One of the most dramatic and straightforward scenes, for me, is the one we read today at Caesarea Philippi.
The location is well chronicled outside of the New Testament. Jesus has gone north to this historic place of pagan worship of the god Pan. Pan was a most famous fertility god. Into a sheer cliff wall, images of this god are carved. At the base of this cliff is a plateau and a huge opening to a cave. Pan’s worshippers would dance and offer homage as thousands of gallons of water per hour poured out of the cave as the source of the Jordan river.
And it was not only Pan. The area was filled with a multitude of temples. Pilgrims flocked to this mecca offering worship to its myriad of gods.
Add to the mix an idea that man himself can become a god. That is what Caesar proclaimed. His subjects even if they didn’t agree certainly acquiesced. Herod Philip built a temple to worship “this man become god” at Caesarea Philippi!
Into this multiplicity of faiths steps Jesus. Perhaps the disciples are within earshot of Pan’s worshippers and Caesar’s subjects. Can they hear the music? Are Roman citizens calling out, “Caesar is Lord”?
It is here that Jesus asks the question. “Who do people say that I am?”
In Matthew’s text Jesus is proclaimed not with one title, but three. He is Son of God, Son of Man, and the Christ. No other gospel applies all three.
In this scene of a multitude of gods and in a culture that expected compliance with the dominant view—the disciplines proclaim the unique position of Jesus.
In our own day we certainly are pressured to get along; to agree that all faiths lead to God/god. We are led to believe that the Christian view that Jesus is the only Way, the only Truth, the only Life, to rigid, intolerant and bigoted.
We are told to “get along”. To acknowledge all roads lead to God. The problem with this view of blending Almighty God with others is that it betrays what the Bible teaches.
It is not new. There is a fancy word for “blending it all together”: syncretism.
The pressure to get along and the drift towards syncretism has been alive and well since the dawn of time. God, in the Old Testament, over and over again warned the Israelites to not mix with other people as a way of preventing their abandoning the True God.
Today, this same approach is wrapped in a different phrase: “it is all relative”.
We are told that everything is really relative: all values and all so-called truths are relative.
But for those who proclaim that all values, etc. are relative, are they really relativists?
I suggest not.
I am not going down the well-established path pointing out that those who say “everything is relative” are making an absolute statement.
I want to make a different point. A point further upstream.
We are living in a time when we must choose one Absolute mindset over another. The same was true for the disciples.
The question before the worshippers of Pan, and Caesar, and the disciples was not “What beliefs are you living according to?” But rather “Who are you living for?”
Caesarea Philippi represents a world which appears to one of worshiping many gods, but it is not. It is one where man is worshipping man.
Consider.
Their human-god relationship of paganism is one of manipulation. Worship “the god” and appease it and you get what you want. Anger the god and receive retaliation. The system was not to honor the Almighty God of the universe. It was to get what they wanted—or rather what the world told them they needed.
Today we may not be living for the god of Pan, or Caesar, or someone else. Yet we face the same choice.
We need to free ourselves of the silly idea of relativism. There are approximately 8 billion of us on the globe. We are not each individually living our own truth.
Don’t be fooled. The so-called freedoms with think we are choosing have a limit. Sooner or later we will bump into people who hold different views, have made different choices and who are practicing different freedoms—and their views will ultimately collide with ours.
This idea of relativism is a farce.
People today are told to reject Jesus. They have been led to believe they can live freely but that is false. Sooner or later their beliefs will run into other people’s beliefs. In the end, those in power (be it government or societal/cultural) determine what is allowable.
Today, you and I stand at Caesarea Philippi. We stand there every day. The din of those worshipping false gods, worshipping themselves, cry out for us to come. They wrap themselves in the din of tolerance. They are really inviting us to death.
We are either living for Jesus, and all that brings, OR we have been deluded thinking we are living for ourselves when we are really subject to the Absolutes determined by others.
Today Jesus asks, “Who do you say I am?”