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NRSVJohn 17: 1-6 After Jesus had
spoken these words, he looked up to heaven and said, ‘Father, the hour has
come; glorify your Son so that the Son may glorify you, 2since
you have given him authority over all people, to give eternal life to all
whom you have given him. 3And this is eternal life, that they
may know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom you have sent. 4I
glorified you on earth by finishing the work that you gave me to do. 5So
now, Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had in your
presence before the world existed. 6 ‘I have made your name
known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave
them to me, and they have kept your word.
NRSVMatthew 28: 18-20
And Jesus came and said to them, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been
given to me. 19Go therefore and make disciples of all nations,
baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, 20and
teaching them to obey everything that I have commanded you. And remember, I am
with you always, to the end of the age.’
Many years ago there was a man who loved ants. He would
often take broken up crackers and bread and place it next the ant trails in
front of his house. He would even spend time talking to the ants even though he
quickly realized that they could not understand him. His love for them was so
great that one day he had a great idea. He would become an ant and tell them
about himself and his love for them. So he did. He became that thing that he
loved so much and he spent his time telling the other ants about himself, the
man who loved them and fed them. They asked him how he knew all this stuff and
he shared that he was indeed the man who now was an ant so that he could share
his love for them. This story is an interesting fable about ants and a man who
loved them. But most of you know that it has a deeper meaning especially for
those of us who love God and follow God made human.
All too often we get hung up on the story of Jesus, the
great healer and the great miracle worker. But who exactly was Jesus and why do
we follow or need to follow this man from Nazareth. Nazareth is a short
distance from the Sea of Galilee. In Jesus day it would have been an area where
farming was probably the main vocation though we believe that Jesus grew up as
a Carpenter’s son, meaning He likely learned that trade from Joseph, His human
father. So who was this man who people follow two thousand plus years later?
Who is this man who people believe to be the Son of God? How is it that a man
could walk this earth for a short thirty-three years and a woman would devout
her whole life to the sick and dying in India in His name? Who is this Jesus
that gifted musicians would compose song after song in His name?
In “One Solitary Life” Dr. James Frances wrote: “All the
armies that ever marched, all the navies that were ever built; all the
parliaments that ever sat and all the kings that have ever reigned, PUT
TOGETHER, have not affected the life of man upon this earth as powerfully as
has that one solitary life of Jesus Christ.”
We begin to shape our understanding around what we believe.
I had a professor once who proclaimed that all we know about Jesus is a myth, a
series of stories that have been passed down for generations. What is the truth
of what we read and hear about Jesus? Beginning with His ministry we find that
He shaped a very different theology than that of His day. To be a Jew in the
first century was hard. It was difficult and downright improbable that any
normal Jew could have even lived up the code of Israel. You had to wear certain
things at certain times, eat your meals in certain ways and only have certain
kinds of food, and you had to abide by the rules of living that the Jewish
leadership harped on day after day. It began with the Ten Commandments or the
Law. But that was never good enough. I mean you have to do the very best for
God? Right? God gave us instructions, communicated with us through the
Prophets, who by the way, no-one really listened to anyway. And so we became
the ants to God. Meanwhile God is constantly trying to get our attention, get
us to love God in return and to love our neighbors instead of all that
bickering, greed and hate that permeated the world. So young Jesus grew up
seeing greed and envy, mistreatment and poverty and angry people all around
Him. He saw the greed of the tax collectors and the struggles of the common
family. He saw the injustice of slavery and the wrath of Rome. And from that
upbringing He began to preach.
Jesus is a teacher. He taught us how to live our lives with
the Sermon on the Mount. If we did nothing else but follow His instruction as
He set it forth in that Sermon, we would lead productive, spiritual and good
Christian lives. Jesus set before us a standard of loving God with all our
heart, mind and soul and loving our neighbor in the same way. When asked in
Matthew 22 what is the greatest commandment, He did not repeat the Ten
Commandments or issue a new proclamation, rather He simply said the Shema,
listed in Deuteronomy 6:4: Love the Lord with all your heart, all your mind and
all your soul. Then if that were not enough and it isn’t, Jesus reminds us of
the rules set in Leviticus for interacting with those around us, when He said,
Love your neighbor in the same way.
Jesus as Spiritual Leader. Jesus taught us to pray. Pure
and simple. Whenever Jesus was overwhelmed, whenever He needed guidance on what
to do or where to go next, Jesus went to God in prayer. If we simply follow His
example, then we can imitate His very nature perfectly. Prayer is the way we
communicate with God just as Jesus did. Prayer allows us to share our concerns,
our hurts, our desires and our love with God. God will answer prayer yes, no
and in God’s time, but God will always answer. If there is no prayer, then why
would we expect an answer. Jesus even teaches us how to pray in Matthew chapter
6.
Jesus as Servant Leader. Jesus showed us what it means to
love your neighbor by reaching out to His neighbors. Who were His neighbors?
Everyone He encountered. Jesus showed us with the washing of the feet in John
chapter 13 that in order to lead one must be willing to serve. I think of all
the people who have been my superiors, the ones who were willing to lead by
example were always the easiest to follow. Jesus reached out to the poor, the
hungry and those in need. He reached out to those who were sick and those who
could not do for themselves. He healed the blind, healed the bleeding and stood
between those who would oppress and those being oppressed.
Jesus as a redeeming relationship restorer. You have heard
me say that not one single healing miracle of Jesus was for physical healing
alone. Jesus was focused on bringing people back into relationship.
Relationship with God first and foremost and then relationship with community.
Jesus desire was that people had a chance. In fact, He was great at second
chances. Jesus would allow the blind to see, the bleeding to stop, hands to be
regenerated and so on so that folk like you and me could see the power of God
and return in relationship to God. Jesus healed the Lepers because they were
seen as the greatest of the outcast and to the people of Israel, a belief, that
the Lepers were the curse from God for their turning their back on God. Each
healing reminded the people God was there for them and God loved them as we too
are loved by God.
Jesus as a radical political adversary. Many miss this
point. Jesus stood against the political powers of His day as I suspect He
would stand against the political powers of today. Jesus was in your face in
His style of telling the Jewish leadership when He thought them out of line
with the Word of God. It was not unusual in the New Testament Gospels to find
Jesus in argument with the Sanhedrin, the Sadducees and Pharisees about how to
live a Godly life. Jesus was very critical of the hypocrisy of the religious
leaders of His time. He said they observed the letter of the law, but defiled
the spirit of living lives of greed and sin.
Jesus as a social injustice flag carrier. Jesus raised up
the social injustices of His day. They included the rights of women, the rights
of the poor, and the rights of the sick. He stood with the woman about to be
stoned in John 8:7. Notice in the story the man is not condemned, only the
woman. He talked with the Samaritan Woman at the well, something a good devout
Jewish man would never do. Samaritan’s were the enemy, they were to be feared
and shunned. Jesus stood with her against racism and bigotry and gender bias.
Jesus shared parables and story after story about how we are to stand against
social injustice.
Jesus as the Lamb of God. Finally, Jesus was the Lamb of
God. What does it mean to be the Lamb of God? It means that the Son of God, the
one brought into the world so that the ants of the world could understand the
true love of the one feeding them, would get to meet God face to face, on their
terms. God came into the world in the flesh that we might share love with one
another, that we might see perfection in motion and we might learn from that
example. But in order that we truly would understand, God needed to sacrifice
everything in order to show us what true love looks like. Jesus came to be the
lamb of God, to become the lamb of Yom Kippur, the day of atonement when all
the sins of the world were placed on the sacrificial lamb and sent into the
wilderness to be slaughtered. In this case the wilderness is us and we are the
slaughterers.
Jesus! Just a man? Wholly Divine? The answer to both
questions is yes. But Jesus was sent to us that we might all live, freely and
secure in the knowledge of eternal life. For God so loved the world…
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