In his sermon this past Sunday, Reverend Johnson asked the congregation to find some quiet time in the next days or weeks to jot down their personal answer to the question Jesus posed the apostles in Mathew 16: "But who do you say I am?". Ellis shared some of his and others' responses to this question and of course Simon Peter provides his answer in this chapter of Matthew's Gospel. And while Ellis' sermon is worth reading (esp for those who missed it last Sunday!) as is Matthew 16 itself -- the reality is and the purpose of this "homework assignment" is for each of us to try to answer this question for ourself. Simply put, there are no right or wrong answers -- just human ones.
To broaden the reach of this exercise, we have decided to create a web log (aka blog) where members can share their "answers" with the whole congregation.
Answers can be posted under your name or anonymously as you see fit. We hope this "electronic registry" can help stimulate a dialogue on this most important and frankly challenging question.
Please join in...
2 comments:
Sometimes I struggle "seeing" Jesus, what with all the baggage that has been loaded on him for the last 20 centuries.
But when I get past all of that, I start to glimpse this simple, yet radical model for how we should conduct our lives. It is both scary and inspiring to try to follow in his footsteps.
Why do so many of us have a disconnect between the "self" that we perceive our selves to be and the "self" that others see in us? We have different views of the world for one. Attribution theory in psychology gives us a clue to this...Our view of the world around us often leads to us attributing reasons for our actions on the actions of others. Others meanwhile are doing the same thing and they often attribute the causes of things we do to our own character. Reality is usually somewhere in the middle.
Forgiveness is one way that Christ has taught us to bridge this divide. As we understand things from the perspective of others it becomes easier to forgive them. For some of those we love, we are asked to continue to forgive, time and again, as we heard so eloquently from Ellis last week. We also need to better understand "who we are",as if through the eyes of others. Self-reflection, prayer and sharing with others around us in our community of faith are ways that we can achieve this. Is this grace or enlightenment? Maybe it's a necessary but not yet sufficient step on the journey...
I look forward to sharing the journey with the Hancock community.
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