September Newsletter

“Who is this Jesus?”

I have heard this question asked with increasing frequency in
recent days.  The most poignant time was when I heard Bishop
Bruce Ough (from the West Ohio Annual Conference) tell a story
about his son and now daughter-in-law.  At the time, his son
was engaged, and on a certain Sunday,his son and his fiancé
went to church with the family.  As they sat in church and
listened to the pastor speak about Jesus, the bishop overheard
the young lady leaned over and asked his son, “Who is this
Jesus that the pastor is talking about?”  The reality of the
world we live in is that something like eighty percent of
all people under the age of twenty-five have never stepped
foot in a church, and most of these are not familiar with
the Biblical stories as the previous generations were.

Before we can begin to answer this question for others,
however, we must answer this question for ourselves.  We
need to figure out who Jesus is and what he means to us
before we try to tell others about him.  The Jesus often
portrayed in churches is a meek and mild-mannered man who is
nice to everyone and never gave offensive.  This Jesus is not
only pretty dull, but also seems too unrealistic to a
generation that is slow to trust what seems too good to be
true.  The good news is that the Jesus depicted in the Bible
is very different from this image. Jesus is depicted in
Scripture and history as a dynamic leader, who spoke the
truth of the Kingdom of God even when it was offensive.  

The Jesus of Scripture wove together rope into a whip and drove
the money-changers from the temple courts (John 2:14-16).  He
is the same Jesus who referred to the Pharisees as a brood of
vipers (Mt. 12:34),and he is the same Jesus who told the crowd
gathering to stone the woman found in adultery that whoever
was without sin could cast the first stone (John 8:7). The
Jesus of Scripture and history was (and is) a radical whose
interest lay in telling truth. The church can learn from his
example.  While we should never go out of our way to be
offensive,we should also never gloss over the truth of the
Gospel in order to avoid giving offense.  Jesus calls us to
be salt and light in the world; sometimes the world doesn’t
like that.  

The church needs to offer the world the “real” Jesus, who people can identify with, and who raised the standard at which we aim. This is a Jesus who
younger people and older people alike will want to know and follow.

note: the ideas in this newsletter borrow largely from my good friend, Pastor Jared, with some minor editorial changes.