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Dietrich Bonheoffer was one of the most famous theologians of the 20th century. He was

one of the few pastors in Germany in the 1930’s who challenged Adolf Hitler. He attended

Union Seminary in New York City, where I attended seminary. Later on he was thrown into jail

for his part in a plot to assassinate Hitler. While in jail he wrote a book called, “Letters and

Papers from Prison. It’s a wonderful book. In the book is a poem called, “Who am I?” He

wrote:

Who Am I
Am I then really all that which other men tell of?
Or am I only what I know of myself,
Restless and longing and sick, like a bird in a cage,
Struggling for breath, as though hands were compressing my throat,
Yearning for colours, for flowers, for the voices of birds,
Thirsting for words of kindness, for neighbourliness,
Trembling with anger at despotisms and petty humiliation,
Tossing in expectation of great events,
Powerlessly trembling for friends at an infinite distance,
Weary and empty at praying, at thinking, at making,
Faint, and ready to say farewell to it all?

Who am I? This or the other

And then he closed the poem with:

“Who am I? They mock me, these lonely questions of mine.

Whoever I am, thou knowest, O God, I am thine.

Bonheoffer’s poem asks a question that every human being eventually has to answer.

The question, of course, is “Who am I? What is our identity?

Who am I?

If your journey is at all like mine your answer to the question “Who am I?” changes

throughout the different parts of our life. If you had asked me the question, “Who am I?” while I

was in Junior High I would have responded by saying that I was a violin player. I had a violin

teacher who inspired and challenged me. At that point in my life there was nothing I wanted
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more than to be a professional violinist. When I was a senior in high school I was a football

player. Nothing mattered more to me than playing football. Every day for a year I woke up and

one of the first thoughts that went through my mind was how many days until football practice

started at Worthington High School. After college I was an organizer for the farm workers in

California. Nothing mattered to me more than helping these very poor people, most of them

Hispanic who lived and worked in terrible conditions. When I went to seminary I worked as a

youth director in a church. I wanted to build a strong youth group. After seminary I was the

pastor of the Presbyterian Church in Plainview. If you had asked me the question, “who am I” I

would have said I was a Redevelopment pastor. Every day for 16 years I thought and devoted

myself to building that congregation. During that time I met my wife Amy. We married and had

our daughter, Hannah and suddenly I was given the most important answer to the question “Who

am I?” I was a husband and a father. Now if you ask me the question I am a New Church

Development pastor or a church planter.

Who am I? In the course of 45 years I’ve been a violinist, football player, organizer,

seminary student, youth director, redevelopment pastor, husband, father, and church planter. I

would guess that you have had many different roles too.

This question is the essential question that defines our life. Who am I?

Today we heard a story of Jesus answering the question, “who am I?” It’s hard for me to

overemphasize the significance of this story. If someone came in the room and said, Jesus

Christ, the son of God is going to give us his answer to the question, “Who am I?” I think we

would run out of here to hear what Jesus would say. If someone told us that we could see a

video on a web page of Jesus answering this question, the web site would probably crash from
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overuse. Here in this book—the Bible—we have the story of Jesus responding to this identity

question.

This story took place very early in Jesus’ adult ministry. At this point in Luke as an adult

Jesus had been baptized and then tempted by Satan in the wilderness. When Jesus left Satan he

went back to his home region of Galilee—which was in the northern region of Palestine. Jesus

would go into the small towns—really they were villages. According to the 1st century historian

Josephus there were 204 villages in Galilee. Jesus’ approach was to go into the synagogue on

and teach. Because Jesus was such an amazing teacher word starting getting around about him.

It was at this point just as word was getting around about Jesus that he entered his home

village of Nazareth. Nazareth was a tiny village—between 500 and 1500 people lived there.

Jesus’ mother, Mary, came from Nazareth. She was in Nazareth when the angel Gabriel

announced to her that she would bear a son and call him Jesus.

Today N is a town of 65,000 people, the capital of the northern district of Israel. In Jesus

day N didn’t have much of a reputation. One of his followers, Philip, when he heard that Jesus

was from Nazareth said, “can anything good come from Nazareth.

As was his style Jesus walked into this tiny village. He went to synagogue to worship

God. The synagogue was probably a small building. There were no lights or electricity, no

organs, no pianos. In a typical Jewish worship service someone would read the Shema from

Deuteronomy; the group assembled would recite the Ten Commandments, someone would read

a Scripture from the Old Testament, and then somebody would talk about the Scriptures.

I’m sure that is what happened. At the time for someone to read the Scriptures Jesus was

given a scroll of the prophet Isaiah. Jesus was the Lay Reader. Jesus read this:

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,

Because he has anointed me
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To bring good news to the poor.

He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
And recovery of sight to the blind,
To let the oppressed go free,
To proclaim the year of the Lords’ favor.

The tradition was for the rabbis to share an interpretation of the Scripture. They would

do this sitting down. Jesus sat down to share his interpretation. All of the eyes of the people

were on him. The people at the service probably had known Jesus for a long time. They had

probably watched grow up. They probably knew of the growing reputation of Jesus. People

were waiting for a word from Jesus

Then Jesus said something revolutionary. I purposefully used the word to describe what

Jesus did. It was revolutionary. What Jesus said still reverberates in the world today. Jesus said,

“this scripture from Isaiah is fulfilled in me.” It’s as if Jesus said, I am the one who has come to

live out this scripture. This piece of scripture is my identity. This piece of scripture answers the

question, “Who am I?”

There are other places in the gospels where Jesus talked about his own identity. Places

where Jesus described himself as the Son of Man and as the Messiah, but in no other place is

there such a long description of Jesus’ self-identity.

This stirs me, and I hope it does to you. The church is often called the body of Christ.

As the body of Christ we bring good news to the poor, we proclaim release to the captives, we let

the oppressed go free, and to proclaim the year of the Lords’ favor.

At Chain of Lakes we spent a lot of time last year determining our identity, coming up

with a response to the question, “Why do we exist?” When I started here last February I said that

the most important goal we had for the year was to come up with our culture. We did that. We
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came up with a Purpose Statement, and almost have our Core Values established. We have a

name and a target. We’ have a sense of who we are.

Another question that we’ll eventually have to answer is “Who is Jesus to us?”

We Presbyterians have a national New Church Development office in Louisville,

Kentucky. They came up with a DVD to help churches come up with their identity. It’s made

up of 16 sessions. When we worked on our Purpose Statement I thought about following this

guide, but I thought that 16 sessions was too long. We did a one day retreat.

This DVD encourages congregations to spend a lot of time on this question, “Who is

Jesus?”

What pains me how differently churches look at Jesus.

I’m going to talk about this more next week in my sermon at the Grand Opening, but I’ve

had the privilege of being in a lot of different types of churches.

I had the privilege of serving a conservative Presbyterian Church. In a conservative

church people will focus on the divine side of Jesus. Conservatives talk about how Jesus died for

our sins; they’ll talk about his substitutionary atonement—how he took our place on the cross;

they’ll talk about how he was born of a virgin and ascended to heaven; they’ll talk about how

Jesus will come again to judge the world; they’ll talk about how you and I have been adopted by

Jesus into a relationship with god and have access to the throne of grace; they’ll share that only

through Jesus do we receive eternal life.

I’ve had the privilege of being in more liberal churches. People on the liberal side will

focus on Jesus’ humanity. They’ll talk about how he challenged the religious authorities; how he

was a man of deep compassion, how he loved and went out of his way to care for the poor; how

he was a prophet in the tradition of the Old Testament prophets who condemned injustice; and
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they’ll talk about how he was a wonderful teacher of moral truths. Truths like love your enemy,

love your neighbor as yourself and, and the Golden Rule, do unto others as you would have them

to unto you.

What pains me is too few churches integrate these views. It’s as if a church has to be one

or the other; they can’t be both.

What I would like to see is for us at Chain of Lakes to take the best of the conservative

view of Jesus and the best of the liberal view of Jesus. Let’s integrate them. I completely

believe that an integrative view of Jesus is not only faithful to the gospels, but it will be very

attractive to people all over the north metro.

It’s my hope that we will frequently say that Jesus died for our sins, and that he was a

human full of compassion. We’ll teach that he was born of a virgin—yes, and that he challenged

the religious authorities of his time. We’ll talk about how Jesus will come again a second time

and how he was a wonderful teacher of moral truths. When people talk about our church, they

won’t say that we’re conservative or liberal; people will say that we follow the gospel. Let’s

have a both/and approach to Jesus.

Let’s share a both/and approach to Jesus.

It’s essential for us to remember that we as a community exist to be the body of Jesus to

the world. It’s very easy for churches to lose our focus. It’s easy to get absorbed in our own

institutional needs.

For the past three weeks I’ve spent a lot of time encouraging you to invite people to our

Grand Opening worship service next Sunday. This Grand Opening service is one of the best

opportunities that we are going to have to share our congregation with another person. I hope

that none of us believe that bringing people to a worship service for the first time is solely the job
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of the pastor. Research shows that over 90% of people who come to a church for the first time

come because they were invited by a friend or family member. The success of pastors bringing

someone to worship for the first time is very low—less than 10%.

My job as a pastor is to create a community where you want to invite your friends and

family to. I’ll do some inviting—I plan on making a number of calls to people this week. But

the success of our Grand Opening service really depends on you.

A couple weeks ago Jennifer and I set a goal about how many new families we think will

come to this service. We set a goal of 10 new families—with a stretch goal of 20. I think this is

a realistic goal. The service next Sunday is going to be fantastic. Our Executive Presbyter is

going to speak, John Ivers is going to speak, I’m going to give the best sermon that I’m capable

of giving, the co-principal of the viola section of the Minnesota Orchestra and his wife are going

to play music, my daughter is going to sing. We’ll have people from many other Presbyterian

churches here. But even with all of this going on the most important objective of next week’

service will be to have new people here. We want to have between 10 and 20 families here.

As you’re extending a personal invitation this week, I want all of us to remember why we

want someone to come to our church. Why do we want someone to come to our church? Is it so

we can grow in numbers? Is it so we can get new members? Is it so we can develop as a

community?

I would be lying if I said no to any of these questions.

Our prime focus of inviting people to our church is to help the person grow as a disciple

—as a follower of Jesus. We’re inviting others to join our journey of being a community who

follows Jesus. To be a community who brings good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the

captives, to let the oppressed grow free.

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We’ve already started doing that. I was so proud of you last week for your financial

response to the Haiti earthquake. I was blown away when John Ivers our Treasurer told me that

you gave over $400 to this offering. Our Presbytery sent out an E-mail challenging

congregations to give a $1 for every member in their church to this offering. If we had done this

we would have given $33 last week. We gave $400, $8 for every person who was here. Your

contribution makes me proud to be your pastor. We are already making an impact on the world

in Jesus’ name.

When we invite people we are inviting them to join our adventure of following Jesus

I am so excited about our development of a church. I’ve shared with you before that few

people in their lifetime have the opportunity to start a faith community. It is an absolute

privilege to be able to start a church in Jesus’ name.

I want all of you to have this excitement too. This week when we invite people we are

continuing the work that Jesus started in a synagogue in Nazareth. It blows me away that here

we are half a world away and two thousand years later and we are continuing the work that Jesus

started there. Let us share a complete Jesus with the world.

Prayer
Lord Jesus,
In that room in Nazareth you did something revolutionary. You changed the world
You shared your mission with the world. Ever since your followers have answered the
question, “who is Jesus.”
May we at Chain of Lakes integrate the best thoughts about Jesus. May we take the
views of our conservative brothers and sisters and the views of our liberal brothers and sisters.
May we develop a complete view of Jesus, one that will be attractive to many people in the
North Metro. Inspire us, …..
We pray for our Grand Opening service
…….
We pray for the people in Haiti
……
We pray for our own faith lives