Sermons

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But Who Do You Say?
April 17, 2005
Sermon Series on the Gospel of Luke
4th Sunday in Easter
Rev. Dan Baumgartner
Luke 9:18-27

Good morning! He is risen! …Let us not forget.

It’s great to be back with you this morning. Last week, my oldest son Jesse and I were out on the east coast, visiting a couple of colleges. The first couple of days we were in the Boston area, and last Sunday morning took the train into downtown Boston and went to the early service at Park Street Church.

Park Street is a very historic church. Built in 1809. Early on, the church was called “Brimstone Corner,” not for the fire and brimstone sermons, but because during the war of 1812, the brimstone used for gunpowder was stored there!

The first Sunday School in America started there in 1817, the first prison aid society in 1824. The American Missionary Society was founded there in 1826. William Lloyd Garrison gave his first anti-slavery speech there in 1929. The National Association of Evangelicals started there in 1942. Billy Graham started a famous evangelism campaign there in 1949. It’s right in the heart of historical Boston.

On one side of the church is the Boston Common. The oldest public park in America, 44 acres of open land in the middle of a city. The Common was a training ground for colony soldiers, and was occupied by the British in 1775. On the other side of the church is a cemetery that has people like John Hancock and Samuel Adams are buried in. There’s history everywhere, seeping out. We don’t have anything like that.

Park Street Church and Bethany do have one thing in common…they have absolutely no parking spaces! And, Bethany has something that Park Street doesn’t: an authentic horse trough for doing baptisms out front, as we will at the end of the service!

As we sit together in God’s Word this morning, I encourage you to watch with me for these things: a question, 2 confessions, and an invitation.

Sooner or later, it gets personal. This faith thing. It always gets personal. This passage starts out so simply. Just Jesus and the disciples playing a little game of Jeopardy: The little window on the gameboard goes up and reveals The Answer: “John the Baptist, Elijah or one of the other prophets from antiquity.” Jesus supplies The Question:

Who do all the people out there say I am?

The answers to Jesus’ question were pretty predictable, celebrity names from the past, people folks would recognize. John the Baptist, Elijah who some thought - and who the Jews still think - will precede the coming of the Messiah (Malachai 4:5-6), or another prophet, who knows who…maybe Jeremiah or Moses. It’s not the first time the question has been thrown out.

Who is Jesus?

In Luke 8 when Jesus was with the disciples in a boat and the wind and waves threatened to overturn the boat, and with a word Jesus calmed the storm, the disciples huddled down and whispered

“Who is Jesus? Even nature obeys him?”

No answer is given.

In Luke 9, the ruler Herod, who had executed John the Baptist, heard all the rumors about Jesus. “Who is Jesus?,” Herod asks.

No answer is given.

No, it’s not the first time the question has been asked. And for our sakes, it better not be the last time. Who is Jesus?

It starts out so simply, Jesus asking

“Who do all the people out there say I am?”

Jesus listens to the predictable answers, and then cuts to the heart of the matter so quickly it leaves the disciples gasping for breath:

“But who do you say I am?”

Actually, our translation in the pew Bible doesn’t quite capture the original language. There’s an emphasis missing. What it really means is: “But you…who do you say that I am?”

Sooner or later, it moves beyond speculation…and gets personal.

When I was in high school…back before the invention of most computers, before cellphones and ipods, way back in 1977 at Queen Anne High School, a couple of my friends decided they would pull a big prank...they were going to fake a shooting in our history class, using the blank pistol used to start track meets.

Remember, this was in the 70’s, long before guns and schools were news stories. Their prank didn’t work so well, because the history teacher apprehended the culprit with a flying tackle before he was five steps down the hallway.

The vice-principal immediately suspended him for the rest of the year. Our group of friends were a little indignant on our friend’s behalf, thinking this was rather harsh punishment.

And so we talked about all sorts of things…how we needed to stick up for our friend, how we needed to stand up to the administrators, how we should pass a petition around school asking the vice-principal to meet with us and reconsider.

It was all great talk, a bunch of philosophers sitting around talking. We had fun dreaming up appropriate responses that “we all ” ought to do.

And then…somebody thrust a clipboard in front of me with the petition all prepared and said “Dan, we think you should be one of the first to sign this.”

It wasn’t just conversation anymore. It was personal. Sooner or later it gets personal.

When you think about it, Jesus has waited a long time to ask this question. He’s allowed the disciples to be around him for a long time, in lots of different situations, before he asks the question:

Who do you say that I am?

I wonder if we give that kind of leisure to our friends that we want to know Jesus? I wonder if we let them be around us, be in our community, give them the space to come to know Christ rather than push them.

In the last few weeks, a number of people here in this community have invited Christ into their life for the first time. We heard some of their stories two weeks ago. Though each of the stories is unique and different, there also are common threads:

• the sense that God is present with them
• a surprising sense that God has been drawing them
• the opportunity to be part of a Christian community while they get to know Jesus.

It’s very personal.

But you…who do you say that I am?

There’s an awkward silence among the disciples. Everything goes to slow motion, then the whole scene grinds to a halt. Can you imagine? What if Greg had paused after the prayer time, brought the hand-held mike out to you and said “Who is Jesus?”

What if at your workplace staff meeting, the boss suddenly looked at you and said “Kim, Scott, Joan-who is Jesus?” And there you are…all your co-workers looking at you, thankful to high heaven that they didn’t get asked, curious as can be as to what you will say.

Jesus’ question is so intensely personal. It’s not philosophical, or about what the latest Gallup poll says about believers, or which church we like or don’t like, it’s not about where is God when bad things happen. It’s about Jesus. The awkward silence lingers over the question.

The silence is blown apart as Peter blurts out “The Messiah of God!”

It’s refreshingly clear. Bare bones. No modifiers, no hedging. Not “I think you are the Christ of God.” Not “You are the Christ of God, at least for us.” Just You Are.

We live in a day when the church often tries to be so sensitive that we tremble in fear of offending someone, or appearing exclusive…so that we soften and soften the answer until we don’t not say anything at all…like the politician who ends his speech with “Those are my convictions. If you don’t like them, I have others!”

Not Peter, he makes the first confession…not a confession like admitting his guilt or sin, but a confession as in declaring what is true.

“You are the Christ of God!”

When Peter identified Jesus as “the Messiah of God,” he was tapping into things probably larger than he knew. Messiah in Hebrew, Christ in Greek. The expectations for God’s Messiah spread across the centuries and a number of concepts.

• The anointed one of God
• God’s King, God’s ultimate king
• the bringer of the kingdom of God

All were rolled into this conversation. Peter’s confession acknowledges Jesus’ unique identity as the divine One, the Christ.

Then comes Jesus’ confession. His declaration of truth. It has to do with how he was the Messiah. While others around him envisioned it as a political power position, Jesus explained what messiahship would actually look like: great suffering, rejection, death and resurrection.

No one, Peter or anyone else, had seen this coming. Jesus is the messiah, the Christ, but he is this kind of messiah…one who chooses to give himself for the sake of others.

Peter’s confession held up Jesus as divine Christ. Jesus’ confession hones his identity as crucified Christ. Together, that’s the person of Jesus, who looks at you and says,

“What about you…who do you say I am?”

We may spend a lot of time answering with theological questions, doubts, being more comfortable talking about religion or church…that’s all well and good…but sooner or later, it gets personal.
A question, two confessions…and an invitation.

It’s amazing how fast Jesus moves from declaration…to discipleship. From confession to following. It’s immediate. If Jesus is the One…will you dare risk your life on it?

“If any want to become my followers…,” Jesus says. You don’t have to do it. The choice is out there. Nobody is forcing you to. It’s voluntary. It has to be. But “If any want to become my followers…then let them deny themselves, take up their cross each day and follow me.”

That’s quite an invitation. You don’t hear it much. You hear things like “follow Jesus and here’s what it will get you. Here’s the benefits.” Jesus says “deny yourself and pick up your cross each day.”

I’ve been so struck this week by how radical these words actually are. Especially in our culture. And honestly, I’ve been disappointed to realize how far away these things really are from my daily life. Ask yourself…do these words describe your life?

“Deny yourself. Pick up your cross each day.”

It gets very, very personal, doesn’t it?

Deny yourselves. Wouldn’t that look different than someone who lives to satisfy themselves?

• Live life sacrificially. For others.
• Live on less money than you earn for the sake of those who have little.
• Use your time differently. Invest in other people, intentionally and deliberately.
• Say no to things everyone around you does because you operate by a different call.

Most of us who declare Christ are not denying ourselves, but rather are trying to have it all. Have all that a relationship with Christ and his people brings, and have everything the people around us have as well. Be in the community of faith and have money and status and the elimination of discomfort.

Most of us are running ourselves sick, and not quite getting it done. We don’t want to miss out on anything. And it raises all these very awkward questions.

Why can we make time for reading clubs, swimming, music lessons, workout schedules, 60-hour work weeks, PTA, television shows, movies but not for quiet time with Jesus?

Why can we do all these things, but not be committed to regular ministry? Or to spending time in regular Christian community? There’s probably 40 small groups that meet now from Bethany, and more forming all the time. It’s probably the place where most spiritual growth really takes place.

Almost no groups can meet weekly anymore…maybe just two-three that I know of. Most meet every other week. Many (including mine) barely make it once a month. We want it all.

T ake up your cross each day.We’ve managed to change this into just enduring the hard things in life that happen to us. “I guess this is just my cross to bear” we say when we get arthritis, or a relationship goes sour, or you get bad grades. Those are very important, and God walks with us through them… But I don’t think this is the cross Jesus is talking about here.

When Jesus took up the cross, it wasn’t something that just happened to him. It was something he chose. Hard as it was, he chose it. God called, he responded. Mother Teresa’s work in Calcutta was not a cross because she happened to be there. She chose to take it on, to carry it.

Cross-bearing is not just passive endurance of something difficult, it is saying “Yes” to the call to serve God to the point of self-denial.

We can’t live like that…without coming first to a place of confessing Jesus. It’s only in knowing him as the one who gave everything for us…that we could dare to live differently.

Donald Miller is an author from Portland who wrote a very interesting book called Blue Like Jazz. Like much of what is now known as the “emerging church” movement, he is interested in stripping away the trappings of faith to get to what really matters (I certainly hope that is what we are about as well!).

Toward the end of the book, he reflects on an experience from not long ago when he felt compelled to read through all four of the gospels…which he had never done before:

“And I read through Matthew and Mark, then Luke and John. I read those books in a week or so, and Jesus was very confusing, and I didn’t know if I liked Him very much, and I was certainly tired of Him by the end of the second day.

By the time I got to the end of Luke, to the part where they were going to kill Him again, where they were going to stretch Him out on a cross, something shifted within me. I remember it was cold outside, crisp, and the leaves in the trees of the park across the street were getting tired and dry.

And I remember sitting at my desk, and I don’t know what it was that I read or what Jesus was doing in the book, but I felt a love for Him rush through me, through my back and into my chest. I started crying…

I remember thinking that I would follow Jesus anywhere, that it didn’t matter what He asked me to do. He could be mean to me; it didn’t matter, I loved Him, and I was going to follow Him.”

Confessing Jesus. Following after him.

One of the ways the church has confessed its faith down through ages is through the Apostle’s Creed. A form of it was first used in the 2nd century, and it was used in its current form by the 7th or 8th century. It’s quite a bit longer than Peter’s confession! But it’s a way we stand before God, and our brothers and sisters and the world, and speak out:

You are God’s Christ!

Will you stand with me and speak the Apostles’ Creed together?

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