Who is Jesus to you?

Discerning how to talk about our faith, including who Jesus is to each of us, can be challenging in a diverse meeting community. Here we suggest a few ideas for bringing a discussion about Jesus to your meeting.

Listen

Listen to the podcasts of Pendle Hill’s fall lecture series, Who Do You Say That I Am? Following each podcast, ask: Who is Jesus to this speaker? How has this influenced the speaker’s life? How is the speaker’s experience similar to and different from my own? What have I learned from this speaker – about Quakerism, Christianity, and my own faith?

Read

Read Margery Post Abbott’s Pendle Hill pamphlet #402, Christianity and the Inner Life: Twenty-First Century Reflections on the Words of Early Friends. In a worship sharing mode, consider the “Questions for Discussion” on page 36. These include: “How do I name the Source of Love and Truth? What is my direct experience of that Source? Who is Jesus? How do I know Jesus?”

Try an Exercise

This exercise has been used in Resident Program classes at Pendle Hill and in Friends meeting workshops:

1. Ask participants to line up to create a continuum based on their beliefs or relationship with Jesus. At one end could be those who understand Jesus as their personal savior/the Spirit of Christ/Divinity/Son of God; at the center could be those who see Jesus as an important example of someone expressing "that of God" very fully/an important teacher; and at the other end could be those who believe "So much harm has been done in the name of Christianity/I have little relationship with Jesus."
2. While participants are standing on the continuum, ask them to talk about how it feels to reveal this about themselves.
3. Then get into pairs with each person taking turns sharing reasons for choosing that spot on the continuum. While one person speaks the other listens and asks questions to understand the speaker like: "When did you come to this understanding? What religion (if any) did you grow up in?" This sharing in pairs is designed to enable people to hear each other and to help each other articulate personal experiences and understanding; it is not for arguing or debating beliefs.
4. After talking in pairs the group comes back together and participants share something they learned about beliefs concerning Jesus.