Who do you say that I am?

Luke 9:18-24

Antioch Christian Fellowship

June 24, 2007

“But, who do you say that I am?”  This question that Jesus asks His disciples in the gospel reading today is more than just another question.  It is the building block of our faith. 

The disciples have been traveling around the country and they have heard speculation about Jesus.  Jesus has drawn a lot of attention.  Crowds of people are following Him just to hear what He has to say.  He performs shocking, powerful miracles transforming tortured souls into radiant beings, withered hands into useful limbs, pale corpses into vibrant lives.  Jesus has caused such a stir that the religious leaders, the Scribes and Pharisees have begun to follow Him and question Him.  Who is this man?  People want to know, even Herod, the king has heard of Him and wants to meet Him.

In Luke, it is just after Jesus delivers the people from hunger with the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 that He and His disciples, gathered alone and without the crowds have this crucial conversation.  Jesus first asks the disciples, “Who do the people say that I am?”  People can be variously translated, “crowd or multitude.”  Jesus is asking the disciples about the people who do not follow him regularly.  It is as if He is saying “Who does the world say that I am?”

The disciples respond that people recognize the prophetic ministry of Jesus and have likened Him to former prophets.  Jesus is a prophet.  The people are not wrong, but they have an incomplete understanding of who Jesus is.

Then Jesus asks the question, the question that has been asked generation after generation ever since He first asked it, “But who do you say that I am?”  The question is directed at His disciples, those who have chosen to follow Him.  Those who have spent the most time with him.  Peter speaks for all the disciples when he responds, “You are the Christ of God.”

Peter’s confession is recorded in all the synoptic gospels with slightly different wording, Mark (Mark 8:29) records the words as "You are the Christ" and Matthew (Matthew 16:16)  "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God."  Their differences are insignificant because they all say the same thing.  When Peter spoke these words he was acknowledging Jesus’ importance.  Jesus is more than a prophet:  He is the long awaited Messiah, the anointed one of God who would deliver them from their oppressors.  Peter is acknowledging that Jesus is different from all those who have come before.  While it will become clear that none of the disciples understand at this point what their own words mean, this confession is a milestone in the ministry of Jesus to His people.

While there were many views about who the Messiah was, most people in the 1^st century envisioned the Messiah as a great military leader.  The Jews longed to be free of their Roman oppressors.  They wanted a king who would defeat the immediate threat to their autonomy, they wanted to be free of the Romans.  Peter’s confession was a milestone because now that the disciples saw Jesus as their deliverer, Jesus could begin to develop their understanding of what that meant.

Because Jesus knows that their understanding is flawed about the work of the Messiah, He charges the disciples not to tell anyone.  Before the disciples can tell others who Jesus is, they must understand it themselves.  It is a hard lesson for the disciples, they stumble, they fall, they don’t get it right a lot of the time, but Jesus continues to teach them, because He now has the foundation upon which He can build.  Peter’s confession “You are the Christ of God” is that foundation.

Jesus begins his messianic teaching immediately.  He gives to the disciples a description of the true Messiah.  He says, “I will suffer and be rejected.  I will be killed and raised.”  There will be victory, but the victory of this Messiah is through suffering, rejection and death and those who follow him will travel the same path.  The disciples must have been so puzzled especially after the great power that Jesus has displayed in his ministry.  He has the power to be a great military leader.  They must have been so baffled.  Luke records no more words from the disciples.  Many times, when the disciples are confused, they question Jesus about his words, but this time, it is as if they are so confused, they don’t even know what to ask.  As we read through the rest of Luke, we see that the dispelling of the worldly view of the Messiah and the retraining of the human mind in the truth of who He is, is a persistent, sometimes frustrating task for Jesus.  As the disciples stumble, fall, and get it wrong, Jesus is there to correct and deliver them with His words and His presence.

It is not only the Messiah who walks a different path from that expected by the world, but it is also those who follow Him, His disciples.  Being His disciple requires that one not be attached to the world, its values, and its acceptance.  Living in the world, but not being of it, requires daily diligence.  That diligence is rewarded not by gaining the world; it is not the acceptance or values of the world that Jesus’ disciples seek.  When we forsake the world, we can see, we can sense, we can feel, we can live, even if for very brief moments of time, in His kingdom.  We can have a glimpse of what it will be like when we are no longer in any way associated with the world and belong completely to His kingdom.  Just after our reading, eight days later, God gives to Peter, John and James a glimpse of the kingdom (Luke 9:28).  They have gone with Jesus up on the mountain to pray, Jesus is transformed into a dazzling white figure walking with Moses and Elijah.  That is what Jesus meant when He says in verse 27, “I tell you truly, there are some standing here who will not taste death before they see the kingdom of God.”

But the real victory of understanding doesn’t come until Pentecost.  Even after Jesus is resurrected from the dead, when He is about to ascend to heaven, we read in Acts that the disciples are still questioning Him about the victory over the Romans.  It is only after Jesus’ ascension, after they prayerfully wait for the Holy Spirit that the disciples are able to proclaim publicly what they have confessed here privately (Acts 2).  The Messiah, our deliverer came for a permanent victory over our ultimate enemy death.  He proved through miracles that He had the power over temporal afflictions, but His purpose for coming was greater than anyone imagined.

The question that Jesus asked so long ago is still valid today.  It is a prickly, bothersome question.  It is no easier for us than it was for the disciples who first heard it.  Jesus still asks through the active presence of His Holy Spirit to each of us, “Who do you say that I am?” People search Scripture and other ancient texts searching for new information, something others throughout the centuries might have missed that might make some rational sense.  New information from archeological digs is added to the pile of data and mined for insight.  The prickly, bothersome question that Jesus asked his disciples lingers for us, demanding an answer:  But who do you say that I am?

Jesus causes such a stir, even today.  Who does the world say that I am?  Some say, He was a great political activist, others He was a great teacher, some even say a prophet and great healer.  Does Jesus belong in a list of the world’s greats where greatness is defined by the world’s standards?  Alexander, Confusius, Ghandi, Dhali Lamba, or is He different, is He someone whose identity, whose inscrutable nature demands our full attention, daily dedication so that we can receive the fullness of God’s revelation?

Who do you say that I am?   Frank Morison heard the question and thought he knew the answer.  He set out to prove the gospel message was a myth.  In his book, Who Moved the Stone?  he states his basic premise  “I wanted to take this last phase of the life of Jesus . . .to strip it of its overgrowth of primitive beliefs and dogmatic suppositions, and to see this supremely great person as he really was.”[1]  Jesus was a great man, like so many other great men.  As he gathered data, studied, devoted his full attention to the person of Jesus, he writes in the preface of his book, this is “a confession, the inner story of a man who originally set out to write one kind of book and found himself compelled by the sheer force of circumstances to write another. . . it was as though a man set out to cross a forest by a familiar and well-beaten track and came out suddenly where he did not expect to come out.”  Frank Morison, like Peter confesses, “You are the Christ of God.”

Who do you say that I am?  Jesus asks the question to all:  those of us who call ourselves by His name, “Christian,” those of us who still wonder, those of us who are still seeking, knowing that we desperately need a deliverer, but somehow afraid that we will find Him, like Frank Morison leery of primitive beliefs and dogmatic suppositions.

The question deserves an answer.  Not because Jesus needs to know, but because He asks.  It is a question asked by God himself, to bring clarity to our minds about who we are in relation to Him. To confess Jesus as the expected deliverer of God, is confessing more than who He is, it is confessing who we are.

 The question demands an answer.  It will not go away if we ignore it.  It will emerge in a different time and place.  Years ago as I was driving home from a long day at the office, I remember hearing the question. I responded, “I’m pretty busy right now.  I’ve got to pick up Laura and take her to piano lessons and then get Emily at softball practice.  Somehow, in the mix of all that I’ve got to get a nutritious dinner on the table, be sure their homework is done, do some laundry to be sure they have something to wear to school tomorrow and I’ve got a proposal due tomorrow so I’ll be up late.  I don’t have time to think about who you are.  I know that God loves me and that will just have to do for now.”  I didn’t hear the question again until both my children were out of college.  If I could, if I had known then what I know today, I would have stopped everything to answer the question.  There are consequences to not answering; there is another whole life that is not lived. 

Jesus asks today, He asks now, “Who do you say that I am?”  It is a question worth answering again.