Nothing More—Nothing Less

Matthew 16: 13-20

Peter correctly answers the question Jesus poses. Jesus says you are correct, but you did not know it yourself, “flesh and blood” did not revel it to you rather the Living God had, The Father.  This is called the “Good Confession,” and it is essential.  As Disciples of Christ, we say, “No Creed but Christ,” we say we have no creed.  It is not that we reject creeds, but we reject creeds as a litmus test for fellowship.  As it is stated in the first principle of the identity statement of the CC(DOC):

We confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God, and proclaim him Lord and Savior of the world, requiring nothing more - and nothing less - as a basis of our life together.

We start fellowship with a belief in Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God, we need nothing more or nothing less to bring us together as Church, which Jesus told Peter He would start with him, and this confession and handed him the keys.

Now Peter stated the correct answer, as Jesus made quite clear, the answer we depend on for our life together.  Yet Peter did not understand his confession completely.  First off a few verses later Matthew reports that Peter tries to rebuke Jesus’ passion prophesy, and Jesus said “get behind me Satan.”  Peter claims he would follow Jesus and yet he denies Him three times.  Peter was a first century Jewish man and thus his idea of the Messiah was influenced by that reality.  The idea of the Messiah  was to free the land from the Romans.  They believed the Messiah would provide a victory, a military, and social victory for for the Jewish people.  I find it quite evident that Peter must have had that hope with the sword on him, the sword he drew on the night of Jesus’ arrest, which Jesus rebukes and heals the victim.  This is why Jesus said, “Shhhhhh!!!” about Him being the Messiah, Jesus realized that Peter did not get it, Peter had the correct revelation, but the true revelation would come through the flesh and blood on the cross and the resurrected man who told us “Peace.”

Peter had to be open to being wrong.  Even after Jesus cooked him breakfast on the beach and asked him if he loved Him three times and told him to tend and feed His sheep, Peter still had to be open to being wrong.  He believed the keys were about keeping people out, not to open the gates, as Peter was concerned about believers following the laws of the Torah, until God send him visions that made him realize:

Then Peter began to speak to them: ‘I truly understand that God shows no partiality, but in every nation anyone who fears him and does what is right is acceptable to him. You know the message he sent to the people of Israel, preaching peace by Jesus Christ—he is Lord of all. (Acts 10:34-36)

The key is that Peter was open to the joy of being wrong, a term I borrow from James Alison.  This is not a joy of being lost or a joy of hurting others.

The best example of the joy of being wrong I can think of was a time I was driving the three hour commute from my seminary during my first year.  I have many times I was wrong, but this one I believe can help you understand the joy of being wrong.  See I told my friend I thought I was interested in a woman, but I was convinced that I should not pursue her.  I was convinced she was not interested (later to learn she did not pick up on flirting well).  I was convinced I was right.  Half way home, I decided to ring her, I was open and hopeful.  She answered, “who is this"?” but by the end of the conversation we had a date planned and rest is history, as we have been married for six years.  That is the great joy of being wrong.

We do not expect young people who are just baptized to fully understand their good confession that Jesus is the Christ the Son of the Living God.  We expect them to continue their education to continue to disciple.  All of us need to be like Peter and be open to being wrong, even looking for the joy of being wrong.  For Peter it started with the Good Confession and ended up opening the Kingdom of Heaven to everyone. 

We simply need Christ, nothing more—nothing less, to begin our life together as Christians and we need to be open to learn and change what we think we know the Messiah is.  We could be wrong and that can be full of Joy.

Ichthys (Fish)

Matthew 14:13-21

Ichthys is the ancient Greek word for fish.  Fish is important to the early church.  Not only the feeding of thousands with a few fish, the first disciples were fishermen who Jesus told would fish now for people. The resurrected Jesus makes a coal fire breakfast of fish, when he tells them to cast net on the other side of the boat and they miraculously catch 153 fish, and Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Him, and tells Peter to feed and care for His Sheep.  Today the cross has become the greatest symbol of Christianity, but in the first century it was still in use to kill criminals, including Christians.  The fish became the most used symbol.  The story of Jonah was also very important to early Christians and my favorite was the idea that followers of “the way” were little fish because they were born in the baptismal water.

Those reasons above would be enough to use ichthys as the symbol of the movement, but it was also an acrostic for Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior (in the ancient Greek).  To remind you an acrostic is a word that the letters of the word are the first letters of the words, and in this case a wonderful saying that demonstrates who is Jesus.  This was known and thus when they saw a fish they knew that others believed Jesus Christ God’s Son Savior, just as we now see it on the back of cars and business cards. 

As for this scripture, Jesus has the disciples feed over 5,000 people.  Amazing.  I would love to had been there, but I did have an experience that makes me understand what the disciples were feeling and thinking.  I will share with you that experience.  I was in Jamaica leading a short-term mission trip.  Our goal was to develop relationships with other Christians as we helped their church.  Specifically put a new metal roof on top of their grade school, tile a bathroom, create a playground, and run a 5 day Vacation Bible School. 

Each day after the VBS we would have lunch in the fellowship building, where we had the children.  We would clear the room of anyone that was not of our mission team.  We had to, we thought, we had limited resources for lunch and we especially had to make sure all of our team was well fed and well hydrated.  The first two days we easily cleared the room of everyone but the team for lunch and we dined on either pork, chicken, or curried goat.  However, on the third day the kids asked if we could perhaps try Jamaican Patties and sure enough someone arrived early with enough for our team to have 1 1/2 patties.  However, the room was not cleared at that time, in part because lunch arrived early, I and the other leader were tired, and the people were more confortable with us.  The other pastor and I tried to clear the room, we wanted our team to feel confortable as they ate and we had less food then other days.  But someone forgot to cancel the orders of pork, chicken, and curried goat, which arrived at the normal time.  Well us pastors kept on our perceived duty we were supposed to protect the mission team.  Now we had our lunch and the addition of a patty (and a few extra).  We wanted to help these people but we thought it was important for our team to be well nourished.

Well then there was Dylan.  Dylan was the youngest member of our team, whose father was on the roof each day.  Dylan though decided to be part of the VBS team, and in reality he was the only American participant of VBS.  He would help when you told him something specific to do, but he was generally just one of the kids (which if you remember our goal was to create relationships, and he was doing just that).  Well Dylan got up and grabbed one of the Styrofoam containers of chicken and offered it to a woman, who was just hanging around but was not asking for food.  Dylan heard Jesus say, “you give them something to eat.”  Dylan knew Jesus can feed 5,000 plus with just five loaves and two fish, that we could certainly feed all the people in that room.  We realized that we leaders were resisting the the command “They need not go away.”  And while I have had many confusions on mission trips with food, I never had a third lunch arrive, but sure enough on this day another greater amount of patties arrived.  We needed to find people to take this food. 

What a wonderful lesson that experience was, and I know who Jesus is via the acrostic of Ichthys, yet I need to remember what it means to be a Christian who follows Jesus the Christ God’s Son [our] Savior, so I remember an acrostic for fish; Fully I Savior’s Helper.  I know who Jesus is and I realize that I need fully give myself and He will provide.