21st Sunday After Pentecost in a Season of Green

Who then is Jesus?
A Lesson on Authority and Identity

In a 1983 Gallup poll Americans were asked 'who do you think Jesus is."

70% of those interviewed said Jesus was not just another man.

42% stated Jesus was God among men.

27% felt Jesus was only human but divinely called.

9% states Jesus was divine because he embodied the best of humanity.

Also, 81% of Americans consider themselves to be Christians.

“I want to know Christ and the power of His resurrection and the sharing of his sufferings by becoming like him in his death.”

“Because they regarded him as a prophet.”

I believe that Jesus Christ, true God, begotten of the Father from eternity, and also true man, born of the Virgin Mary, is my Lord, who has redeemed me, a lost and condemned creature, purchased and won [delivered] me from all sins, from death, and from the power of the devil, not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death, in order that I may be [wholly] His own, and live under Him in His kingdom, and serve Him in everlasting righteousness, innocence, and blessedness, even as He is risen from the dead, lives and reigns to all eternity. This is most certainly true.

In the first lesson we hear about God’s expectations for His people. Sending prophets, sending a message, giving hope - yet, “Why did it yield wild grapes?”. “Expected justice but saw bloodshed.”

Paul saw “everything as a loss” in comparison to his relationship with Jesus. “I regard everything as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Jesus Christ.”

Knowing, believing, hoping, and living out our faith in a complex and often hostile world means that we stand as prophet in the midst of deaf ears, that we hold firm to our convictions about who Jesus is to us and the difference faith can make, and that we recognize the ways that we too can reject the message of the Gospel and the movement of God in our lives.

Applying the Text

(1) Our identity is shaped and molded by our faith in the Lord Jesus.

“As to the law a pharisee, as to zeal, a persecutor of the church, as to righteousness under the law, blameless. Yet whatever gains I had, these I have come to regard as loss because of the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”

“They wanted to arrest him but feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet.”

(2) Our understanding of who Jesus is comes through a relationship with him.

(3) Our mission and goals as a faith community are defined by the witness of the Word, the faith of those who stand beside us, and the legacy of faith that has gone before us.