God the Son and Redeemer, Sunday, 5/8/16 1 We re continuing this morning with our study of the Apostles Creed. This ancient Christian Creed is one of the earliest expressions of the core beliefs of the followers of Jesus, and is still used in almost identical form across a wide breadth of Christian faith traditions, including the Roman Catholic Church, the Lutheran Church, the Presbyterian Church, the Anglican Church, and the United Methodist Church. The Apostles Creed remains important to us today as a benchmark against which we can judge modern teachings and as a teaching tool for spiritual formation. When we recite the Creed, there s a sense in which we re also offering a prayer to God, witnessing to our faith and affirming what we believe in the presence of God. Last week we tackled the very beginning of the Creed: I believe in God, the Father Almighty, creator of heaven and earth. Today we re going to embrace a huge portion of the Creed in one sitting, the very largest portion of the Creed, what we believe about Jesus Christ. Let s begin with one of the most unique and definitive Biblical testimonies about who Jesus is. I m reading from the Gospel of John, in the very first chapter, the first 18 verses. I m reading in the New Living Translation. {Read John 1:1-18} 2 This is a picture of the famous Christ the Redeemer statue. Does anybody here know where this statue is? It s in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. This statue of Jesus, constructed over nine years beginning in 1922, is almost 100 feet tall, 92 feet wide, and weighs 700 tons. Can you imagine having this massive sculpture of Jesus, his arms outstretched, overlooking your city? I think it would be awesome. In fact, if we can t get a new community center for Buffalo, perhaps we could build one of these! Fortunately for us, we don t really need the statue to know that Christ IS looking over our cities- it s implied in the Creed. But that s later in the story. Let s start instead at the beginning. I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord. 3 This is a sculpture of Augustus Caesar, the Roman emperor who was in power at the time of Christ s birth. Incidentally, does anyone know which Caesar was in power at the time Christ was crucified? It was Tiberius. Regardless of which Caesar was in power, the Roman rulers were jealous of their power, and they refused to share the allegiance of their subjects with anyone else. Therefore, it was customary in the days of the Roman Empire to demand an oath of allegiance to the Caesar. To confess, Caesar is Lord, would be to 1
declare an oath of allegiance to the Roman Empire. Contrariwise, to declare anyone other than Caesar to be Lord was an act of rebellious subversion punishable by immediate death. The early church declared, Jesus is Lord. In doing so, they were declaring their undivided allegiance to Jesus. To do so was not only scandalous, it was dangerous, and many Christians lost their lives for refusing to recant this simple statement of faith: Jesus is Lord. Some people are uncomfortable these days referring to Jesus as Lord. That s certainly understandable. After all, we live in a democratic republic, without the tyranny of kings and nobles or the occupying forces of the Roman Empire. We live under a constitution and we have a Bill of Rights. But don t let your modern sense of political freedom muddy the waters here. You do need a lord in your life, and if it s not Jesus then it s likely to be something else, like money, power, or control. We all give our first allegiance to something in this life. As for Christians, we say, Jesus is Lord. 4 The next part of the Creed is also scandalous, and yet it s so familiar that we don t experience the shock: Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary. That God would step into creation and become part of it is unique to Christian thinking and really sets it apart from other faith traditions, including Judaism. This is a forensic anthropologist s model of what a Galilean man might have looked like in the time of Jesus. Contrary to most of the pictures we display of Jesus, he wasn t of European descent and so it s unlikely that he had blue eyes and fair skin. It s also extremely unlikely that he had long hair and it s possible that he didn t even have a beard. According to one scholar, being clean-shaven and short-haired was considered absolutely essential, although philosophers did sometimes sport a beard to set themselves apart. I rather like to think that Jesus looked more like this, because he seems somehow more human. Most of our pictures of Jesus tend to emphasize the divine at the expense of the human, and I sometimes wonder, in light of the divine wisdom and power of Jesus, if we really appreciate that he was also fully human. When we say in the Creed that Jesus was born, we mean just that- with all the crying, bleeding, eating, and yes, even pooping that being a human baby entails. The God we worship was born! That s incredible! When you say this part of the Creed, try to allow it to transport you back to the fullness of the season of Advent and the wonder of Christmas. All that is implied by our simple confession that Jesus was born. 2
5 When we confess that Jesus suffered under Pontius Pilate, was crucified, died, and was buried, we should allow ourselves to remember also the fullness of Holy Week, starting with the triumphal entry of Jesus into Jerusalem on Palm Sunday, his arrest in the Garden of Gethsemane on Friday night, his condemnation by the Roman Governor, Pilate, and his crucifixion. By the way, even though we say the word buried in the Creed, we don t mean anything remotely resembling our contemporary burial customs. He never had a casket or an urn and his remains weren t placed in hole in the ground or scattered on a lake. The body of Jesus was wrapped and anointed and placed in a cave. Think about that for a moment. Here s yet another scandal hidden away in our statement of faith. The God we worship actually died by every measure of modern medical science. His blood stopped pumping, his brain stopped working, and his body became cold and began to decay. Death can be ugly and scary, and Jesus experienced even that for us. But if that was the end of the story, my guess is that none of us would be followers of Jesus. 6 As an aside, what are we to make of this awkward phrase in the Creed, he descended to the dead. Some versions of the creed have instead read, He descended into hell, also sometimes referred to as the lake of fire, a place of eternal torment. Did Jesus go to hell before he rose from the dead? The doctrine that Jesus descended to the dead is derived from two New Testament passages. In Ephesians 4:8-10, Paul writes that Jesus descended to the lower, earthly regions. Peter is more explicit when he writes in 1Peter 3:19, he went and preached to the spirits in prison. Does this mean that Jesus really did go to hell? Actually, the ideas about the afterlife were a bit different at the time of the writing of the Old and New Testaments. In addition to heaven and hell, there was a common belief in a place called Sheol, the land of the dead- a place not of eternal torment, but simply a place where it was believed that all people went when they died, awaiting resurrection and final judgement. The evolution and diversity of ideas about the afterlife are too complex to dive into this morning, so for now, let me suggest that when we read in the Creed that Jesus descended to the dead, we should understand this to mean at least that Jesus really did die completely. What we should definitely NOT take from this part of the Creed is that Jesus was damned to Hell, even temporarily. 7 Fortunately, the death of Jesus was not the end of the story, and the Creed continues, 3
On the third day he rose again. It s one thing to believe that Jesus was willing to die for us, to become the sacrificial lamb that erases our sin-debt with the Father, but it s an entirely different thing to say that the Father s love is so powerful that he refused to allow his son to remain dead. Paul puts it this way in 1Corinthains 15:17-20: If Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the first fruits of those who have fallen asleep. Not only does the resurrection prove that the Father really is almighty, but it also proves that the promise of the Son is good. Because Jesus was raised from the dead, so will we be. Paul describes our future resurrection as follows in 1Corinthians 15:51-53: Listen, I tell you a mystery: We will not all sleep, but we will all be changed in a flash, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, the dead will be raised imperishable, and we will be changed. For the perishable must clothe itself with the imperishable, and the mortal with immortality. When we affirm in the Creed that On the third day he rose again, we also affirm that there will come a day when we too will rise again. 8 Continuing in our reading of the Creed, we say that Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father. I am certain that there are more things that we don t know about heaven than things we do know. You may remember that last week I said that the heavenly mansion with many rooms promised by Jesus is a metaphor given to provide us comfort in facing a future that is simply beyond our human capacity to understand. In the same way, please understand that God the Father and Son are not sitting side by side on gem-encrusted gold thrones somewhere up in the clouds. The clearest understanding we can take from this metaphor is that the Son, having completed his mission on earth as a man, returned to the direct presence of the Father. Some commentators have speculated that Christ sitting somehow is a sign that his work of redeeming fallen humanity is done. I m thinking that s probably over working the text. Seated at the right hand is a common figure of speech. It refers to a person of high rank giving someone equal honor with him or herself, recognizing them as possessing equal dignity and authority. This was commonly denoted 4
symbolically by positioning that person to the superior s right. This is the image I associate with the Crist the redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro. The Son, raised and in the presence of the Father, looking over all the world he redeemed. 9 The last portion of the Creed that we ll look at today is perhaps the least comforting of all the beliefs we affirm in the Creed. I believe Jesus will come again to judge the living and the dead. The New Testament presents a consistent witness that Jesus will not be remaining at the right hand of the Father forever, but will be returning, on a day that none of us can ever guess. Furthermore, his return will involve two principle actions. Ultimately, the Father has appointed the Son to judge all people, or to use a metaphor from the Gospel of Matthew, to separate out the sheep from the goats. Many people don t understand that prior to the final judgement, there will be a general resurrection of all people. In other words, bodily resurrection is not a promise reserved for Christians alone. Jesus himself describes his final mission in John 5:28; a time is coming when all who are in their graves will hear [my] voice and come out those who have done good will rise to live, and those who have done evil will rise to be condemned. When we recite this portion of the Creed, we are reminding ourselves that the absent landlord will be returning when we least expect him, and simply knowing his name will not be enough to save us. Instead Jesus instructs us that we ll be judged according to whether Jesus knows US, and that by whether we loved the people we shared this life with. 10 Jesus is Lord. Jesus was born. Jesus died. Jesus rose. Jesus returned to the Father. Jesus is coming back to raise and judge us. That could be the Pastor s Digest version of this part of the Apostles Creed. But the implications of affirming these facts, individually and as a church, are so much bigger. When we say or pray this portion of the Creed, we are professing our sole and unwavering allegiance to Jesus, confessing that Jesus is God, accepting the atoning death of Jesus for the forgiveness of our sins, and humbly submitting ourselves to his final judgment in the hope of receiving eternal life in the life to come. Are you ready and willing to stand up and proclaim that Jesus is Lord? The next time you recite the Apostles Creed, I hope you ll be challenged to ask yourself that very question, and then challenged to confess it. Jesus is Lord. Do you believe it? 5
Buffalo United Methodist Church serving people for Jesus Christ so that we all may know joy! 609 8 th Street NW Buffalo, MN 55313 763-682-3538 Bill Reinhart, Pastor pastorbill@buffaloumc.com 6