Occasionally a question falls into our conversation and rocks our small world. Take your friends down to the lake, sit around a bonfire on a pleasant summer evening, and see where the conversation goes as the flames fade to flickering embers. Someone will softly blast into your circle with a profound inquiry, the kind that perennially pops into mind for thinking people.

“Who am I - - - really?” Why am I here?” What’s my purpose?” “What is the real meaning of life?”

On the north side of the Sea of Galilee one evening about 2000 years ago a small band of followers, enjoying a campfire, heard Jesus ask, “Who do men say that I the Son of Man am?” Picture yourself there as a part of that conversation. What do you say? Who is this Jesus?

Man-on-the-street interviews commonly glean uncertain attitudes about Jesus, who He was historically, and the role He plays in life today. At the time, some compared Him to the great prophets, Elijah, Jeremiah, and John the Baptist. In a contemporary interview, we might hear the words, great teacher, prophet, or even kook. Sometime in life, each of us must answer the questions, who is Jesus and what does that mean to me?

On that Galilean evening long ago, one of His followers, a man named Simon, says, “You are the predicted one stepping out from our Jewish Prophecies to take your place as the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God!” In essence, Jesus answers, “Simon, son of Jonah, you rock! You get it! I have come here to go to Jerusalem, entertain death on a Roman cross that makes me look like a martyr, but come out of it resurrected and alive, ready to live inside your life for eternity, so that you can be reconciled to the God of Creation.”

So, who is Jesus? As you answer that question, you either run from the transcendent truth that God exists and loves you just as you are, or you accept the mystery of faith in this One who died for you and embrace the personal love that God has for you.

Who Jesus is and what God did through Him transcend time and circumstances. Believers band together. The small, or large, groups of faith-filled followers are what we call the Church. Jesus says to the man He calls Peter, “Man has not revealed this truth to you, but God in heaven has given you the intuition and insight to know that this is real. This truth will form the foundation of the community of believers that will be called the Church and even death itself will not be able to hold it back in this world or the next.”
 
The church remains the unstoppable force in this world, the movement of God in individual’s lives and in the lives of all people. The church may be a small band of Believers, or it may be the collection of souls that make up the Church universal, those who follow after Jesus in all pursuits and all places in the world.

The church may be represented by one, or by many, who show their willingness to scale the heights of arrogance in human and humanistic leadership that sets ideas, men, and societies one against another. The Church is called to stand for God and His truth.

Strident voices say the church creates problems for our world today. In the halls of government labor many who believe in the perfectibility of man. They attempt to hammer a form of man-made equality and utopian compliance into constructs of governance, restricting the free will of individuals hot on the pursuit of happiness in life.

All the busy-ness of man cannot dissuade Believers from their calling, knowing Jesus and making Jesus known. We are the Church. Let’s be the Church. Who is Jesus to you?

 

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