Who on Earth? Rev. Dr. Martha ter Kuile Minister of Worship, Congregational Care and Faith Development The Story Chapter 25: Jesus, the Son of God May 10, 2015 Source: Matthew 17.1-7 Six days later, Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white. Suddenly there appeared to them Moses and Elijah, talking with him. Then Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it is good for us to be here; if you wish, I will make three dwellings here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. While he was still speaking, suddenly a bright cloud overshadowed them, and from the cloud a voice said, This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him! When the disciples heard this, they fell to the ground and were overcome by fear. But Jesus came and touched them, saying, Get up and do not be afraid. Psalm 45 My heart overflows with a goodly theme; I address my verses to the king; my tongue is like the pen of a ready scribe. You are the most handsome of men; grace is poured upon your lips; therefore God has blessed you for ever. Gird your sword on your thigh, O mighty one, in your glory and majesty. In your majesty ride on victoriously for the cause of truth and to defend the right; let your right hand teach you dread deeds. Your arrows are sharp in the heart of the king s enemies; the peoples fall under you. 1
Your throne, O God, endures for ever and ever. Your royal sceptre is a sceptre of equity; you love righteousness and hate wickedness. Therefore God, your God, has anointed you with the oil of gladness beyond your companions; your robes are all fragrant with myrrh and aloes and cassia. From ivory palaces stringed instruments make you glad; daughters of kings are among your ladies of honour; at your right hand stands the queen in gold of Ophir. Hear, O daughter, consider and incline your ear; forget your people and your father s house, and the king will desire your beauty. Since he is your lord, bow to him; the people of Tyre will seek your favour with gifts, the richest of the people with all kinds of wealth. The princess is decked in her chamber with gold-woven robes; in many-coloured robes she is led to the king; behind her the virgins, her companions, follow. With joy and gladness they are led along as they enter the palace of the king. In the place of ancestors you, O king, shall have sons; you will make them princes in all the earth. I will cause your name to be celebrated in all generations; therefore the peoples will praise you for ever and ever. John 7.25-44 Now some of the people of Jerusalem were saying, Is not this the man whom they are trying to kill? And here he is, speaking openly, but they say nothing to him! Can it be that the authorities really know that this is the Messiah? Yet we know where this man is from; but when the Messiah comes, no one will know where he is from. Then Jesus cried out as he was teaching in the temple, You know me, and you know where I am from. I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me. Then they tried to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him, because his hour had not yet come. Yet many in the crowd believed in him and were saying, When the Messiah comes, will he do more signs than this man has done? 2
The Pharisees heard the crowd muttering such things about him, and the chief priests and Pharisees sent temple police to arrest him. Jesus then said, I will be with you a little while longer, and then I am going to him who sent me. You will search for me, but you will not find me; and where I am, you cannot come. The Jews said to one another, Where does this man intend to go that we will not find him? Does he intend to go to the Dispersion among the Greeks and teach the Greeks? What does he mean by saying, You will search for me and you will not find me and, Where I am, you cannot come? On the last day of the festival, the great day, while Jesus was standing there, he cried out, Let anyone who is thirsty come to me, and let the one who believes in me drink. As the scripture has said, Out of the believer s heart shall flow rivers of living water. Now he said this about the Spirit, which believers in him were to receive; for as yet there was no Spirit, because Jesus was not yet glorified. When they heard these words, some in the crowd said, This is really the prophet. Others said, This is the Messiah. But some asked, Surely the Messiah does not come from Galilee, does he? Has not the scripture said that the Messiah is descended from David and comes from Bethlehem, the village where David lived? So there was a division in the crowd because of him. Some of them wanted to arrest him, but no one laid hands on him. May God bless to our understanding these words from Holy Scripture. In our second reading we find Jesus in Jerusalem, during the week-long feast of Tabernacles or Sukkot, one of the three important pilgrimage holidays that all Jewish men were expected to participate in every year. Partly a harvest festival and celebration, Sukkot commemorates the escape from Egypt. Centuries later, it was at Sukkot that Ezra preached the great revival and rebuilding of the Temple after the Exile. Between two festival Sabbaths, the people are to live in temporary dwellings or tents made of branches of palm trees and boughs of leafy trees and willows of the brook (Lev. 23. 41) perhaps this is the origin of our concept of a camp meeting. It was a Sukkot dwelling that Peter offered to make at the Transfiguration in the passage that Stephen read. 3
In this passage from the Gospel of John, Jesus and the disciples have come to Jerusalem at Sukkot, and so the streets are filled with pilgrims, all of them talking about the strange miracle-worker from Galilee. [read John 7.25-44] Reading this passage, you can almost see where Monty Python s Flying Circus got some of their inspiration. The absurd logic of the crowd flies around the set I thought they were trying to kill him. But here he is speaking in public. No, it s because they know he s the Messiah. He can t be, he s from Galilee. But he must be, nobody could do more miracles than this man. And then the Pharisees dispatch the police but somehow they fail to act. And in the midst of it all, Jesus, calmly saying things that no one can fathom. I am the source of living water, let anyone who is thirsty come to me. No-one can go where I am going. What, where did he say he was going? Is he going to the Gentiles? He s a prophet, no he s the Messiah. But was he born in Bethlehem? The crowd keeps up its clamour, and as we are told, some wanted to arrest him, but no one laid a hand on him. We picture Jesus quietly strolling away while they all keep on talking to each other about what they think. A prophet, a rabblerouser, a subversive? Or the one they ve been waiting for? No-one has ever been able to figure out who Jesus was. It is a central question perhaps the central question in the Christian faith, yet after two thousand years of wrangling it is neither settled nor easy to set aside. Some people go so far as to say that he didn t exist at all, that all the stories about him are just that. They point out that there are virtually no references to Jesus outside the writings of the early Christians, and that the shape of the story of Jesus suggests that it is a reworking of older myths from other religions. In this perspective Jesus is a symbolic rather than a historical figure, representing the force of healing and transformation in this broken world. Some of us may have read one of the versions of that theory in Tom Harpur s book The Pagan Christ about a decade ago. So that is one perspective. At the very other end of the spectrum we find those who say that Jesus came from heaven and entered human life miraculously through virgin birth. They say he 4
lived among humans, but always had supernatural powers to heal physical illness and disability, to command the winds and the seas, to cast demons out of people, and to multiply bread and fishes to feed multitudes. They say that after Jesus died he was miraculously raised to life again by God and that this dying and rising has in some mysterious way permanently repaired the broken relationship between God and humanity that he was the Saviour. This view holds that Jesus lives today, quite concretely, and can be talked to and experienced in a very direct and personal way. This more traditional take on Jesus is part of our heritage, and we have many echoes of it in our hymns and perhaps in our memories of Sunday school. What a Friend We Have in Jesus, or Jesus Loves Me, or the one we sang this morning. In some denominations the experience of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ is a requirement for calling yourself a Christian. [But it isn t only them. As a minister in a liberal part of a liberal denomination, I must say it is remarkable how many people do talk about having had concrete experiences of encounter with Jesus it s not just a fringe phenomenon.] Somewhere between these two poles lies a whole range of different perspectives on Jesus. Some people have focused on the kinds of things he did. They note his kindness the way he healed the sick and the blind and the lame the way he invited the children right in to the inner circle, as Amanda read to the children this morning. The way he made a point of including the outcasts and eating with sinners and the poor. Even the gentle way he touched the disciples to calm their fears in the Transfiguration story. In this reading it is the example of Jesus that is most compelling about him, and Christians are urged to be like Jesus. Others are more interested in the ethical teaching of Jesus they ponder his demanding standards. Turn the other cheek, go the second mile, give your coat and your shirt. Forgive seventy times seven. Give everything you have to the poor. Love your neighbour and be a neighbour to those you think of as strange and unlovely. Care for one another. Live a life beyond the call of duty. In the ethical reading, Christians are urged to listen and obey. 5
Still others, when they consider Jesus, find themselves intrigued by his wisdom. There is a quality of the Zen-master about him, as he gently proposes impossible paradoxes. In losing your life, you will gain it. You have to be born again. Consider the lilies, do not fret about the morrow. The last shall be first and the first last. Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you. Sometimes the wisdom of Jesus is considered feminine, and in the Middle Ages Julian of Norwich and others thought of Jesus as a mother, nurturing Christian souls as a mother nurses her infant. Or as a hen with chicks. A nice thought for Mother s Day. (Council prayer) A wisdom reading of Jesus invites Christians to be perplexed and transformed by him. So here is the map didn t exist, just a story some people thought up to start a cult was God and still is, the ruler of the universe. And between those two, not in a straight line his compassionate way of being, his brilliant teaching, his puzzling wisdom. Christians who emphasize Jesus example and his teachings and his wisdom don t really need to have firm opinions on the topic of miracles and supernatural appearances. And that doesn t make them any less Christian. You can suspend judgement. Following Jesus involves practices of openness and compassion which are life-transforming and world-transforming in themselves. We shouldn t feel the need to be absolutely exact in defining our own perspective on Jesus. Even though scholars and theologians and saints have gone to the stake over such things, we may be wiser to cultivate a kind of attentive uncertainty about him. For one thing, our perspective changes in the different chapters of our lives. And for another, there is an elusive quality about Jesus. I don t think we can really grasp him. The more we look at him the more we have to admit that there is something unmanageable about Jesus. You can hear the echo of the people in the crowd at Jerusalem well, he s from Galilee. And if anything, perhaps we tend to be like Peter, when he offered to make three tents on the mountainside confronted with an overwhelming mystery, we try to normalize it, wrestle it into a shape we recognize. You might say that the whole history of Christianity is the story of Christians trying to make the mystery of Christ into a temporary dwelling, a tent. 6
When Jesus smiled and drifted away from the crowds at the Festival, he left them wondering who on earth he was. And we should wonder too, as we read and pray and sing and follow. Fortunately, as we wonder about him we do it in good company, for we are not alone. Thanks be to God. Amen. 7