Jesus, Who do you say that He is?

This is a preview of the message I will be giving this Sunday (8/21/05) at the V.A. Chapel. The scripture passage it draws from is Matthew 16: 13-20.

In the gospel passage we just read, Jesus asks His disciples two similar yet different questions. At first He asks them who the crowds say that He is. They answered, "Some say John the Baptist, but others say Elijah and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets." Then Jesus takes the question to a deeper level and asks His disciples, "But Who do you say that I am?" In a way, I think Jesus is still asking those very same questions today and getting some similar responses. Let me explain what I mean by sharing with you a story from my own life.

As some of you may know that I spent my junior year of college abroad in Israel. While I was there, I had a number of experiences that forced me to separate the Christianity I had grown up with, from my own relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ. I remember waking up one morning that fall feeling very distant from God. That whole summer and months leading up to this day had been filled with experiences that seemed to contradict everything I had come to know about God and Christianity. And now everything seemed to be coming to a climax. The peace, joy and hope that I had come to count on as constants in my life seemed to be gone. I had nothing left to stand on, but my own faith in God. Not knowing what else to do, I locked myself in my room, opened up my laptop computer and began to type. The first thing I wrote was a shouting session with God. I wanted to know why it felt like He was stripping away all my securities. Why was He removing everything I had had going for me? Then as I was going on and on in this direction, it occurred to me that I did, in fact still have something left. I had my relationship with God. Into the realization, I heard God asking the same question Jesus asked His disciples: Who do you say that I am? Like His disciples. My first instinct was to go with what my family and the church said. God is all-knowing, all-powerful, all-loving, desiring all to come to saving knowledge of Him through His Son, Jesus Christ, our Lord. Yet, at that moment, none of those answers nor any other Sunday School answer seemed to hold water between God and I. God seemed to want a deeper answer that that; just as Jesus wanted from His disciples. God wanted to know Who I personally knew Him to be. Who had He shown Himself to be in my own life? This was how God personalized His question to me. And so I was left to answer as only I could. Jesus was my friend when all others ran away. God was my redeemer and loving Father, the One who would never lead me astray. I could go on, yet that might take the task away from each of you.

For just as Jesus asked His disciples Who He was to them, and just as God asked me, so God is asking you today. Who do you say that God is? Who do you say God's Son, Jesus Christ is? If you, by chance, don't know Him personally and would like to, feel free to come and see myself after the service or any of the chaplains during our time here. God longs to be more to each of us than someone we can know a lot about. God wants each of us to know Him personally and intimately. That relationship begins with each of you. Where it will go from there? Only God knows!