Scripture: Psalm 2:7-9; 1 John 2:4; Matthew 11:28-30; 2 Corinthians 1:20 Series: 2022
Continuing a series on the Apostles’ Creed, Wilson preaches the clause ‘I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord’ from Psalm 2:7-9. He warns that we tend to remake Jesus in our own cultural image (Schweitzer, Sallman), which is a pagan idol; unpacks the titles Jesus (Joshua) and Christ (anointed/Messiah, not a surname); and argues that moving from general belief in God (natural theology, Aquinas) to faith in Jesus as Lord requires revelation by the Holy Spirit. Mystery means something disclosed, not hidden. Confessing the creed is a baptismal, life-changing claim: to say ‘I know him’ (1 John) and not follow is to be a liar. Christ calls us to conversion, to drop our nets and to call the burdened to him (Kierkegaard), offering radical love, mercy, and the assurance that in Jesus God has said yes to us (2 Corinthians 1:20).
Illustrations: cultural-portraits-of-jesus, schweitzer-quest-historical-jesus, sallman-head-of-christ, mr-christ-not-a-last-name, aquinas-five-ways, slavery-family-values-idols, kierkegaard-come-here-to-me
October 16
I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord
I will announce the Lord’s decision: He said to me, “You are my son, today I have become your father. Just ask me, and I will make the nations your possession; the far corners of the earth will be your property. You will smash them with an iron rod; you will shatter them like a pottery jar.” Psalm 2:7-9
Visual images of Jesus display the breadth of cultural difference across the world. There are portraits of Jesus, drawn or painted, in almost every culture that has existed in the last 2000 years. Portraits that make Jesus look like radically different people. Here are a few examples Powerpoint slides except the last one]
Jesus has been portrayed in different ways because of the different impact the gospel has made on different cultures. Usually, though, we personally connect most with images of Jesus that correspond to our own image of Jesus. As the scholar Albert Schweitzer wrote a hundred years ago in his book, “the quest for the Historical Jesus.” Often when we look for Jesus, we find a face that looks a lot like us staring back. A conservative finds a conservative Jesus. A liberal finds a liberal Jesus. A radical finds a radical Jesus, not only in how he looks but how he acts.
This is a great challenge. If we believe that Jesus is the son of God, the word made flesh, the perfect human, the perfection of humanity, there is a part of us that wants that perfection to look a little more like us than not. Part of this may be so that we don’t have as far to go to get there. If Jesus likes the things I like and dislikes the things I dislike, gosh, I’m almost there. We’re close to bridging the gap between the divine and me.”
And yet this is an entirely pagan view of Jesus. It has nothing to do with the Jesus of the Bible, the Jesus of faith, the Jesus of mercy and grace and transformation. And honestly, when we look at these pictures of Jesus, the portrait that is furthest from the Jesus of the Bible is the most famous one of all,
Last Powerpoint Slide Picture of Jesus]
painted by Warner Sallman, a portrait from 1950, with over 500 million copies around the world. To follow Jesus is not to make him more like us, but for us to become more like him.
Series Intro
We are continuing to look at belief in God through the creed. We’re starting with the second clause of the apostles creed. I believe in Jesus Christ. His only son, our Lord. Jesus Christ.
The word, Jesus, is the Greek version of the word, Joshua. Joshua, the great figure from Numbers and Deuteronomy and his own book. Joshua, the patriarch who led the people into the promised land when Moses could not enter it. Joshua, because of his faithfulness to God, was able to lead the people home.
Now with Christ.
Christos means ‘anointed’ in Greek. It’s the translation of, Messiah, Mechiach, The anointed one of God. Messiah does not mean son of God. It means anointed of God.
It is also important for us to state up front that Christ was not Jesus’ last name. It wasn’t, “Uh, hi, well, good afternoon, Mr. Christ, how are you doing today?”
Last names or patronyms as they exist in the modern world didn’t exist as much in the ancient world as we know them today.
What does it mean to believe in this man whom we refer to as Jesus Christ? What does it mean to have faith in Jesus Christ?
The scripture I wanna jump off from is Psalm 2, this great Psalm of Thanksgiving, is also a psalm about the connection between God, the Father, and God, the Son.
You are my son today. I give the nations to you.
We also have here an understanding of the Lordship of Jesus Christ. That this carpenter’s son is, in fact, Lord of all the nations, ruler of all the nations, just ruler in a way that’s different from the world. And the only way we can get there, get to Jesus, is by faith, by faith in him. We can’t see Jesus as lord on our own. People have tried but it doesn’t quite work.
Talking about the existence of God apart from faith is called natural theology.
There are a number of different arguments about natural theology that have gone on since ancient times, about whether you can prove the existence of God by reason alone.
Aristotle had arguments for this Plato had arguments for this Different people, over the centuries, have had arguments for this. Thomas Aquinas had his famous five ways, which some of you may remember from growing up Catholic
With all this, belief in God in general is different from belief in Jesus Christ.
The only way to get from some general awareness of divinity in the world to the particularity of God in the person of Jesus Christ is by the fact that it is revealed to you, that it is unveiled for you, that it is disclosed to you through the Holy Spirit.
This is an act of faith. That this person that we refer to as Jesus Christ, Joshua, son of Joseph, is God the Father’s only son and is our Lord. These are acts of faith. There’s no historical or material record that could offer an entirely compelling argument for this reality. It is a mystery of God.
Now, the word mystery is thrown around in religious circles in bad ways, like a cop out. “What about this? Well, it’s a mystery” 🤷♂️ Mystery in Greek is mysterion, something that has been disclosed and revealed. It’s translated in Latin as sacrament. Something holy and set apart that is disclosed for us. A mystery is not something we don’t understand or something that is hidden from us. In fact, a mystery is something that has been revealed to us. That Jesus is the Christ, the anointed one of God, the Meshiach on whom the world longs, the only son of God, the Lord of all the nations, our Lord, this claim, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son, Our Lord, is a claim about all of human reality. All of existence.
It is a claim about the history of the universe and the future of the universe. It is not a light thing you say and drone on about. The original apostles creed was a baptismal creed. It was stated when someone entered the church. Before they entered the waters and put on the white robes of new life, they would say these words. It is a life changing claim. To be honest when saying these words is to not live a life of lies anymore. It is to change directions. It is to drop your nets.
In the first letter of John, the Apostle writes, “whoever says, ‘I know him’ and does not keep his commandments is a liar.” When we say, I believe in Jesus Christ, his only son our Lord, we are saying, I know him. I know this Jesus, this God out of whom all things were created.
And to say, “I know him” and not to follow him is to be a liar.
Now we have mercy. We have forgiveness through this, but God calls for a radical shift in life, a radical shift that’s not based on these portraits of Jesus that every culture is able to create. A radical shift that is not based on our own preconceptions or biases. A radical shift that is not based on some idea of Christian culture or Christian values or family values. Jesus never talked about values. If you need a set of values to believe that Jesus is god, worship those values, don’t worship God. If you need Jesus to look a certain way, and you are uncomfortable by images that don’t conform to expectations, worship that look, don’t worship God. I say this because this is what has happened over the last two thousands years. Christians have turned the good news of Jesus Christ into a distorted cultural artifact that has become an idol. Christians have used values and aesthetics to justify sins of enormous magnitude. Slavery in the south was justified through Christian values. Domestic violence has been justified through family values, but those are idols.
When you encounter the risen Lord, Jesus Christ, everything changes, because you see the world with different eyes; the blinders have come off. Do you see that Jesus is Lord? Do you see that Jesus is God? Do you see that Jesus is one with the Father and the Spirit?Then everything changes in how we live our lives. How we go to sleep at night, how we raise our kids, how we work at our jobs, how we relate to our neighbors, how we seek the face of Jesus in our neighbors, how we are willing to see the face of Jesus in ourselves.
The clause about Jesus Christ in the Creed goes on for a while, but it begins with this essential encounter. If you say that you know him and don’t follow his commandments, you’re a liar.
Well, pastor Wilson, what are his commandments? It is the call of Jesus, which is at once the simplest commandment and the hardest. When he comes to his friends, his disciples, on the seashore and says, “lay down your nets and follow me.” When he comes to the people near the city and says, “come to me, all you who are weary and heavy Laden, and I will give you rest, Lay down your burdens at my feet, for my yoke is easy. And my burden is light. Christ calls us to come but Christ also calls us to, in turn, call others to him.
Søren Kierkegaard paints this call in a stark light:
“Come here to me.” Amazing! Human sympathy does, after ‘all, willingly do something for those who labor and are burdened; we feed the hungry, clothe the naked, make philanthropic donations, build philanthropic institutions, and if the sympathy is deeper we probably also visit those who labor and are burdened. But to invite them to come to one, that cannot be done; then one’s entire household and way of life would have to be altered. It will not do, when one is living in abundance oneself or at least in joy and gladness, to reside together in a house and live together in a common life and in daily association with the poor and wretched, with those who labor and are burdened.1
But those are the people who Jesus calls. And those are the people whom Jesus exhorts us to call. Jesus calls us to transformation, to utter and total change. That’s what conversion is, it is going one way in life and then going another.
But what about those of you who have been Christians for most of your life, do you still need to turn your life around? Yes. Always and everywhere and everyone, yes. What if you haven’t believed? What if this faith thing is still strange and weird? What if it hasn’t been revealed to you that Jesus is the Christ, the son of the living God? What if you’ve got a ways to go in this journey of belief?
My hope and my prayer is that, through this space and this encounter with the risen Lord, you will encounter his love and his mercy. You will meet him, not his values, his person here for you, and realize that you are worthy. You are forgiven and you are offered a life of love. God saw our need and sent Jesus to us.
You don’t have to say yes to God. You can still dismiss it. I mean, Christians have been dismissing God’s love for 2000 years. The Hebrew people before Jesus were dismissing, God’s love from the very beginning. Most of the Bible is about people spurning God’s offer of love and mercy. And yet God has remained faithful. And to this day, God is faithful. You may say no to God, but in Jesus, God has said yes to you. As Paul says in 2 Corinthians, “For all the promises of God find their Yes in him.” Jesus is not just a swell guy from a while ago. Jesus is not just a handsome figure in a painting, but, as the UMC Confession of faith says,“truly God and truly man, in whom the divine and human natures are perfectly and inseparably united. He is the eternal Word made flesh, the only begotten Son of the Father”2, the Lord of heaven and earth, he has offered himself for us. He has offered himself for you. He has called you by name and said, follow me, follow me to a life of radical love, a life of radical mercy, a life of radical hope. Let us pray,
Heavenly Father, meet us here in this place. Redirect our lives. Forgive us for lingering in our old ways and show us the peace of your presence. In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.