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11
February 2004
Alpha Talk 2
“Who Is Jesus?”
Jennifer K. Morrow
When you’re here at church, in a class of one
sort or another, and someone asks you a question, Jesus will usually work for an answer. Even
if you’re not sure, make Jesus like the letter “C” on a multiple-choice exam and you’ll have
made the best guess possible. I’ve joked with the youth group about this and now, when Nick or
I ask a question, the blank stares last only as long as it takes one of them to remember our
little joke and yell out “Jesus!” Then we get to have a good laugh. But it’s more than worth a
good laugh. Because if Jesus is the answer to enough questions around here to make that joke
funny, then there must be something to it. That something has been the life and work of the
church since its beginning nearly 2,000 years ago.
But before this little Jewish sect began
meeting and breaking bread together, before Jesus was the answer, he was the question, and
continues to be. Questions of who Jesus is have been on everyone’s lips whose ears have heard
his story: How can this be, since I am a virgin? asks Mary. (Luke 1:34) “What is this? A new
teaching--with authority?” say the crowds who witnessed him heal. (Mark 1) “I need to be
baptized by you, and do you come to me?” asks John the Baptist (Matthew 3:14) “Why does your
teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” ask the Pharisees. (Matthew 9:11) “Who are you
that you claim to have the authority to forgive sins?” (reference) At one point, Jesus turns
the question round to his disciples. “Who do people say the Son of Man is?” And they answered,
“Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the
prophets.” And Jesus said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “You are
the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” (Matthew 16:13-16)
Jesus’ question to his disciples is the one
we’re here to consider this evening. “Who do you say that I am?” Who do you say that Jesus
is? How would you respond, right now? The church’s answer to this question has come and
continues to come in a staggering variety of ways. The struggle to answer this question has
made heretics out of some and saints out of others. This question, in part at least, produced
the church’s great creeds. The two most familiar today are the Nicene Creed and the Apostle’s
Creed. In each of these, the longest section is the paragraph concerning the work and person of
Jesus Christ. And we should also note that the Nicene Creed for example, was not composed until
the year 325 A.D. And so for nearly three centuries after the life and death of Jesus, the
great fathers of the church wrestled with God, with the scriptures, and with each other over
this very question: Who is Jesus? Which, to me, says two things about the answer to that
question: it takes time and it is worth the time it takes. For the last several weeks I’ve
been listening to another very different answer posed by George Frederick Handel some hundred
years ago. From the opening “Comfort, ye my people,” to the final “Worthy is the Lamb,” his
Messiah puts words and music to Peter’s answer long ago. “You are the Messiah, or the Christ,
the Son of the living God.” And what do we do with the reality that the answer to our question
has been behind historic creeds, ugly heresy trials, and magnificent pieces of music? What to
do with this? One place to start is to keep asking the question.
It is popular these days to answer that
question by saying Jesus was a great teacher. This is true, but it is not the church’s answer.
C.S. Lewis says this about the “great teacher” answer: “A man who was merely a man and said the
sort of things that 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 worse¼but let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about his being a great
human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.” (quoted in Gumbel, 32)
C.S. Lewis puts it in his version of a
multiple-choice question. Who is Jesus? A. A Madman; B. Something Worse; C. The Son and
Self-Revelation of God; or D. A Great Human Teacher. And then Lewis says, let me make your job
easier for you. It cannot, under any circumstances, be letter D. And so choosing the answer,
if you accept Lewis’ construct, becomes quite easy. Unless Jesus was lying or crazy, by process
of elimination, Jesus must be the Son of God, God’s self-revelation to the world.
This is what the church claims and indeed, is
kept alive by. And so if Jesus is God’s self-revelation, then where we must begin in examining
our answer is not with the person of Jesus, the Scriptures that contain his story, or even with
the people who have witnessed to his life, but with God. And so, a new question: Who is God?
Karl Barth, arguably the most important Protestant theologian of the twentieth century, claims,
“God is who he is in His work.” In other words, we know who God is what God does. Barth wants
to refrain from needless speculation about God in general and theories of God’s being. So we
know who God is in what God does. And what God does is reveal Godself in Jesus Christ. And how
God reveals Godself in Jesus Christ is by two specific actions: the Incarnation and
Resurrection. These truths are the beginning and end and beginning of the good news we call the
gospel. These are Christmas and Easter. Tonight we will look more closely at the Incarnation,
and next week we will consider the Resurrection.
Incarnation. It refers to the church’s claim
that God has come to earth to dwell among us, to make a home with us most fully, but not only,
in the person of Jesus Christ. Now is the point at which it becomes tempting to either accept
or reject this as a doctrine. Either you buy it or you don’t. Fortunately, and exceedingly so,
this temptation is not actually an option. Because, fundamentally, the Incarnation is not a
doctrine but the action of God. And that action cannot be negated by one’s rejection of it. It
is true whether we believe it or not. God has acted and there’s not a thing we can do about
it. And so if the Incarnation has been passed off to you up to this point in your life as some
doctrine to be believed, a dogma to which you are to ascribe if you are to call yourself a
Christian, then I would certainly understand if you were not interested in calling yourself a
Christian. If Christianity is just a series of beliefs to hold like a hand of cards then I
think I would prefer a series of beliefs that said nothing of loving my neighbor and didn’t ask
me to wake up nearly as early on Sunday morning. How annoying. How boring. But it’s not
boring, Christianity. Javier spoke about that last week. And Christianity isn’t boring because
it isn’t a set of principles or rules, but rather a way of life. And not just air in your lungs
blood in your veins life, but a life bigger than anatomy and physiology. A life that matters.
And what the Incarnation says, at its core,
it not so much that Jesus was born in 4 A.D. to a virgin named Mary, although those things may
be both interesting and true. But what incarnation is is right there in the word, in carne, in
the flesh. The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. At the end of To Kill A
Mockingbird Atticus says to Scout that to understand other people the secret is to “put on
someone else’s skin and walk around awhile.” This is what God did. God came to dwell with us
in the person of Jesus Christ and thereby dwells with us still, very truly. And so back to
Barth for a moment. If this action of Incarnation is God’s self-revelation, then what about God
is being revealed? First, we must understand that the Incarnation is an act of relationship.
It is the initiation of relationship with us, God’s creation. God risks it all for us by
putting on flesh and vulnerability just to be near us. And so what is revealed to us in the
Incarnation is that God loves.
And there is the answer to our question. Who
is God? God loves. That is who God is. And Who is Jesus? Jesus is God’s loving. And what is
the Incarnation? It is God’s making the first move in Jesus Christ. And so how do we respond,
what do we do with what all that is being revealed?
We follow God’s lead and we act, we live.
The Incarnation is not something so much to be believed as something to be trusted and
experienced. Christians are not called to believe in it, but rather invited to participate in
it; that’s why it’s a way of life. Our lives are filled with meaning because they are filled
with God. “Earth is crammed with heaven,” says poet Elizabeth Barrett Browning, “And every
common bush afire with God. But only he who sees takes off his shoes.” And so, when
considering the incarnation, what we are called to do is not so much believe, as to see.
The best story I know about seeing is the
story of the Good Samaritan. It’s one of the most familiar of Jesus’ parables. Everyone has at
least heard the expression, if not the story of the Good Samaritan. But what was it that made
the Samaritan so darn good? What is it that the Samaritan did that the other characters in the
story did not do?
The story goes that a man was beaten up and
robbed along the road from Jerusalem to Jericho. I have read that this road was not exactly
easy street. It was a twisting, stony, narrow trail with a different band of thieves around
every corner. Anyway, this guy gets left for dead along the side of this treacherous stretch
and a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan come walking by. Sounds like we should be waiting for a
punch line. But alas, no punch line, only more details. The priest approaches the
all-too-common sight of the wounded man, glancing at the body for only a moment he passes by. A
little later, a Levite, or Jewish temple official, comes upon the man in the road. Careful to
take only a quick look, he too hurries on his way. He was no fool. He had heard that bands of
robbers who worked the Jericho road often sent one of their own to pose as a wounded traveler.
Picking up his pace, the Levite would not be so tricked. Finally, Jesus notes that a Samaritan
came near the man. He had mercy on the traveler. He helped him, rescued him from certain
death. In all these the Samaritan responded differently than the priest or the Levite. But
before he could care for, carry, salve or save the wounded man, the Samaritan had to see him.
Thomas Merton recalls the following
experience in his writings,
“In Louisville, at the corner of Fourth and
Walnut, in the center of the shopping district, I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization
that I loved all those people, that they were mine and I theirs, that we could not be alien to
one another even though we were total strangers. Then it was as if I suddenly saw the secret
beauty of their hearts…the person that each one is in God’s eyes. If only they could all see
themselves as they really are. If only we could see each other that way all the time.” (Merton,
144-145)
The kind of sight that the Samaritan
possessed on the road to Jericho and which Thomas Merton possessed at the corner of Fourth and
Walnut streets, or maybe better put, the kind of sight that possessed them is risky, inviting
vulnerability, and just really hard. But it is also the kind of sight that is possible because
God has acted in the Incarnation.
I’ve been to the corner of Fourth and Walnut
streets in Louisville. Fourth is still Fourth. Walnut is now called Muhammad Ali Boulevard.
Near their intersection stands a plaque. On the plaque is the story of Thomas Merton’s
encounter there. Just down the street from the plaque is a bench. One day as I walked down the
sidewalk I noticed the bench. And I noticed the bench because there was a man sitting on it.
He was big, dirty, black, poor, and likely hungry. I was small, clean, white, rich, and
content. I saw him sitting there several feet before I reached the bench. The first glance was
all I allowed myself. As I passed by him I fixed my gaze on the buildings ahead, or the cars,
or the bus stop--I really don’t remember exactly what I did look at. I just remember that I
didn’t look at him. And I didn’t look at him because I knew if I did I would no longer be able
to pass by; because, if I looked at him--really looked at him--I risked seeing the hunger or
sadness or loneliness or humanness in his eyes. And to see those things would have made me
vulnerable to the point of opening my wallet, my afternoon, or my words to him. Despite the
fact that this happened a few years ago it did not occur to me until I wrote that I had managed
this display of blindness on the very sidewalk where Thomas Merton discovered true sight.
True sight is our response to the
Incarnation. It makes life matter. It makes a stranger on a bench human; more than that, God.
“Then the king will say to those at his right
hand, ‘Come, you that are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the
foundation of the world; for I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me
drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you gave me clothing. I was sick
and you took care of me, I was in prison and you visited me.’ Then the righteous will answer
him, ‘Lord, when was it that we saw you hungry and gave you food, or thirsty and gave you
something to drink? And when was it that we saw you a stranger and welcomed you, or naked and
gave you clothing? And when was it that we saw you sick or in prison and visited you?’ And the
king will answer them, ‘Truly I tell you, just as you did it to one of the least of these who
are members of my family, you did it to me.’” (Matthew 25:34-40)
Frederick Buechner says this of the
Incarnation: “It is untheological. It’s unsophisticated. It is undignified. But according to
Christianity, it is the way things are.” God came among us in the person of Jesus Christ and is
still here. The reality of the incarnation is that God is not absent. God is not dead. God is
living and present and all around and among us. God was in a baby boy in a stable. God was at
the corner of Fourth and Walnut Street. God is here. And who is God? God loves. Who is
Jesus? He is God whispering to us, “Just open your eyes. I love you. You’ll see.”
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