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Oct 24, 1999 WHO IS JESUS CHRIST? (Matthew 22:34-49) The revealing titles of a biography just published of Indonesia's new president, Abdurrahman Wahid, is: "Gus Dur: Who are you?" It is quite common for us to learn that we know very little about our leaders even though they are widely reported on by modern media. According to the book, many associates for the new President state that they really don't know him. They are divided as to whether he is brilliantly clever or utterly naïve in his political strategies. The publication of the biography on former President Ronald Reagan , DUTCH, after l4 years of the most intimate observation by the biographer, is another example of a public figure who at the end of his chronicled career remains unknown to most people including many who spent years in personal service to him. So it can be no surprise that we do not know all we might want to know about Jesus of Nazareth who lived 2,000 before the instant analysis of CNN and the documentation of the Internet. We have only one basis web site on Jesus and that is the scriptures. And the scriptures present diverse images of Jesus. Even his friends arrived at differing undertstandings about him ranging from a wandering teacher, who had no where to lay his head (Mat. 8:20 and Luke 9:58) to the Cosmic Christ through whom and by whom everything in heaven and on earth was created.( Col. 1:15-17) The many views of Jesus may not be contradictory but they have led to quite different religious communities in the Lutherans, Baptists, Roman Catholics, Orthodox and hundreds of other Jesus groups who arrive at differing places in the Christian spectrum. Jesus encouraged this diversity of response because he seldom spoke clearly and emphatically about himself. Today's text is a case in point. To his question to the other rabbis, "What do you think of the Messiah? Who's son is he?", we might wish that Jesus had gone on to state without any ambiguity: "Look, guys, I'm the Messiah. I'm the Son of God." He did not do so. Perhaps he wanted all his followers to make up their own minds and hearts about the Messiah. At any rate, the Church went on to answer the question that Jesus is the Messiah, the Christ, the Son of God. Although it took another four centuries for the church to arrive at the conclusion, as it did at the Council of Chalcedon, that Jesus is fully human and fully divine. The rabbis to whom Jesus put the question responded in terms of their tradition. The Messiah for them was the son of David, that is, a yet to be born descendant of the family and tribe of David. Jesus is not satisfied with their traditional response because he cites to them a little known verse from Psalm l00: "The Lord says to my Lord: Sit at my right hand until I put your enemies under your feet." This is traditionally a psalm attributed to King David. And Jesus' point is that David is addressing God as the first Lord and the second as the Messiah, so how could David be the father of the Messiah. Jesus did many impressive things and regularly claimed a great authority but he was quite modest when linking himself to God the Father. The only title that Jesus regularly used in self-reference, and it is a strange one, is Son of Man. His followers during his earthly life called him "rabbi" which in English bibles is translated as "Teacher" and "Master." After the Resurrection the Church liked to address Jesus as "Lord." Most Christians agree that the New Testament has got right, more or less, what we know and need to know to conclude that Jesus is the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Savior. But how the New Testament teaches that Jesus is the Son of God is not derived from Jesus' own self-identification. The statement "Jesus is God" occurs no where in the Gospels even though it has often been made into the watchword of Christian orthodoxy. The overwhelming weight of the New Testament way of speaking about Jesus is plainly on the side of distinguishing Jesus from God. Paul's statement may be taken as an apt summary: "FOR US THERE IS ONE GOD, THE FATHER…AND ONE LORD, JESUS CHRIST. (1Cor. 8:6). The honorific of LORD, rather than GOD, was the early Church's preferred title for Jesus the Christ. The sole uncontroverted instance of Jesus himself being named "God" is in doubting Thomas's confession: MY LORD AND MY GOD" addressed to the Risen Lord (John 20:28). Biblical scholars immediately inform us that this is probably a formula from John's own time, not Jesus, made by defiant believers in response to the claim of the Emperor Domitian to be "our Lord and God." Fundamentalist Christians fear that the recurring debates about who is Jesus and what can we really know about him, a process currently given fame or infamy by the long going Jesus Seminar, will weaken and diminish our faith in Jesus Christ as God's bridge of salvation for us. A century ago fundamentalists similarly feared that modern science would demolish the underpinnings of biblical faith. Such did not happen and I suggest that our faith in Jesus Christ does not finally depend about the ongoing search for more knowledge about Jesus. We should certainly welcome that search. Jesus has said: IF YOU CONTINUE IN MY WORD, YOU ARE TRULY MY DISCIPLES; AND YOU WILL KNOW THE TRUTH AND THE TRUTH WILL MAKE YOU FREE. Christian faith always seeks understanding. We want the truth about Jesus. But our faith depends on our belief in Jesus, rather than our knowledge about him. And our faith in Jesus is received from the community of faith and each of us either experiences Jesus as our Lord and God, or we do not. Our confirmands are engaged in a process in which some information, knowledge and perspective about Jesus are being shared. But the key to confirmation is not knowledge but faith. And personal faith arises when anyone accepts what the Church proclaims about Jesus and experiences that proclaimed Lord of the Church as the One who makes all the difference in our lives. Perhaps another way to put this is: The Resurrection of Jesus has always been just about the most debated fact about Jesus. The Church has come down declaring that he was resurrected and that Jesus is alive. The Church came to that decision, not because of facts as such, but because the Church has experienced Jesus as the living Lord of the Church. For individual Christians, like our confirmands, it does not make that much difference how often the Church declares Jesus is alive. The issue for everyone is: Is Jesus alive for you? Jesus in my experience makes the key difference in my life. It is through Jesus that I know that God is an affirming, parental, divine reality that always seeks the best for Gene Preston. That is the grace that Jesus mediates to me. That is why Jesus is the Anointed One, the Saving One for me. I asked our confirmands this past week to write an answer to this question "What is the meaning of baptism?" All the girls agreed that baptism is the forgiveness of their sins. That is quite true and Jesus is experienced as the Savior by tens of millions precisely because it is by trusting Jesus and believing in his promises that they know release from their old selves. Jesus can give every person a fresh start, and then a fresh start again and again. Baptism does wipe clean the bad things in our lives. Just as it commences many new and good things in our lives. Baptism is assurance of the forgiveness of your sins, baptism is further your entrance into new life in Jesus. An emphasis only upon forgiveness of sins may reduce God's love for you to a sort of defensive barrier of divine protection raised up to protect you from evil. But God's love is much more and the fuller meaning of baptism is that it is your entrance into a new life in which more and more you will experience Jesus as alive to you. God takes the offensive with us through baptism. Actually, Jesus never talked much about baptism; there's only Matthew 28:l9 and the instance of his own baptism by John the Baptist. But Jesus did talk constantly about opening the way to new life. For every Jesus reference to baptism there are a hundred of his teachings about the Kingdom of God. The single greatest thing Jesus has done for me, and I hope for you, is to reveal God as the heavenly Father who always seeks the very best for us and who welcomes me right now into His Kingdom so that I can live as a Kingdom believer, a Kingdom worker, a Kingdom blessing. In today's Gospel Jesus shows his knack for personalizing the meaning of faith: He, in effect, reduces the rather complex ten commandments of Moses to just two commandments: love God, love one another. In his first commandment, which hearkens back to the Shema, or teaching in Deut 6:5, known to all Jews, Jesus in effect is summarizing the first four commandments. Those first four call us to honor God as the only divine one, to honor his name, to honor his creation. Jesus sums these commandments up in the single phrase: love God. Then he goes on to summarize the other six commandments, all of which talk about our human relationships: love your neighbors. The way Jesus' summarizes the Law of Moses into the love of God and one another is an example of how Jesus does his saving work by showing God as a force of parent-like goodwill in all the events of one's life. It is Jesus' gift of God as revealed in the New Testament which establishes him in my faith as the Christ, the Messiah, the Anointed One, the Saving One, the Grace of God. I would never have known this except for the Church. It is the Church, which has protected, preserved and tried to live this experience of the loving God. Those folks who say they can know Jesus Christ apart from the Church are as naively crazy as a student of politics claiming he can know the new president of Indonesia without any reference to the written record about him, without any reliance upon what his friends say about him. You young confirmands answered a further question about baptism correctly that the three parties involved in baptism are l) the person seeking baptism 2) the Holy Spirit granting forgiveness of sins and breathing new life into us and 3) and here you all said "the minister." Correct if you are using the minister as shorthand for the Church. It is the Church which is the critical third party in your baptism. Through baptism you enter the church as full members. You have come to experience Jesus as grace through the Church; you join the Church for the purpose of continuing to grow in that grace of God experienced in Jesus. Last Sunday afternoon after church some of us attended the Don Moen concert at the Coliseum. The moment the artist appeared on the stage and the words for the first song of love for Jesus went on the screens, the Coliseum was swept with excitement. Nearly every young person was instantly on their feet, singing about on the opening song lines. It was just like a rock star mounting the stage and giving forth with an all time pop hit known by heart to his legions of adoring fans. The difference, however, is this: the focus of our celebration was not on Mr. Moen or any of the other musicians, greatly appreciated though they are. The excitement, the physical energy, sprang from the deep experience of Jesus as making all the difference in our lives. Jesus is the One! Jesus is the mediator of God's Grace. Jesus is the One who convinces us that God is with us now. Who is Jesus Christ? The One through and with whom we can know the grace of God, that is, that God is always seeking us, affirming us, supporting us.
Pastor Gene Preston
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The Rev. Gene R.Preston14th Floor, Blk 36, Lower Baguio Villa Tel : 25516161 Fax: 25512114E-mail : gpreston@netvigator.com |
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