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August 21, 2005 Tom Drewer SERMON:
"Who Is He”
Like other great newspapers the
It has often been noted that Jesus' favorite teaching method was the asking of questions. There are over 100 questions asked in the four Gospels. Of his parents Jesus asked, "Didn’t you know that I would be in my Father's house?" Of the paralyzed man he asked, "Do you want to get well?" Of people who listened to Him teach but failed to act, "Why do you call me 'Lord, Lord,' and do not do what I say?" No question is more important, however, than the question He posed to His disciples at Caesrea Phillipi: "Who do you say that I am?"
It is a fair question for us to ask today. "Who do you say that
Christ is?" The answer to that question will have
an effect on our ethical standards, our feelings about our responsibilities
to God and to one another, and our feelings about
our own purpose and destiny.
Dr. E. Stanley Jones once said that the early Christians "out-loved, out
laughed, and out-died the people around them." Why? They knew who Jesus was and it affected everything about them. So, who do you say that He is? Who is He?
Is He simply a good teacher an excellent moral example a spiritual guru
in the same class with Moses and Buddha? Or is there something more to this
Galilean? I hope by the way I ask the question you have guessed that I
believe there is something more.
JESUS, FIRST OF ALL, IS THE REVELATION OF THE
NATURE OF GOD.
As John Killinger put it so cogently, "Jesus is God's way of getting
rid of a bad reputation." Man had many ideas and intuitions about the
nature of God prior to the coming of Jesus. But even the most brilliant
theologian was a blind man trying to describe an elephant. How could any mortal
capture the essence of the divine Other? It was beyond human capacity. Even more critically, bad descriptions of God caused persons to perform outrageous rituals such as infant sacrifice, temple prostitution and the slaughter of unbelievers (a practice that is still carried on in parts of the world today).
Bad ideas of God always produce corresponding behavior. If someone says
to you, "Oh, it doesn't matter what you believe, just so you are
sincere," ask them to consider the modern state of
Back in the winter of 1981, the Mayor of Chicago, Jane Byrne, made a
much-publicized tour through a public housing project in
Sounds like a typical political promise, does it not? But Jane Byrne did
one thing more. The following week she announced her plans to actually vacate
her luxury apartment and temporarily move to Cabrini Green to see first-hand the
problems of that crime ridden neighborhood. We are impressed by Jane Byrne's courage. Shall we not also be moved then by the compassion of God who saw our plight and became incarnate, walked in our shoes, that God might know our need and we might know God’s love. One of my favorite stories about Helen Keller concerns her introduction to the Christian message. When Helen learned to communicate, Anne Sullvan decided it was time for her to hear about Jesus Christ. Being a Bostonian, she summoned the most renowned clergyman of the day, Phillips Brooks. Brooks came, and with Sullivan interpreting, he talked to Helen Keller about Christ. Soon a smile lighted Helen's face and she beckoned for a chance to respond. Through her teacher she said, "Mr. Brooks, I have always known about God, but until now I didn't know His name."
Helen Keller was more fortunate than most people in her spiritual
sensitivity. She knew God's nature but not His name. Most people without Christ
know His name but not His nature. Jesus is the revelation of the nature of God. HE IS NOT ONLY REVELATION, HOWEVER, HE IS ALSO REDEEMER.
Elizabeth Achtemeier and her husband were given fellowships to study at
Basel University, Switzerland, under the tutelage of the renowned theologian
Karl Barth. She relates that Barth visited this country and spoke at Union
Seminary in City. A seminary professor was shocked when in conversation with Barth, someone had asked what he would say if he met Adolph Hitler and Barth's reply was simply, "Jesus Christ died for your sins." Comments Achtemeier: "How irrelevant, how simplistic, how utterly absurd seemed that reply to American pragmatic ears!
And yet I suspect that Barth's answer...(was)...that finally the church
has only one message Jesus Christ and Him Crucified." Jesus Christ died for our sins. That is the central message of our faith. We preach Christ and Him crucified! One of the "in" things today is to ask people, "What is your sign?" That, of course, is a reference to astrological signs. One man got tired of answering that overused question and started replying simply, "the cross." What is your sign? The cross. The cross is our sign that we have been set free from the dominion of sin. We can walk in dignity as children of the Father not because of anything that we have done but because of what Christ has done in our behalf.
In John Bunyan's classic work, Pilgrim's Progress, Christian has been
making his way to the One thing more; HE IS ALSO OUR RISEN LORD. Two famous Broadway producers were pallbearers at the funeral of the great escape artist, Harry Houdini. As they lifted the beautiful and heavy casket to their shoulders, one of them turned and whispered to the other, "Suppose he isn't in there!"
He was, of course. Only one man in human history has conquered the grave
and it is He whom we call, Lord. "Christ has been raise from the
dead," writes In an Easter, 1984 article for the Boston Sunday Globe, theologian Harvey Cox noted "In His Divine Comedy, Dante reports that after he had made the torturous ascent from hell to purgatory and then drawn close to the celestial sphere, he suddenly heard a sound he had never heard before." Stopping and listening, Dante wrote, "It sounded like the laughter of the universe." The Easter story, says Cox, "gives us a clue to this baffling riddle" as to why God laughs. "God laughs, it seems, because God knows how it turns out in the end..."
Somehow
it seems to me that if we know Christ to be the risen Lord there ought to be
more laughter in our hearts. There ought to be laughter in the halls of
Evangelical church. There ought to be laugher as we gather around the table
for Sunday dinner.
We do not have to fear anything in this world. Christ has overcome the
world. A frontiersman came to a lake that was frozen over. He was fearful to cross to the other side. How solidly frozen was the ice really? In his fear he knelt down and began to creep most timidly on his hands and knees. Suddenly he heard a happy sound. It was a team of horses pulling a wagon. It was in the middle of the lake and it was moving rapidly. The frontiersman knew that if the ice could support a horse drawn wagon, it surely could support him. He stood confidently to his feet and continued his journey with a feeling of great exhilaration. That is the good news of the Gospel. One has gone before us. He has shown us, as it were, that the ice will hold.
Someone sent a clipping from their church bulletin to sometime back. The
typist had misplaced a notice about a bus tour in preparing the bulletin. Thus
it read like this: "Today's liturgy portrays Christ as the Good
Shepherd. He will lead all who seek Him to eternal life. The bus will depart
from the Holy Family parking lot at He is the Revelation of the nature of God. He is our Redeemer from the power of sin and death. He is our Risen Lord who reigns victorious and is present with us in the power of the Holy Spirit.
That is what the New Testament says about Christ. He is all this and
more. He is the Savior of the world. But he cannot be
your Savior until you
settle this crucial issue in your own mind. Who is He to you?
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