Who is Jesus?
With curiosity, I posed this question to our son, who’s almost 4, the other day. “Wade, who is Jesus?” “Jesus is at your church,” he said. “He’s a big statue.” I imagine he meant the mural here above the altar, depicting the resurrected Jesus clothed in white meeting the women outside the tomb. Later, I asked him again: “Wade, who is Jesus?” “Jesus is God,” he said. “God is with us.”
I myself am hard pressed to give a better answer than that. Of all the things he’s heard about Jesus – all the Bible stories, and songs, and prayers – this is the thing it distills down to: Jesus is God. God is with us.
“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” Jesus asks the disciples. It’s a fair question. He’s been teaching, healing, and feeding; expanding and remixing what people thought they knew about God and about what it means to be a person of faith. He’s eaten with all kinds of people, willingly come near to the sick and injured and demon-possessed and unclean. What have others distilled from all that, Jesus wonders. What do they think is going on? Who do they say that the Son of Man is?
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| Caesarea Philippi. Photo by Stacey Franco on Unsplash |
Some say Jesus is John the Baptist, while others point to Elijah, and still others say Jeremiah, one of the prophets.
But then Jesus asks a harder question – not who do people say that I am, but who do you say that I am?
You’ve been with me for the teaching and healing and feeding – what has it all been about? What has all of that told you about me?
Peter gives an inspired answer – “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.”
Like John the Baptist, and like the prophets before them, Jesus calls the people to repentance. But more than that, Jesus issues an invitation to transformation. More than that, Jesus himself brings about the forgiveness of sin that enables our repentance and transformation.
Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of the living God. His earthly ministry begins with a specific purpose: to proclaim the nearness of the kingdom of heaven. The thing that’s amazing is that Jesus’ very presence enacts what he proclaims. In other words, the kingdom of heaven looks like healing the sick and hurting, and feeding the hungry. The kingdom of heaven looks like expanding and remixing what we think we know about what it means to be a person of faith and who, exactly, is welcome in our midst.
The kingdom of heaven looks like God being with us. The Son of the living God was born and learned and felt and suffered and died and rose so that he might be with us in our own birth and learning and feeling and suffering and death and resurrection.
Peter gave an inspired answer, but this story isn’t really about Peter. The good news is not that Peter got it right, for once, and so maybe there’s hope for us. No, the good news is that what Peter said is true. Jesus is the Messiah, the one anointed and sent by God to be with us and save us. Jesus is the son of the living God, the Word of God, living and incarnate.
It is Christ who is our center and our foundation, Christ who calls us and sends us out. It is Christ who is with us, always, to the end of the age.
These are challenging times. Anxiety, grief, stress, uncertainty – it’s a lot to bear. Truly. Perhaps it is enough to rest in the reminder that God is with us through all of it. Perhaps it is enough to be reminded that who Jesus is doesn’t depend on our ability to name it. Instead, God comes to us regardless of our proclamation or stumbling, revealing Jesus in word and water, in bread and wine, in forgiveness and love. This is who Jesus is.
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