Sermon: Who Is Jesus?

Delivered at Bethel United Methodist Church in Greenville, South Carolina on April 23, 2017, the Second Sunday of Easter

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Who Is Jesus?

Audio Version

But Peter, standing with the eleven, raised his voice and addressed them,

“You that are Israelites, listen to what I have to say: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him among you, as you yourselves know - this man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.  But God raised him up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.  For David says concerning him,

‘I saw the Lord always before me,

for he is at my right hand so that I will not be shaken;

therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced;

moreover my flesh will live in hope.

For you will not abandon my soul to Hades,

or let your Holy One experience corruption.

You have made known to me the ways of life;

you will make me full of gladness with your presence.’

“Fellow Israelites, I may say to you confidently of our ancestor David that he both died and was buried, and his tomb is with us to this day.  Since he was a prophet, he knew that God had sworn with an oath to him that he would put one of his descendants on his throne.  Foreseeing this, David spoke of the resurrection of the Messiah, saying,

‘He was not abandoned to Hades,

nor did his flesh experience corruption.’

This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.  Being therefore exalted at the right hand of God, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured out this that you both see and hear.  For David did not ascend into the heavens, but he himself says,

‘The Lord said to my Lord,

“Sit at my right hand,

until I make your enemies your footstool.”’

Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”

Acts 2:14a, 22-36 (NRSV)

Christ is risen from the dead

Trampling over death by death

Come awake! Come awake!

Come and rise up from the grave

From “Christ is Risen” by Matt Maher

Throughout the Gospels, we read numerous stories in which people approach Jesus with questions.  Some used loaded questions in an attempt to force Jesus into a difficult situation, like those who asked Jesus whether or not it was lawful to pay taxes.  Others were earnestly seeking knowledge, like the scholar who asked Jesus which commandment is the most important.  Some people asked questions that were downright silly, like the Sadducee who asked Jesus which man would be a the husband of a seven-time widow after the resurrection of the dead.¹  Even now, when we turn to Jesus through the reading of the Gospels, we are sometimes seeking answers to the questions in our hearts.

Lately, I have found myself fascinated by the stories in which Jesus is the one who poses a question to someone else.  For example, Jesus once asked two of His future disciples, “What are you looking for?”²  Later on, He asked a man who had been an invalid for thirty-eight years, “Do you want to be made well?”³  The questions Jesus asks people tend to be the kind of questions we would all do well to ask ourselves from time to time.

One day, while Jesus was alone with the Disciples, He asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”  The Disciples responded with some of the rumors that were circulating about Him at the time, that He was either John the Baptist or a prophet of old who had returned from the dead.  Jesus then asked the Disciples, “But who do you say that I am?”

The disciple Peter answered, “The Messiah of God.”⁴

Peter made a bold claim about Jesus, and I have no doubt that he wholeheartedly believed what he said.  Still, I think it is safe to say that, at that time, he did not fully understand what it meant that Jesus is God's Anointed One.  Peter, like many people of his day, expected the Messiah to be a great warrior king who would liberate the Jewish people from their Roman oppressors and usher in an age of peace and prosperity for Israel.  Not long before Jesus was betrayed to those who wanted Him out of the way, Peter boldly said to Him, “I am ready to go with you to prison and to death!”⁵  Again, I believe that Peter meant what he said, that he would have valiantly died in battle for Jesus.  When Jesus surrendered to the mob that came to arrest Him, Peter realized that there wasn't going to be a battle, and he ended up denying three times that he even knew Jesus.⁶  Peter lied to save his own skin, but I think there was a measure of truth in his lie, for he did not know Jesus as well as he once thought.

Jesus had foreseen Peter's denial, but He also knew that Peter would be back.  When He predicted that Peter would deny Him, He also said to him, “When once you have turned back, strengthen your brothers.”⁷

The day after Jesus was arrested, He was sentenced to death and crucified, and His body was placed in a borrowed tomb.⁸  Two days later, the Disciples received reports that Jesus' body was missing.  Peter raced to the tomb and found that it was indeed empty.  Later that day, Jesus appeared to Peter and the other Disciples.⁹  Jesus had been resurrected from the dead, just as He had told the Disciples.¹⁰  For forty days, the Disciples continued to learn from Jesus, and Peter began to see beyond his preconceived notions about who “the Messiah of God” was supposed to be.  Jesus ascended into heaven, and, ten days later, on a feast day called Pentecost, a crowd of people from many nations gathers around the Disciples.¹¹  Empowered by the Holy Spirit, Peter steps forward to address the crowd.

So what does Peter say about Jesus now?

Peter describes Jesus as “a man attested... by God with deeds of power, wonders, and signs that God did through him.”  Throughout the Gospels, we read that Jesus proclaimed the coming of the Kingdom of God and that, as a sign of this coming Kingdom, Jesus healed people of their diseases and ailments, cleansed lepers, freed people from their demons, raised the dead, fed the hungry, befriended the friendless, challenged the self-righteous, and sent His followers out to go and do likewise.  These works, according to Peter, signify that Jesus was indeed sent by God.  In some translations of the Bible, these works are called Jesus' credentials or accreditations.¹²

The Gospel teaches us that God so loved the world that He sent His Son, not to condemn the world but to save it,¹³ but this Son of God was not well received by the world He came to save.  Jesus was a man attested by God... but rejected by humanity.  Peter says to his audience, “This man, handed over to you according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God, you crucified and killed by the hands of those outside the law.”

When Jesus returned to Jerusalem during the week of Passover, His works became a bit more provocative.  First, Jesus rode into the city on a donkey, as a king might ride into town during peacetime.¹⁴  Next, Jesus stormed into the temple and ejected the merchants, proclaiming, “It is written, ‘My house shall be a house of prayer’; but you have made it a den of robbers.”¹⁵  Through these two acts of protest, Jesus seemed to be challenging both a violent empire and a corrupt religious establishment that kowtowed to the empire.  Fearful of the potential repercussions of Jesus' actions and the people's response to them, the religious leaders colluded with the Roman Empire to have Jesus crucified like an enemy of the state, even though He had done no harm.

Peter proclaims to his audience, “God raised [Jesus] up, having freed him from death, because it was impossible for him to be held in its power.”  He goes on to say, “This Jesus God raised up, and of that all of us are witnesses.”  Scholar William Barclay notes that the Resurrection of Christ was central to the preaching of the Apostles.  After all, there would be no Church without it.¹⁶  Peter and the other Apostles boldly proclaimed the resurrection of Jesus Christ, because it had changed their lives profoundly.  Barclay writes,
When the disciples preached the centrality of the resurrection, they were arguing from experience.  After the Cross, they were bewildered, broken men, with their dream gone and their lives shattered.  It was the resurrection which changed all that and turned them from cowards into heroes.¹⁷

The people had awaited a Messiah who would free them from their oppressors.  What they did not realize is that, what they hoped Jesus would do at a local level, He was doing at a global or even cosmic level.  As the ancient prophet declared, it was too small a matter that the Servant of God should only save Israel.¹⁸  Though Jesus appeared to be challenging the Roman Empire and the religious establishment, He actually had some greater adversaries in His sights the whole time, enemies that had been oppressing all of humanity since the very dawn of human existence.  His two acts of protest in Jerusalem brought Him to the battleground of the Cross, where He faced off against the sin of humanity and the fruition of our sin, namely death.

For two days, Jesus lay in the grave, and it appeared that sin and death had claimed yet another victim.  On the third day, He was resurrected from the dead by God, and He emerged from the tomb victorious.  The battle was won, and our liberation from sin and death was secured.  As St. John Chrysostom, an early archbishop, proclaimed on one Easter Sunday,
Let no one fear death, for the Death of our Savior has set us free.  He has destroyed it by enduring it.  He destroyed Hell when He descended into it.  He put it into an uproar even as it tasted of His flesh...  Christ is Risen, and you, O death, are annihilated!  Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!  Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!  Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!¹⁹

At the Church I attend, Christ's victory over death is celebrated rather dramatically on Easter Sunday.  At the beginning of the service, the acolyte, the Bible bearer, the praise band, and the two pastors proceed into the sanctuary, while the congregation sings Charles Wesley's beloved Easter hymn “Christ the Lord Is Risen Today.”  The senior pastor stops in front of the cross on the communion table, which has been covered by a shroud since Good Friday.  During the second verse of the hymn, as the congregation sings, “Where, O death, is now thy sting?  Alleluia!” he whips the shroud off the cross, throws the shroud to the floor, and stomps on it.²⁰

Christ's victory over death has profound implications for our lives.  In Jesus' day, the Roman Empire promoted the Pax Romana, a twisted kind of peace that was maintained by the annihilation of anyone who would dare to stand in opposition to the Empire.  The people wanted someone to defeat their oppressors, but Jesus, through His death and resurrection, rendered their oppressors ultimately powerless.  This is good news!  To know that no evil that can be wrought upon us, not even death itself, has to have the final word should be a complete game changer for all of us.  In the words of Jonathan Tompkins, “Sin and death, they are still around, but, friends, their power is limited, and their time is short.”²¹

Peter calls to mind the sixteenth Psalm, in which the psalmist David cries out for protection to the God in whom he has taken refuge.²²  Toward the end of the Psalm, David proclaims, “Therefore my heart is glad, and my soul rejoices; my body also rests secure.  For you do not give me up to [the Grave], or let your faithful one see the Pit.”²³  We read in the Bible that David was spared from death at the hands of his enemies more than once, but he did eventually die.  Peter reasons that, if David is dead, then he could not have been referring to himself as the one who was not given up to the grave; therefore, he must have been prophesying about someone yet to come.  God had promised David that his dynasty would never come to an end,²⁴ but the one who was spared from death was not David but his descendant, Jesus of Nazareth.

Peter concludes, “Therefore let the entire house of Israel know with certainty that God has made him both Lord and Messiah, this Jesus whom you crucified.”  Jesus was resurrected from the dead, and He ascended into Heaven to sit at the right-hand of the Father.  From thence He has poured out the Holy Spirit upon those who follow in His footsteps.  To Peter, these things are Jesus' vindication, the definitive proof that Jesus is indeed the true King and Savior.  Peter might have lost hope briefly when Jesus was arrested, but his new proclamation about Jesus is even bolder than his first, for he has declared that Jesus is not only the Messiah, but also Lord.  To profess that Jesus Christ is Lord was a dangerous thing to do in the days of the Roman Empire: to say that Jesus is Lord is to say that Caesar is not Lord.

C.S. Lewis, in his most famous work Mere Christianity, suggests that, in the same way that the first-century Jews suffered under the oppression of an evil empire, the whole world suffers under the oppression of forces in rebellion against the Creator.²⁵  Lewis writes, “Christianity is the story of how the rightful king has landed, you might say in disguise, and is calling us all to take part in a great campaign of sabotage.”²⁶  When we proclaim that Jesus Christ is Lord, we proclaim that we have sworn our loyalty to the true King of the world and that no other power truly reigns, no matter how prevalent, influential, powerful, or violent it might be.  Those who claim to rule this world may wield the power of death, but our God has the power of resurrection.  In the words of St. Paul, “If God is for us, who is against us?”²⁷

Years later, in a letter to the early Christians, Peter writes that, through the resurrection of Christ, we are “born anew into a living hope.”  We have hope that the trials we face in this life will not destroy our faith but will only make it stronger, and we have hope that we too will be saved from the power of sin and death.²⁸  Similarly, St. Paul suggests that the Risen Christ is the first fruits of the resurrection.  In the same way that the ancient first fruits offering was given in anticipation of a greater harvest yet to come, God's raising of Christ from the dead is a sign that there is more resurrection to come.²⁹  In the midst of the suffering we face in this life, we can take hope, remembering that Christ was resurrected and looking forward to our own resurrection.

Jesus asks His disciples, “Who do you say that I am?”

St. Peter proclaims that Jesus is a man attested by God with mighty works, the victor over sin and death, and the true Lord and Savior of the world.

Who do you say Jesus is?

Amen.


Notes:

1. Mark 12:13-34
2. John 1:35-39
3. John 5:2-9
4. Luke 9:18-20 (NRSV)
5. Luke 22:33 (NRSV)
6. Luke 22:47-62
7. Luke 22:31-34 (NRSV)
8. Luke 23:32-56
9. Luke 24:1-12, 36-42
10. Luke 9:21-22
11. Acts 1:3-9, 2:5-12
12. See Acts 2:22 in the Common English Bible or The Message.
13. Based on John 3:16-17
14. Luke 19:29-38 (NRSV)
15. Luke 19:45-46 (NRSV)
16. William Barclay.  The Acts of the Apostles, Revised Edition.  1976, Westminster Press.  p. 27
17. ibid.
18. Isaiah 49:6
19. http://anglicansonline.org/special/Easter/chrysostom_easter.html
20. Jonathan Tompkins.  “Why Easter?”  Travelers Rest United Methodist Church podcast, 04/16/2017.
21. Christine Matthews and Jonathan Tompkins.  “Why Palms? Why Passion?”  Travelers Rest United Methodist Church podcast, 04/09/2017.
22. Psalm 16:1
23. Psalm 16:9-10
24. 2 Samuel 7:16
25. C.S. Lewis.  Mere Christianity.  bk. 2, ch. 2
26. ibid.
27. Romans 8:31 (NRSV)
28. 1 Peter 1:3-9 (CEB)
29. 1 Corinthians 15:20-22 (NRSV)

St. John and St. Peter at Christ's Tomb was painted by Giovanni Francesco Romanelli around 1640.