January 24, 2010
‘Who Would Jesus Follow?’ January 24, 2010
Listen to audio Rosedale United Church
(Nehemiah 8, selected verses , Luke 4: 14-21) Doug Norris
Last week while in BC one of my colleagues was speaking about his congregation in Calgary and how they had participated in a local street fair last summer. Rather than setting up a booth with pamphlets about the church’s mission statement or posters for the Bible Study Group, they rented a Dunk-Tank, and they wore those bright T-shirts – not the ones with John 3:16 that used to always show up on camera at PGA golf tournaments – but the new ones – they simply say WWJD. Which they interpreted to mean ‘Who Would Jesus Dunk’. (so I’ve been thinking this might be a way to create some buzz at our AGM lunch next month. A dunk tank, outside, in February. Think of it as a kind of recreational baptism)
Who Would Jesus Dunk?
Anyway, this got me reflecting on some titles for this present series of sermons.
Who Would Jesus Follow?
Who Would Jesus Annoy?
Who Would Jesus Bring Home to Dinner?
Why does it matter who we think Jesus is? Why should we explore this?
There are two customary answers as to why this is not a good question to ask.
The conservative response goes something like this : you don’t need to explore the person of Jesus – because the doctrines of the church tell what you need to know. Jesus was the Son of God and he died for our sins. Ironically, it is in the churches where Jesus is most revered that the study of him is least tolerated.
In the 1990’s , when the ‘Jesus Seminar’ scholar Marcus Borg was in high demand as a writer and speaker, I helped organize a workshop with him in one of the Guelph churches. He spoke about his search for the ‘historical Jesus’ – what can we know about how he really lived, what he did, what he said, and how much of the gospels are embellishments by later writers. He taught that we can differentiate between history and metaphor and myth, and perhaps the person of Jesus will make more sense to us.
A small delegation came to my office, clergy from the local evangelical church. I knew these men well – we played hockey together on Thursday nights – the kind of gentlemanly hockey that Christians play – we bowed our heads and prayed before the game, and then tried to knock each other down, but if you knocked somebody down you stopped and helped them back up – it’s what Jesus would do. So these tended to be low-scoring games, with a lot of apologies…
So my hockey-playing colleagues came to see me and said – and they were genuinely perplexed – ‘Why are you bringing this man to town? He is against Jesus! He digs into things that we should just take on faith!’ And they were startled to hear our response – which was that we wanted to hear Marcus Borg out of our love for Jesus and his ways – we wanted to know him more deeply, to explore him as a full human being…
So the conservative response is – don’t explore Jesus! Just believe what you are told.
The progressive response goes something like this : Don’t talk so much about Jesus! We should be moving past our individual competitive religions and towards a universal faith! Look how much damage and violence there has been because of Jesus! The way forward for humanity is to stop talking about Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed and follow the way of reason, or mindfulness and yoga… The more deeply you invest in Jesus the more strife there will be with the equally strident Muslims and Jews and others… Oh, it’ll just be trouble, if you talk more about Jesus!
So here is the post-modern task : for those who are Christian to be unequivocally Christian – for us to be clear about the One in whose name we gather and whose teachings we want to understand and live out – but also to be unequivocally open to the mystery of God and to understand that the Presence that has spoken to us through Jesus will be at work in other ways through other people. As our Creed says ‘We believe in God who is at work in us and others by the Spirit’…
So here’s why three sermons and a bunch of evenings exploring Jesus – so we can grow in understanding of our tradition, know as much as we can, and then bring what is most beautiful and most life-giving in the life of Jesus into the conversations with all of our neighbours. Our convictions and loves for the gospel will not be a bludgeon but a dish we bring to a shared table. And God help us if it has no flavour or means so little that we can’t tell the others at the Table what is in it…
Let me go further with this, then, by showing you some pictures. Those of you who have been to some of the study groups I’ve done will know that I sometimes bring out a set of 3 or 4 pictures of Jesus, that is, images that have been created over the years to imagine him, to portray him. We have no idea what he looked like, and as a faithful Jew it would have scandalised him to learn that his image was being created. There is a clear command in the Jewish Law against creating images. Jewish art is full of symbols but never faces. There is a magnificent mosaic floor in the ruins at Sepphoris, a Roman town just outside of Nazareth – it is conceivable that Jesus or his father Joseph were employed in it’s construction – and in the Roman style there were faces in the artwork. Later on, Jewish patriots scratched out the faces – this is where the term ‘de-facing’ comes from, a form of censorship.
So, as we view these pictures, let’s be aware that we are viewing these less like photos, and more in the sense of ‘icons’ – an image, an act of imagination through which we are put in touch with some deeper reality that can’t be captured.
And as you are seeing these, I want t o ask you to adopt one of them – to consider which one of these Jesuses you are drawn to.
‘Man of Sorrows, Acquainted With Grief’ Jean Julien Bourgault
Out of the Quebec tradition so heavily influenced by the Roman Catholic church is the Jesus who has suffered, and so can be identified with those who suffer. This image brings with it two convictions – first, that Jesus himself suffered and died, in the atonement for our sins – and second, that because of this he is able to be compassionately present with all who suffer.
‘Jesus, Pantocrator’ (Ruler of all) – source of art not known
This type of image was traditional in the East – the Greek churches primarily – the style is usually the same – a risen Jesus, standing or sitting on a throne like a ruler – with the a sphere representing the world under his feet. His hand is raised in blessing – he is now the power that rules over all the world. This is Jesus in power, on high.
‘Jesus Loves the Little Children’ RUC window
You may not be able to see this window over there in the corner, but there is a window like it in almost every church you’ve ever been in. The story of Jesus quite intentionally welcoming children occurs just once in the gospel narrative, but has become a huge part of his persona – it makes him accessible, kind of like the favourite uncle who always has a candy or a dollar when he comes to visit.
‘Jesus Storms the Temple’
This image takes the opposite opinion. No kindly gentle Jesus here. This is a favourite among many United Church folks, as it is the angry Jesus, the prophetic Jesus who will speak truth to power, damn the consequences.
Christ of the Breadlines Fritz Eichenberg
Here is an image that will resonate with those of you who make the weekly journey with the men and women at Out of the Cold. Jesus, anonymously among and present with the poor.
Inspired by the work of Dorothy Day, “I have said, sometimes flippantly, that the mass of smug bourgeois Christians who denied Christ in his poor drove me to Communism, and that it was the Communists, and working with them, that drove me to God…”
Haida-Jesus
This is a copy of a painting loaned to me for a while by the late Hugh McCullum – former editor of the Observer. It was done for him by a native artist in the Pacific Northwest. We were using the image on a Good Friday pilgrimage called ‘Show Us Your Face’. So it is a reminder of what we call ‘contextual theology’ – that the face of Jesus, and the ways of Jesus will be imagined differently by people in different places.
Jesus Liberator
Two ideas :
Albert Schweitzer – a theologian and physician in the early part of the last century, he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1952 for his philosophy he called ‘Reverence for Life’, which he wrote after rejecting both the traditional doctrines of the church and the study of what, at the time, was being called the ‘quest for the historical Jesus’. He told a bit of a parable.
He said that looking far back into the past to find Jesus was like gazing far down a very deep well. All is dark at first – nothing to be seen or known. Then, some light, and a face appears. And the ripples on the surface settle out, and the face becomes clearer, and we discover it is our own face. We end up seeing who we want to see – a Jesus who will reflect what we believe. This is a risk in this enquiry.
Marcus Borg, at the very outset of his book ‘Meeting Jesus Again – For the First Time’ – sets out precisely why he wrote it, and why he thought it absolutely essential that Christians explore the person of Jesus.
‘Images of Jesus matter. It is my foundational claim that there is a strong connection between images of Jesus and images of the Christian life.’ The image we hold to will shape how we live in the world. So it is not that we hold to this idea or that idea of Jesus as a kind of entry pass into heaven – hold the correct idea and you get in, hold the wrong idea and go to hell – so much as whether we will live faithfully in the world…
Let me slightly revise Schweitzer’s parable. Jesus looked into the deep well, to see if he could see who the historical Jesus might be. It is early in his work and he is a young man and like every human I’ve talked to about the work we do, he was wondering – what will I do – how will I be in the world? And in the deepest place in the well he saw a face. But not his own face – he saw the face of the prophet Isaiah, and if he did at that point understand that he himself would one day have followers and that his words would be written down – he at least knew that at that moment he would be a follower of Isaiah – the image of God for him was the One who brings good news to the poor, who ends the violence of captivity and occupation, who heals and who gives new life.
And if, as he looked into the deep well he might have seen how it would be for the people of the world this past week – weeping in the dust of Haiti and farewells to beloved church members and a growing and scandalous gap between the wealth of the richest bankers and the foreclosed homes of dislocated workers, and he might have understood that he had chosen right – to follow Isaiah speaking good news and to rebuild ruined cities and bind up the broken-hearted…
And in the next moment he would have understood that this will mean trouble. And we’ll look at that next week…