I often wonder what Jesus was getting at when he asked his disciple, “Who do you say that I am?” Was Jesus testing the waters, trying to figure out if the people and his friends understood the nature of his divinity? Was he trying to figure out if his rabble rousing was about to get him killed? Was he concerned with how his identity was formed by the community? Or was he simply wondering what people thought about him?
President Obama’s speech in Newtown on December 17 included this pivotal question: “Are we prepared to say that such violence visited on our children year after year after year is somehow the price of our freedom?” The president is bristling here at the way our political discourse reflexively leaps to claims about individual rights and freedoms.
Normally my siblings and I spend December 26 goofing around together. This year, however, we felt the need to create something that addresses an important issue facing our Christian sisters and brothers elsewhere in the English-speaking world.
For sermon-prep help, I frequently look at hymns, paintings, novels, poems, etc. Also Bach cantatas. Meinen Jesus laß ich nicht, written for the first Sunday after Epiphany, has intrigued me with its interpretation of Luke 2:41-52.
