I'm visiting Gina at the State Hospital one day back
when she's training chaplains there. As I'm waiting
for her to get free, one of the patients walks up to
me and says, "Do you know me?" I don't know him, but I
hesitate, because maybe we've met. I often introduce
myself to people three or four times before my brain
makes a permanent record, like a pen short on ink you
have to retrace repeatedly before you can read it. "Do
you know me?" he insists, a little louder. I'm
wracking my brain, and now I'm wondering if maybe he's
an amnesia victim searching for his own lost self.
"No," I reply, "I don't think we've met." "Then why
should I talk to you?" he says, and he walks away!
The disciples had every reason to know Jesus by the
time he asked them "Who do you say I am?" So why did
he ask them? Was Jesus searching for his own lost
self, voicing his own inner doubts, wondering aloud if
he was fulfilling his mission or mistaken about his
identity after all? If Jesus was fully human, then he
had to discern and develop his calling just as we do.
The gospels present an evolving self-consciousness
about his destiny, with several critical moments along
the way like his baptism and his transfiguration,
where God clearly visits Jesus and speaks in words
that both confirm and direct him. At other places his
sense of identity is challenged - in the wilderness
where he is tempted, in confrontations with religious
leaders, in those moments where people quit following
him because his teachings are too hard and he expects
too much from them. Between these mountain top highs
and valley floor lows, Jesus ponders, prays, and
discovers his path by walking it. From the time he is
a child amazing the Temple teachers with his
precocious spiritual insight to the hour of his trial
in the garden when he prays "Let this cup pass from
me," Jesus wrestles with his unique and difficult
destiny. So it should not surprise us here along the
way if Jesus might wonder if he is on the right track
after all.
I lived in New York when Ed Koch was elected mayor.
For the first two years at almost every public
appearance he would ask the crowd, "How am I doin'?"
Everybody would laugh and applaud, because it made us
feel he cared if we cared if he was doing the job
right. Of course, Jesus wasn't running for office, and
he would not compromise his message to fit the opinion
polls. He didn't seem to be concerned with popularity
like some folks nowadays who will cut the gospel
fabric to suit the fashion of the times. You know,
avoid controversial issues because that's not why
people come to church, make the gospel easy to follow
because people have enough demands on them already,
tell the people what they want to hear so they'll
think God is their biggest fan without ever a hint of
challenge to the way they think and live? You can
build a crowd that way, but I'm not sure if you can
build a church.
No, Jesus pretty much made hamburger of everybody's
sacred cows. And he demanded a lot. And he would not
compromise. So most of the crowds initially attracted
by his teachings and his miracles abandoned him. It
must have been lonely at times. In the mystery of
Jesus' simultaneous full humanity and full divinity we
can't possibly penetrate the inner workings of his
mind, but at least from the human side we can
understand why Jesus might ask "Who, me?" "Why me?"
"What next?" and "How am I doin'?" along the way.
On the other hand, maybe Jesus wasn't looking for the
answer to his question, but for their answer. Maybe he
wanted to know if his disciples were catching on,
understanding what he was about, what he was trying to
do. Obviously Jesus was a puzzle to that time, like a
lot of public figures in our time. Ask someone if they
know who George Bush or Al Gore really are, and you
may get a smile, or you may get a scowl or maybe just
a shrug. Some say "Abraham Lincoln." Others say
"Adolph Hitler." Still others say "One of those
politicians." But they all think they have good reason
for their opinion when the truth is none of us knows
the real George Bush or the real Al Gore. People are
complex, and not easily "known." They are a mixture of
many things and always capable of surprising,
shocking, or disappointing you.
For that matter, which is the real you? The one who
barked at your best friend yesterday or the one who
gave assistance to a total stranger? The one who
barely passed math or the one who keeps a careful
checkbook? The one who partied hearty on Sixth Street
last night or the one sitting sedately here in church
today? Do you even know who you are?
"Who do people say I am?" Jesus asks his disciples.
They answer: "Some say you're John the Baptist. Some
say Elijah. Others say you're Jeremiah or one of the
great prophets." We pigeonhole people according to our
past experience. "We've seen this before," they
thought. And they were right. Jesus was a lot like
John the Baptist and Elijah and Jeremiah and the other
prophets who preceded him. These were flattering
comparisons, but too limiting, because Jesus was more.
So they were wrong. Still, they hadn't been with Jesus
all along, hadn't heard all his teachings, weren't
close enough to know him well like the disciples. So
much for the crowds.
"But who do you say I am?" Jesus asks them. Simon
Peter speaks for them all, blurts out what they have
all just begun to dare to think. "You are the
Messiah!" Christos, in Greek: "Christ." In Hebrew:
Meshiach, "Messiah." A loaded word! It means, simply,
"anointed one," like the way a King was anointed at
his coronation, as a sign of God's blessing poured
out, as a symbol of his giftedness and responsibility
to rule. Israel called all her kings "Messiah" during
their lifetime, but only David even came close to
living up to the ideal. Then David's dynasty was gone,
and there was no ruling Messiah. So Israel came to
expect a coming Messiah, the ideal King, sent by God
to deliver them, sent by God to rule them as the ideal
sovereign. It was both a political and a spiritual
word. And it was loaded, because various visions of
this Messiah had been described, and various
expectations raised. Loaded more, because they had
waited a long, long, long time for God's Messiah to
come. It wasn't a word any Jew would use lightly, not
even Peter. But Jesus has given him reason to venture.
"You are the Messiah!" There. He said it.
It hangs there in the air. Then Jesus breaks out in
joy: "Simon, you blessed Rock! God put this in your
mouth, and I'll build my church on it." Peter gives
the answer Jesus wants to hear. But somehow, it isn't
enough. For as soon as Jesus starts to speak of his
destiny to suffer and lay down his life, Peter
contradicts him, pulls Jesus aside, tells him,
"Listen. Nobody wants a Messiah like that. This
suffering business isn't politically correct." So
Peter makes it clear that what he means by "Messiah"
and what Jesus means by "Messiah" are two different
things entirely. And Jesus responds to this with
scorn: "Get behind me Satan!" Poor Peter! In just six
verses he goes from "Blessed Rock!" to "Rock-head."
You see, you can call Jesus "Messiah," but if you
think that means calling the shots and lording it over
the people around you because you're next to God,
you've missed the point entirely. You can call Jesus
"Messiah," but if you don't understand that means
loving and serving others to the point of
self-sacrifice, you're just taking the Lord's name in
vain. So when Peter confesses that Jesus is the
Messiah, he's right. But he's wrong. He doesn't know
Jesus yet. He just doesn't get it.
But Jesus already knew that, don't you think? I don't
mean because he was God and already knew everything
everybody would ever say, but because Peter and the
other dim bulbs had missed the point all along. Who
would have blamed Jesus if he said, "Why should I talk
to you?" and just walked away? But why did he ask them
if he already knew they wouldn't have the right
answer?
Maybe the question is here for the sake of generations
to come, for our sake, so we will have to answer it.
How about it? Who do you say Jesus is? A generation
later Paul describes Jesus as "all things to all
people." Already people were making Jesus what they
needed him to be. The confusion about him continues in
our time, doesn't it? There are still people who say
Jesus was a great teacher, Jesus was a social
revolutionary, Jesus was a courageous prophet, Jesus
was a wise philosopher - meaning, of course, that's
all he was. We ourselves can't figure out whether we
want to say Jesus was unique and beyond compare or
typical and therefore an example attainable for all of
us to follow.
The scholars of the modern church have led us through
three "quests for the historical Jesus." I have a
shelf full of their musings. One book called Jesus and
another book called Christ, both by the same author.
Another wrote, The Essential Jesus, The Historical
Jesus, and Jesus, A Revolutionary Biography. Still
another gives us The Real Jesus and Living Jesus. I
also have Honest to Jesus, Meeting Jesus Again for the
First Time, Jesus: God and Man; Jesus: The Man, The
Mission, and the Message; A Marginal Jew: Rethinking
the Historical Jesus; Jesus the Magician; The Quest
for the Historical Jesus; Jesus Through Many Eyes; and
Jesus Through the Centuries, just to name a few! These
scholars all read the same sources, but each comes up
with a different Jesus because they all have their own
agenda and they want Jesus to serve it.
They aren't the only ones, of course. Christians
everywhere have competing visions of Jesus, and you
know, I just don't believe in the Jesus a lot of them
do, not the way they describe him. There's a lot of
confusion out there, and still a lot of
misunderstanding and taking the Lord's name in vain.
No wonder a man asked me recently, in all seriousness,
a Baptist Christian, "Who is this Jesus fellow to you,
anyway?"
The truth is, we lack even the basic information about
Jesus you would get from a driver's license: height,
weight, eye color, and whether he might need
corrective lenses before operating heavy machinery. We
have no photographs, no paintings, no life size
statues, not even a description of his appearance,
though I once heard a preacher describe Jesus in
perfect detail as "a rugged, handsome, blond haired,
brown eyed man, with short hair and clean shaven, a
man's man, tall and strong." Jesus had to be handsome,
he reasoned, because nobody would have followed him if
he were ugly. On the other hand, we have more
information about Jesus than we do about most ancient
historical figures, but all of it has come to us
through the filters and agendas and imaginations of
people who either already believed he was God or
absolutely rejected the idea. There's no such thing as
unbiased history, and the Jesus of the Bible lends
himself to a variety of plausible interpretations. So,
how can we know Jesus?
In the Bible, there are two ways of knowing. You can
know about someone: facts, information, data. Or, you
can experience someone. Thus, you can know people
without knowing everything about them. And you can
know about people without ever really knowing them at
all. But the mystery always remains. You can never
fully comprehend who a person is because a person is
dynamic. Do you know the people sitting around you
today? Can you claim really to know a single soul on
this planet? Yes, in some cases, very well. But no,
not entirely.
Do we know Christ? Not if we merely try to bend him to
our own agendas, especially not if those agendas are
incompatible with the gracious savior consistently
revealed by the scripture. He is not hateful, violent,
or abusive. We can say what he is not. But can we say
we know him? Yes, very well. But no, not entirely.
Perhaps it would be better to say, "We are getting to
know him." In fact, as Elizabeth O'Connor observes, we
do not follow Jesus because we know everything there
is to know about him. We follow Jesus in order to know
him. It takes a life time, nothing less. And because
he is alive and his Spirit is present in our midst, we
can never claim to know him entirely. He is still
capable of surprising us. He is still revealing
himself to us.
The Incarnation - that Jesus was God in human flesh -
is the heart of our Christian faith, because we
believe God still unites with our flesh, dwells in our
hearts. None of us has ever looked upon Christ, so how
can we know him? We know him as he is embodied in each
other, however imperfectly. You and I are the body of
Christ, Paul says, the church, through whose bodies
and gifts Christ's Spirit continues to work in the
world. I have never seen Christ, but I have seen
Christ in you. And the Bible is like an artist's
sketch of someone you have never seen. But you hold
that picture up to each person you meet and in every
circumstance of life, and you notice the resemblance,
you keep glimpsing him everywhere. Think about it. Who
has been Christ to you? More importantly, who has
encountered Christ through you?
We should not be troubled by the confusion about who
he is. We are still getting to know him ourselves. As
we follow him and do his work and embody his love, we
know him better. The Bible says, "We shall all see
him." Meanwhile, I think our own lives and destinies
answer who we think Jesus is, if not also who the
world decides he is. So how are we doin' Lord?
Writes the poet/pitcher Dan Quisenberry:
they asked through the ages
a song of blessing
says Mary
full with child
Christ the Son of God
says peter
before he heard the rooster's crow.
a silent man
a political hot potato
says pontius pilate
by the wash bowl.
my Lord
says thomas
with fingers on wounded flesh
a reason for war
to cut off more ears
say the crusaders
marching towards palestine
my authority to grab land and money
say the medieval popes, and televangelists
flowing purple robes and heavy coffers.
a mystery of beauty say the artists
limestone dripping in their eyes
our ground of being
say the theologians
thick glasses and heavy books.
my road to votes
say the politicians
with powdered faces and hands out
my savior, my redeemer
say the poor in spirit
humbled by hardship.
my mentor in peace and justice
says martin luther king
marching to birmingham
too confusing, I'll take the silver
says judas
with a kiss
who was and is and is to come
says john
trembling with his vision
my slipstream to the Creator
of the universe, to infinity
says me
with graying moustache
He is right. Maybe the reason there are so many
different pictures of Jesus is that Jesus allows us to
make him what we need him to be - within limits, of
course. Maybe the reason there are so many different
pictures of Jesus is that each of us must answer the
question for ourselves. So. Who do you say Jesus is?
May we pray?
Jesus, Friend, be near to us, that we be strangers no
more.
Jesus, Savior, be clear in us, that others might see
your love.
Jesus, Sovereign, be free in us to do your work and
will.
Jesus, Messiah, be revealed through us that finally
the whole world might know you and rejoice in
salvation and in peace. Amen.
Who are you
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