Who
do people say Jesus is? Like most things, it depends on who you ask.
Some
would say He is a prophet or teacher. Still others would call Jesus a liar, a
deceiver, a mischievous miscreant who continues to mislead people too afraid to
think for themselves. Some might be a little more gentle, calling Jesus a
misguided man who thought higher of himself than he ought, but who had good
intentions. Others may not have any impression or opinion on Jesus. Others will
have a hodgepodge admixture of Jesus as Santa and Easter Bunny, flavored with a
dash of Tooth Fairy, a sprig of St. Patrick’s lucky Irish clover, a shot each
of Davy Crockett, Jim Beam and George Washington, waves an American flag while
watching Nascar and Cowboys football, and smells of Grandpa’s old pipe
tobacco.
Others
would say He’s the Jesus of the Bible. They might talk about how Jesus is God’s
Son, born of Mary. They would talk about His miracles, His power and His
authority. They might say He’s the Great Physician who can heal the sick and
restore sight to the blind. They may speak of His daring run-ins with the
Pharisees and Sadducees; or His chasing out the moneychangers from the temple.
They might remark on His power even over demons. They would talk about Easter
and Alleluia and Christ is Risen, Indeed!
How
about you? Who do you say Jesus is?
When
he was given the opportunity, Peter confessed Jesus as the Christ. He’s
spot-on. Christ is in Greek what Messiah is in Hebrew. They mean the same
thing, from two different languages: The Anointed One. Not a reincarnated Old
Testament prophet like Moses or Elijah, or a New Testament evangelist like John
the Baptizer - Peter identifies Jesus as The Anointed One.
That
raises a question: “Anointed for what?”
Like
the first question, it depends on who you ask. As it was used over the
centuries, Messiah and Christ took on less and less of a theological anointing and
more and more of a political anointing. It came to mean revolutionary, someone
who was wiling and able to make Israel great again™, to lead a holy war against
the heathen Romans, reestablish the rule of David, and become the earthly king
that Israel always seemed to think they needed.
It
seems Peter is operating under this model. He wants Jesus to rise up and be a
military king, a political pundit who is able to maneuver his way into independence
and revolution and heroics with bands and drums and armies.
But
Jesus isn’t that kind of Anointed One.
Oh, He is anointed as King, alright – but His kingdom is not of this
world. He will sit on a throne – but it will be a cross. He will be raised up –
when the soldiers lift his cross up to the sky. This is all necessary. It is
part of God’s plan of salvation to redeem the world from her sinfulness, to
save Israel from herself, to rescue the church into eternity. He is anointed to
be the once-for-all sacrifice for the world. He is anointed to die.
And
when Jesus speaks of this, it is so disturbing, so appalling to Peter that He
positions himself between Jesus and the Cross and rebukes Jesus. I imagine the
conversation could have been like this, “Are you kidding me? I didn’t leave my
fishing business to watch you simply walk into town and die. This isn’t what my
brother and I signed up for! It can’t be this way, Jesus! We need to fight – in
fact, I’ll whack the ears off anyone who dares lay a hand on you, Jesus! I got
your back!”
Peter
wants a cross-less Jesus. He doesn’t want to talk about suffering, or sins, or
punishment, or hell, or damnation. He wants the fun, the excitement, the glory…the
world’s idea of anointing. But without the Cross, there is no Anointing. Without
the Cross, there can be no Christ.
This
is why Jesus speaks so severely to Peter: Get behind me Satan! Yes, Satan. No
one wants a cross-less Christ more than the devil himself, and in short order,
Peter – the great spokesperson for the confession of the Church – had also
become the infamous spokesperson for satan himself. See how easy it is? In a
moment of weakness and unbelief, Peter shows the incredible struggle of being
sinner and saint at the same time. Like Paul says, “The evil I don’t want to do,
I do; and the evil which I desire not to do, I do.” Here Peter proclaims Jesus
as Messiah and with the same mouth tells Jesus He cannot go to the cross.
What’s
the solution for Peter – for us! – when we get ourselves ahead of Jesus? “If
any man would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and
follow me.” Denial of self. This doesn’t mean giving up Hershey candy bars for
Lent. This means deny everything you have and are; deny your whole life as you
hold it. Try to hang onto it and you will lose it. But, to lose your life for
the sake of the Gospel, you will find. You find it at the cross.
Cross-following
isn’t easy. It’s harder today than ever before, I submit, and it will be even harder
in the future to come. Churches are told to not talk about sins, and when pastors
preach that way, they are declared unloving or even worse. It’s tempting to make
Jesus a cross-less Christ so we don’t have to talk about who we are under the
lens of God’s holiness. Instead we can just be told to do our best and it’s all
OK.
Jesus
speaks a warning of being ashamed of Him. “Whoever is ashamed of me and of my
words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also
be ashamed, when He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy angels.”
Jesus wasn’t simply speaking of His own generation when He called it
“adulterous” and “sinful.” Ours is no better and probably worse. I’m not going
to use the usual preacher’s device to list all the adulteries and sins of our
generation. You know them well enough, and we all participate in them more than
enough.
But
the sadness and grief is that we’re not ashamed. Past generations had a sense
of shame. What once shamed us to the point where we didn’t talk about it and
hid it and blushed when it was mentioned, now we brag and boast and justify ourselves.
And what are we ashamed of? What do we keep hidden and personal? Not our sins
but our Savior. Not our sins but the cross of Jesus. Not our sins but the One
who takes away our sins, who justifies us, who washes our Sin away with His
blood.
So,
how do we not be ashamed? How do we be better prepared s o that, when asked, we
are able to speak of Christ with faithfulness instead of weakness?
In
the business world, there is what is called the “elevator pitch,” the idea
being that you have the time for an elevator ride to sell your idea to a fellow
elevator traveler. Now, what if you had to do that with the Gospel? What if you
had the opportunity to explain Jesus, or the Gospel, or the Christian faith in
the amount of time of an elevator ride? Make it simple, make it concise, but
make it as full and rich as possible. That was the challenge issued by David
Heim, the executive editor of the magazine THE CHRISTIAN CENTURY. Heim decided
to ask various theologians to try this exercise: what is the essence of
Christianity in seven words or less? The contestants could offer follow-up
explanation of why they wrote what they wrote, but they could only use seven
words to convey the message. [1]
Here
is your assignment for next week: In seven words or less, answer Jesus’ question:
“Who do you say I am?” Prayerfully consider the question, read through the
Scriptures this week, and then give an answer. Bring it with you next week. I won’t embarrass anyone, I promise.
I
know this isn’t fair – I’ve had two weeks to work on this – but here is my
seven word answer: Who is Jesus? “Through the cross, Savior of the world.”
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