Who Is This Jesus?

Text: Matthew 21:1-11

“Who is this?” or rather “Who is this Jesus?”  In my not so humble opinion this is the most important question anyone/everyone must answer and especially us for we are the ones who for now he has called here to meet him.  Who is this Jesus? I must say right off the bat that I’m not talking about knowing things about Jesus.  Rather, I’m talking about knowing Jesus, indeed who he reveals himself to be by means of the work of the Holy Spirit in our midst.  Who is Jesus revealing himself to be to us here especially today as we are gathered around his table sharing a meal which he has shared with his disciples since the night of his arrest, the meal in which he says “this my body given for you.  Eat this in remembrance of meal.”  And, "This is the cup of the new covenant sealed in my blood shed for the forgiveness of sins.  Drink this in remembrance of me.”  Jesus is here and by this meal he is saying to us “this is who I am”.  At this point we have to be clear, this meal isn’t just something about Jesus.  It is Jesus and as it is a meal, knowing him therefore involves our consuming him – eating his body, drinking his blood.  That’s something we may find barbaric and offensive.  In fact in the earliest days of the church Christians were accused of practicing some bizarre form of cannibalism.  Nevertheless, he is really here for us to really consume him.  But, let me shy away from that and just say it would be helpful if we understood eating his body as participation in him in Christian fellowship and drinking his blood as imbibing of him in his life being poured into us by the gift of the Holy Spirit who bonds us to Jesus so that we participate in his life giving relationship with God the Father so that we know the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father for Jesus and we know Jesus’ adoration for the Father and desire to do his will as Jesus did.  To know the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father for God the Son and God the Son’s adoration of the Father and desire to do his will, to know this for yourself is what it is to know who Jesus is.  To know him is a gift of the Holy Spirit who gives us a relationship which we must work at as we do all other relationships in our lives.

Knowing Jesus is relational and goes beyond just knowing things about him. I know things about my parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, stories and so forth.  Those stories are full of laughs, joys, hurts, and disappointments and by these accounts I learn that the people who reared me are only human.  But it’s not the stories and the things I know about them that have had such a profound effect on who I am.  Rather, it’s actually having been in relationship with them that has done nothing less than been the foundation of who I am.  Similarly, I know things about my wife, but it’s who she is in the relationship that we share that profoundly affects who I am.  I don’t know Dana as in who she is in her very self by some sort of psychic link.  I know Dana by the effect she has on me that has wrought changes in me; changes that have come about as the direct result of who she is in her very self.  Dana and I have two small kids.  Some day they will figure it out that their mother and I after all are just people, but…that’s not what scares me about being a parent.  What scares me and keeps me humble is knowing the profound effect that who I am in the right now of the every moment of our ongoing relationship will have on them.  Who I am is sin-sick and I don’t want to pass on to them the disease of my brokenness.  Therefore, I strive to foster a relationship with Jesus Christ the Lord of Creation who by his incarnation into fallen human being, his living faithfully, his dying, and his being raised has and is healing humanity and all of creation from its sin-sickness that culminates in the futility of death.  I strive to know Jesus and the healing power of his resurrection so that by my affection and by my actions towards my children I pass on the who I am that's healing.  I want to be conducive to and a conduit for them coming to know the steadfast love and faithfulness of God the Father and the adoration and willingness to do the will of God the Father that Jesus had.  I strive to be conducive to their coming to know Jesus by the work of the Holy Spirit.

Getting back to knowing Jesus, I have a trail of papers that say I know a lot of things about Jesus, but it’s those glimpses of him that I have caught in the relationship that I have with him that profoundly changes me.  A few years back I took up the task of memorizing the Sermon on the Mount.  I took a verse a day, memorized it, and then throughout the day particularly on my run I just said it over and over again to myself.  It took just over 120 days but when I was done (and I still couldn't recite the whole thing from memory) I found that Jesus had impressed it upon me, for lack of a better way of saying it, just how open to me and non-judgemental and forgiving he is.  The gospels themselves tell us as much about Jesus, but it is entirely another to have Jesus impress upon us his unconditional love so that we know this is who he is and are changed by that.  When Jesus reveals his gracious and loving self to us personally we need to keep in mind that this is truly how God is.  There is no God hidden behind Jesus who is other than who Jesus is.  God the Father is not some angry, old man, judge with a long white beard whom Jesus has to buy off with his death to get him to love us.  God the Father is just as graciously open to us and for us as Jesus is.  Sermon for another day. Moving on.

This relationship with Jesus isn’t just a “Jesus and me” thing.  My relationship, and indeed your own relationships with the Trinity involves a host of other people.  When we talk about spirituality, about the relationship that we have with God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit we just have to accept the given that it’s going to involve the totality of the relationship networks we are in and particularly those in our Christian fellowship.  The Triune God of grace meets us not only in times of devotion, in mystical experience that we have been trained by our culture to call crazy, but also if not more so in the people we encounter throughout the day.  Coming to know Jesus in the midst of not just a relationship with him on our own but through our relationships with others is why the church is so important in our lives.  

Thus, this question of "who is this Jesus" really cannot be answered apart from active participation in a group of other Christians.  To put it mildly, if we want to know who Jesus is we need the church and by that I do not mean the institution of the church.  Rather, we need Christian fellowship.  We need Bible Study in which we engage each other's lives not just learn things about the Bible.  We need to share our lives and pray together.  When our Lord moves in our lives we need to share that with one another.   We come to learn who Jesus by how he is with our family in Christ.

Back when I lived in West Virginia I had a good friend, Dwight.  He had at one time been a pastor but then and still he conducted an evangelistic/pastoral ministry by means of bringing people to his whom for banjo and fiddle camps.  Dwight periodically would ask me "How goes it with the Lord?"  Now that's a very powerful and very intimate question and definitely not one anyone of us fine, upstanding Presbyterians would feel comfortable answering.  But, I would answer.  It involved some confession, some reflection on my ministry and relationships and where I sensed Jesus was leading me.   During those moments Dwight didn't do much more than stare off into space and listen.  He listened to me and he was also listening for a word from Jesus for me.  In those moments the body and blood of Jesus became a very present reality.  The Holy Spirit was there creating a union between Dwight and I in Jesus.  Dwight's friendship was one that I will always cherish because its foundation was Jesus Christ.  The Jesus I met in my meditation on the Sermon on the Mount is the same Jesus who met Dwight and I when he sat me down to see where I was at with the Lord.
Friends, the body and blood of Jesus are at this table we share them in this meal.  May he who gave his body and let his blood be shed for us that we may live in him and be healed on our sin-sickness, may Jesus become a reality in your Christian fellowship through the work of the Holy Spirit to the glory of the Father who smiles over you saying "My beloved children with you I am well pleased.  Amen.