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?
Welcome to Christ Church’s provisional blog. This site will enable us to start a 50-day journey exploring the Sermon on the Mount, starting tomorrow.
We stole this idea, and many of the exercises (with permission), from Jason Coker, who is planting Ikon Community near San Diego, CA. Thanks Jason!
So it will work like this: each day there will be a new blog post with an exercise related to our journey through the Sermon on the Mount. Most of the exercises will take 15-20 minutes. They can be done alone, but when possible it will be great to do them with others, or at least take some time to reflect together with others. On Sundays from now until Advent, the portion of the Sermon we have been chewing on all week will be the focus of our worship gathering.
I’m praying this will enable us to move in the direction of being able to do normal life with gospel intentionality. So do what you need to do to keep up with the exercises: Subscribe to the RSS feed or visit this blog every day at a specific time. However you do it, participate with us in this journey of discovery and growth together!