So Pilate said to him, “Then you are a king?”
Jesus answered, “You say I am a king.”

Do we know what to do with Jesus? How do we compartmentalize Him? How do we classify Him? Is He an enigma, a question, an unsolved riddle, a mystery beyond our comprehension? Is He just a man, a teacher, a thinker of good and great thoughts, words to live by?

Knowing what to do with Jesus is our lifelong mission.

Start with faith. You have been given the gift of faith by your baptism and faith is necessary unto salvation —“ for absolute knowledge of God is impossible. Each Sunday we say: I believe in God… as an act of faith. Begin in that faith.

The next step in furthering your search for Jesus is Holy Scripture.

In today’s Gospel Jesus’ reply to Pilate was simple —“ you classify me as a king, but here is the reality of it:

“For this I was born and for this I came into the world,
to testify to the truth.
Everyone who belongs to the truth listens to my voice.”

Jesus came to us, sent by the Father, to reveal the truth of God to us. A powerful and overwhelming truth, that God, eternal and all powerful, would condescend and die for our salvation. We celebrate this fact every Sunday here on this altar.

The great Christological hymns of the New Testament confess this. In Philippians 2 we read:

Christ Jesus,
Who, though he was in the form of God,
did not regard equality with God
something to be grasped.
Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave,
coming in human likeness;
and found human in appearance,
he humbled himself,
becoming obedient to death,
even death on a cross.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.

God took the form of a slave to die an ignominious death for us. For this obedience the Father exalts His Son and has given Him everything to be under His power.

In the Letter to the Colossians we read that the Father:

…delivered us from the power of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins. He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation. For in him were created all things in heaven and on earth, the visible and the invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things were created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, that in all things he himself might be preeminent.

There is a whole branch of theology called Christology. Christology attempts to define Jesus the Christ. Christology isn’t concerned with the minor details of His life; rather it deals with defining Jesus’ very nature, the Incarnation, and the major events of His life. Christology tries to define Jesus’ human nature, His divine nature, and the interrelationship between these two natures; how they interact and affect each other.

Christology delves into Christ’s nature by studying the titles and names attributed to Him. He is Christ the prophet, teacher, priest, sacrifice, the Son of Man, God incarnate, the Word, the new Adam, the Lion of Judah, the Lamb of God, the first born of the dead, and the King of Kings, Lord of Lords —“ all titles from scripture.

From scripture we know the names and titles of the Lord. We know His actions and His work. We have a solid starting point and a whole branch of theology to help us understand Jesus. But yet, what do we do with this Jesus. We are still unclear.

Perhaps the problem and the danger was best captured by Dietrich Bonhoeffer when he urged people not to think of God as a stop-gap for the areas in our life that are incomplete.

If we see our knowledge as lacking —“ well, God knows all. If our love life is lacking —“ well, God loves me. If I see myself as poor —“ God will provide riches. As Bonhoeffer notes; we typically think that as our knowledge increases, or as our love, success, and riches increase, we need God less. We push God back as we advance. God retreats because we do not need Him as much.

Bonhoeffer’s tells us that we are to recognize God not only in the mystery of what we do not know, or as the source of that we do not have, but in what we do have, in what we do know. God, revealed to us in Jesus, is to be part and parcel of every aspect of our lives. He said:

God is no stop-gap; he must be recognized at the center of life, not when we are at the end of our resources; it is his will to be recognized in life, and not only when death comes; in health and vigor, and not only in suffering; in our activities, and not only in sin.

He goes on to say:

The ground for this lies in the revelation of God in Jesus Christ. He is the center of life, and he certainly didn’t ‘come’ to answer our unsolved problems.

That is how we answer our question. That is how we discover what we are to do with Jesus. From faith, through scripture and theology, to the realization of God, our God, Who permeates every aspect of our lives.

Jesus is indeed the King who must be at the center of our lives. The Lord over all we are. Not the stop-gap or the go-to guy. Not the pinch hitter or the backup quarterback. Not the magic genie or the cosmic slot machine. Not God for only the mysterious and lacking.

When we accept God as our king and as our all, when we are regenerated in and pledged completely to our King, our life will change. We will be changed and His kingdom will be one step closer to its realization.

To my question: Do we know what to do with Jesus? How do we classify Him?

The answer: He is the center of our lives, our all-in-all. Our God and King.