the faith? Because, I mean, think about this. For all of Christianity and all of Judaism, parents would hand on their faith to their children who then handed the faith to their children, who then handed the faith to their children, and then handed on, hopefully, accurately. And so this colleague of Christian Smith asked the question, where did that break down? How did this generation fail to get the faith of their parents? And he discovered something remarkable. What he discovered was that generation of parents did hand on their faith. This isn't just the faith of millennials or Gen X. This is actually the faith of most boomers. Basically, again, this idea of moralistic therapeutic deism that God's not particularly involved in your life unless you need him to solve some problem, that good people go to heaven when they die, that the main goal in life is to be happy and feel good about yourself.

11:40 Like all of those things are what we kind of generally, from the oldest among us to the youngest among us, those of us who believe in God believe in that version of God. And this is the crazy thing. That is a distorted version of God. That's like in Matthew 16. The apostles, what are people saying about? Who do people say the Son of Man is? Well, they say that you're not really involved in our lives. Say that you're not particularly involved in real right or real wrong. They're saying you're not really concerned, God, about good and evil. They're saying that you're not actually coming at the end of time to judge the living and the dead.

12:22 They'll say your name. And this is us right now. We'll say the name of Jesus. but the Jesus that we're referring to most often is our own particular version of Jesus. I found this so often. I found this years ago. I was reading a book. I think it was called What's So Amazing About Grace and in this book, it was a great book by a man named Philip Yancey, What's So Amazing About Grace and in it, Philip Yancey was recounting that he once watched an interview of a baseball player. The baseball player was Christian. It was a post-game kind of thing and the baseball player apparently had, he was running to home plate and the catcher had the ball. And so he just, he ran into the catcher, knocked the ball out of his hand and was safe then, made the run, scored the run. And the guy asked, you're a Christian, right? He said, yeah, I'm a Christian. He said, you know, if Jesus was playing baseball, would he have hit the guy?

13:15 You know, would he have tried to knock the ball out of the catcher's hand in order to score the run? And the man stopped and he said, you know what? I think he would have. Why? Because Jesus, he would have played fair, but he would have played the win. And Phil Bansi pointed out, he's like, no, that's what you do. That's what you did. To say that what I think is how Jesus thinks is falling into that trap. I'm saying this is my own personal version of who God is. I discovered this personally in the last five years. So five years ago, we started the Bible in a Year podcast. and there are so many people who have written and saying, I've always wanted to read the Bible. I never have, but now I have. And it's just, it's incredible to get to know this God who I didn't know. But there have been many people, including many old people, who have written to me and they've said, so I'm starting this Bible in your podcast.

14:11 I'm in day five or I'm in day 85. And I don't know if I like God because what they're getting is they're getting the whole book. They're getting the whole story. They're getting God revealing himself to us as he is. And of course, sometimes it involves a misunderstanding. Sometimes it involves like, I'm not really getting this. Sometimes it involves, I have a hurt heart. And therefore, when I hear about God in this particular way or that particular way, I have a hardened heart.

14:39 But I found people who, when they've come face-to-face with Jesus himself or come face to face with God as he's revealed himself in the Bible, they say, well, that's not the version I like. That's not the version I prefer. But Jesus has revealed himself in all four Gospels. God has revealed himself in all 73 books of the Bible.

15:02 And so maybe this, maybe before I get to my Caesarea Philippi, before I have to give an answer, who do you say that the Son of Man is? maybe I have to put myself in a place maybe I have to put myself in his presence and simply say God you show me where you God you show me who you are maybe before I can give an answer I have to ask God to tell me who he is because this is I think this is the reality he gets to reveal himself to me long before I get to have an opinion of him I'll say that again. Jesus, God himself, he gets to reveal himself to me long before I get to have an opinion of who he is.

15:53 So before you and I get to our Caesarea Philippi, before we get to that place where we say, here's who he is, we need to, I think starting today, we need to put ourselves in a place where we say, okay, God, you get to reveal yourself to me. Please just reveal who you really are. Have you ever found yourself in this position where you're thinking a certain way and you're like, yeah, that's true and this is true, like this is how I think. And then you realize, pause and ask the question, but Jesus, would you think this way? A couple years ago, I came across a man named Tim. Tim had been put in federal prison. I shared this story a number of years ago, but Tim had been put in federal prison, and Tim was a faithful man. Tim, he's a husband, a father, a good man, wrongfully accused and wrongfully convicted. But he was in prison. Before he was in prison, he was just praying like crazy.

16:47 In the prison he was in, he found that they had a chapel with the Eucharist reserved. And so all of Tim's free time in federal prison, which there was some, all of Tim's free time, he was just in the chapel. He just praying in front of Jesus in the tabernacle, in the Eucharist. He said it was a great gift of his life. And in fact, it was what strengthened and sustained him. At one point though, there was a man who was coming through his prison. Now this man had been in the worst American prisons that we have to offer, but he was a short timer in the sense that he was getting out pretty soon. He was getting out in only a couple months, I think. And he had heard that Tim was a Christian, knew that he was a Catholic. And he came up to Tim. And then this man, no, Tim had been in jail for, he was accused of some white collar crimes. Again, he had no knowledge of this. He didn't do it, but he was accused of this. And this man was in jail and he had been convicted for some very serious and violent crimes. And this man comes up to Tim and says, Tim, I hear that you're a Christian.

17:42 I hear you're a Catholic. It's like, prove to me. I've been part of this Bible study and that Bible study. I've read the Bible. I've gone through all these things. You tell me, who is Jesus and why should I be a Catholic? Apparently, Tim had this like filled with the Holy Spirit moment where he looked at this man, again, this man who could hurt him pretty significantly. And he kind of stood up to this man and said, listen, I'm not going to do that. I'm not going to waste my time with you. And the guy was taken aback. And he said, I'm not going to waste my time with you. Listen, if you want to know who Jesus is, and he put out this challenge to him. He said, if you want to know who Jesus is, you're going to go up to that room, that room I go into, in that box, that's Jesus in the Eucharist. If you really want to know who Jesus is, I challenge you for the next 30 days, you park yourself in front of him for one hour, every single day, and he's in his presence, nothing else. Just park yourself in front of Jesus and just beg Jesus to reveal his heart to you. Guy was like, what?

18:33 He's like, yeah, and listen, do that, and I'll talk to you. If you don't, I'm not going to talk to you. And also, I'm going to check on you. You have to tell me when you're going to go. You have to tell me when you're going to be there. And so we, you know, first day, second day, third day, he'd pop in. Okay, the guy's there is praying. He'd leave. Or maybe stay and pray with him. Something like day 27. This man like bursts out of this little chapel and he's running across the yard. He's like, Tim, where's Tim? Where's Tim? He's crying out for Tim. Finds Tim. Comes up to this man and he says, and his tears coming down this man's cheeks. This man who had been in prison for some serious violent crimes. And he embraced Tim and he said, Tim, he showed his heart to me. He revealed himself to me. He said, I was praying and I was just, for this day, 27 of 30 days, I've been there one hour every single day, just Jesus, show your heart to me. And I felt like God himself, I reached out his heart and it embraced my heart.

19:30 He's real. Tim became that man's OCIA sponsor. That man came into the church and wrote about how Tim changed his life. But it wasn't Tim who changed his life. It was the fact that he put himself, he placed himself in front of Jesus and said, Jesus, you get to show yourself to me long before I get to have an opinion of you. And that's my invitation. This is the last thing. For every one of us. Every one of us will come to our Caesarea Philippi where we will have to answer the question, who do you say that Jesus is? When I answer that question, I don't want to give someone my version of who Jesus is, my version of who God is.

20:12 I want to tell them who he really is. but I don't get to have an opinion of him until I learn from him who he is. So the invitation, pick up his word, all 73 books, and let him tell you who he is. Let him tell us who he is. To place ourselves in his presence in the Eucharist and to say, Jesus, show me your heart. Show me who you are. because every one of us will come to our Caesarea Philippi.

20:53 And every one of us knows that, Jesus, you get to show me who you are long before I can.