The questions we ask shape our drive - our desires
and pursuits in life. It starts at an
early age. Children who asks questions
like “What are stars?”, “Can I run
faster?”, or “Can I sneak a bowl of chocolate chips without getting caught?”
will pursue different paths in life than the children who sadly asks questions
like “What’s wrong with me that other kids don’t want to play with me?” or “How
can I do my hair so that people will see me as pretty?” I call these kind of paradigmatic questions
“driving questions?”
Organizations also have driving questions as
well. If an insurance company’s
foundational question is “how can we provide our clients with the best
affordable coverage?” will do business differently than the insurance company
who strives to answer “How can we produce more bottom line profit?”
Churches have driving questions. We ask questions like, “How can we get more
people to attend church?” or “What’s wrong that people don’t come to church
anymore?” or “What’s wrong with us that people don’t attend our church?” Our preoccupation with those last two
questions is helping to feed the demise of the North American Church. They may seem like good questions to ask, but
they are a symptom of group depression and point us in the wrong direction.
In our Matthew passage this morning Jesus presents us
with two questions that I think we would better spend our time pondering. The first is “Who do people say the Son of
Man is?” and the second is, “Who do you say I am?” These are versions of what I call the pesky
“who” question. There are two versions
of that question: the less personal and less powerful version which simply “Who
is Jesus” and the more personal and powerful “Who are you, Jesus?” The first question has us simply looking for
information about Jesus. The second one
puts us in a relationship with him. In
that question we find the renewing of our minds that transforms us.
Take the Apostle Paul for example. His story begins with him being a zealous
up-and-coming Pharisee who had it in for the followers of Jesus. His answer to the “Who is Jesus?” question
was quite blatantly that Jesus was a blaspheming false prophet and his
followers needed to be reigned in at all cost.
He started asking “who are you, Jesus” one day as he was on a trip from
Jerusalem to Damascus to arrest Christians.
Jesus appeared to him in a bright light and confronted him. At that moment Paul started to ask a new
driving question, “Who are you, Lord?” realizing that there is only one person
a Jew would call Lord. Paul then spends
the rest of his life as Jesus’ “Apostle to the Gentiles” preaching the Gospel
and planting churches all over the Mediterranean world and he spent a great
deal of his time suffering for Jesus and the church.
“Who are you,
Lord?” was Paul’s driving question. In
his Letter to the Philippians he makes this evident. He wrote that letter from prison while under
the imminent threat of execution and in it he very adamantly sums up his life’s
purpose. He writes: “I want to know
Christ and the power of his resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by
becoming like him in his death, if somehow I may attain the resurrection from
the dead” (Phil. 3:10-11).
Back to Matthew, this little period of question and
answer comes as the climactic answer to a driving question the disciples began
to ask back in chapter 8 when Jesus calmed the storm. If you remember Jesus was sleeping soundly in
the back of the boat. The storm is
raging. The disciples are afraid for
their lives. They awaken Jesus with an
accusation that he doesn’t care that they are going down. He gets up and rebukes them for their lack of
faith: “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” He calms the storm. The sea becomes utterly still. At that the disciples are amazed and they
begin to ask “What sort of a man is this that the wind and the sea obey him?” “Who are you, Jesus?”
The next few months they have to struggle with this
question as they wander around the Galilean countryside and points beyond. They see Jesus cast out legions of
demons. He heals the paralyzed, the lepers,
and the blind. He teaches about the
Kingdom of God. He calls the Pharisees a
bunch of hypocrites. He raises a young
girl from the dead. He sends them out on
a mission and they do these same things.
The Kingdom of God is at hand, even theirs. Upon returning, Jesus feeds upwards of
fifteen thousand people with two fish and five loaves of bread. He walks on water and calms a great
windstorm. There again in a boat on a
calm sea they come to their answer. What
sort of man is this that the wind and the seas obey him? Well, worshipping him, they confess, “Truly,
you are the Son of God.”
Something that should profoundly strike us here is
that when the disciples asked the pesky “who” question of Jesus, he answered
them. The answer came as they witnessed
him at work in their midst and as he involved them in his ministry. They found themselves changed by him.
In my humble opinion, we do not spend enough time
asking “Who are you, Jesus?” Sadly and
profoundly, “Jesus, who are you?” is not the question that drives our lives,
mine included, and the ministry of our churches.
We spend a lot of time in our watered-down boats
saying “Jesus, don’t you care that we are perishing?” But we don’t stop to ask, “Jesus, who
are you?” We have our beliefs and the stuff
we know about Jesus and having that we simply don’t think to ask our Lord the personal question,
“Jesus, who are you?” We seem to have
missed the point that we are supposed to be being transformed by the Holy Spirit
to be more and more like Jesus. We are
good, faithful members of churches but to actually call us Jesus’ disciples...well there's a difference between being a member of a religious institution called a church and being a disciple Jesus who wants to know who Jesus is and to be like him.
Disciples are students of who Jesus is as a person
present in our lives. He isn’t simply a
historical figure who teaches us stuff we would call truth. "Who are you?" is a relational question.
Learning who Jesus is happens in relationship. Praying the who question is a good place to
start. It is good just to sit and ask
the empty spot on the couch next to you “Jesus, who are you?”
When we read our Bibles, we should read them with the
expectation that Jesus is going to share himself with us as we reflect on what
we read. There’s more to the Bible than
just history and teachings about God. We
call the Scriptures "living" for a reason; through them he speaks.
It’s also good to have a handful of friends that you
meet together with and on a regular basis to talk about what the Lord is doing
in your life. Seeing others be
encountered be Jesus helps us to know it when we ourselves are wrestling with
the Lord.
Finally, Jesus sent the Holy Spirit to bind us to
himself so that we might be in an unbreakable relationship with him. He is in our “being” and we are in his. The first thing Jesus is going to reveal to
us about himself is that he is the beloved Son of the living God. And since the Holy Spirit binds us to Jesus
at the level of our very being this revelation Jesus gives to us of himself
comes with us also knowing ourselves to be beloved children of God. It is good for us to sing Jesus loves me this
I know, but it would be more accurate to sing God the Father, almighty Maker of
heaven and earth loves me in Christ this I know by the presence and touch of
the Holy Spirit, but lyrically that’s just a hard one to put to music.
“Who are you, Jesus?” is the most important driving
question we can ask. He will answer it
and the answer will change us each. It
will change our churches. Ask it. Amen.
