This
morning I am going to speak to you from the heart about Jesus. Most Sundays I speak passionately with you
about the love of God in Jesus Christ: I
get excited and fervently encourage you to open your hearts and lives to the
Lord in new and daring ways. I usually try to give you a lot of background and
theological context, too so that there is both substance and gravitas to our
conversation.
As
most of you know, I have a hard time with the way our tradition has been passed
on to us in the 21st century:
· Sometimes it has been shared with a hell fire
and brimstone fear-mongering. Other times, it has been presented like an
abstract, intellectual book report based upon “I’m ok, you’re ok” platitudes.
And currently there is a fascination with sloppy agape generalities making the
rounds that is all the rage.
· But from my perspective, when it comes to the
life, death and resurrection of Jesus neither shame nor sentimentality cuts it:
a religion built upon a degrading fear is just as destructive as a spirituality
of disembodied thinking or a sappy, pastel piety.
Small
wonder that today’s gospel from St. John takes pain to tell us:
This
is how much God loved the world: He gave
his Son, his one and only Son. And this
is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in him, anyone can have
a whole and lasting life. God didn't go to all the trouble of sending his Son
merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came
to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in him is acquitted.
Did
you hear that – and I mean really hear that – in a deep way?
· God sent Christ into the world so that NO ONE
need be destroyed: a word of hope.
· God did not go to all the trouble of sending his
Son merely to point and accusing finger – telling us over and over again how
bad we are – that’s a word of both compassionate judgment and grace.
· No, Christ came to offer healing and hope to
humanity so that the world might be put right again: that’s word of transformation – social,
spiritual, political and personal transformation.
The
Statement of Faith in the United Church of Christ puts it like this: In Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our
crucified and risen Lord, God has come to us and shared our common lot,
conquering sin and death and reconciling the whole world to himself.
So
let me share some insights of the heart with you about Jesus because I don’t
believe that people take up the Cross of discipleship because of the
facts. Eugene Peterson put it like this
– and because it corresponds so profoundly with my own experience – let me
quote it to you:
One
day… after constructing my teaching ministry as a kind of min-university in which
I was the resident professor… I had a shock of recognition. I saw that church was really a worship center
– and I wasn’t prepared for this. Nearly all of my preparation for being a
pastor had taken place in a classroom, with chapels and sanctuaries ancillary
to it. But the people I was now living with were coming – with centuries of
validating precedence – not to get more facts on the Philistines and Pharisees
but to pray. They were hungering to grow
in Christ, not bone up for an examination in dogmatics. So I began to
comprehend the obvious: that the central and shaping language of the church’s
life has always been its prayer language.
So
here’s what I have come to know and experience about Jesus – and let me use the
outline of the Statement of Faith just to give my thoughts some shape and
order, ok?
· First, Jesus is both the man of Nazareth and
Christ.
· Second, he is our crucified and risen Lord.
· And third he has come to us from God to show us
as much of God as we can comprehend – taking upon himself our sorrow and
suffering – as well as offering us all a way through sin and death to intimacy
with God.
It helps me trust God to know that
Jesus lived in a time and a place called Nazareth. That means he was not a
mythological character – or an angel – or one of the gods come down from the
mountains to play with us. Jesus was
real. His life was real and his death
was real, too and that helps me trust that his resurrection was real.
In
this I find myself making a connection with Christ as comforter because knowing
that he was from Nazareth tells me a few other things, too. It tells me that he
was born to a common working man and woman who lived a life of faith under
Roman occupation. That is, he grew up in an ordinary family – not a palace –
and struggled to make his love of God real in an oppressive context. So when I find myself having doubts – and
fears – and trouble being faithful, I sense that I’m not alone: Jesus had a tough time making sense of faith,
too. What’s more, his life was a whole
lot harder than mine.
Let’s
face it: Nazareth was NOT considered to be a great neighborhood, ok? One of the disciples who would later follow
Jesus, Nathaniel, asked his brother Philip when Philip was trying to check
Jesus out: “Can anything good come out
of Nazareth?”
· You see, Nazareth is in the northern most
section of Israel – far from the spiritual center of Jerusalem – and was
considered a poor country cousin to the capital.
· You might think of it the way folks down South
in the Bible Belt think of the great Commonwealth of Massachusetts, ok?
Today
it is also known as the Arab capital of Israel given its majority Muslim
population. So to name our Lord as one who hails from 1st century
Nazareth helps me connect my struggles of faith with his. Jesus knew the tension of being from the
periphery rather than from the heartland.
He lived through the problem of his patrimony, too – people called him
“bastard” and smirked saying he was “Mary’s son” not the first born of Joseph –
having to find peace in his shame. And
that doesn’t even touch what it meant to grow-up under the boot heel of a hated
occupation invasion army.
All
of this strengthens my intimacy with Christ as Comforter: when he invites “all ye who are tired and
heavy laden to come and follow so that I can give you rest,” I trust him: he’s been there before – with heavier burdens
than mine.“Peace, peace I leave you,” he told his disciples. “Not the peace of the world by my peace – a
deeper peace – a time-tested and intimate peace that is born of God.”
And
I need that comfort, so here’s one more insight I hold close knowing Jesus is
the man of Nazareth… Do you recall what Amy-Jill Levine told us about the
stable when she visited with us back in December? How does the Christmas story go… the Holy
Family had to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem and there was no room for them
at the inn? Sometimes this story is
taken in a direction to talk about the tough conditions the Lord was born into
– the stable is often called a cave or a barn – and it is toughened up for
shock value.
·
But it is more likely that this stable was the
first floor shelter for the animals of the inn-keeper – a place where they were
kept warm and safe in the night – and the manger was likely a trough where the
animals were fed.
·
So placing Jesus – the baby of Nazareth into a
feeding trough before he becomes the man of Nazareth – suggests that this child
when he matures will become food for the world, yes? How did he put it in John’s gospel: I am the bread of life broken for the world?
And
so we say seven little words – IN JESUS CHRIST, THE MAN OF NAZARETH – and draw
comfort from Christ Jesus. (Let me pause and see if you have any
questions or thoughts so far, ok?)
But
comfort is only half of the equation of faith: Christ also calls us to the Cross. In
Jesus Christ, the man of Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord, God comes to
us… and there are two thoughts I want to share with you about the Cross of
Jesus Christ: first, it speaks to us
about the way we engage injustice – with compassion, not hatred – in peace, not
violence; and second, the Cross teaches us that the way to be filled with God’s
grace is to emptied of ourselves.
·
You know, of course, that the Cross was a Roman
tool capital punishment, right? It was
the electric chair – or lethal injection – of the day. (Can you imagine wearing a little electric
chair or syringe around your neck as a sign of faith?)
·
As a public form of execution, it was designed
to bring shame and excruciating pain to the traitors and criminals who
experience its death and fear and obedience to the people living under Roman
occupation.
At
our best, our faith tradition does not hide from the horror of the Cross, in
the time of Jesus or in our own time. But we used to… look around you. Do you
see anything that speaks of the horror of the Cross here?As much as I love the
beauty of this Sanctuary – and I do – and as much as I cherish our Pilgrim
tradition – and I do – we went through a period of time when we ran away from a
theology of the cross. We wanted a
religion of power – and beauty – and prestige – a religion the Protestant
theologian, Martin Luther, called a theology of glory not a theology of the
Cross. We wanted to be in charge – to
make the rules – to be the winners.
So
we turned our back on the Cross – made it pretty – put it on a pedestal rather
than taught and lived that the Cross is how we best know about God. There isn’t time to unpack this fully – we’ll
do that at another time – but let me be clear:
· A theology of glory emphasizes our ability to
reason and learn and work things out. It
posits that if we just study something long enough – help everyone become
enlightened – we can solve most of our human problems.
· It is arrogant and naïve all at the same time,
because, of course we can have all the education, wealth, resources and
enlightenment you can own and we will still be sinful, yes?
Think
of Rome: they were at the apex of civilization and they crucified Jesus. Think
of pre-war Germany: they were the zenith
of theological, educational and philosophical wisdom and they brought 6 million
Jews and nearly as many trade unionists, mentally challenged children and
gypsies to the Cross of the gas chambers.
Think of the pastor who was at the heart of building this sweet
Sanctuary: with all the wisdom and
reason of his age, he still insisted that Black members sit in the balcony and
his wife refused to share a common cup at Holy Communion with those who were
inferior – especially people of color.
So
let’s be clear: St. Paul was right when
he taught us that “All have sinned and fallen short of the grace of God,”
yes? All of us – the elites and the low
life’s – the power-brokers of industry and the addicts – those who sleep in a
king-sized bed and those who find shelter in cardboard on the street. All of us have sinned and fallen short of the
glory of God. And the Cross makes that
clear…
In
the Cross we can’t fake it: the Cross shows us Christ’s suffering in hunger and
exploitation – in war and race hatred – in misogyny and racism. The Cross
teaches us that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And so we
say: In Jesus Christ, the man Nazareth, our crucified and risen Lord… God
has met us and shared our common lot.
And
here’s the good news: not only does the
Cross expose our sin and the sins of the world, but we can also take our
sin and hang it on the Cross. If we own
our arrogance – accept and embrace our naiveté – and complicity and all the
rest, we can put it on the Cross with Christ.
And as we empty ourselves by faith, Jesus takes our sins and transforms
them. Heals them – fills them with God’s light – and redeems them.
The
Apostle Paul put it like this: It
wasn't so long ago that you were mired in that old stagnant life of sin. You
let the world, which doesn't know the first thing about living, tell you how to
live. You filled your lungs with polluted unbelief, and then exhaled
disobedience. We all did it, all of us doing what we felt like doing, when we
felt like doing it, all of us in the same boat. It's a wonder God didn't lose
his temper and do away with the whole lot of us. Instead, immense in mercy and
with an incredible love, he embraced us. He took our sin-dead lives and made us
alive in Christ. He did all this on his own, with no help from us! Then he
picked us up and set us down in highest heaven in company with Jesus, our
Messiah.
And
here’s how I know this is true: Jesus
did this for me. It isn’t just something
I’ve read about or been told, it is part of what lives inside me today. When I
ran out of gas – used up all my tricks and wisdom and sophistication – I was
exhausted with life. I hated myself – I
detested the church – I wanted to run away from my wife and family and hide in
all the shame and filth I felt inside.
· I won’t bore you with the details just to say
that I got to a place where I couldn’t do anything anymore: I couldn’t love, I couldn’t preach, I
couldn’t face myself or anyone that mattered.
· So after a few highly unsuccessful attempts to
run away and distract myself in the unhealthiest ways possible, I thought: Alright, goddamn it let’s see if Jesus can
save me.
· I pleaded with him on the Cross – I screamed at
him in my fear and guilt – I argued with him through countless nights and hated
his silence.
But
he took it all – all my bile and venom – all my fear and shame. And when I had
emptied myself and owned who I had become, he came to me very quietly and
said: are you through now? Are you tired? Heavy laden? Come to me and I will give you
rest – and he did. And he hasn’t quit –
on me – or on you. And that, beloved, is
the good news for today.
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