Feast or Famine

Matthew 16:13-16

And coming into the region Caesarea Philipp, Jesus inquired of his disciples saying, “Who do the people say the son of mankind to be? And they said, “Some John the Baptist, and others Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “And who do you say me to be?” And Simon Peter answered saying, “You are the Christ the son of the living God.”

Any good Hebrew Bible reader knows that the son of mankind is a reference to Ezekiel. Jesus did say that He didn’t come to abolish the prophets but to bring them to their fruition. Whatever son of mankind Ezekiel started off as, Jesus came to pick up where Ezekiel left off. And Peter, the good Jewish guy that he was, knew that to be true.

If geography had anything to do with this particular conversation, Caesarea Philipp was a Roman town named after Herod’s son. More than that, this city was the home to Pan, the half-man half- goat God of sexual pleasure, seemingly a cousin-city to Corinth. Why would Peter say, son of the living God? Perhaps to contrast the nearby idols built for worshipping a dead god.

The worship of dead gods is a tradition that has carried through the long ages of time. The beauty industry has capitalized on the worship of sex and physical attraction. Pride and ego is the altar which finances these efforts to build and worship the self. No wonder Jesus sets a new standard for Divine participation “f you want to come behind me, he renounced himself (Matthew 16:24). In other words, check your pride and ego at the door, almost as difficult as parting with one’s own shadow. Depending on how long the relationship with pride and ego has been enjoyed may determine how long it will take to break it up.

Jesus gave his disciples three years to get over themselves and to get on to more serious work, evangelizing the world with water immersion, planting people with spirit-fruit seed and then training them to produce that spirit-fruit with the use of 20 commands. Feasting on pride and ego will kill the crop, and the forecast? A deadly spirit-fruit famine.