A friend of mine recently began a new job. In the first weeks of his employment, he was busy learning about his job and learning about the company. When someone goes in to a new organization, one of the tasks is to learn how things are done in the new place—as quickly as possible. How things are done in a place, whether it’s a workplace, a church or a new extended family, includes of lot of stuff—and one of the most important bits of stuff to learn is the shorthand people use to communicate with each other. My friend was doing pretty well with the transition. He was learning what people expected of each other in the work environment, he was learning the structure and figuring out how he fit in to the picture, and he was doing pretty well at translating the shorthand, but there was one bit of shorthand that had him stumped. He heard the term so often that he was concerned it was something basic he should have known already, so it took a while before he felt comfortable enough to ask someone. Finally he said to a co-worker: What’s an SSOT? And the person answered: Single Source of Truth. In that company, that’s how they refer to a document that’s held to be the accurate list or table or description of whatever. The Single Source of Truth is the gold standard of information. It’s not something cobbled together from several other documents and therefore at risk for scribal error—the mistakes that happen when people copy from one thing to another. Nope—this is the real deal. If someone shows you the SSOT, you know you’ve got the information you need and that you can count on it being accurate. Well, my friend was delighted to get that question cleared up, and pretty soon he was using the term just as often as everyone else. Everything was going just fine until the day when he asked a coworker for the SSOT—the Single Source of Truth—for something and the coworker responded: Which one?
Most of us would love to have the Single Source of Truth about the things in our life, but as my friend learned, that’s hard to find, even when people say it exists. That’s what Peter learned in the gospel portion we’ve just heard. Jesus asks the disciples who people say that he is. They know the answer. They tell him, Some say that you are John the Baptist, some say you’re Elijah, some say you’re one of the prophets. And Jesus takes it one step further, asking: Who do you say I am? Peter answers: the Messiah. And Jesus acknowledges Peter’s answer by telling him and the other disciples not to tell anyone.
Immediately after acknowledging that he is the messiah, Jesus begins to tell the disciples that dark days are coming. He tells them that he will suffer, and that he’ll be rejected by all those in positions of authority. He tells them that he will be killed and that he will rise after three days. And Peter—Peter, who believes he holds the Single Source of Truth—Peter, who has the right answer, realizes that Jesus, the man he’s been following all this time, is confused about the whole concept of messiah. Jesus has clearly missed the whole point. I imagine that Peter doesn’t want to embarrass Jesus, so he takes him off to the side, away from the other people, to explain to Jesus that he has it all wrong.
Things haven’t changed much in the last 2000 years. There are still people who believe they hold the Single Source of Truth about Jesus—about God—about the Holy Spirit—about our relationship with each other and our relationship with the Holy. We ask ourselves what Jesus would do in a given situation and forget that even the disciples who knew Jesus intimately were continually thrown for a loop by the actions they couldn’t predict. We remind ourselves of Jesus’ teachings, then amend them, saying “Well, of course, that wouldn’t work in the situation we’re in now.” Over the generations and the centuries, we have wrangled about the rules, the structure, who’s in, who’s out, and everything else we humans get our knickers in a knot about—and in most of those cases, all sides are claiming access to the Single Source of Truth.
It really would be nice to have a Single Source of Truth about the God we believe in, the Christ we follow and the Spirit that connects us to one another. It would be nice, but we have something even better. We have scripture that shows us the ever-changing story of God and God’s people—and offers us fresh insight into that story and our own stories each time we read it. We have tradition that carries with it the voices of the communion of saints—those who have gone before us and whose faith has carried the story to us. And we have reason that guides the way we each experience the Holy and allows us to share with each other the tiny bit of the truth that’s entrusted to each of us.
It would be nice to have a Single Source of Truth, but we are blessed with something bigger than nice. We are blessed with the diversity of the Body of Christ, and that blessing is never more apparent than on this Sunday when we celebrate our homecoming—our re-gathering as a faith community after the season that has so many of us going in so many different directions. Today we celebrate the beginning of a new Sunday School season, and we give thanks for the young people entrusted to our care and for those who have stepped forward to guide them as they learn more about our scripture, our traditions and their own experience of God. Today we also celebrate the beginning of the new choir season, and we give thanks for the diversity of voices and instruments that add an extra dimension to our worship. Our gathering in this place celebrates all the ways we are shown the truth of God and the ways Christ still asks us who we think he is.
The risen Christ still asks who we think he is, and he continues to give us the answer. He gives us the answer in the people we greet today, in the faces of people who are visiting with us, in the questions of our young people and in the wisdom of our elders. He gives us the answer when he meets us in our prayer and when we stumble across him in our struggle to live as he teaches us. He gives us the answer when we come to this table and when we walk out the door into the world. I invite you to listen with me for the answer—to watch with me for the answer—to share the answers you hear and see, and to give thanks that our God requires only that we keep looking and listening for the answers—that we keep seeking God in every day of our lives.
Thanks be to God.