The bite of Jesus' words

I recently heard a good Tim Keller sermon. In this sermon, Keller said that anyone that really hears Jesus cannot respond moderately to him. This is a good word for both Christians and non-Christians.

For non-Christians that presume Jesus to be simply a masterful teacher, not Savior and Lord over all, it is a good word. It seems very acceptable to shrug Jesus off as a great man, but not who he claimed to be. Regarding those that like to call Jesus a great moral teacher, C. S. Lewis says,

That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sorts of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to. (Mere Christianity, 52)

For Christians, on the other hand, it is tempting to look at the more radical Christian as an odd duck. I recently heard about a family that sold their nice, year-old home in order to buy a lesser home in a poorer neighborhood. They wanted to live more simply and are seeking to be a renewing presence in a needy area. This is the kind of intentional, counter-cultural radicalness that Jesus' words lead us to. That is, if we really hear him.