Peter's choice 

There are so many choices in modern life aren’t’ there? Every day advertising bombards us with choices between everything from new cars to breakfast cereals. Even buying a coffee these days is a complex business requiring us to navigate our way between decaff soya macchiatos and green tea matcha lattes. The luxury of choice is seen as one of the benefits of living in a relatively affluent society.

It is also seen one of the benefits of living in a democracy; a society where, as individuals, we have the chance to choose between leaders and even our alliances.

In some parts of the world, at least, the idea of choice is deeply ingrained and as Christians our understanding of God includes the fact that he has given us free will. Our God is not a dictator who demands our unfailing loyalty, but a loving father who gives us choices. He wants to be in relationship with us, but will not coerce us into loving him. Rather he wants us to reach deep down into our souls, and willingly make the choice to turn to him.

God’s free will was made wonderfully manifest in the person of Jesus Christ, who came to earth not as an authoritarian leader but as a humble wandering rabbi who knew that, as he sowed the seeds of the gospel, many of his teachings would fall on hard ground.

The reality is that Jesus never goes in for the hard sell, but instead gives us a series of choices. Did you know that there are 150 questions in the gospels? These question are some of the most profound ever asked of humanity; and of these question the most critical is the one that Jesus asked of Peter near the end of his ministry: ‘Who do you say I am?’ (Matt.16:15)

It was this question on which the future of the Christ’s church on earth would turn. Matthew tells us that Jesus asked this question of Peter nearly three years’ into his ministry. Peter and the other disciples had travelled with Jesus throughout Judea and Samaria, listening to his public teaching, witnessing his miracles with intimate access to Jesus and his divine wisdom.

Throughout the country rumours had spread about this miracle working rabbi and there was much speculation and many theories as to who he actually was. Matthew records Jesus asking the disciples ‘Who do people say the Son of Man is?’’ to which they replied ‘Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ (Matt.16:13-14

There were many competing voices; the voices of the establishment including not only the Pharisees and the Sadducees but also the Romans, with their God of war, who had conquered the known world. There were also those who sought to overthrow the establishment such as the Zealots. Each had their own view of who Jesus was, and some of these views were very influential.

But Jesus was not interested in who others said he was. Standing in front of Peter, he asked him ‘But what about you? ‘Who do you say I am?’ And Peter answered ’You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ (v15-16)

Peter made a choice; a choice not to listen to the dogmatic voices of authority, or to the babble of the crowds; a choice not to listen to the many who rejected Christ, but to listen instead to the still voice of God - the voice from heaven that Jesus says could only have revealed this great truth.

It was a bold choice and it would soon become clear that it was one with implications. When Jesus was arrested only a short while later in Jerusalem, Peter became so aware of the dangerous implications of his choice that he temporarily faltered. And after Jesus’s death, Peter would eventually be martyred in his name. But he would also become the rock on which Jesus’s church on earth is built.

We worship today because of the choice that Peter made when faced with Jesus’s question. He made the choice to believe, and to commit, whatever the implications. And Jesus’s question rings down through the centuries, as he continues to ask each and every one of us ‘Who do you say I am?’ Each and every one of us is asked to make a choice.

We still make this choice against the background of clamoring voices; the voices of ardent secularists who would ridicule anyone who chose to believe that Jesus was anything more than a wise teacher; the voices of materialists who see the whole questions as completely irrelevant in a consumerist society and even the voices of some in the church who would deny the fact of the resurrection.

It is all too easy to be swayed by a society who sees belief as at best as quaint and at worst as dangerous. It would be all too easy to hedge our bets but Jesus doesn’t allow us that luxury.

Jesus asked questions because they force us to have an opinion, they do not allow us to sit on the fence. And he asks us ‘Who do you say I am?’ Forcing us to take responsibility for our faith.

The writer and theologian C.S. Lewis one famously wrote that he wanted to prevent people making the foolish statements about Jesus being just a wise human teacher. He claimed that Jesus’s statement that he was the son of God was so outrageous that he can never be dismissed a great moral teacher. We have to decide if he was mad, bad or was telling the truth. As Lewis points out Jesus knew what he was doing, and that he was forcing us to make a decision.

Faced with Jesus’s claim, all of us must make a choice. Because if Jesus’s claim is true it is the most important truth ever imparted to mankind. If false it is of no relevance but what it cannot be is ‘moderately important’.

We have to make a choice, and that choice will come with implications. Thankfully we are never likely to face the trials that Peter faced for his beliefs. But being a Christian, always has and always will make demands of us and we will have to continue making choices day in day out.

As we live our lives as Christians, we will have to choose seem foolish in the eyes of world. We will have to choose the path of righteousness rather than convenience, to choose to forgive when forgiveness seems too hard and choose to love when it seems humanly impossible.

The choice to be a Christian is not an easy one. It is not a one time commitment but a lifetime journey in which we continue to be challenged and faced with difficult choices, and in which Jesus will ask us again and again’ Who do you say I am?’