In this morning’s Gospel reading, we hear Jesus put a couple of questions to his disciples. First of all he asks them,
“Who do people say the Son of Man is?”
We know from the Gospels that ‘Son of Man’ seemed to have been Jesus’ own title of choice so this was a question about who people thought Jesus was. And, as we heard, the disciples tell Jesus that people think different things about him. Some think he’s John the Baptist, some think he’s Elijah, some think he’s Jeremiah and some think he’s one of the prophets. Given the Jewish understanding of things at the time, that suggests that a lot of people thought Jesus was the herald of the Messiah, the one who was to come to prepare the way for the Messiah.
But Jesus makes no comment on what the people thought, he simply asks the disciples another question:
“But who do you say that I am?”
That was a very pertinent question. And, in many ways, it was a far more important question than the first one. The disciples were the people who’d spent a lot of time close to Jesus, they’d seen him work and heard him speak much more than anybody else. And they’d not only seen and heard what other people had seen and heard, they’d had the privilege of seeing and hearing what others hadn’t. They’d see the miracles he’d done when no one else was around and they’d had the parables explained to them when they were alone with Jesus. So they were the people who knew Jesus best. And so, whatever anybody else thought about him, they were the people who really ought to have known who he was. And it was very important that they did know who Jesus was because not only were they were the people who were working with him now, they were the people who were going to continue his work after he’d returned to the Father and, as we heard a little later in this morning’s Gospel, they were the people who were going to become the Church and who were going to take the Gospel into the wider world to teach people who Jesus was, and is.
But, as we look at the world today, 2,000 years after Jesus asked those questions, I think we must realise that his questions are as pertinent today as they were then. It might not be Jesus who asks them today, but people are still asking who was Jesus?
And, just as when Jesus asked the question, there are lots of different answers. To those outside the Church, who don’t have any faith, Jesus might be a great philosopher or a great teacher of wisdom or morals and ethics. For those outside the Church and of different faiths, Jesus is usually seen as a great prophet, but one who was misunderstood by his contemporaries, especially his own followers who founded a new faith and the Church around him.
As Christians, we might agree with some of those answers, but to us, Jesus was, and is, much more than any of those things. As we heard in the Gospel, Peter answered the question on behalf of all Jesus’ disciples when he said that Jesus was
“…the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
But even so, Christians, or perhaps I should say people in the Church, often still disagree about who Jesus was.
I don’t mean by that, that people disagree with Peter’s answer to the question; no one in any mainstream Church would say that Jesus wasn’t the Messiah and the Son of God, and if they do then, quite frankly, they shouldn’t really be calling themselves Christians or members of the Christian Church. But what people do disagree on is what Jesus taught and what he meant by his teachings. People put their own interpretation on Jesus’ words and teachings. Rather than conforming their lives to Jesus’ life, which is really what it means to be a Christian, to be Christ-like, in a sense they conform Jesus to their way of life. And that affects the Jesus they preach to the world.
That’s always gone on to some extent and we only have to read the Gospels to see that each of the Evangelists have their own particular interest or slant on who Jesus was.
St Mark shows Jesus as a man of action, rushing from place to place, wherever he’s needed, with no time for rest. St Matthew shows Jesus as a great teacher and as the Saviour of Israel. St Luke’s Jesus is a universal Saviour and great healer and someone who carries the burdens of others. And St John shows Jesus as a great miracle worker and emphasises his divinity and close, personal relationship with the Father, more than any of the other Gospel writers.
We think the Evangelists did this so that Jesus could be portrayed as addressing the concerns of the particular Christian community each evangelist was writing for. That’s understandable. But, if we don’t take all the Gospels into account when we’re building an image of who Jesus was, we can end up with a distorted image of him. The same thing can happen if we look for examples of Jesus addressing our own particular concerns and ignoring examples of Jesus speaking against our preferences. And I’ve come across lots of examples of that.
There was a lady with a rather feminist outlook that I met in a parish I once served in, who told me that she didn’t like the disciples, and neither did Jesus, he preferred women to men. I asked her where she got that impression from and she said it was because all the disciples ran away when Jesus was arrested, and only the women stayed with him. When I pointed out that the Gospel says that Beloved Disciple was with Mary at the Cross, she said, ‘Oh. That’s in John isn’t it? Well I don’t take any notice of what John says, I don’t like him, I prefer Luke!’ Luke’s Gospel, by the way, is the one that gives the most prominence to women, as you would expect from someone who portrays Jesus as the Saviour of all people.
I’m sure many of you here will have heard Jesus referred to as a proto-Socialist, or the first Socialist because of his concern for the poor. That’s a view that was very common a few years ago, especially amongst more politically left-wing Christians. But then, on the other hand I remember once hearing during a TV interview, a very famous, world famous in fact, American evangelist saying that Jesus wasn’t a Socialist; that Jesus believed in business and free-enterprise; that Jesus believed in private property; that Jesus believed in the ‘American Way’.
Which I always thought was a bit of an anachronism, but the pronouncements of American Christians are often puzzling to more than me. As indeed is the C of E’s current preoccupation with money. I’m sure Jesus wouldn’t have objected to the Church collecting money to meet its needs, after all, St Matthew’s Gospel tells us that he paid the ‘Temple Tax’ but how they can justify hounding churches for money, and closing churches and cutting clergy numbers for financial reasons while the Church sits on over £8 billion, how they can square that with Jesus cleansing the temple when God’s house of prayer had been turned into a den of thieves, I don’t know.
In fact they are, and have been during the Churches history, literally hundreds of different theologies and movements, based on partial and distorted versions of Jesus’ teachings. Some of them seem to have been based on nothing more than the personal views of those who’ve espoused them. Some of them, perhaps many of them, have highlighted neglected areas or unseen implications of Jesus’ teachings, but none of them are the whole picture and so, if they’re taken in isolation, they all give an incomplete and distorted image of Jesus and his teachings. They all give the wrong answer to the question, who is Jesus?
So who is Jesus? As St Peter said, Jesus is the Messiah and the Son of the living God. Jesus is the one who came to take away the guilt and punishment of our sins by carrying them on the Cross on our behalf. Jesus is the one who came to be our Saviour so that all people might have eternal life. Jesus is the one who said that all we need do is believe in him and in the words he spoke, which weren’t his words, but the words of our Father in heaven. And Jesus is the one who summed up those words very simply in the Great Commandment to love God and to love our neighbour as we love ourselves. And if we think about it, what else do we need to do, or say? What is it that isn’t covered in that Great Commandment? It might not be so easy to put into practice, but that’s our fault; it’s not a fault in Jesus, or an omission from his teachings that we have to put right. And we’ll only think that it is if our image of Jesus is wrong, if we don’t know him as his disciples should.
Amen.
You will find the Propers for the 21st Sunday (Trinity 11) here.
Parish Church of St Mark Chadderton 