Who is Jesus?

Here's another excerpt from a great sermon written by Eugenia Gamble. The text is Luke 9:18-27, which begins, "Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, 'Who do the crowds say I am?'”  

A number of years ago I took my study leave for a month alone to write on a tiny island off of Nova Scotia ... When I was in Nova Scotia I thought a lot about that question. I was serving a congregation that was growing and growing more diverse in a city that seemed more and more unconcerned about the gospel. So whenever I had a natural opportunity, I asked the question of people that I met what they had to say about Jesus.

.... I met a couple from Ontario who lived on their sailboat and went all over the world. We chatted while our clothes washed and somehow, probably after they asked what I did for a living, I asked them.

The man said, “He was a wonderful man who founded a horrible religion. No,” he went on, “It’s not a bad religion. It is just practiced by horrible people, hypocrites. I’d like to be a Christian if it wasn’t for the hypocrites.”

The young girl who rented me a movie at the general store nearly every evening said in answer, “He was part of God wasn’t he, a long time ago?”

The defrocked Roman Catholic priest who was the owner of one of the little restaurants in town said, “He was my way to God before the church blocked my path.”

And, my personal favorite, the young man at the pizza parlor said, “Jesus, I don’t know the dude.  Does he live around here?”

In each of those conversations, I could hear Jesus’ pensive question to his friends, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”

That is a huge question for us today, sisters and brothers. Who do the crowds say that he is? Is he a political code word for a particular ideology? Has he become a justification for our points of view—right, left, right, wrong? Is he just the name of an ancient man with long blond hair who was fond of holding lambs and lifting gentle hands to gentle children?

Who do the people in your company say Jesus is? In your school? In your family? In your neighborhood?

What does it mean to be blessed?

We just had to share this excerpt from a Waiting for Water sermon we received written by Dr. Stuart Bond. He is writing about Jesus' famous Sermon on the Mount as recorded in Luke 6:17-26. We'll pick up where Dr. Bond describes the press and chaos that must have surrounded Jesus that day as he prepared to teach the crowds and his own disciples.

Finally, he sits everyone down. He looks over this crowd of scared people, some of them healed, most of them struggling, all of them wondering what their future would be. And he says, “These are the blessed people: those of you who are poor, hungry, weeping, and hated.” 

Joan Baez gave us modern images about these same folks in the early seventies:

Blessed are the one way ticket holders
on a one way street.
Blessed are the midnight riders
for in the shadow of God they sleep.
Blessed are the huddled hikers
staring out at falling rain,
wondering at the retribution
in their personal acquaintance with pain.
Blessed are the blood relations
of the young ones who have died,
who had not the time or patience
to carry on this earthly ride.   

Joan Baez, Blessed Are, 1970, 1971, Chandos Music

Meanwhile, Jesus continues, woe to you who live comfortably because you have all the comfort you are going to get. Enjoy that pizza now, because the time will come when you can’t find a bite. And yuk it up while you can because it is closing time at the comedy club, and tragedy is the next event on the marquee. And if everyone thinks you are the greatest, that is just the way they talked about the prophet-haters back in the day. 

The problem for us is that we feel the divide. We already know that Jesus is not talking about us when he says they are blessed. He is talking about “them.” He is talking about people who live in rough circumstances and have nothing to show for a lifetime of hard labor. And maybe we could go for that—we can see the beauty in the picture of an old woman sitting outside her hut chopping wood or the African woman balancing water on her head and a child on her hip. We like the poetry of considering them blessed.

But how about them woes! Are you kidding me, Jesus? Sure I have had some privilege and some opportunities, but I also worked hard to be where I am. Are you telling me that after all this, plus serving on several church committees—are you telling me that I am out of your kingdom just because I am not poor? 

Maybe. Or, maybe it is more like this: Unless you are part of the solution, unless you care about the plight of those with nothing, unless you align yourself with the kingdom’s goals, you have had your day. My getting poorer isn’t going to make any poor people rich. But my being satisfied with the world as it is, my being glad to keep things arranged with me on top—that isn’t going to help anything either. 

And isn’t it interesting how we hear this statement of hope for the poor and instantly want Jesus to talk more to us? Sometimes we who have so much need to step back and let this word simply be for those who have nothing. Maybe part of what we need to do is be silent and listen, and realize this: “Jesus is their voice. He is speaking for those who cannot speak, who are never heard. Jesus is their voice.” 

(Children from Cienfuegos, Dominican Republic. Photo courtesy of Healing Waters International.)

You might come back and tell me the futility of trying to help the poor. After all, you might say, Jesus himself said, “The poor shall be with you always.” It is never going to change. 

I would say to you that Jesus was quoting that saying from Deuteronomy 15: 11, which says, “There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brothers and toward the poor and needy in your land.”

Jesus envisions a day when the poor are lifted up and—let’s be honest—the rich come down a few pegs. And if his prayer is that his will be done “on earth as it is in heaven,” then we want to become a blessing to the poor. We want the water they drink to hydrate their bodies rather than infect them. We want the work they do to be micro-enterprises that create sustainable businesses. We want the horizons for them to be brighter than a one in three chance of death by AIDS. What can we do?