Jesus Asking: The Question of All Questions

CONSECRATE Wake up, sleeper, rise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.  Jesus, I belong to you. I lift up my heart to you. I set my mind on you. I fix my eyes on you. I offer my body to you as a living sacrifice. Jesus, we belong to you.  Praying in the name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit, amen.  HEAR Matthew 16:13–19 ESV  Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, others say Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter replied, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father who is in heaven. And I tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven.” CONSIDER [Special Note: Earlier this year, I wrote the Seedbed resource for Lent 2026—Jesus Asking: The Three Transformational Questions of Lent. I felt led to share this entry on today's text with you today.] There were six of them, five girls and one boy. They ranged in age from twelve to fifteen. We sat around the table on a Sunday morning in the upstairs classroom of the Gillett Methodist Church. It was the first day of our first confirmation class; the first such class I had ever taught since my own confirmation many years before. For those unfamiliar, confirmation is a rite of passage where a person (most often a young person) walks through a transformational learning process designed to lead them to an opportunity to give their lives to Jesus Christ, thereby confirming their personal faith in him as Savior and Lord. I didn’t start with a curriculum or even much of a plan. I wasn’t interested in giving them religious instruction or denominational indoctrination. Those things aren’t wrong, of course, but I felt we needed to be far more basic and fundamental. We needed an extended conversation about first things. I passed out six blank moleskin type books, designating them as our confirmation journals. I asked them to open the books and on the inside cover to write, in large print, what I called, “The question of all questions.” The question of all questions comes from Jesus of Nazareth. It is addressed to every person who ever lived and whoever will live. He asked the question for the first time of his disciples in a place known as Caesarea Philippi in the north of Galilee. There is an alternate name for this place: Pan. Pan means many—as in many gods. Pan was also home to an ancient shrine known as “the gates of Hades.” Here’s the scene: The place is crawling with people. They are congregating around this shrine and that one and clustering around this guru and that teacher. It’s kind of like a national park for religious business. I picture Jesus’s disciples gathered up around him as they are looking out on this scene. That’s the setup for the question of all questions. It wasn’t the first question he asked that day though. Here was the first question: “Who do people say I am?” They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.” Then he dropped the mother of all questions on them.  “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” So I said to my first ever confirmation class, the five girls and one boy seated around the table, “Write those seven words in large bold letters inside the front cover of your confirmation journal. That’s the question of all questions and the focus of our class over these next months. And now I say it to you:  “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?” PRAY Our Father, thank you for your Son, Jesus. Lord Jesus, thank you for cutting to the chase. Thank  you for speaking plainly and from heart to heart. Mostly, thank you for caring enough to ask me the question, “Who do you say I am?”  I don’t want to give you the pat answer. I will live with the question in a deeper way. Come, Holy Spirit, and grant me a fresh revelation that I might make a real response? Praying in your name, amen.