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     It is no question that Jesus was controversial in his time.  The incident reported in today's gospel passage from the Gospel According to Luke is less dramatic than the one in the Gospel According to Matthew, where Peter makes his confession of faith and is named "Rock" and made the "foundation of my church."  In Luke, the emphasis is on Jesus' answer to his own question. He warns the disciples not to repeat what Peter says, and instead states baldly: "The Son of Man must suffer greatly and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised."   What Peter said was true on its face but it did not go far enough.  The idea of a suffering Messiah simply would not be acceptable to most people of that time who expected someone quite different.

     When I was in the studium (our Dominican word for "seminary"), I had to study a subject called "Christology."  This subject struggles to answer the very question that Jesus poses: "Who do you say that I am?"  This question is the one from Matthew and very different from the one in Luke.  We studied the answers given by the church fathers and the magisterium down the ages.  On Sunday, we recite together the words of the Nicene Creed.  These give a bare bones theological description of Jesus that is part of the content of our faith, but that does not excuse us from reading the Gospels and responding to Jesus' question, "Who do you say that I am?"  Our response and how we live and act on it determines the meaning for each of us of the word, "Christian." AMEN