Jesus

Jeremiah 18: 1-6
Romans 12: 1-2
John 1: 1-14

Jesus

We used to do a lot of camping when our kids were young. We started with a tent, and spent a lot of nights with that tent, and lots of campfires. Nowadays campers often have motor homes. A motor home allows campers to put all the conveniences of home on wheels. A camper no longer needs to contend with sleeping in a sleeping bag, cooking over a fire, or hauling water from a stream. Now he can park a fully equipped home on a cement slab in the midst of a few pine trees and hook up to a water line, a sewer line and electricity. Most motor homes even have a satellite dish attached on top. No more bother with dirt, no more smoke from the fire, no more drudgery of walking to the stream. Now it is possible to go camping and never have to go outside. People buy a motor home with the hope of seeing new places, of getting out into the world of nature. Yet they deck it out with the same furnishings as in their living room back home. They may drive to a new place, set themselves in new surrounding, but the newness goes unnoticed, because they only carried along their old setting. Nothing really changes.

If we accept the love God offers us, things do change—we change. But God does not change, nor does Jesus and his message. That message is timeless, and applies to us as it did to those who heard him 2000 years ago.

If Jesus is to be anything more than just another name, another historical mythic figure for us; if he is to become in any sense "Christ," "Savior," "Lord"; if his name and his story are to arouse in us anything like "faith," then we have to encounter him and not merely some ideas about him. Before there were ideas about Jesus there was Jesus. There was the Jesus who was experienced as a real person by those to whom he preached, those he healed, those with whom he lived, and those whom he angered.

We all have images of Jesus. We see artists’ renditions of him from the time we are small children, and it is our human nature to have an image of Jesus in our minds when we think or speak of him—just as we have an image of another person in our minds when we think or speak of that person. When you talk about a friend or a family member, you “see” that person in your mind. As children, or as new Christians, to the pictures—the visual images--we have of Jesus we attach what we learn about his personality, what we come to believe and feel about him. Just as we do about people around us.

Our faith needs more than reading or ideas about Jesus. And our faith needs more than artist’s renderings of their ideas about Jesus. We need in a real sense to experience him as a real presence in our lives. Our minds want to—need to—“see” the person about whom we are thinking or talking. There are four images of the Christ at work these days which seem to me to cause problems, or at least detract from the good that might come from seeking more closely an experience of Jesus as he truly is.

The first is the “Divine Jesus”. In this image the primary feature of the Christ is his absolute distinction from us: We are finite; Jesus is infinite. We are sinful; Jesus was sinless. We are mortal; Jesus, though he assumed mortality, was really always immortal. This image sees Jesus as one who stoops down momentarily from his throne to deliver us from our sinful condition: In this image the world is a sinful place, a place from which we should try to separate ourselves. In this image we must rise above the rest of the world. For too many, this Jesus is too perfect, and too removed from their lives for them to see him as their friend. This image fails to see Jesus’ very real, recognizable humanity. Jesus did not separate himself or his disciples from the world. He became immersed in the world, sat down and ate with all kinds of people whom the church leaders of his day despised. Jesus lived as we do. He felt heat and cold, fear and sorrow and happiness, confusion and doubt, hunger and thirst and pain just as intensely as any of us have or ever will. He did not come merely to rescue us from our humanness, he came to share it with us and with us change the world.

The second image that causes problems is “the conquering Jesus”. While he was alive, many people, including some of his own disciples, wanted Jesus to be a conqueror, to overthrow Roman rule. Over the years many more have created a picture of Jesus as conqueror who would overthrow the Roman powerful oppressors. There is the title King of Kings. This image forgets the Jesus who said “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God”, and the Jesus who commanded us to love our enemies, and to love one another “as I have loved you.” If conquering can ever be associated legitimately with Jesus Christ, then we had better be clear that at the top of the list of what must be conquered is our own tendency to rebel against God, and our tendency to want to create him in OUR image.

The third image I think we need to be careful of is the image of “ the judgmental Jesus.” Somehow, the old hellfire and brimstone theology of our puritan past has never quite disappeared, and today the picture of Christ as an impartial or even a vindictive judge has again found its way amongst impressive numbers of Christians. Individuals have frequently suffered under the impossible moral demands of those whose "Jesus" is all law and no gospel. No one familiar with the Scriptures can dispense with the thought of divine judgment. But when religious speakers determine that judgment is its own end and not a means to something else, they have altogether forgotten the Jesus who came, not to destroy, but to give life more abundantly. John 3:17 says, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.”

The fourth image of Jesus that can cause problems is that of the “accepting Jesus”. God’s love cares about the real condition of each of us; and if we are in fact a distortion of the person that we could be, then the only role that true love can have in our lives is the role of bringing truth and the intention to change. Yes, God first accepts us as we are. We do not earn his love. As soon as we turn to him—every time we turn to him in repentance-- he accepts us as we are at that moment. But that does not mean that Jesus likes me, accepts me, and then makes no great demands upon me. If I accept his love I am going to find myself changing, and God is going to use me to change the world around me.

But God doesn’t just love us as individuals. God loves his whole world—his creation. Jesus is God’s pledge of love not just for us as individuals, but for the whole world. Jesus who accepts us just as we are is not ready to keep us that way. Nor is he ready to accept the world, our world, and keep it this way. If we can trust any of the illustrations of God’s love for the world we must conclude that this love, far from accepting the status quo, wills to alter it drastically.

I believe the real image we should have of Jesus is as “the transforming Christ”. The image we should have of Jesus is of someone who accepts us but through his love wants to continue God’s creativity by changing us and then the world around us.

Instead of the divine Jesus who would keep us away from the world, we should see a Jesus who wants us very much involved with the world, just as he was. Instead of the conquering Jesus, the transforming Jesus doesn’t ask us to take over the world but to befriend it, person by person. Look at how friendless the world is today--how much in need the world around us is of transformation through God’s love.

Instead of the judging Jesus, we should see Christ as one who recruits reconcilers and stewards and poets of creation. Instead of simply “the accepting Jesus we should see a Jesus who calls us to responsibilities we would never dream of undertaking otherwise. Through his acceptance of us we are not to accept the violence, injustice, inequality, and degradation of the world around us: that is discipleship today. Through our acceptance of him, we become God’s hands and mouths in the world to bring God’s creative changes.

There is only one thing the church has to offer the world that no other organization can offer: Christ It is Jesus the Christ who transforms us. Jesus the Christ who loves us. Jesus the Christ who accepts us as we are when we repent of our past. But if we accept and love Jesus he will transform us, so that through us God’s love can work to transform the world. Amen