Proper 16-A (8/24/08)   Exodus 1:8—2:10; Rom 12:1-8; Mt 16:13-20

Christ the King, Oshtemo                                             Fr. Joseph Neiman

Theme: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16:15)

Who is Jesus? Who is Jesus to you? Any preacher will tell you behind this narrative from the Gospel of Matthew lies the existential question addressed to each one of us: “Who do you say that I am?” (Mt 16:15). Our answer makes us disciples of Jesus, Christians.

Now we live in a very religious culture, as contemporary research from the Pew Forum would indicate, although our religious beliefs and values do not automatically link with organized religion, that is, with active participation in a church. Our culture is also fascinated with Jesus. Witness the fact that each year at Christmas and Easter, we are apt to find a major article in Time or Newsweek explaining the current level of research about Jesus underway. Witness also the great interest in Dan Brown, The DaVinci Code, both the book and the movie, and we will see similar when his other book, Angels and Demons, becomes a movie later this year. Then there was the massive audience for Mel Gibson’s, The Passion of the Christ.

Most Americans could probably agree with the statement by Professor Robert Van Voorst from Western Theological Seminary in Holland that “Jesus of Nazareth is arguably the most influential person in history”[1] But what do we know about Jesus? Who is he really?

The first disciples of Jesus had the same problem after the resurrection and ascension, and as they invited others to become disciples, they developed baptismal creeds which persons affirmed before being baptized. The Apostles Creed, which was developed out of these very early statements of faith in the first and second century, states the basic historical facts about Jesus as represented in the New Testament: I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. He was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. He suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died and was buried. He descended to the dead. On the third day he rose again. He ascended into heaven, and is seated at the right hand of the Father. He will come again to judge the living and the dead” (BCP p. 120).

Bart Ehrman, whose popular book, Misquoting Jesus (Harper 2005), was a runaway best seller a few years ago, describes in an earlier and more scholarly book, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture (Oxford 1993), the great diversity of answers given to the question, who is Jesus, in the second and third centuries. He says: “Some Christians believed that Christ was somehow both a man and God; others said that he was a man but not God; others claimed that he was God but not a man; others insisted that he was a man who had been temporarily inhabited by God. Some Christians believed that Christ’s death brought about the salvation of the world; others claimed that his death had no bearing on salvation; yet others alleged that he never even died.”[2] So it should not be surprising that people today, even Christians, have vastly differing views of who is Jesus in this 21^st century. Many of these early answers become “heresies” once the Church developed more clearly defined answers, which we call dogmas.

In the year 325, the Roman Emperor Constantine convened the Council of Nicea to provide an opportunity for the Bishops to arrive as some consensus about who is Jesus given the great diversity of opinions. Their definition, enlarged and affirmed in the First Council of Constantinople in 381, can be found now in what we call the Nicene Creed, which we will pray in a few moments. Notice the expansion from the Apostles Creed:

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
     the only Son of God,
     eternally begotten of the Father,
     God from God, Light from Light,
     true God from true God,
     begotten, not made,
     of one Being with the Father.
     Through Him all things were made.
     For us and for our salvation
          He came down from heaven:
     by the power of the Holy Spirit
          He became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,
          and was made man.
     For our sake He was crucified under Pontius Pilate;
     He suffered death and was buried.
     On the third day He rose again
          in accordance with the Scriptures;
     He ascended into heaven
          and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
     He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
          and His kingdom will have no end.

All the additions resulted from debates about the identity of Jesus and his role in relationship to us in God’s will for humanity and the earth.

The most definitive or dogmatic answer, if you will, came later when the Church gathered in the Council of Chalcedon in 451. You can read that definition in the back of your Prayer Book on page 864. Catechisms and various creed developed since then generally incorporate this teaching.

Going back to Matthew’s Gospel this morning, it is important to note that the question, Who do you say that I am? follows shortly after the narratives we heard the past two weeks: the sharing of the loaves and fishes (Mt 14:13-21), and the walking on water (Mt 14:22-35). These were spectacular events, and so Matthew tells us that the people “brought all who were sick to Jesus, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed” (Mt 14:34-36).  If you had been there, wouldn’t you believe and have an answer, perhaps, like Peter’s: “You are the Messiah, the son of the living God” (Mt 16:16). You would clearly be impressed.

For centuries the accounts of the miracles in the New Testament Gospels were seen as proofs concerning the nature of Jesus and the teachings of the Church. But with the Renaissance in the 14^th century, with the discovery of ancient manuscripts and the renewed interest in the Greek and Latin scholars, came an interest in history and the beginning of a critical analysis of the New Testament. This was followed, of course, by the Reformation in the 16^th century in which the study of the New Testament in German and English led scholars to differing interpretations and thus differing answers on who is Jesus and especially what Jesus has to do with us.

Then came the era known as the Enlightenment or Modernity in which scholars sought with the development of reason and the scientific method to separate the historical Jesus from the dogmatic Jesus taught by the Church. This led to “the quest for the historical Jesus” using the tools of history, a quest which is still underway today as many popular books attest.

I am sure you have found this mini-survey of history fascinating, but I have tried to show you that the answers to the question, who is Jesus, have gone through immense variety and controversy in generation after generation, and still are underway today. Some continue to stress the divine Jesus who knows all things and can do all things, other stress the human Jesus who taught, healed and was crucified, perhaps as a social reformer.

In our own history, Thomas Jefferson, put together a book popularly called, the Jefferson Bible. The full title was: The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth. In it, he deleted all the supernatural accounts from the Gospels and left the essential teachings of Jesus. He described his purpose in a letter to John Adams in 1813: “There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man.”[3]

So what about you? When you pray, what is your image of the Lord to whom you are praying? If you close your eyes, and focus: What does Jesus look like? How would you describe him? The answer is vitally important because that relationship with the risen Lord is the basis of faith and what makes Christianity, Christianity.  As Hans Kung put it: “If first of all we leave aside everything that has been accumulated and piled up in the history of Christianity in churches, theologies, legal ordinances, spiritualities, popular religion, at the origin of Christianity we find nothing but a person…. So Christianity does not stand or fall by an impersonal idea, an abstract principle, a universal norm, a purely conceptual system. Unlike some other religions, Christianity stands or falls by a concrete person, who represents a cause, a whole way of life: Jesus of Nazareth.”[4]

It is easy to create a Jesus of our own liking. We can answer the question by describing the Jesus we would like to have. Some might see him as the “great care bear in the sky,” the one who rescues us when we pray from the troubles we have created for ourselves by our decisions or from the troubles others impose upon us. It is easy to conceive of a gentle, loving Jesus, who looks a lot like whatever handsome man we can envision. But Jesus was a Jew of first century Palestine, and he would not have been crucified if he was simply a gentle, loving man. Unless we have an image of Jesus, the Jesus rooted in history, we pray to an illusion, a self created Christ.

For our homework this week (I give homework and let the good Lord do the testing to see if you learned anything). I suggest there is a way for you to give the best answer for who is Jesus. That answer can come from letting the risen Lord tell you who he is in what is called “centering prayer”. Centering prayer is a prayer without words, a prayer of entering into the silence of our hearts, God’s favorite chapel, and letting the risen Lord speak to our depths through the Holy Spirit. God is present in us as well as beyond us.

The method is simple: sit in a comfortable chair, close your eyes, enter into silence, and to keep your mind from rambling and working on some activity or project, pick a small prayer word, like “love” or “Jesus” or “peace” and use that word as an anchor to pull you back from any stream of thoughts which start to distract you so you can be fully present to the presence of the Lord in the silence. We seek to shut off our thoughts and be present to the Lord who will “reveal” himself to us (Jn 14:20-21).

It is profoundly simple but also simply profound. After learning this approach to prayer – it takes practice – you may find it restorative, or provocative, or transforming – various outcomes. It allows the good Lord to speak to us in the depths of our heart and soul with or without words.

In addition, to gain historical images of Jesus, read the Gospel of Matthew all the way through. Try to grasp how Matthew presents Jesus. What is Matthew’s answer to who is Jesus?  As St. Paul wrote to the Romans: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your minds so that you may discern what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God” for you and for all humanity, and for the earth itself, which we seek as we pray, “your kingdom come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

There are many other books available at this time telling us about the historical Jesus, but the fact that they cannot come up with a clear and consistent consensus means there is still much to be done in answering the question in the quest for the historical Jesus. But we each can and need to answer it ourselves.  So who is Jesus? He will tell you if you open your heart to him in prayer and if you renew your mind with reflection on the Gospel of Matthew this week.

God bless you and keep you this day and always. And remember that the good Lord loves you more that you can ask for or even imagine. Do you believe that?