As Moderator I have been emphasizing the centrality of Jesus Christ in the life and mission of our church. I have been trying to talk about what it means to bear witness to Jesus Christ in a secular age. But this begs an important question. Which Jesus and whose Christ?
This is not a new question. Jesus once asked his disciples, “Who do people say that I am?” (Mark 8:27) They responded by rehearsing what they had heard on the street. People thought that Jesus was John the Baptist, or Elijah, or one of the prophets. Jesus then asked his disciples, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter spoke for the group and answered, “You are the Messiah (or the Christ), the Son of the Living God.”
We’re living in a culture where people either have increasingly diverse ideas about who Jesus is or little knowledge about him at all. Most people in Canada do not attend church and what they know about Christianity is often based on stereotypes or caricatures.
At such a time the church has to be clear and confident in what it confesses about Christ. Images of Jesus based only on tradition or culture or experience or art or personal preference simply won’t do. Following Jesus today means taking the Bible and what it tells us about Jesus seriously, at least as seriously as we take our own thoughts.
The truth is that Jesus asks the church in every generation, “Who do you say that I am?” and we can’t answer that question without being drawn back into the world of the Bible.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer once said the critical question for Christians is always, “Who is Jesus for us today?” Wrestling with that question leads to what one Christian writer calls the continuous conversion of the church. As followers of Jesus, we discover there is no real Jesus other than the Holy One we meet in the pages of Holy Scripture, Jesus the Christ, the Son of the Living God. Encountering the risen and ascended Christ in the words of the gospel changes us again and again.
This should not surprise us. As Presbyterians we believe that the Old and New Testaments “reveal the Creator’s holy love,” as Living Faith puts it, and “lead us to Jesus Christ.” “Through the scriptures the church is bound only to Jesus Christ its King and Head.” Jesus Christ is “the living Word of God to whom the written word bears witness.”
John Calvin had it right when he said, “This, then, is the true knowledge of Christ, if we receive him as he is offered by the Father: namely, clothed with his gospel.” Calvin saw that the Jesus of Christian faith is the Jesus of the Bible. The Jesus we are invited to follow is the Jesus revealed in the gospel. Faith, Calvin said, rests upon God’s word. “We cannot take the right road to Christ unless the gospel goes before us.” On that road, “the treasures of grace are opened to us.”
As a church it may be that God is calling us to meet Jesus again for the first time in the Bible. We need to learn and teach the Bible if we expect to have anything meaningful to say about Jesus Christ in a secular age.
As we prepare to celebrate Christmas, the words of the Reformer Martin Luther point us to a deep truth: “The Bible is the swaddling clothes and manger within which Christ was wrapped and laid.” That’s the “manger” we should be revisiting during this holy season.
