Who Do You Say He Is?

If I told you to pull out a piece of paper and write on it who you say Jesus is what would you write? We all have some answer; we all have some images of Jesus. Some of them are the images we learned as children in Sunday school which have proved troubling and we don’t’ have anything to replace them with. Sometimes we dismiss Jesus on the basis of what we knew about Jesus at age six. Some of us have never examined the evidence for ourselves.

One of my main goals in preaching is to gain a fresh hearing for Jesus, especially among those who believe they already understand him. I’m sorry to tell you this, but you probably don’t. Because what happens sometimes is that presumed familiarity has led to unfamiliarity. Jesus is sometimes obstructed by clouds of well-intentioned misinformation.

But ultimately, rather than give you my answer to the question I’d rather challenge you to answer the question for yourself because that’s the only answer that matters. Is he Messiah? If that’s what you think, what does that mean? Jesus clearly didn’t’ fit into what a Messiah was expected to be. Messiahs were supposed to have power, were supposed to take charge, were supposed to set things right and free the Jews from political expression. But Jesus refused to stiff arm anybody. He refused to dominate or to take up arms.

Is he Savior? OK. But what is he saving us from and what is he saving us to? Some people clearly had no interest in being saved. When Jesus said the poor are precious and the rich are in big trouble, only those on one side of that equation found it intriguing.

Is he Teacher? Surely, but is that all?

Who do you say he is? Messiah, Savior, Lord, shaman, teacher, friend, prophet, prince of peace?

Now, as you try and answer that question, don’t be too alarmed if you cant’ nail it down. Even those of us who wrestle with the question regularly find it difficult, because Jesus is sometimes downright incomprehensible; he is often enigmatic, ambiguous. From the very beginning, who Jesus was, what he was about, was far from self-evident. There were people who stood face-to-face with Jesus and said, “This is God incarnate.” There appear to be many more who said, “This man is nuts.” Although I think that for most of us, the biggest issue isn’t that we’ve listened to Jesus and found him incomprehensible; it’s that we’ve listened to him and found him too damned difficult.

Herb Miller, Who Do You Say That I Am?

____________________________________

Defining Christ

Every photographer knows the importance of having the camera lens in focus before triggering the shutter. You can set the right shutter speed. You can open the lens to its proper setting. But if that lens is not in focus, the picture will be worthless.

Anyone who’s trying to sell something these days knows the importance of having an accurate focus on the market for which a product is intended. Whether you’re trying to sell soap or soft drinks, it’s necessary to know exactly which people will most likely purchase your product. On what age group or sector of the public do you focus your advertising?

So Jesus realized that if people were going to follow him, and if his followers were going to be truly effective Christians in the world, they needed to know exactly who he was. They also needed to know precisely what was involved in being a Christian.

That’s probably one reason why he asked this simple, but all-important question in our Bible reading. “Tell me,” he says, “who do people say I am?” And a little later he refines the question: “What about you?” he asked them. “Who do you say I am?”

Richard W. Patt, Partners in the Impossible, CSS Publishing Company