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?