My remarks from this evening's talk on "Why Does Jesus Matter?" follow:
Several years ago, a
good friend explained something about God that really resonated with me. She told me that our triune God has something
for everyone. Some of us relate more
closely with God the Father – our provider and protector; others are drawn to
Jesus our brother – our companion on the journey through life; some are
attracted to the Holy Spirit – the still soft voice that speaks to us in the
silence of our hearts. Our attraction to
different images of God can change as we face different challenges and
experiences in our lives. This
explanation resonated with me because I was suffering from a self-imposed Trinitarian
guilt-trip. You see, I’ve always been
very focused, very attracted to the image of God the Father, the Almighty One, to
the point that I felt that somehow I was neglecting the other two persons of the
Holy Trinity. Now, of course, God is one
so devotion to one person of the Trinity is devotion to all, but I am Catholic
so I quickly seize any opportunity to feel guilty about something.
So imagine how I felt
when I was asked to speak about why Jesus matters. Sure, I’ve studied the theology, and I do
believe that I have a personal relationship with Christ, but my relationship
with Christ rests securely in the perspective that theologians call “High Christology”
or Christology from Above” - I relate
with the divinity of Christ more than with the humanity of Christ. Just listen to me, I use the title Christ much
more than I his name – Jesus. So my
initial reaction to being asked to speak about why Jesus matters was a feeling of
inadequacy. I felt like I couldn’t do the
subject justice. I felt a little out of
my element. And the guilt came flooding back
in. But after I reviewed the Discovering Christ materials, I realized
that the answer to the question, “Why does Jesus Matter?” lies right in my
sweet spot. Jesus matters because Jesus
is God.
The people at Discovering Christ did some “man on the
street” interviews to find out how people responded to the question: Who is Jesus? As you can imagine, the answers varied
greatly. One man said that Jesus is God’s
Son who “saved man,” air quotes and all. Another man referred to Jesus as his higher
power; the one I believe in; the beginning and the end. A college-aged student said that Jesus was an
influential person who may have been fiction. One woman identified Jesus as the person we
can all look forward to meeting when we die, and another woman said, “I’d
rather not talk about it. A Jewish man
understood Jesus as a Jew who set up a new Jewish sect, and a young woman
called Jesus a figment of the imagination. As you can see, to some, Jesus matters; to
others, he doesn’t. Well, if you believe
that Jesus was just a good man, a great teacher or a great moral example, as
many do, then Jesus doesn’t matter. He’s
no different from any other good man – like Martin Luther King, Jr.; or any
other great teacher – like Socrates; or any other great moral example – like Mother
Teresa. Not to downplay the significant
contributions of each of these people, but the fact is that we have lots of them. If that’s all that Jesus is, he’s not unique;
he doesn’t matter. But if Jesus is God,
then he not only matters, but he matters a lot; he’s all that matters.
So why do we believe that Jesus is God? Well, there are easy answers, and there are
more challenging answers. We can find
both easy and challenging answers in Scripture. So let’s start with some easy answers. The Gospels tell us of the many miracles performed
by Jesus during his short life. In
Matthew Chapter 8, we hear of Jesus’ authority over nature as he calms the
raging sea that threatens to sink the disciples’ boat. (Matthew 8: 25-27) John Chapter 11 speaks of Jesus’ authority
over death in the story of the raising of Lazarus after four days
in the tomb. (John 11: 43-44) And Luke
Chapter 5 tells of Jesus’ authority to forgive sins when he heals the paralytic
with the words, “Your sins are forgiven.” (Luke 5: 17-26) If the miracles aren’t proof enough, Jesus
flat out tells us that he’s God. In John
Chapter 10, Jesus says, “The Father and I are one.” This statement would have been considered
abject blasphemy to the devoutly monotheistic Jews of Jesus’ time, and we know he
paid the price of his life for saying it. His miracles and his statements about his
divinity are, for some, reason enough to believe that Jesus is God. But for me, the Incarnation itself provides
the most compelling reasons to believe that Jesus is God made man; that Jesus
matters. In my opinion, three things
about the incarnation matter:
1. That God came to dwell among us matters;
2.
How God came to
dwell among us matters; and
3.
Why God came to
dwell among us matters.
I’ll
start with the first.
The fact that God came to dwell
among us matters to our belief that Jesus is God. It’s inconceivable to almost every religious
tradition outside of Christianity that God would deign to become man. It’s beneath him. Why would God set aside some aspect of his
divinity to live among his lowly creatures? The very definition of “god” holds that God is
completely perfect and happy in himself. He doesn’t need anything let alone to live
with us. Yet, it was perfectly clear to the
Apostles and disciples after the Resurrection that the Word became flesh and
dwelt among us (John 1: 1), that Jesus is one with the Father, God’s eternal
Word who was with God from the beginning. This is an outrageous claim that was rejected
by the Jews and many since. But it’s the
outrageousness of the claim that makes it all the more compelling to me. Just think about it, if you wanted to win over
followers to your beliefs about God, would you advance a proposition that ran
completely contrary to the common understanding of who and what God is? Probably not.
But the Apostles and disciples did, and they stuck by their story – so much
so that many died because of it.
The fact that God came to dwell among also us tells us
something about God that Jesus preached:
God is love. (1 John 4: 8) There’s no reason for God to dwell among us
other than love. He needs nothing. He simple wants
to dwell among us. Wanting to be with us
with no need for anything in return is love.
That God came to dwell
among us matters.
How God came to dwell among us also
matters. In Jesus’ time, there was a strong
belief among the Jews that the Messiah was coming soon. We know that the Messiah is the anointed one foretold
by the prophets who would come to save the Jews from their oppressors and usher
in a great period of shalom, or universal peace. While there was some disagreement on the
details, the general view was that the Messiah would be a mighty warrior sent
by God to conquer evil. The Jews had
many oppressors in their history, Assyrians, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks and,
in Jesus’ time, the Romans. So the Jews
were more than ready for the Messiah to come. And he did.
But how did he come? Not as a
warrior, but as a baby, which is pretty much as weak as we get. And if that’s not bad enough, this baby wasn’t
a princeling; he wasn’t born into great wealth.
He was born to simple parents in a stable among farm animals. Humble beginnings for a Messiah and
definitely not what was expected. Again,
the ridiculousness of the story makes it all the more compelling to me. If you were going to claim to be the Messiah,
or you were going to preach that a particular person is the Messiah, wouldn’t
you at least have had the good sense to make up a story that fulfilled people’s
expectations? Jesus and the Apostles and
disciples were either senseless or right.
Again, how God came to dwell
among us tells us something about God that Jesus preached: God’s love is humble. Listen to how Saint Paul describes Jesus in
Philippians Chapter 2: “Though he was in
the form of God, Jesus did not regard equality with God something to be
grasped. Rather, he emptied himself,
taking the form of a slave, coming in human likeness; and found human in
appearance, he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a
cross.” (Philippians 2: 6-8) In
Jesus, God humbled himself to become man and lived humbly as a man. How God came to dwell among us
matters.
Last
but not least, why God came to dwell among us matters. Justice requires that wrongs be made right and
that each receives what he or she deserves. So when we do something wrong or we owe a debt,
we expect to pay a price to make things right. The Judeo-Christian tradition
developed a legal process called redemption that had its roots in a Jewish family practice of buying
back lost goods or property or a person who was enslaved.[1] Redemption was
a way to satisfy the demands of justice while returning things back to the way
they should be. A passage from Chapter 4 of the Book of Ruth
illustrates the practice of buying back one’s relative who is enslaved or
indebted to others. This passage suggests that a redeemer must have at
least three qualifications: (1) the redeemer must be a close relative of
the person to be redeemed; (2) the redeemer must have the means (financial or
otherwise) to redeem; and (3) the redeemer must be willing to redeem. (See Ruth 4: 1-11).
In a world enslaved by sin for millennia, no person or group of people was
capable of redeeming all of humankind; yet, justice still demanded that the
price for sins against God be paid. Humanity could never free itself from
its enslavement to sin . . . until the incarnation. By entering this
world and taking on our sins, God satisfied the qualifications of a
redeemer. By becoming fully human, Jesus became our brother, our close
relative. As fully divine, Christ had the
means to bear the sins of all
humanity for all time. And by climbing Calvary to his cross, Jesus willingly paid the ultimate price for our
sinfulness.
So what does why God came to dwell
among us tell us about God that Jesus preached? It tells us that “God so loved the world that he
gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but
might have eternal life.” (John 3:16) Why
God came into the world matters.
And so we’re left with a
choice: do we believe that Jesus is God,
or do we believe that Jesus was just a good man, a great teacher or a good
moral example? As I said earlier, if we
don’t believe that Jesus is God, Jesus doesn’t matter. If we do believe that Jesus is God, then he not only matters, but he matters
a lot; he’s all that matters. Jesus
asks all of us the same question he asked the Apostles: “Who do you say that I am?” If you want to find the meaning of life and
your purpose in it, your answer to that question really matters.
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