Who is Jesus?

If time travel were possible, I’d choose to visit the Holy Land during Christ’s 3 years of earthly ministry. In particular, I would choose to tag along with the twelve disciples, the specific men Jesus chose to give up-close and personal, intensive training about the Kingdom of God.

One of the places I’d like to go in my time-travel journey with “the Twelve,” is on a road to a place called Caesarea Philippi, a Roman city 25 miles north of the Sea of Galilee. Road conversation was pretty typical for Jesus and the disciples, but this particular discussion would have been especially poignant.  One of them, a former tax collector named Matthew, recorded it in his Gospel:

When Jesus came into the region of Caesarea Philippi, He asked His disciples, saying, ‘Who do men say that I, the Son of Man, am?’ So they said, ‘Some say John the Baptist, some Elijah, and others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Simon Peter answered and said, ‘You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.’ (Matthew 16:13-16)

I imagine Jesus posing this question as they walked on the hot, dusty road, and the group strolling on with several disciples tossing out the representative answers. But then I picture Jesus stopping abruptly, and the group halting with him, and then posing the follow-up question: “Who do you think I am?” I can hear a long pause, and then watch Peter, after looking around at the others, resolutely turning his head to Jesus and making his great declaration: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” In an astonishing moment, Jesus affirmed Peter’s declaration: “ Blessed are you, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but My Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 16:16-17). No disciple could have gone to sleep that night without the dawning realization that this Jesus they were following was far more than they could have expected.

The significance of that ancient roadside conversation remains. Our culture, like the culture of Jesus’ day, has many things to say about Him, about who He is, and how He fits with a particular agenda or another. During the past presidential GOP primary, I heard a caller on a talk show argue that Jesus would favor one particular candidate, and that He most assuredly would not be in support of another. I recently saw a bumper sticker that read “Jesus was a Feminist.”  It seems that no matter the particular corner of culture, Jesus has been co-opted into their cause.

Peter’s answer to Christ’s question shattered all preconceptions the modern culture had of Jesus; He wasn’t just a good prophet, He was the One the prophets had foretold.  He wasn’t just a political Messiah to save the Jews from the Roman state, or a social reformer come to put the religious elite in their place.  He was the Son of the Living God, who had come to be the Savior of the World.

This same Jesus shatters all the preconceptions that our world attempts to box Him into today. Despite the attempts to label Him and co-opt His message, Jesus Christ cannot be reduced to an ideology, or simplified to a slogan. To borrow from C.S. Lewis’ description of the Christ-figure Aslan of the Narnian chronicles, “he is not a tame lion.” Eventually, every ideology is confounded by His teaching, overruled by His lordship.

Meanwhile, Jesus confronts every person with the same question with which He confronted His disciples: “Who do you say that I am?” The answer cannot be merely intellectual. It must be answered with the conviction of genuine belief, as did Peter, or else it has not been truly answered at all: “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.”

Photo credit by Chapendra in creative commons

Build the Wall and Love the Immigrant?

“We have to protect our country from external threats.”

“We need to show compassion to those who are in need.”

If I asked the average American if he agreed with each of those statements, doubtless he’d say yes. But if I asked him if he agreed with either one of those statements in the context of our national immigration policy, he’d probably choose one or the other to summarize his views, and probably quite forcefully. And so it seems our American populace has done on the issue—one side forcefully arguing that national security is the guiding principle when it comes to immigration, the other also forcefully arguing that compassion should be so instead.  The two positions appear, in their raw, simplified explanations, to be mutually exclusive.

But are they?

Some years ago, a wise friend of mine explained that we often look at situations in terms of “either/or.” We think we have to choose either one thing or the other, elevating the one and excluding the other. But my friend pointed out that God usually doesn’t demand that kind of mutual exclusivity when it comes to real life. For example, God commands that we are to love Him with all of our heart, soul, mind, and strength. But such paramount love for Him doesn’t mean our love stops there. The same God commands us to love our neighbors as ourselves (Mark 12:30-31). Instead of “either/or,” it’s a “both/and.” We love both God and our neighbor. Sure, God has the priority, but love for Him doesn’t exclude the need to love our neighbor—in fact, the one actually helps us to do the other one even better.

I recently heard Rev. Samuel Rodriguez, President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, apply the paradigm of “both/and” to the immigration issue. He pointed out that both sides of the debate have legitimate concerns that should be factored into a workable, sensible, and Biblical immigration policy. Immigration law should be enforced to prevent illegal immigration, while at the same time, preservation of immigrant families should help guide that enforcement.

I heartily echo Dr. Rodriguez’s sentiments. In all the commotion surrounding how to address immigration, terrorism, and national security, we’ve rather forgotten that the concerns being raised aren’t contradictory. Let me give you a bit of word picture to help make the point.

Let’s say you’re a home owner who has a leaky roof and a broken furnace. You wouldn’t say you can’t fix the roof because you have to fix the furnace, or vice versa. One might have priority over the other, but both can be properly addressed in due time. And in so doing, you would want to have the appropriate person fix each respective problem: a roofer for the roof, an HVAC technician for the furnace.

So it is with our country. Last Tuesday night, President Trump declared to our Congress that he wasn’t President to represent the world; he was president to represent America.  Of course, he’s right. His responsibility, by order of the Constitution, is first and foremost to the United States. And the security of our nation ought to be at the top of his “to-do” list. Part of that security is enforcing our existing immigration laws and seeking, where necessary, additional policies that will keep, as the President has put it, “our communities safer for everyone.” In other words, he’s been hired to fix the leaky roof.

But what about refugees seeking safe haven from horrific persecution? What about people from other countries seeking to better their lives and the lives of their families? What obligation does President Trump owe them? No more than the roofer owes to the furnace. The President of the United States cannot place the concerns of non-Americans at the same level of priority as Americans. He wasn’t elected to do so. However that doesn’t mean we don’t address their plight, any more than the homeowner ignores his broken furnace.

Well-meaning Christians may lecture the President on the need to implement an immigration policy that prioritizes the Biblical principle of showing compassion to the alien. But this is asking the roofer to fix the furnace. It’s up to the HVAC technician to fix the furnace because he’s the person best equipped and most knowledgeable to do the job. Social welfare is best delivered through private means.  There is no better group of people than the Church of Jesus Christ, to reach out to the immigrants and refugees in our midst, and to help provide relief to refugees outside of our borders. That’s our job, by divine mandate, (James 2:15-17), just as it’s the government’s job, by divine mandate, to protect our nation from harm and to punish those who do it evil (Romans 13:1-5). Our tasks aren’t mutually exclusive; they can be done in tandem.

Remember, the government, including President Trump, isn’t the owner of this House we call the United States of America. We the People are. And if we remember whose job it is to fix the roof, and whose job it is to fix the furnace, we may just end up with a sturdy roof that weathers the fiercest storm, and a furnace that warms the house in double time. Yes, there will be occasions when the roofer and the HVAC technician might get in each other’s way. But when that happens, the homeowner can make the needed adjustment to see that both guys have the room they need to get their respective jobs done.

Photo Credit by qbac07 in creative commons