“Who do people say that the Son of Man is?”
Jesus was compared with many figures of great stature in the Jewish tradition: Abraham and Moses, John the Baptist, or the prophets. The person making such a comparison surely thought to honor Jesus with it. Peter, however, describes Jesus most accurately: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
Only Martha of Bethany, in John’s Gospel, Chapter 11, makes as insightful a claim when she says: “I have come to believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, the one who is coming into the world” (11:27). Getting Jesus right means getting beyond the great-man attribute and on to something beyond what this world can produce.
The otherworldly power of Jesus was such that religious leaders of his generation called him Beelzebub or a devil—anything but a man operating under his own authority. Christian author C. S. Lewis perceptively noted that the only rational ways to identify Jesus are as Son of God, devil from hell, or madman; what you can’t logically say was that Jesus was simply a great guy.
What does it mean to you to say: “Jesus is (my) Lord”?
(Reflection and questions by Alice Camille in Exploring the Sunday Readings)
Since the Sunday Gospel is the heart of the Gospel Weeklies, an important part of preparing to share the Gospel with children is to read and reflect on it in advance of your class session. The Gospel at Home and The Gospel for All Ages (see Gathering Rituals/Questions) are resources on our website that can help you do this. While these resources take a break in the summer months, we’ll be drawing our weekly reflections from Exploring the Sunday Readings.
Image credit: Distant Shores Media/Sweet Publishing [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons
