Gandhi said that he did not think Jesus was uniquely divine. I guess that is not unexpected, after all, Gandhi was Hindu and believed that all humanity was divine or at least had divine sparks within. H.G. Wells said that Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history. Nietzsche said, “Jesus died too soon. If he had lived to my age he would have repudiated his own doctrine.” In Islam Jesus is seen to be a good and godly man–a prophet in a long line of prophets. Ben Franklin extolled the character of Jesus, but in regard to his divinity he declared himself a skeptic. Even Albert Einstein had a high view of Jesus and referred to him as the luminous man of Nazareth. But Einstein would not commit to the idea of a personal God. In light of what Einstein could see of the universe, that there was a God made sense, but he did not think Jesus was divine.
In 2002 George Gallop did a survey to get a sense of how modern Americans answer the question Jesus posed to his disciples 2,000 years ago: “Who do you say that I am?”
Eight in 10 Americans held the belief that Jesus Christ is God or the Son of God. When we examine Gallup data in greater detail, we discover that about half of this group holds the orthodox position — that Jesus was in fact God living among men — while most of the remainder believe that Jesus was divine only in the sense that he was a man who was uniquely called by God to reveal God’s purpose in the world. In an earlier 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.
In our Gospel today Jesus asks the twelve disciples what the people were saying about him. Some said, John the Baptist, some said Elijah, some said Jeremiah, and others said a prophet. Was it a bad thing to be confused with John the Baptist? After all John was a great man. Through his sensational preaching the Bible says all Jerusalem and Judea came out to see him and hear him preach and watch him baptize people. He was a powerful and influential man of that time! The historian Josephus spends more ink on John the Baptist than he does on Jesus, as a matter of fact.
Right after John the Baptist people thought Jesus might be Elijah. It was certainly at least a complementary thing to be compared with man who was Israel’s greatest and most famous prophet. Elijah was the one who did all kinds of amazing things like stop the rain for a number of years and call down fire from heaven. Of course, Jeremiah was pretty famous too! Perhaps some of the people caught the feeling of sorrow that Jesus conveyed over Israel’s sin and hardness of heart and thus identified him with Israel’s weeping prophet.
What was wrong with being identified with John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah or some other prophet? Those people, John, Elijah, Jeremiah were all in some way people who were forerunners to the coming Messiah. These people were not the Messiah but were going to usher in his era. In the minds of the Jews of Jesus’ day the Messiah was going to change everything. He was going to drive out the Romans. He was going to bring in an unprecedented age of prosperity. He was going to catapult Israel to dominance in the world! The problem was that Jesus wasn’t acting like the Messiah they had pictured in their minds. But he was certainly not just a regular guy. He taught with authority. He ordered demons out of people; he healed the sick and did miraculous things like walking on water and telling the winds and storms to be quiet. So on the one hand he didn’t fit into their paradigm of a Messiah, on the other hand he was greater than just a regular teacher.
In our day people don’t confuse Jesus with John the Baptist or Elijah or Jeremiah. But at the same time people still don’t see him as Messiah. Today people, like Dan Brown the author of The Da Vinci Code think of Jesus as a noble hero—a victim of early Catholic distortion and identity theft. Or people think of Jesus as a wonderful moral teacher. Practically no one has anything bad to say about Jesus.
But who is He? Yes, he is certainly wonderful moral teacher. Yes, he easily is the most dominant man in human history. Who do the people say Jesus is? We know that. The real question from Jesus is, “Who do you say that I am?”
If Jesus is simply a man, a good man, a highly moral man, an incredibly influential man, he is still just a man. But if he is in fact God become man that changes everything. It is this issue that causes the problems. We humans divide upon the divinity of Jesus. We don’t divide on whether he was a good fellow or a good teacher. We divide on whether he is, as Peter said, “the Son of the living God.”
And why, what does it matter? It matters because if Jesus was divine, was God in the flesh, then God, through Jesus, broke into human history. God became man and lived among us. He showed us that he was divine through his ability to heal the sick, and raise the dead. He showed us he was divine by his power over nature in that he could walk on water, tell the wind and storm to be quiet; he could multiply five loaves and two fish into food that could feed over five thousand people. He told us stories about how God’s kingdom works and showed us that frequently the way we humans think is exactly upside down from the way God thinks. He taught us and gave us new commandments; if he was divine, then what he taught us and commanded us matters and is authoritative. If he was God in the Flesh, he showed us God—how God thinks and how God cares, how God acts. And then Jesus, this God-man died for us, took the punishment for our sins, died as a ransom for us. But he did not just die—that would be only human. He then came alive again; he rose from the dead. He died and rose so that we now have access to God through him. If Jesus was divine we now know what God is like; we don’t have to guess or wonder. We can know him; we can communicate with him; we can actually have a relationship with God. If Jesus was indeed God in the flesh, then, then we know that God wants to have a relationship with us as well.
You see, that is why it is important if Jesus was divine or simply a man. That is why it is important who we believe Jesus is. That is why this question is the most important question we can ever answer. It is not one to be answered quickly. Because either way, whether we think Jesus is divine or whether we think he is simply a good man, what we have decided makes a difference a huge difference on how we think and how we live.
Jesus asked, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter said, “You are the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the Living God.”
What do you say?
