As I am sitting her writing this meditation in the darkness before dawn, I am watching the waning crescent of the moon growing in brilliance just above the mountains surrounding Albuquerque.  From my hotel window, I have watched this one beautiful mountain emerge from the darkness each morning before dawn.  Because I have seen the mountain during the day, I ‘know’ that it is there in the darkness, even though I cannot see even its outline in the darkness until the sun rising behind it finally reveals its mystery for yet another day’s turning.  I am held captive by the darkness within which the mountain sits as it is, not waiting for me to see it, but just being a mountain, being its own life – not waiting to be seen but nestled in the cosmos of darkness that is its home, perhaps or perhaps not aware of the musings of an insomniac human peering into the darkness from the 11^th floor of a hotel room in speechless wonder. There is both the deep sense of the impenetrability and the extreme openness of meaning in this moment.

Jesus went into the region of Caesarea Philippi
and he asked his disciples,
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
They replied, “Some say John the Baptist, others Elijah,
still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.”
He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?”

 Matthew’s Gospel (Mt 16:13-23 ) has Jesus asking his closest companions what they have hearing from the people they have been encountering in their travels.  Specifically, he is wondering ‘who’ they say he is.  After a few answers from the disciples, Jesus directs the question personally to each of them, “But who do you say that I am?”

Peter is quick to answer:

“You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Jesus said to him in reply, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah.
For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my heavenly Father.”

Peter must be feeling pretty good about himself.  First, it appears he answered the question ‘correctly.’  And Jesus seems to be affirming him in this answer.  If you are familiar with this passage, immediately following this, Jesus says, “you are Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church.”  Things seem to be getting better and better for Peter. First, a correct answer and now, a commission.  Then suddenly, Jesus reveals to Peter and the rest of the disciples that he (Jesus) will “go to Jerusalem and suffer greatly from the elders, the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed and on the third day be raised.”  Peter, apparently horrified by this proceeds to then confront Jesus by telling him that this could never possibly happen.  Jesus’ response to Peter’s reaction is rather harsh:  “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.  You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.”

[The crescent moon outside is getting brighter as the sky turns from pitch black to the deepest darkest blue…the mountain’s outline is now emerging]

Poor Peter!  He’s been through a lot in this passage.  Like winning at the Price is Right but then overbidding on the showcase showdown. The passage to me hinges upon that one question, “who do you say that I am?”  This is both a personal and communal question.  I don’t think that it has a once and for all ‘correct’ answer.  When I look back on my life, I know that I have answered that question differently at different points in my life depending on so many factors.  The answers are diverse, and as meaningful as they are at each moment, it seems to me that it is the question itself that has the enduring meaning.  I know that tomorrow the answer may be different for me.

How do we perceive God in our lives, at this moment?  How do we encounter the divine presence right now? How we answer that will determine how we see everyone and everything.  It will determine our expectations and hopes, the criteria for our happiness and disappointments.  It will be the index for how we evaluate ourselves, others and the world.  It will be how we choose to judge or perhaps not be too quick to judge.  It’s an organic question that carries all the meaning of our lives.  If we can stay with the ‘sufferings and deaths’ that this perennial question presents, we will find newness and transformation.

For the most part, though, it is like the darkness just before the dawn.  That moment of emergence and birthing that holds all the mystery and all the hope.  I wonder sometimes if it is precisely this darkness of unknowing but still trusting that in all the ways that it befuddles, irritates, perhaps even angers us, that is the point.  Holding onto the darkness of not knowing is also holding onto the hope that something new is on the way.  There is already new life in the darkness.

So, ‘who do you say that I am?’ is a question that, in a way, allows us to learn to see in the dark.  This is a way of moving through the light of our lives, but not only trusting the light and that which we feel certain about – ourselves, others, our world – but trusting even perhaps more so that unknown possibility which is always waiting to be transformed and birthed in the dark.  We can analyze and assess all we want, and in fact, we must do this in order to function in our lives.  It is important to do so, but the key is not to try to tell God what God can or cannot do, like Peter telling Jesus that His suffering life and death could not possibly happen in the Gospel.  Our certain predispositions can be a blinding light that hides the darkness of unknown and wonderful transformative new possibilities.

Today my father turns 80 years old.  I know and feel the great gift he has been to me in my life in his support, love and guidance through the years, starting with bringing me into this world )along with my mother) and continuing on up until this very day.  In saying that, I know that my attempt to assess his life would be futile and anything I could say about him would only represent one tiny particle of what his life is about, what it has been and what it will be forever.  He has had to ask that same question for 80 years that was posed by God to Peter and all the rest of us  “who do you say that I am?”  I am sure that it has been a journey of blessing and struggle for him, just as it was for Peter as we hear in Matthew’s gospel.  I am so thankful for the gift of my Dad’s life and how he has shown to me how to stay with the question and trust in my own experience learning to see the Divine.

Maybe it is as much about the darkness as it is the light.  We tend to look at darkness as something to be avoided, without seeing it is the very thing that provides the transformative newness to emerge.  Is darkness the setting for a kind of ‘knowing’ that can allow us to hope and trust, as we struggle to answer the question of how we see the divine in our lives?  I believe so.

Outside my hotel window, the mountain’s outline is now clearly delineated by the brilliant rays of the sun rising behind it.  The light is actually framing the mystery of the darkness.  Yes the mountain is there, the day is new, the possibilities are there, the divine is waiting to be incarnated in today in each of us.

Happy Birthday Dad!