“Who do you say I am?” In the region of Caesarea Philippi, a city named in honour of Caesar Augustus and associated with imperial power, the question takes on a particular significance. Peter’s confession is not simply a statement about Jesus. It is a declaration about where ultimate authority and allegiance belong.  If we were to ask you whom I’m talking about when I refer to a certain person as "Divinely conceived, The Son of God, Lord, Saviour, the bringer of peace on earth, The bringer of good news”, most Christians today would immediately answer “You’re talking about Jesus.”   But if I had asked during the time of the Roman Empire in the first century AD, they might have given a very different answer:   “You’re talking about Caesar.”

By the time of Jesus’ public ministry, Augustus had died, and his adopted son Tiberius was emperor. Yet the claims made for Augustus had not disappeared. Augustus had been declared divine after his death, and Tiberius now bore the title “Son of the Divine Augustus.” So, this scene in Matthew's Gospel poses a fundamental question: Who is Lord? This question has lost none of its power.  Every generation must answer it for itself. To whom do I give my ultimate allegiance? And, ultimately, whom do I worship?

 The common expectation was that the Messiah would be a warrior king who would free the ancient Israel people from oppression and begin a time of great prosperity and peace.  Jesus did not come to be a political messiah but as one who would inaugurate the inbreaking of the Reign of God.  All the previous expectations about the messiah would need to be surrendered.  Peter has been gifted with that revelation but does not fully understand it.  Jesus thus instructs the disciples to not tell anyone that he is the Christ because they do not know what they are saying.

The English Benedictine Monk Fr Laurence Freeman offers us this reflection:  “Who do you say I am? is an intimately personal question.  If we do not feel its intimacy as disturbing - even intrusive - we have not listened to it. It is a question that summons a response from a silent depth within the heart itself.”  In answer to Jesus' query about his identity, the disciples tell Jesus what others are saying about him. Jesus is not simply initiating an open discussion, but, he is leading the disciples to personal understanding and profession of who he is. Peter acclaims, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The church is that community of individuals who have come personally to know who Jesus is and have chosen personally to make Jesus known to the world. Jesus himself will lead us there through our personal encounters with him. We are people who proclaim that Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God, the Son of the living God.  And we are called into the community founded by Jesus the Christ, and built upon Peter, the rock, the one to whom Jesus entrusted the keys of the kingdom of Heaven.