Who Do They Say We Are?
Speaker: Rev. Matt Henry
Location: Whitney United Methodist Church
Date: March 8, 2009
Who do they say we are? Christian. Jesus said unto his disciples, “Whom do you say that I am?” They replied, “Why, you…you are the eschatological manifestation of the ground of our being. You are the ontological foundation of the context of our very selfhood revealed.” And Jesus said, “What?” If they were in seminary that’s how they would answer that question until they get out in the real world.
So, just who is Jesus, friends? How many of you think Jesus should be our role model? Raise your hand. How many of you try your best to emulate Jesus? Raise your hand. Okay, that’s good. Now, let’s think. Let’s look a little carefully at exactly who Jesus is, at who we have just claimed as our role model, at who we say that we try our best to emulate. Is Jesus the Prince of Peace as Isaiah prophesied? Or is Jesus actually this character found in the 2nd chapter of John? I want to read this to you really quickly. This is Jesus, after all, as John describes him. The Passover of the Jews was near and Jesus went up to Jerusalem and in the Temple he found people selling cattle, sheeps and doves and money changers seated at that Temple…now listen carefully. This is Jesus your role model…making a whip of cords he drove all of them out of the Temple, both the sheep and the cattle. He also poured out the coins of the money changers and overturned their temples.
Can you imagine Jesus doing that in this church? What would be your reaction to the one who you just claimed you emulate? He told those who were selling the doves…this is heavy on the exclamation points…’Take these things out of here! Stop making my Father’s house a marketplace!’ Whipping people with a bull whip. Is that the leader you just claimed as your role model? Get behind me Satan….Jesus is saying this to his closest disciples. Jesus, do you have an anger problem? Whipping people with cords in the Temple, throwing over tables, dumping an offering on the ground…is this the Prince of Peace, or the angry, violent, angry, righteous judge of John’s Gospel? Is he the miraculous healer of all the Gospels or is he the one who could do no miracles in his home town, in Mark 6:5? Is he one who unites and unifies people in his wake or is he one who causes pain and hardship for families? “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth,” Jesus says. “I have come not to bring peace but a sword, for I have come to set a man against his father and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. And one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.” The words of Jesus, our mentor.
Brothers and sisters, my question to you is which one of the Jesuses do you worship? Which one do you give allegiance to? Which one should you emulate as the role model to follow? Will the real Jesus please stand up? What diagnosis would a therapist give Jesus? Think about it for a second. Yeah…suicidal, paranoid, schizophrenic. Maybe a little bi-polar. Someone who has a Messiah complex, certainly. What personality type best describes Jesus? Is Jesus a helper? Is Jesus a reformer? Is he a challenger? Is Jesus a peacemaker? Is he an achiever? Maybe Jesus is an individualist. Yeah, jack of all trades which includes whipping people on their behind with a bull whip. Overturning temples, overturning tables, throwing the offering on the ground. Yeah, man, a multi-tasker, absolutely man! Tough love. No, John Wayne wouldn’t allow himself to become sacrificed on a cross. I don’t think that’s a fair assumption. John Wayne would whip out his shotgun and start shooting people.
Peter says Jesus is “The Messiah.” And Jesus’ response is “Yes!” And then after telling them exactly just what that means, that all the good stuff he’s done will be misunderstood and unwelcome, and that he’ll suffer, and that he’ll get crucified for it, but live to tell the story. Jesus’ right hand disciple, his main man Peter, suddenly changes his mind about Jesus and says, “No, no, wait a minute. I changed my mind. You can’t be about that after all.” Whereupon Jesus calls him “Satan” with a curse. I wonder what Jesus’ Staff/Parish Relations Committee would have to deal with. They’d be having to meet about him every week I’m sure. Friends, are we willing to let Jesus be Jesus and do his job or not?
For you are setting you mind not on divine things but on human things. He called the crowd with his disciples and said to them, ‘If any who want to become my followers (this is us) let them deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.’ I think being a Christian is the hardest thing in the world for it calls us to make some very difficult and sometimes nasty choices. It doesn’t require much to be a church goer but to be a Christian, that’s something else all together. Luke writes in the Book of Acts And it was in Antioch that the disciples were first called Christian which, by the way, literally means “Little Christ.”
So, what is a Christian? Is it someone who, as Jesus says, denies themselves and picks up their cross, and is willing to get nailed to it like him, and follow him, like Mark tells us? Are we Christians? We say we are. Then what does this mean? More importantly, who do others say we are? Self-deniers and followers or something all together different? Are we evangelists who proclaim the Lord Jesus, who rejoice in God’s grace, as Luke says the people called Christian do? If someone were to come and join us for a year and watch and listen very carefully, who would they say we are?
There was once a congregation that had fallen upon hard times. Once it was a great church, but as a result of the waves of aging and death and fear of change, it had become decimated to the extent that there were only a few parishioners left. Most were over seventy in age. Clearly, it was a dying congregation.
Now, in the neighborhood surrounding the church there was a little house that a rabbi from a nearby town occasionally used as a retreat. Through their many years of prayer and contemplation the congregational leaders had become a bit psychic, so they could always sense when the rabbi was visiting the house. “The rabbi is in the house, the rabbi is in the house again,” they would whisper to each other. And as he agonized over the imminent death of his congregation, it occurred to the church’s lay leader to visit the rabbi and ask, if by some possible chance, he could offer any advice that might save the church.
The rabbi welcomed the lay leader of the church at his house. But when the lay leader explained the purpose of this visit, the rabbi could only commiserate with him. “Yes. I know how it is,” he exclaimed. “The spirit has gone out of the people. It is the same in my town. Almost no one comes to the synagogue anymore.” So the lay leader and the old rabbi wept together. Then they read parts of the Torah in both of their scriptures and quietly spoke of deep things. When the time came for the lay leader to leave, they embraced one another. “It has been a wonderful thing that we should talk after all these years,” the lay leader said. “But I have still failed in my purpose for coming here. Is there nothing you can tell me, no piece of advice you can give me that would help me save my dying church?”
“No, I am sorry,” the rabbi answered. “I have no advice to give you.” But then the rabbi paused and said quietly to the lay leader, “Yes, there is one thing I have to tell you: One of you is the Messiah.”
When the lay leader returned to the church, his church council leadership gathered around him and asked, “Well, what did the rabbi say?”
“He couldn’t help,” the lay leader answered. “We just wept and read the Bible together. The only thing he did say as I was leaving—it was something cryptic—he said that one of us was the Messiah! Maybe it’s something from Jewish mysticism. I don’t know what he meant.”
Now in the days and weeks and months that followed, the parishioners began to think about this and they wondered whether the rabbi’s words could actually be true. “The Messiah is one of us? Could he possibly have meant one of us parishioners here at the church? If that’s the case, who is it? Do you suppose he meant the lay leader? Yes, if he meant anyone he probably meant our lay leader. He has been in our church for a very long time. On the other hand, he might have meant Jane. Jane is a holy woman. Everyone knows that Jane is a woman of light. Certainly he couldn’t have meant Malcom! Malcom gets crotchety at times. But come to think of it, even though he is a thorn in people’s sides, when you look back on it, Malcom is virtually always right, often very right. Maybe the rabbi did mean Malcom, but surely not Barbara. Barbara is so passive, a real nobody. But then almost mysteriously she has a gift for somehow always being there when you need her. She just magically appears by your side. Could Barbara be the Messiah? Or maybe it’s the pastor. Could he be the Messiah? Of course, the rabbi didn’t mean me. He couldn’t possibly have meant me. I’m just an ordinary person. Yet supposing he did? Suppose I am the Messiah? Oh God, me?”
As they contemplated in this manner, the parishioners began to treat each other with extraordinary respect on the off chance that one of them might actually be the Messiah. And on the off, off chance that each parishioner themselves might be the Messiah, they began to treat themselves with extraordinary respect.
Now, because the church was situated in a beautiful town, it so happened that some people occasionally came to visit the church to picnic on its tiny lawn, to sit under some of its magnificent shade trees, and even now and then to go into the cement block sanctuary to meditate. And as they did so, without even being conscious of it, they sensed this aura of extraordinary respect that now began to surround the congregation and seemed to radiate out from them and permeate the atmosphere of the place. There was something strangely attractive, even compelling, about it. Hardly knowing why, people began to come back to the church more frequently to picnic and to play and to pray. And they began to bring their friends to show them this special place. And their friends brought their friends.
And then it happened that some of the younger people who came to visit the church started to talk more and more with the older parishioners. And after a while one asked if he could join them. And then another. And another. And it happened, that within a few years the church had once again become a thriving congregation and, thanks to the rabbi’s gift, a vibrant center of light and spirit.
Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you, but rejoice in so far as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings so that you may also be glad and shout for joy in his glorious reveal. If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blest because the spirit of glory, which is the spirit of God, is resting on you. But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker. Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace but glorify God because you bear this name. For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God. If it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the Gospel of God? And if it hard for the righteous to be saved, what will become of the ungodly and the sinners? Therefore, let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust themselves to a faithful creator while continuing to do good.
Who will they say we are? People who suffer in accordance with God’s will, entrusting themselves to a faithful creator while continuing to do good, or will others see us as just doing lip service to the title of Christian. One thing is sure here, brothers and sisters, others will say we are what they see and hear from us, and they will be looking for the Messiah among us. Ain’t it cool?
These words I speak to you this morning I give to you in the name of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.