February 21, 2016
Dr. Thomas J. Pace
Start Here: Who is Jesus Christ?
Luke 9:18-24
Today’s lesson comes from the Gospel of Luke: 9-18-24: Once when Jesuswas praying alone, with only the disciples near him, he asked them, “Who do the crowds say that I am?”They answered, “John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.”He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Peter answered, “The Messiah of God.” He sternly ordered and commanded them not to tell anyone, saying, “The Son of Man must undergo great suffering, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”
Then he said to them all, “If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will save it.
I was on a plane a few months ago and was sitting next to a woman. I was working on my sermon and had a little pocket Bible that I had out. And the woman I was sitting next to was from someplace else, Eastern descent of some sort. I don’t know where. It’s interesting, she never really told me that. She told me she lives near Chicago.
But in the midst of it she was watching me, and she said, “Are you a Christian?” And I said, “Yes, I’m a pastor, and yes, I’m a Christian.” She said, “Tell me about it.”
I thought, “Tell you about what?” You know you have those moments where you think, “I’m supposed to have been preparing for this my whole life, and now it’s come, and I’m stuck. I’ve got nothing to say.”
I stumbled through something, I can’t remember what, but it turns it out that she’s a practicing, very faithful Christian, and I think she was just messing with me, just like this is a test, it’s only a test.
We had a good conversation but it does occur me it’s hard to say, “What does it mean to follow Jesus? What does it mean to be a Christian?” And that’s what I want to talk about today.
Let’s pray. God, open us up. Open our eyes that we might see, our ears that we might hear, open our hearts, God, that we might feel. And then, O Lord, open our hands that we might serve. Amen.
I want to take a few minutes as we head into this to talk to you a little about the Apostles’ Creed. We didn’t have time last week when we began with Holy Communion as we began this Lenten season.
Early in the life of the church, back in the first century, and into the second century, the early Christians when they would become converts to the faith would be trained the 40 days plus Sundays just before Easter. There are still some churches that do that today. So for those 40 days plus Sundays which we now call Lent they would be trained in the doctrines of the faith, then on Easter Sunday they’d be baptized and brought into the church. Until that time, in fact if you go and look at the ruins of Byzantine churches from the 2nd and 3rd centuries, you’ll see that there is an inner court where they worshipped and then there’s an outer kind of court where those who had not yet been baptized would come and watch the services, participate in the services, but across a little wall with windows in it.
What would they use to train? Think about this. There’s no Bible yet. So they had the letters of Paul and the Gospels maybe are sort of circulating, but they have not been codified yet. They had not been put into a Scripture yet that the church has said, “This is what we believe.” And they would be trained using what they called the Old Roman Symbol. This is in your outline if you want to follow. The Old Roman Symbol is the precursor to the Apostles’ Creed. It’s very much like the Apostles’ Creed, though it’s a little shorter. It’s basically the same thing. And the Old Roman Symbol they would learn this, and then on Easter Sunday they would confess their faith using those phrases. So for example in 1 Timothy Paul’s writing to Timothy and he says, “I urge you to hold fast to the confession of faith you made in front of many witnesses.” The scholars believe he’s talking about this statement that says, “I believe in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit” Those same words we say in the Apostles’ Creed would have been the words that Timothy would have said at the moment of his conversion when he professed the faith as a young person.
Romans speak of the “form of doctrine.” It encourages the Romans to hold fast to the “form of doctrine” that they had been given. That “form of doctrine” is this old Roman Symbol where they said, “This is what we believe.”
So it’s one of the reasons we say the Apostles’ Creed here almost every Sunday. It’s because we want to reinforce that this is the core teaching that Christians have believed for twenty centuries.
Note that it has three parts. The first line is “I believe in God the Father…” The second line is the longest and the heaviest, and that should say something to you about what matters most in the Christian faith. “I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord” and then it explains about Jesus. And then the last part some people think is like a catch-all basket of other things. But the truth is that the last part that says, “I believe in the Holy Spirit” focuses on what God is still doing in the life of the church and the people and what God will do in the future. So it’s God the Creator, what God did in Jesus, and then what God’s still doing, how that kind of breaks down.
So that second part… we can’t go through all of it, all of the specifics, it’s too long, but I want to focus on the first line, “I believe in Jesus Christ his only Son, our Lord.”
Our Scripture today is so great. I just love this because it asks this question. It begins with this: “Who do people say that I am?” Jesus asks. And it’s kind of where we go first. We think, “Okay, what’s the right answer? And what is the appropriate doctrine that I’m supposed to teach? What does the preacher say that I am, and what does my neighbor say? What does the Sunday school teacher say? What does the commentary say that Jesus is? Who is this Jesus?”
I have to say when the lady on the plane asked, “Tell me about it,” that’s what spun in my head. “Okay, what’s the right answer? I want to get the doctrine right here.”
But isn’t it so interesting that Jesus pushes and says “No, who do you say that I am?” What do I believe about Jesus? Really, when you close your eyes and you say, “What does it mean to say I believe in Jesus?” How do you answer that?
Simon Peter says, “You are the Messiah.” Again I want you to understand the word. In Matthew, the very same passage, Matthew and Mark both, Simon Peter says “You are the Christ, the only Son of the living God.” Luke says, “You are the Messiah.” They’re the exact same word, one is Hebrew and one is Greek. They mean the exact same thing. The word “Christ” means “Messiah.” Literally it means “The anointed one.” But that’s like a translation; from Hebrew to Greek is “Messiah” to “Christ.”
So when I say to you “Jesus Christ” that is not Jesus’ last name. You don’t look up Jesus in the phone book under “Christ, Jesus.” This is a title. It’s like saying Governor Abbot or Caesar. So the word “Caesar” was put in all of the emperor’s name as a way of a title. So it functions kind of like a name, but what it’s saying is that Jesus is the Christ. When you say Jesus Christ, if you’re saying it in the right place and in the right way, not profane, you’re saying, “Jesus is the Messiah.” That’s what you’re saying, Jesus is the Anointed one.
Now here’s what the Messiah was, and this is important stuff for you to know. The Jews believed that the Messiah was one anointed by God who would establish on earth a kingdom where God would reign in peace and justice. Let me say that one more time. The Messiah was the one who was anointed by God who would establish on earth the kingdom of God, a kingdom where God would reign with peace and justice. So when he’s saying, “You are the Messiah, the Christ,” there’s a lot built into that.
But what I want to do today is break that down into three parts, three ways of saying, “What does it mean when we say Jesus is the Messiah” or “Jesus is the Christ?”
First, it means we say “Jesus is Lord.” Other words you see used in Scripture are “Jesus is King,” “Jesus is Sovereign” and this says that Jesus has the ultimate authority in our lives for how we’re supposed to live. When Jesus finds the disciples he calls them and says, “Follow me.” He doesn’t say, “First believe in me,” he says, “follow me. I’m going to show you how to live. I’m going to show you how you’re supposed to live your lives.”
When you join St. Luke’s United Methodist Church, if you stood in front, I asked you a question. It was “Do you believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior of your life?” And you said very quickly, “I do.” What you’re saying is, “I give Jesus ultimate authority for my life, and I’m going to live my life as he taught me how and as he showed me how to live. That’s how I will live. I will pattern my life after him, because he has ultimate authority in my life.”
There’s a book that came out in the late 19th century by Charles Sheldon that became a huge best seller. It was called In His Steps, and in fact it became the inspiration for those little “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets. It was the story of a pastor, a fictional story, he actually wrote it as a Sunday night sermon series. He told this fictional story about a church where the pastor challenged his congregation to actually live like Jesus taught. He said, “What would happen if you actually got out the Sermon on the Mount and you read it and you really followed it?”
What if you took seriously Jesus’ statement, “I tell you seriously if you are angry with your brothers and sisters you are liable for the judgment.” “If someone asks for your coat give them your cloak as well.” “If someone strikes you on one cheek turn to them your other cheek.” “Don’t judge other people. You worry about the log in your own eye and not the speck in theirs.” “If someone hurts you forgive them not seven times but seven times seventy times.” My goodness! What if we really did that – if we really lived like that?
There is a movement among Christians that has some baggage that’s associated with it, so I don’t wholly endorse it, but I find the concept very interesting. It’s called Red Letter Christianity and the people who follow this say, “I’m a Red Letter Christian.” And it comes from when in the old days some of the old King James Bibles would print the words of Jesus in red. They say, “We’re really going to focus on the red letter words in the Scripture, and we’re going to do what they say.” Wow! What would happen if we did that?
Let me be sobering for just a minute. I’m not sure we do that very much when I really take an honest look. I look at my life and really take an honest look. Mahatma Gandhi said, “I like your Christ, I don’t so much like your Christians. They’re not so much like your Christ.”
I read a book that I’ve been struggling whether or not to tell you about. I made reference to it once before. It was really troubling for me. It messed with me, I’ll tell you. It’s by William Lobdell, called Losing My Religion. So unless you feel that your feet are planted firmly in the faith don’t read the book.
Here’s the story of William Lobdell. He is a journalist, and when he was a young man his life was a mess. He had failed marriages and another marriage was failing, and he had an alcohol problem and he was a mess. He came to an evangelical church and came to know Christ and his life was transformed, changed in dramatic ways. He found himself stronger and happier and all of those things.
So he went to his editor on the “Los Angles Times” and said, “I would like to be a full time religion writer. I want to spend my whole time covering religion. His editor, to his amazement, said, “Okay.” So he did. He interviewed Mother Teresa and wrote about her, and interviewed all these great saints, people who were doing great things. He covered amazing churches that were so giving, lots of positive things.
Then one day he got a phone call from his editor who said, “I need you to go to Boston, and there’s a scandal brewing in the Catholic Church about priests abusing children.”
He said, “I’m on it” and he went to cover it. He gets drawn into it, and it’s one of those scandals that’s just grown and grown and grown. He got drawn into it, and what’s interesting is that he reflects that his biggest pain was not that these priests that did these terrible things, or that the church covered them up. It was that when he would go to the congregations and talk to them about their priest who had been moved away or had been convicted or accused, all of them stood up for their priest. It’s like the people didn’t know right from wrong. Then he got drawn into following Benny Hinn and some of the faith healers. He said, “I would prove to people that this was a set up that they’d put plants in the congregation. I would prove that to people, but the congregation still would say, ‘Well, we believe in him.’ I began to realize that there were great saints, some amazing saints in the church but…” And here’s his conclusion: “…the vast majority are no different than anyone else. They don’t live their lives any more like Jesus than other non-Christians do.” And that’s how it ends.
It ends that way, and the reason I share that with you really comes from the back of the book which is evangelical pastor after evangelical pastor as well as mainline and Catholic writers who say, “Read this book. Because this is what the world is looking at us thinking and will we as regular mainline Christians decide that we’re going to live our lives like Jesus taught. Will we choose to pattern our lives after the Christ that we stand up in front of everyone and say ‘He is Lord of our lives.’”
The reason the early church grew so fast is because those early Christians made Jesus Lord of their lives and said, “I’m going to give my life away like he did.” What did the passage say we just read? Jesus says to those early Christians, “If any want to become my followers let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me. For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who want to lose their life for my sake will save it.”
So the first question we ask when Jesus looks at us and says, “Who do you say that I am?” is “You are the Christ, you are Lord of our lives. And we will pattern our lives after the way you live.” That’s first.
Here’s the second thing. “You are the Christ, the Son of God.” When we say Jesus is the Son of God we’re saying that Jesus is incarnate. There are a lots of people who say, “You know, I love what Jesus taught. I think he’s a great teacher; I would make him Lord of my life. But come on, he’s not really God. He’s a great leader, and a great teacher and a great model.”
There may be people here who feel that way. Here’s the challenge with that. You can’t take the red letters without taking the red letters where Jesus proclaims his own divinity. Jesus says, “I am the Son of God.” That’s built into the story, particularly in the Gospel of John. And here’s why that’s so important. The essence of the Christian faith is not following all those rules or just living our lives after the pattern of Jesus. The essence of the Christian faith is being in a relationship with Christ. And you can’t have a relationship with a Higher Power. You have a relationship with a man, the Word made flesh right among us.
The oldest Scripture from the New Testament is probably found in the second chapter of Philippians. It’s a hymn that was probably written on the walls of the early churches. Now let me give you the setup. Most religions say, “Here’s God, God is holy, God is perfect. You and I are struggling down here, and what we do is we try and live better lives. We pattern our lives after Jesus and try to be better people. We can do that and if we can live our lives well enough, good enough, maybe we’ll get close to Jesus. And when we die he’ll say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant’ and we’ll get in.”
And we get that in our minds – that’s our picture of religion. The essence of the Christian faith is the exact opposite. Here’s what it says in Philippians 2: “Though he was the very nature of God he did not count equality with God as something to be grasped, held onto. But emptied himself being born in human form, taking the form of a servant.”
God didn’t say, “You get holy and come up and be near me.” God said, “I’m going to come be with you. Just like you are, broken, hurting. I’m going to suffer your suffering. I’m going to feel your pain. I’m going to go through the same stuff you go through. That’s how much I love you.” “The Word became flesh and moved into the neighborhood,” is the way Eugene Peterson says it in The Message. Moved in to be with us. Wow!
One of the first poems that I fell in love with was by Gwendolyn Brooks, an African American poetess. The poem is called “The Preacher Ruminates Behind the Sermon.” I don’t really get that part by the way. Here’s what she says, “I think it must be lonely to be God. Nobody loves a master, no, despite the bright hosannas, the bright clear Lords, the bright determined reverence of Sunday eyes. Picture Jehovah riding through the hall of his importance, preachers running out from servant quarters to acclaim, to shout appreciation of his merit’s glare. But who walks with him, dares to take his arm, to slap him on the shoulder, to tweak his ear, to buy him a Coca-Cola or a beer, pooh-pooh his politics, call him a fool? Who knows? Perhaps he tires of looking down those eyes never lifted, never straight. Perhaps he sometimes tires of being great in solitude without a hand to hold.”
It’s a great picture of a God who said, “I love them so much that I’m going to go be with them, move into their lives.”
When I pray I spend a lot of time writing my prayers, but when I’m not doing that I sit on my couch, the sleeping, watching golf, working couch. I sit there on that couch, and I look across at the other couch in the family room. And I imagine Jesus sitting there on that couch leaning forward, looking into my eyes and saying, “Tell me about it,” and shaking his head with empathy because he’s been through whatever I’ve been through and worse. God became a human being so God could be with us. Emmanuel – God with us.
So here’s the last part. When we say Jesus the Messiah, we’re saying Jesus is our Savior. When you join the church you say, “I accept Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of my life.” The Gospel of Matthew says, “You will name him Jesus because he will save the people from their sins.” Savior. When you see in Scripture the references to Jesus as the “Lamb of God” or “the blood of Jesus” and if you look at the Apostles’ Creed you see how much of it is about the event of the cross. The suffering, the crucifixion, the resurrection, all is such an important part of it. Because in that event the wall between God and us was broken. And we were set free from the guilt and power of our sin.
We’re going to talk about this more in a few weeks in a sermon on the forgiveness of sin from the Apostles’ Creed. But let me say, if you were like me when I was struggling with saying “Jesus is Lord of my life,” you probably thought, “Man, I’m sunk! There’s no way I can do that!”
We promise for Jesus to be our Lord but also our Savior. Despite our shortcomings God says, “I’m going to be with you, and I’m not going to let you go.”
There’s a story I tell about every two or three years here, and that’s why we call it a “totem story.” That’s a story that hopefully begins to be a picture that helps define a neighborhood or a community. The story goes like this. It’s called “Dinner with the King” and I share it with you as we close.
Once upon a time there was a kingdom and in the kingdom there was a castle and in the castle there lived a king. All around the kingdom there were posted lists of rules, things you were supposed to do or not do. And some of them were easy, “Don’t kill, don’t steal.” Others were harder, “Don’t be angry with your brother. Don’t look lustfully at a woman in your heart. Forgive your brother seven times seventy times.” And the people said, “I can’t do all that, forget it!” And if you followed those rules you could have dinner with the king. The people would think, “I’m not going to have dinner with the king. There’s not any point. I can’t follow all those rules.”
Now out in front of the castle was a man who sat in the little booth, and across the top of the booth was a sign that said, “Free dinner with the king cards.” People would come up to him and say, “You can’t do that. You can’t just give away free dinner with the king cards. Don’t you see the rules? This is serious stuff we’re doing here. You just can’t give away free dinner with the king cards.”
And the guy said, “Look, here’s the deal. I can do it because I’m the prince. The king has sent me out here to make sure you all will come in. He’s tired of being alone in there. And not only that the cards aren’t really free, because I’ve paid for them.” And he showed them the holes in his hands and feet.
And a lot of people just walked away, saying, “That doesn’t make sense.” But some people took the card and they walked across the drawbridge and down the grand hallway, and the prince went with them. They sat down in the king’s dining room, and they had a great dinner with the king. He told them all about his heart. He shared his heart with them, and they shared their struggles and challenges with him, and hey built this incredible relationship with intimacy, and at the end of the dinner he said, “Come back all the time now.” And when they left that dinner they were never the same again, never the same. They tried all the harder to follow the rules that were posted around the kingdom, not because they felt that they had to, but because they wanted to, because they’d felt the king’s love and they loved the king back.
Friends, I want to invite you today to have dinner with the king, to make him Lord of your life, and to do everything you can to pattern your life after what Jesus taught. Accept Jesus as Lord and follow him. Recognize Jesus as the Son of God and love him. And claim Jesus as Savior, and receive his amazing grace.
Let’s pray. Lord God, we thank you for your Son Jesus, that you decided that you didn’t want to be apart from us, but that you wanted to be with us, that you would show us how to live, that you would love us and be loved in return. And that through the cross you would save us. In the name of that Jesus we pray. Amen.