I want this morning to summarise the ‘Who is this Jesus?’ Holy Week course building on the words of the healed doubter in today’s Gospel from John 20 verse 28: Thomas answered Jesus, ‘My Lord and my God!’
We’ve been engaging with the question Christ himself addressed to Peter: 'Who do you say I am?'
The Scriptures provide at least eleven different names for Jesus which directly or indirectly affirm his divinity – God, as in Thomas’ response (John 20.28), Son of God, as in Peter's response, Only Begotten Son (cf Mark 12:6), the First and the Last (Rev 1:17), Alpha and Omega (Rev 1:8), The Holy One (Acts 3:14), The Lord (Acts 4:33…), Lord of All (Acts 10:36), The Lord of Glory (1 Cor 2:8), God with us (Matt 1:23), Our Great God (Titus 2:13), God Blessed Forever (Rom 9:5).
Some of these titles are used of Jesus again and again.
In his book 'What the Bible teaches' R.A.Torrey shows how the Scriptures affirm these propositions:
Jesus Christ is all-powerful, all-knowing and all-present. He is from all eternity, always the same, in the form of God.
In Christ dwells all the fullness of the Godhead in a bodily way.
Jesus is linked to our creation, preservation, the forgiveness of sin, the raising of the dead, judgement and the bestowal of eternal life.
Jesus Christ is a person to be worshipped by angels and mortals, even as God the Father is worshipped.
When we pick up the New Testament we can’t avoid the centrality of Jesus Christ and the repeated claim of his divinity which echoes on from that first affirmation of St. Peter.
'Who do you say I am?' asked Jesus in Matthew 16:15. 'Simon Peter answered, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God".Yet Jesus went on to say how it could be that people, starting with Simon Peter, could be given an aptitude to see his divinity:
Verse 17 goes on: 'Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.'
The Scriptures are essential to our seeing of Jesus but they’re inseparable from prayer, the Holy Spirit and the experience of his Church, which Christ goes on to elaborate.
'Who do you say Jesus is?' When someone reaches a firm answer, the conviction of his divinity they do so by a special grace, the scriptures say.
The Bible gives us the words, the pieces in the great puzzle of Jesus - what an awesome puzzle it is!
The pieces are to be fitted together around a living Person who is before us this morning if what the Spirit has said to the Church for 2000 years is true.
You may protest. Surely the knowledge that Jesus is 'Son of the living God' is something that can be reasonably proved as well as something to be received by grace through faith?
Fr. Prat of the Society of Jesus defines faith with this in mind: 'Faith is the amen of the intelligence and the will to divine revelation.'
It’s absolutely true. We can hear about Jesus, we can even believe notionally - in our heads - that he is God incarnate - but it may make no difference to our lives.
I believe Mongolia is in-between Russian and China but that belief makes very little difference to my life. I have prayed once or twice for Mongolia but I have never been there and have no friends from there.
Yet I believe also in the resurrection of the dead. I have not experienced that either, but it has come real to me through One whom I trust, who has himself experienced resurrection and who has promised me a share as well when I die!
It is the Jesus we are talking of who has promised me this!
'Christ is as great as your faith makes him' said the evangelist D.L.Moody.
The question of Jesus 'who do you say that I am?' has in fact a billion answers.
When we talk of a person, as we talk of Jesus, if we believe him to be alive, who he is to us has as many answers as Jesus has friends let alone seekers or people who barely know his name!
Someone was on the tube and overheard a teacher with a group of children who were asked about the founder of Christianity and heard them all draw a blank!
Someone also overheard a girl in Jewellers asking for a Cross, but for one, to use her words, 'without the little man on'!
My own personal testimony about Jesus is very much that of someone who was given all the facts of Jesus at School and welcomed a day when the pieces came together around the living Lord.
For years I have prayed for people who are nominal Christians formed in a Christian society, that they will allow the Holy Spirit to put the pieces of the jigsaw together - all those biblical truths I mentioned earlier.
Now I pray that people will be drawn by the Spirit to get the facts, the pieces of the greatest and most wonderful puzzle in the world, so that they can fit them together.
Who do you say Jesus is? Very often the only copy of the gospels people see are Christians - they get to the Scriptures only after Jesus has drawn them through Christians.
There may be ignorance of Jesus around but there are also images of him around that we need to shatter sometimes for people to do real business with the Lord.
Like Jesus 'meek and mild', the effeminate image on holy cards. Our Lord is meek, but he is also the strong Shepherd of souls, the leader and pioneer of our faith.
Or take Jesus 'Superstar', the 'coolest' guy of all. Well there is no one like Jesus, but his uniqueness lies more in his call to suffer for us and with us than to shine above us as hero.
Some Christians give the impression that Jesus is like a sort of 'heavenly security blanket' there to help us escape facing up to reality and almost an escape from the responsibilities of life.
One could go on but undoubtedly the distinctive feature of Christianity is the claim to divinity of Jesus Christ and its implications for all who encounter this distinctive.
Anyone investigating Jesus Christ through encounter with the Christian Church, her Gospels, Creeds and Councils cannot escape the question of his divinity and all that implies.
Who do you say Jesus is? There can be a moment when the full implications burst upon us.
The missionary Roland Allen in his book 'The Spontaneous Expansion of the Church' describes the force of the testimony of a new believer, something that may well echo in many of our hearts as we listen to the description:
'He speaks from the heart because he is too eager to be able to refrain from speaking. His subject has gripped him. He speaks of what he knows, and knows by experience. The truth which he imparts is his own truth. He knows its force. He is speaking almost as much to relieve his own mind as to convert his hearer, and yet he is as eager to convert his hearer as to relieve his own mind; for his mind can only be relieved by sharing his new truth, and his truth is not shared until another has received it. This his hearer realises. Inevitably he is moved by it.'
For those of us who accept Jesus as Son of God there remains a continual call to answer the same question 'Who do you say that I am?' as part of the call to intimacy with God that Jesus brings us.
Few writers in past years have shed as much light on the issues facing Christianity as did Thomas Merton who lived as a Trappist monk and died in the late 1960s. It was on a rare visit to the town near his monastery when the truth he had previously accepted of Jesus took on a new dimension, what he called a 'second conversion' to humankind.
As he walked briefly in the crowd he felt deep in his Spirit what he called 'the immense joy of being man, a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate'.
Merton spoke of his Christianity beginning 'with the realisation of the presence of God in this present life, in the world and in myself, and that my task as Christian is to live in full and vital awareness of this 'ground of my being and of the world's being.' p320.
To live in Christ is to share immortal being in the Spirit. To Thomas Merton a dwelling upon and a facing up to death are essential as a means of deepening one's being into Christ and His victory.
It is the octave day of Easter and we come back to another Thomas – St Thomas who addressed Christ saying My Lord and my God.
Our basic optimism as Christians is rooted in the belief that in Jesus, God, has come earth, lived, died and rose….ed for the survival of the Church as guilty of an implicit denial of Christ's victory.
Yet it is that phrase 'I am a member of a race in which God Himself became incarnate' that struck me in bringing up Thomas Merton.
By accepting the divinity of Christ we are granted purpose for life and reason for death. As Christians Eastertide is fro us the renewal of enduring joy at the coming of Jesus, which is the springboard of lasting hope for the human condition.
'Who do you say that I am' 'You are the Christ, the Son of the living God'.
What greater source of joy can there be for a human being than the knowledge of the salvation and dignity granted to us all by the coming of Jesus?
The birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus have put this planet, and one race within it, on the map of the universe opening up to us the possibility of endless life and communion with God the Blessed Trinity!
Yet for both our minds and hearts to say 'Amen' to Jesus we need to take his yoke - which means bending ourselves down before him.
For Jesus to take a deeper grasp of our lives we must come ever closer to him ourselves by acts of faith and love.
Let us close with the words of a hymn by Charles Wesley:
Jesus, confirm my heart's desire
To work and speak and think for thee;
Still let me guard the holy fire,
And still stir up thy gift in me.
Ready for all thy perfect will,
My acts of faith and love repeat,
Till death thy endless mercies seal,
And make my sacrifice complete.
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