Something has happened to me at the majority of churches I have worked at. I’m not sure if it is just me or if it happens to every priest and person in ministry, but I’ve been almost cornered and asked a question early in my ministry. By the way the questions have been asked it has been clear that the questions are loaded, that the asker is testing me and is listening for a particular answer. Perhaps it is because of my Christian background – having been raised in evangelical churches and attended a Free Methodist college and seminary – which creates suspicion in some Episcopal churches. Am I one of “those” Christians or do I fit here?
At one church, on one of my first days, the first words spoken to me by someone at the church were, “Who is Jesus?” There was suspicion in the question, some mistrust…but an easy answer for a priest to answer, right? I absolutely bombed answering the question. My answer was dense, convoluted. It probably would have been better if I had just quoted Saint Irenaeus, “Jesus is Himself God, and Lord, and King, Eternal, and the Only-Begotten, and the incarnate Word, proclaimed by all the prophets, the apostles, and by the Spirit.” Technically and theologically correct – both the quote from Irenaeus and my answer (which I can’t even remember exactly what it was) – but neither one particularly understandable, personal, or pastorally sensitive in a moment like that. Sometimes even priests freeze.
If I could do that interaction over, rather than answer the question (especially the way I did), I would say, “I’m happy to answer the question, but I’m also curious why you’re asking. Why that question?” What I would have discovered is that, behind the question I was being asked, was a story. There was hurt and fear that came from experience. This person deeply loved Jesus, they found comfort and care in Jesus. Their life had been deeply touched by their relationship with Jesus…and they had experiences of churches and priests for whom Jesus seemed to be peripheral, at best. They wanted to know if their beloved church would still be a place where they would hear about, grow in their relationship with, and deepen their love for Jesus.
The answer that I gave to their question was appropriate for seminary. Technically correct but didn’t offer any insight into who I am or how I have come to know Jesus through my life. I had a professor in college who liked to challenge the old children’s song, “Jesus Loves Me.”
You may know the one: “Jesus loves me, this I know…….for the Bible tells us so.” Yes, the Bible tells us about Jesus and God’s love for us and Jesus’ work to reconcile us to God and reshape the world into what God intended from the beginning. But, and this was my professors point, the Bible is not primarily where we come to know Jesus’ love for us. We come to know Jesus through experience, not through theological statements or seminary answers or even sermons.
Jesus is the one who has saved me, carried me, comforted, and encouraged me. Not just saved me in the sense of eternal life at some point in the future, but the one who has saved – and is still saving me – from the worst of myself in the here and now. Jesus is the one I follow to discover God’s presence in the world and the people around me. The one who instructs me to love my neighbor and care for those on the margins. And in loving my neighbor and the world around me, I come to know Jesus more fully because Jesus is with my neighbor, too.
“Who is Jesus?” is the question that we ask and seek to answer as Christians. And it is an important enough a question that even Jesus asked it of his disciples: “Who do people say that I am?” There had been buzz about Jesus. He’d been noticed and he stirred up commotion wherever he went. There were miracles, people had been healed… and people wanted a piece of whatever that was. And Jesus wanted to know how the disciples were receiving and shaping the growing conversation. “Who do people say I am?” “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets,” the disciples answer him. But that didn’t answer the question Jesus was really asking. This was not the moment for information. Well-rehearsed, factually correct, but devoid of personal conviction answers wouldn’t do. “But who do you say I am?” Jesus finally asked them. That was what mattered.
So what about you? Who do you say Jesus is? And more importantly, where has your answer come from? Just like in Jesus’ time, there are answers aplenty around us. Who do people say Jesus is? In some circles, Jesus is the embodiment of hyper-masculinity – testosterone-filled, macho, flipping over the tables of wokeness, on the side of those who hold tightly to the way things have always been no matter who it harms. In other circles, Jesus is a warrior for America – fighting with and for whiteness, greatness, American values and traditions. For some, Jesus is a great philosopher – one among many religious figures throughout the ages who points to some amorphous “truth” that is beyond our knowing. In still other circles, Jesus is one who cares most about purity of belief and action, pleased by those who follow a narrow path of righteousness, quick to judge and discipline those who stray. There is a lot of noise about Jesus around us, and I wonder how we find and hear his voice through it all.
A voice that says, “I am always with you.” A voice that comforts the afflicted. A voice that tells us we are deeply and wholly loved in our best times and our worst. How do we come to find and know Jesus who makes space at any and every table for the least and the lost and the last – who never turns one searching away. Jesus, who leaves the 99 to go searching for 1 and doesn’t stop until they are found. How do we see Jesus, not fashioned in our image and for our person, political, cultural, or social agendas, but the Jesus that challenges our assumptions and conclusions and points us to God, not ourselves? Is the Jesus we follow Good News only for me and not for thee…or is Jesus Good News for all of creation?
Who do you say Jesus is? You may have a clear answer to that question and it may give you deep comfort and peace. You may have had an answer from your upbringing, your experience in life, or from listening to those around you who have tried to tell you the answer and have found that answers to be lacking, hurtful, or devoid of Good News. You may be searching for an answer, you may feel lost, you may not think there is any answer.
Here’s some Good News: Jesus isn’t dependent on us to make him real, to give him an identity, to defend him. Jesus is bigger than how small our, at times, feeble answers tend to make him; more compassionate than our judgement of others; more loving than our hate; more caring than our indifference. The saving of our world is God’s work through Jesus…it will happen despite the ways we, and others, tend to get in the way by making Jesus into our image rather than the image – the visible embodiment of – the invisible God who created us and all things in love.
But that doesn’t mean than our witness, our answers, or our faithfulness in following Jesus doesn’t matter. Because whether we like it or not, intend or don’t intend it, our understanding of Jesus, the way we live out our belief about who Jesus is and how Jesus relates to us, shows Jesus to others – for better or worse.
I’ve been listening this week to some songs by those wrestling with their faith, their belief in God, and their understanding of Jesus. The powerful parts of these songs are that these artists are desperately trying to see Jesus, trying to answer the question of who he is. Like the one that goes:
Jesus, Jesus
There are those that say they love you
But they have treated me so goddamn mean
And I know you said, “Forgive them
For they know not what they do”
But sometimes I think they do
And I think about you
If all the heathens burn in hell
Do all their children burn as well?
What about the Muslims and the
Gays and the unwed mothers?
What about me and all my friends?
Are we all sinners if we sin?
Does it even matter in the
End if we’re unhappy?
If you’ve heard a knock on your front door
But all that you found on the porch
Was a pastor that just wanted to be right
And if you really want to pray to Him
But you’re never sure He’s listening
‘Cause who could forgive what you did last night?
I’m so sorry for what you’ve heard
We’re broken poets with silly words
We paint agendas and call it truth
I’m sorry no one explained Jesus to you
Jesus is out there – or at least his name. Some say he is a warrior, fighting some proverbial enemy that looks a whole lot like someone other than us; some say he’s angry or disappointed in you; some say he’s watching us to catch us doing something wrong; some say he doesn’t love you because of who you are or how you look. I say Jesus loves you. I say Jesus loves me. I say Jesus loves my neighbor and my enemy alike. I say Jesus is with you and cares for you and supports you whether you realize it or not. I say Jesus is Good News…and anything that isn’t Good News isn’t Jesus.
Tucked away in a box of keepsakes somewhere in my house is a small scrap of towel that I have had since college. A pastor I knew told a story of an international group of pastors who were gathered, talking about the barriers they faced in their ministries. One pastor from the global south lamented about how Christians – primarily of the west – were often the greatest barrier he faced trying to share Jesus with others. It is the same as Gandhi once said: “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.” This pastor told his gathered colleagues, “The face of Jesus has been so dirtied that it is hardly recognizable anymore.” And then he pleaded with them, “Will you help me clean the face of Jesus?”
That scrap of towel I still have was given to me by the pastor who shared that story. I keep it as a reminder that I have a part to play in either making Jesus unrecognizable as Good News to world in need of hope and healing, or cleaning Jesus’ face so others may see him clearly.
So what about you: who do you say Jesus is? And if you can answer that question, will you help me clean the face of Jesus so those searching for him may find him?
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