So
Jesus and Peter are golfing. They
come to a long par 5 with a huge sand bunker in the middle of the fairway 300
yards from the tee. Jesus takes
out a driver. Peter suggests using
an iron to lay up for an easier shot.
Jesus replies, “Tiger Woods wouldn’t lay up. He’d drive over the trap.” So Jesus swings away and just as Peter warned, the ball
lands short and rolls into the bunker.
Jesus walks up to the ball, swings again and it lands in the cup for a
double eagle. The next hole has a
lake on the left side of the fairway.
Jesus takes a 3 wood out of his bag. Peter reminds him that he has a tendency to hook his drives,
but Jesus says, “It’s the club Tiger Woods would use.” He swings and, sure enough, the drive
hooks into the water. Jesus walks
up to the lake and then walks out on the water, addresses the ball, swings,
hits the ball, and it lands in the cup for an eagle. Well, the foursome playing behind our Lord and Savior have
been watching all of this in disbelief.
One of those golfers approaches Peter and says, “Who does that guy think
he is… Jesus Christ?” “Well,” says
Peter, “the funny thing is he is Jesus Christ. The problem is he thinks he is Tiger Woods.”
In
this morning’s Gospel reading we hear the person who thinks he is Tiger Woods
solicit feedback on what others are saying about him. He then asks those closest to him what they believe. Peter proclaims, “You are the
Messiah.” Jesus then sternly
orders them not to breath a word of this proclamation to anyone because, at
least in the verses that follow, he needs to reframe for them what it means to
be the Messiah. It is a lesson
that pairs nicely with what we heard read from the Book of Proverbs where God’s
wisdom, personified and walking through the streets, offers counsel to all who
will listen.
Theologians
make a distinction between what they refer to as “general revelation” and
“special revelation.” We see one
and then the other in these two readings.
The word ‘revelation’ refers to what we know about God and what we know
we can only know because God chooses to make it known to us. General revelation is knowledge about
God that can be discerned from what God has made – the creation. We can look at the world around us, at
human beings and our social ordering, at art, music, and beauty and discern
something about the nature and will of God.
I’ll
give you an example of this. In my
office I have a hanging that depicts a specific teaching from each of the seven
great religions in our world:
Brahmanism, Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Islam, Judaism, and
Taoism. Although the words of each
teaching are slightly different, they all put forward what we in the Christian
tradition refer to as the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do
unto you. Islam, for example,
teaches “Not one of you will be a true believer who does not wish for his
brother the same that he wishes for himself.” Confucianism asks if there is a maxim that one ought to
follow throughout life. Indeed
there is. It is called the maxim
of peaceful goodness: “What we don’t want done to us we should not do to
others.”
This
is one example of general revelation; of God’s personified wisdom being open
and discernable by all people in all times and places. It is proclaimed in the streets and the
valleys. It is written on the stars
and proclaimed in the lilies of the field… general revelation that all people
can know.
Jesus
Christ is the embodiment of God’s special revelation. We learn things about God in the Word incarnate that we can
not know through general revelation.
Take this morning’s Gospel.
We can look no where in the created order and discern the teaching that
if we seek to save our life we will lose it and if we lose our life we will
find it. In fact, what we learn
from creation is just the opposite, isn’t it… life is about natural selection
and survival of the fittest.
The
Christian tradition holds that special revelation is not something we achieve,
but rather something we receive.
When Matthew recounts the reading we heard this morning he recalls
Jesus’ response after Peter’s confession, “Blessed are you for flesh and blood
[general revelation] have not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in
heaven [special revelation].”
From
this I take that every human being is able to know something of God and God’s
will. And thus, every human being
is accountable to God for that which is readily apparent to all people – a
certain awe for a higher Being and a certain value and respect of all living
things. But I also take from this
that those of us who have received the special revelation of Jesus Christ are
tasked with a mission and held to a higher standard. Our mission is to worship Christ, to embody Christ’s
teachings in a manner that is faithful and compelling, and to preach the Gospel
(using words, if necessary) to the end that others might become people of
faith.
I
count myself as blessed to have received the good news of God in Christ and to
be called to this mission. It is a
special revelation that has come to me because of a variety of factors to which
I can claim no credit. First, I
was born in a time after Christ.
Second, I was born in a society that is predominately Christian at a
time when most parents took their children to church. Next, I was born into a family of Presbyterians and we went
to a church each week. That church
offered a variety of programs for children and youth to expose us to the
faith. It hired a young youth
minister who was devoted to Jesus and shared his faith openly with us. These are factors that not everyone
enjoys. But beyond all of this,
there was something more… something – as Jesus puts it – from the Father. Beyond being an accident of time and
place, faith is a gift that bestows blessing and implies calling. I am blessed to be a person of faith
and called both to live it and to share it with others.
What
if I had been born into a different family in that Presbyterian church; one
that attended only on Christmas and Easter? Or what if I had been born closer to this day and age when
attending church is not a given and many young people have serious reservations
about Christianity as they see it lived out in our day? Or what if I was born in an Islamic
country? Sure, I might be familiar
with the teachings of Jesus, and I might even be open to seeing how many of his
teachings corresponded with those of my tradition, but would I strip away all
the layers of my culture and heritage to take on another so completely foreign
to my own? Probably not. I am who I am not because I am
special and certainly not because I am better than other people, but because
God chose to be known to me. It
gives me a task, a purpose, a role to play in life. I am to be a witness to God in all that I say and do.
The
German Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner, writing in the 20th century,
proposed a notion he called the “anonymous Christian.” Through it, he made a compelling case
that those born before Christ and those who came after Christ but never heard
the gospel could in fact be saved by Christ through the faithful practice of
their own religion. It was an idea
that met with widespread acceptance.
Since then, others have broadened Rahner’s thinking about anonymous
Christians to include adherents faithful to other religions who live in accord
with what this morning we are referring to as general revelation.
I
used to look at today’s Gospel reading and think that Peter was going to get to
heaven because he knew something about Jesus that other people did not. I used to think that because I knew it
too I was going to be rewarded while those who did not were going to be
punished. That fixation on heaven
does not sit well with me now because Jesus teaches that the kingdom of heaven
is not just some glorious afterlife, but is a reality emerging in the here and
now. I now see how people of faith
– all faiths – are to learn from God’s general revelation and bring it to bear
in the world. We in the Christian
tradition who know the special revelation of God in Christ are given the added
responsibility of living for the world those deep truths that can be found
nowhere else but in the incarnate One.
I now see that we have been given a light not to be hid under a basket. We are called to let that light shine
for all the world to see and know what God has made know in Christ.
