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Who is Jesus?
What a great premise:
You’ve just met a young American adult who is utterly irreligious. Having been raised by agnostic parents, their family never attended any kind of religious gathering, and – although they understand what “religion” is and have been exposed to different religious practitioners – they don’t really know anything about Jesus Christ or Christianity. But they’re curious, so – knowing you have something to do with Christianity – they ask you three simple questions:
Who is Jesus Christ?
What has he done?
Why does it matter?Please provide your simple, sincere, and conversational response in 300 words or less.
I was asked this question by my friend Jason Coker, who is doing a weekly series on the subject on his blog. Here’s how I responded (you can also find this on the Pastoralia blog):
Who is Jesus Christ? Wow, where to start. Jesus is a lot of things. First, I should say he was a man who caused quite a stir around 2,000 years ago by claiming that the God who created the entire cosmos was working through his life to save the world from itself, to make everything right.
Which sounds incredibly cliché, doesn’t it? It’s easy to find nutcases like that today. The thing about Jesus, though, was that he backed up his claims by making things right with unusual power and effectiveness: delivering people from sickness and psychological oppression, bringing freedom from guilt and shame, challenging injustice, and teaching people how to live well.
Ultimately this put him on a collision course with the religious and political authorities of his day, because they had stock in keeping people fearful and needy. But instead of fighting them, Jesus allowed them to torture and kill him. Even those closest to him didn’t understand this. Why not fight to stay alive? They thought it was over after that.
Hang with me, because here’s where the story gets crazy. He didn’t stay dead. A few days later he was alive again, in a totally new way, like he’d gone through death and out the other side. He had actually conquered death by his own death and through his resurrection opened the door for everyone to enter into a truly blessed life in God’s family.
We enter into that life by becoming an apprentice of Jesus. It might sound kooky, but you can actually know Jesus today. You can really be with him and he will teach you how to live a blessed life in God’s family, just like him.
Pretty unlikely story, huh? Yet I find myself living in it every day.
How would you respond?
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Identity and Vocation (Epiphany 1: Baptism of Christ)
A sermon on the baptism of Christ by Ben Sternke at Christ Church’s worship gathering on the first Sunday of Epiphany (January 10, 2010), from Isaiah 43:1-7 and Luke 3:15-21.
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Sermon on the Mount 8: Actually Doing This Stuff
The final message (Part Eight) from the Sermon on the Mount series, preached from Matthew 7:13-29 on November 22, 2009.