16 February 2026

Jesus and his friends have come to Caesarea Philippi and he asks them, ‘Who do people say that the Son of Man is?’ Some thought he was John the Baptist, some Elijah, some Jeremiah. ‘Who do you say that I am?’ asks Jesus. It is Simon Peter who answers, ‘You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.’  

But when Jesus reveals the nature of his  Messiahship, Peter gets it all wrong. The Messiah’s  true identity is hidden in the great suffering he must endure in Jerusalem and their identity is to be found in a true discipleship of forgetting self,  taking up the cross and following Jesus. It is a way of hiddenness and  anonymity!

 In a former day, anonymity was common place. Who painted the mammoths in the pre-historic caves? Who wrote the words and composed the tunes of our beloved  folk songs? Who wrote the book of Genesis or the accounts of the books of Kings or even the Gospels? Do we really know?

We have the teachings of Jesus and some of the letters ascribed to Paul but there is much uncertainty about biblical authorship. It is a secret, a puzzle, a search which adds to the wonder of this sacred book whose anonymity reveals the secret of eternal life.

At the end of his discussion about his identity, Jesus sternly ordered the disciples not to tell anyone that he was the Messiah. And so he befriends an anonymous woman at the well who, in her turn, shares the good news with people in the town.

But we do not know her identity save she is a woman and a Samaritan. But the encounter gives birth to a word about living water and a truth that what we harvest in our day is the fruit of those anonymous people who went before us. ‘I sent you to reap that for which you did not labour.’ But who did this labour?