Fr Patrick Ponders...: Who Is Jesus Christ For Us Today?

12 September 2021, Trinity 15, Year of Mark

Isaiah 50:4-9a

James 3:1-12

Mark 8:27-38

Reflection (Sermon)

In today’s gospel, Jesus asks those closest to him:

“who do you say that I am?”

with the clear emphasis on the “you”:

“who do you yourselves, yourself, say that I am?”

It’s a good question.

It’s always a good question.

Whatever answer you may reach,

or indeed even if you can’t find your way to an answer,

it’s a good question.

Who do you say that Jesus is?

Notice this: Jesus himself does not give the answer.

This goes for lots of times

when his identity or his title (or titles) are being discussed.

It is often the other person that uses the language,

and Jesus tends to allow it by not disagreeing with it, but little more.

So we can ask: did Jesus himself think of himself as

God the Son, the Second Person of the Holy Trinity of Father, Son and Spirit?

That’s an easy one to answer: almost certainly not.

That’s because that is the language of the later Church,

which just wasn’t around when Jesus was ministering in his earthly life.

But we can also ask: did Jesus think of himself

as Messiah, as the Christ, as the One who is to come, as the Son of Man,

as the only-begotten Son of the Heavenly Father, as the Son of God?

As we read the gospels, if we are honest, we’d have to say

· there are some pointers to suggest he did think of himself in some or all of these ways,

· and there are other pointers that suggest he thought of all such titles as a distraction, a distraction keeping him from talking about and showing his real concern: the Kingdom of God among us.

So “who do you say that Jesus is?” is a real question,

a question not entirely settled,

even among Christians who are reading the Gospels continually.

Now, I will try something different.

I’d like to introduce a modern – a 20^th-century - Christian to you.

I am thinking of Dietrich Bonhoeffer.

He was a German pastor and teacher.

He was a German disciple, and his dates are 1906-1945.

Yes, you’ll see, we are deep in the territory of the Second World War.

He was teaching in Berlin when Hitler came to power.

His subject was “Christology”, which means

“all the things about Christ, Jesus Christ”.

He spoke powerfully about how,

for Christians, Jesus Christ was the only leader to follow.

Indeed (he said), Jesus Christ is the only Leader of the world,

whether people recognise it or not.

So he already stood out as an opponent to the Nazis.

But as things got worse, he dug deeper.

He came to see that it’s not enough to speak against Hitler and for the truth.

He had to take action.

He became part of the resistance, the internal German resistance.

And – I won’t hide this from you –

he was part of a plot that set out in 1944 to assassinate Hitler.

They thought that, with Hitler dead,

the demonic power of Nazism would be made weak or be destroyed,

and Germany could make peace.

That plot failed (you will have realised).

Bonhoeffer and others were arrested.

Bonhoeffer himself as executed, on 9 April 1945.

He was hanged.

The war was in its final days.

(Hitler committed suicide and Germany surrendered on 8 May.)

It was one of many, many pointless killings the Nazis “allowed themselves”,

Just before their defeat became total.

Thing is: when he was in prison, Bonhoeffer wrote a string of letters

(and other writings).

Soon enough, they were gathered together and published,

and they are moving, powerful - for a string of reasons.

Somewhere in the middle of those letters,

Bonhoeffer tells his friend that he thinks the question the Christian community is going to have to face in new and painful ways is:

Who is Jesus Christ, for us, today?

[April 9 1944: “Was mich unablaessig bewegt, ist die Frage, was das Christentum oder auch wer Christus heute fuer uns eigentlich ist.”]

Who is Jesus Christ, for us, today?

Perhaps you can sense why it was a

lively, a life-changing question for Bonhoeffer.

After all, he’d been led by his loyalty to Christ

to teach and preach against the state,

and then to try to help assassinate the state’s leader.

There are not many saints of resistance

(full-on, political and military resistance)

in the Christian calendar.

Many would say that Bonhoeffer was the first.

But, there was actually more to Bonhoeffer’s question than that.

He was thinking of the whole of the 20^th century, as he’d known it.

He thought that in his day,

the argument that adult human beings

needed the idea of God to explain things

· to explain the formation of the universe;

· to explain the arrival of humankind on the scene;

· to explain the need for us to do good and avoid harm;

· to explain how life is worth it, even in the face of death;

· to explain… anything…

had passed.

No one needed to refer to God to explain anything.

Bonhoeffer thought this,

and he thought it had become

the common sense of all people (pretty much).

So he thought the idea that

people started out with a sense of God,

and then the Christian had the job of setting out to them

why the Christian sense of God was the best

– those days had gone.

Basically,

humankind as such had been religious for many thousands of years,

and now no longer was.

Was Bonhoeffer right in this?

It’s a big question.

I am not saying that he was.

(There’s a fair amount of evidence that

humankind as a whole is now as religious as it ever was.)

I just want you to get a sense of

how big the question was for him.

It was vital, necessary, compelling, exciting; it was almost scary.

Can we be excited, in the same way?
Dare we be?

Dare we ask the question,

precisely when we do not know what answer we will reach?

Who is Jesus Christ, for you – just for you and entirely for you - today?

I cannot tell you.

What I can do is invite you to call upon him…

[Plays: Jesus, remember me, Taizé.]

Prayers for the World and All Needs (Intercessions)

Jesus Christ, you come to us anew today,

make us new in you.

Jesus Christ, we pray for your Church,

which can struggle to trust you fully and stay close to you loyally.

Bless Bishop N,

and all who bear the burdens of leadership,

in our diverse Christian communities.