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The questions we ask shape our drive - our desires and pursuits in life. It starts at an early age. Children who ask 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 child who sadly has to ask 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 kinds 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?”, it will do business differently than the insurance company who strives to answer the question: “How can we produce more bottom-line profit?”
Churches too 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 reined in at all cost. But then one day as he was on a trip from Jerusalem to Damascus going to arrest Christians, something happened that started him asking “who are you, Jesus?”. Jesus appeared to him in a bright light and confronted him about why he was persecuting Jesus’ followers. At that moment Paul started to ask a new driving question, “Who are you, Lord?”. We have to appreciate that there was only one person that a Jew, especially a law-abiding Jew, would call Lord and that was God. He’s suddenly come to the conclusion that somehow Jesus is Israel’s God, his God. 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). “I want to know you, Jesus?” Is that the question that’s driving our lives? As churches, are we driven by the question of “How can we help people come to know Jesus?”
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 was raging. The disciples were afraid for their lives. They awakened Jesus with the accusation that he doesn’t care that they are going down. So, he got up and rebuked them for their lack of faith: “Why are you afraid, you of little faith?” He calmed the storm. The sea became utterly still. The disciples became utterly amazed and they began to ask “What sort of a man is this that the wind and the sea obey him?” ‘s starting to sound like that pesky, “Who are you, Jesus?” question.
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 confronts the Pharisees about their hypocrisy. He even raises a young girl from the dead. He sends them out on a mission and they do these very same things. The Kingdom of God is at hand, even their hands. 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-bogged 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 of Jesus who wants to know who Jesus is and to be like him, to know him in his sufferings, his dying to self, his resurrection.
Disciples are students of who Jesus is as a person present in our lives. He isn’t simply a historical figure from 2,000 years who taught 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.
