Now it happened that as he was praying alone the disciples were with him; and he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?” And they answered, “John the Baptist; but others say, Elijah; and others, that one of the old prophets has risen.” And he said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” And Peter answered, “The Christ of God.” (Lk 9:18–20, RSV)
Perhaps there is no greater threat to our own security than the gods we create out of our own expectations. These gods constantly swirl in our hearts and masquerade in our imaginations. There is the god of my own convenience; the god of my condition; the god of my hidden agenda; the god of my private religious worldview. These gods get broadcast far and wide by the “crowds”, who present a divine image that serves some end that they or we or I seek for their or our or my own purposes. The gods the crowds proclaim are always different faces of “the god of my own choosing,” however that god may look from one person to the next or in one age to the next. We worship the god we expect, who fulfills the end we covet. That end may be prosperity and favor, or collective self-improvement projects where we become “the best versions of ourselves,” or the assumed justification of a particular set of prejudices. The great threat to our security is presuming to know God according to our own expectations of him, instead of learning how to receive God as he is. We become slaves to our own smallish expectations, trapped by the self-generated images we create. We love nothing more than the power to make our own gods.
Jesus asks a question about the crowds and hears what he surely already knows: the crowds seek to put him in his place. To them, he is at best a prophet of God as they expect God to be. They have imagined a god and this man fits in that view. The crowds may even be willing to listen to Jesus all the way to the boundaries of their own expectations. But if he were to step out of place and break from their expectations, they would surely reject him in the name of the god whom they expect.[1] What the crowds expect, they worship.
Journeys of penance, such as the ones we undergo on a pilgrimage, including during the season of Lent, are in part about being cured of our idolatrous views of God. We are to be loosened from the god of our own expectations so as to receive the God who says “I Am”. Jesus reveals the God who creates us and redeems us and invites our worship for our own good. He reveals God not just by what he says or by what he does, but rather by who he is. Receiving Jesus rightly is how we receive who God is. We may want to say this and that about who Jesus is so we can put him into context, but we only receive him as he truly is when we allow him to provide his own context. His prayer is his context because that is where he is at home in his Father’s love––not as a prophet but as the Son.
It is a curious thing that at the beginning of this passage, Jesus is “praying alone” and the “disciples were with him.” The other voices are not there; the crowds have been left behind.[2] The disciples are gathered into Jesus’ solitude. Here the disciples hear the Father’s singular voice and the Son’s singular response. The disciples listen, and when Peter speaks, he speaks in truth.
We often say too much and listen too little. But the spiritual life — life in Christ, as St. Paul says[3] –– is born in the valley of humility, a place where we must first learn how to receive, being schooled in the dialogue of prayer between the Father and the Son that is free of “what the crowds say.” That dialogue unfolds in Jesus’ solitude; only when we are silent can he welcome us in. Away from the crowds, we learn how to cease making gods who fit our image and conform to our likeness––the gods we expect. Within this sacred space God creates, remaking us in his image, conforming to the likeness of the beloved Son.
By the end of Luke’s Gospel, the addiction to the savior we expect on our own terms seems to be the very reason the first witnesses to his resurrection cannot recognize the Risen Christ. Those two downtrodden disciples on the way to Emmaus say of Jesus that “We had hoped that he was the one to redeem Israel” (Lk 24:21). Jesus did redeem Israel, but not as they expected. Their expectations had blinded them.[4]
What blinds us to really seeing Jesus? At times, it might be overpromising, prepackaged spirituality exercises, like overhyped Lenten programs, that end up hooking us on slightly deviant images of God. The traditional practices of the Church, such as the instruction to fast, pray, and give alms in Lent, are comparatively underhyped. Might these, however, actually be remedies for our hidden idolatries and unperceived blindness? We might like to try to be creative and trendy by choosing to “do something” rather than “give up things,” so we can be nicer or the best versions of ourselves. But that is sometimes just another form of giving in to what “the crowds say,” where we worship what we think is best.
Maybe fasting, prayer, and almsgiving really are forms of denial and are meant to be so. Fasting from food, praying away from the constant noise of everyday life, sharing in the poverty of the poor by giving alms — these restore us to the place of solitude in Christ. We silence our expectations and our urges so as to receive more than we can grasp. By practices such as these, the Church guides us into the valley of humility, where we learn how to listen and ultimately be prepared to answer the key question in truth: “But who do you say that I am?”
He is not our guru for enlightenment, nor the prophet of our own agendas, nor our on-call therapist, but “the Christ of God.”
[1] Cf. Lk 23:18–23; Mt 27:20–23; Mk 15:11–14; Jn 18:38–40 and 19:14–15; Acts 3:13–14 and 7:51–53.
[2] Notice how, later, the companions of Saul of Tarsus are speechless as Saul hears the true voice of the Lord. Jesus reveals himself away from the crowds (cf. Acts 9:1–7).
[3] Cf. Gal 3:26–28.
[4] Cf. Lk 24:1–24.