Luke 3:21-38
December 23, 2012
Now when all the people were baptized,
and when Jesus also had been baptized and was praying, the heaven was opened,
and the Holy Spirit descended upon him in bodily form like a dove. And a voice
came from heaven, ‘You are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’
Jesus was about thirty years old when
he began his work. He was the son (as was thought) of Joseph son of Heli, son
of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Melchi, son of Jannai, son of Joseph, son of
Mattathias, son of Amos, son of Nahum, son of Esli, son of Naggai, son of
Maath, son of Mattathias, son of Semein, son of Josech, son of Joda, son of
Joanan, son of Rhesa, son of Zerubbabel, son of Shealtiel, son of Neri, son of
Melchi, son of Addi, son of Cosam, son of Elmadam, son of Er, son of Joshua,
son of Eliezer, son of Jorim, son of Matthat, son of Levi, son of Simeon, son
of Judah, son of Joseph, son of Jonam, son of Eliakim, son of Melea, son of
Menna, son of Mattatha, son of Nathan, son of David, son of Jesse, son of Obed,
son of Boaz, son of Sala, son of Nahshon, son of Amminadab, son of Admin, son
of Arni, son of Hezron, son of Perez, son of Judah, son of Jacob, son of Isaac,
son of Abraham, son of Terah, son of Nahor, son of Serug, son of Reu, son of
Peleg, son of Eber, son of Shelah, son of Cainan, son of Arphaxad, son of Shem,
son of Noah, son of Lamech, son of Methuselah, son of Enoch, son of Jared, son
of Mahalaleel, son of Cainan, son of Enos, son of Seth, son of Adam, son of
God.
In the spring of 1985 I was going through a crisis of
faith. It was my first year of seminary, and I was struggling. I wasn’t
struggling academically. I was struggling in my faith. Most people don’t know
this, but the first year of seminary is a lot like being in the Marines. It’s
not physically demanding, but it is spiritually demanding. Much like in the
Marines, where they break you down to build you back up, most seminarians
experience their first year as a breaking down in order to be built back up. I
was no different.
Why do most seminarians have this experience? Because
they are being led to study the Bible, theology, and religion at a depth that
most people don’t really realize is possible. Seminary students end up reading
the works of theologians with names like Schopenhauer, Moltmänn, Barth,
Brueggerman, and a seemingly cast of a thousand other oddly named theologians
and philosophers. Their works make a person’s head spin. And in the process the
students learn concepts and ideas that break apart the fragile faith that most
of us came into seminary with.
The funny thing was that I wasn’t in seminary to become a
pastor. I was a counselor who wanted to get my master of social work from the
University of Pittsburgh, and I saw an opportunity to learn how to deal with
the spiritual issues that come up in counseling. But I also had questions—deep
questions. I had been questioning for a long time. Part of the reason I left
the church at fifteen was in search of answers. Many young people leave the
church because they just don’t want to bother. They have little or no passion
for things spiritual or religious. I had a passion, and for a number of years
before going to seminary. I explored that passion by reading everything I could
on other religions, especially Eastern religions, but on my return to
Christianity I wanted to hear Christian answers. I entered seminary thinking I
knew a lot,… and I probably did. But that first year of seminary left my head
swimming as I tried to make sense of what I was learning, and to integrate it
with what I knew.
So, in the spring of 1985 I was in a crisis of faith. I
remember the exact moment of the crisis. I was in my apartment, reading yet
another book I didn’t really understand that focused on the meaning of Jesus,
and I started to cry. I was grappling with the whole Jesus thing. I got God the
Father. I got the Holy Spirit, mainly because much of what we teach about the
Holy Spirit is similar to the idea of divinity in Eastern religions. But I
didn’t really get Jesus. I had questions. Was he really God incarnate? Was he
really the Son of God? If so, what does that mean? Or was Jesus just a great
man, a prophet, or something along those lines.
My crisis was that I didn’t really quite believe what
others believed about Jesus. And I was struggling. I wasn’t sure I was in the
right place. I felt as though God had led me to seminary (some would have said
that Christ led me to seminary), but how could you go through seminary if you
don’t have Jesus figured out? In that moment I really was struggling, and I wondered
if I should go to the Unitarian Church. There was a Unitarian church not too
far from the seminary. If I went there I could make things neater. I could just
consider Jesus to have been a great man, and then simplify my beliefs. But I
wasn’t sure I wanted to go to the Unitarian Church. I had been to a few, and
they didn’t do much to inspire me.
I didn’t know what to do, and I felt like I had made the
biggest mistake of my life in going to seminary. Not knowing what else to do, I
prayed. I asked God to give me guidance. If I was to go to the Unitarian
Church, then God needed to make that clear. If I was to stay at the seminary, God
needed to make that clear.
In my crisis I was no different from the many who had
come before me, and who also had struggled with Jesus. The fact is that Jesus,
both when he lived on earth and now, has been a puzzling figure because he was
like no man ever. I didn’t used to believe that he was like no man ever. For a
long time my thoughts echoed those of many of our age. I thought that he really
was an ancient Gandhi or Martin Luther King, Jr. I thought that if Gandhi or King
had been living back then, they’d be considered a Christ, a messiah, too.
Certainly there were similarities. Both of them overcame great odds to lead
people to great leaps. Gandhi overcame the divisions and sectarianism of India.
He brought together Hindus, Muslims, Sikhs, Christians, and many others in
order to achieve Indian independence. In fact, that was why a Hindi man, a
member of his own religion, shot him. He was so effective at bringing together
people of different beliefs and faith that it outraged those who believed only
their religion was right. King’s assassination was for similar reasons. He
brought together people of different races, and outraged those who believed the
races should be separate.
The more I dug into understanding Jesus, the less I
believed that Gandhi and King were like Jesus, which is hard for me to admit
because Gandhi and King are my heroes and models of faith. What they stood for
and accomplished was amazing, but I slowly realized that they were not the same
as Jesus.
Trying to understand Jesus became an obsession throughout
my time in seminary, as well as trying to
understand the Trinity, which is equally as baffling, but not the topic of
my sermon for today. I’ll tell you
what the results of all of that studying about Jesus have been, not only then
but now (since my studies aren’t over).
I still don’t know that I really understand who Jesus was
and is, but I am much more comfortable with not understanding, and with the
knowledge that no one truly understands. How could anyone truly understand
Jesus? He’s a mystery in so many ways.
Still, I want to share with you some thoughts on what I
do know about Jesus, and why this makes him so completely different from other
religious figures. Many people believe that Jesus was simply another Buddha,
another Mohammed, another Confucius, or another prophet like Isaiah or Jeremiah
or John the Baptist. He certainly shared many similarities with them.
They all taught about the connection with the Divine and the
Holy, although each in different ways. Confucius’ focus was on living morally
with others and society. There was
already an acceptance of a kind of animistic spirituality in the culture he
lived in, and his concern was on how people manifest that by living wisely in
society together. The Buddha had a similar concern, which is living in unity
and compassion with the universal divinity. Buddha’s understanding was much
closer to how we view the Holy Spirit, which is a kind of amorphous holiness
and divinity that permeates everything. The focus of his teachings was to get
people to live in openness to that divinity so that it manifests itself in our
lives and our relationships, leading us to lives of compassion. Mohammed taught
people to live according to the desires and plans of Allah in heaven. His focus
was structuring society and relationships in order to create a right way of
living morally, socially, and spiritually. In essence, Jesus taught all of
these things and more.
He was also more than these. Our passage for this morning
reflects that. It’s a passage that few ever read in depth because it is filled
with names that are mostly meaningless to us. But they weren’t meaningless to
Luke and to his readers. They knew whom most of those names belonged to. Luke
was trying to say something significant about Jesus—something that delineates
him from other religious figures. He starts by reminding us that when Jesus was
baptized “a voice came from heaven, ‘You
are my Son, the Beloved; with you I am well pleased.’” This is something
very different from Confucius, Buddha, and Mohammed: that Jesus had a divinity
in him that was unique. And all those names? They are saying the same thing. In
Matthew’s gospel there is a similar list of names, but they only go back to
Abraham. This list goes back to Adam, where the list of names ends, “Adam, son of God.” Luke is saying that
Adam was intended to be the embodiment of God on earth, but that Jesus was,…
and is. The list is also telling us, by going back to Adam, that Jesus wasn’t
just here for the Jews. He was for all people,… for all descendants of Adam,
for the whole human race. That was a problem because the Jews wanted a messiah
who was for the Jews. Luke is saying that Jesus was for everyone.
There are so many more differences between Jesus and the
others. Simply put, Jesus did things that others didn’t—things that get in the
way of a lot of people’s ability to accept Jesus because they don’t fit with
their beliefs about what humans can do. One significant difference is the
healings. Healings were a BIG part of Jesus’ ministry, and in every healing was
a spiritual message: Jesus has broken down the walls between God and humans,
between the material world and the spiritual world. They tell us that God
intended for this world to be infused with the life of the realm beyond, and
that this is the kind of union that leads to holiness, wholeness, and health. Jesus didn’t just heal Jews. He healed
everyone, including those considered sinful by the Jews—a Roman Centurion’s
slave, a woman with a 12-year hemorrhage, a Syro-Phoenician woman, a Canaanite
woman, and many others. All were considered sinful, either because of their
nationality or because of their condition (the Jews saw certain afflictions as
signs of people’s sin). Jesus healed them all, telling them not that he made
them well, not that God made them well, and not that they made themselves well.
He said that their faith—their connection with God—made them well.
Jesus also performed a variety of miracles. Mohammed said
that his only miracle was in hearing and writing down the Quran. It is a
reported that Buddha did a few miracles, but they were miracles that
demonstrated compassion, such as when he mystically stopped a charging
elephant. Jesus’ miracles weren’t just willy nilly miracles. They said
something about God, about us, and about life. For example, Jesus’ feeding of
the 4000 and 5000 wasn’t just about sharing lunch, but about God’s abundance
and how God wants to bring everyone together. Even Jesus’ changing of water
into wine, which is a mystifying miracle to many, had a message. Today, because
we have such a drinking society, we can’t figure out what to make of it. Is it
a miracle saying that we should invite Jesus to every party because he can make
great wine cheap? It’s a miracle that baffles many fundamentalist Christians,
who tell us that the water was changed to grape juice, not wine, because they
believe that Jesus would never touch alcohol.
What they miss is that Jesus drank alcohol all day long
because everyone did. The quality of water was terrible, and people didn’t
drink water. They drank a watered-down wine because the alcohol disinfected the
water. The ancient Jews believed that wine was a gift from God to enhance
relationships. They had a saying: “Without
wine there is no joy.” They believed that when people drank it, people drew
closer to each other, and that drawing closer drew them closer to God. At the
same time, they did not believe in drunkenness. A person who repeatedly became
drunk could be ostracized from the family, the village, and the tribe. Wine was
a gift that was not to be abused. The point of the miracle was to show that God
wanted to foster relationships among people, and so God was showering gifts to
enhance relationships abundantly. The fact that Jesus’ water turned to wine was
the best wine of all said something about Jesus: through him God was giving
gifts of joy to people to reunite people with each other and with God.
Another difference was his willingness to sacrifice
himself. Other great religious figures such as Mohammed, Confucius, and Buddha
died natural deaths. Gandhi and King died violent deaths, but they were
unsuspected deaths. Jesus went to the cross willingly. He could have avoided
it. He had ample time to slink away. If he had just walked back to Galilee, he
could have lived a long life because he would not have been arrested there.
Instead, he went to the garden to pray in order to ready himself for a brutal
and painful death. That willingness to sacrifice himself, to put himself in
harm’s way for others was different. All great religious figures had to endure
struggles, and they did so honorably. But Jesus did so willingly by courting
it.
The final thing that makes Jesus different was his
resurrection. This is the belief about him that pushes so many away. It was a
problem for me for a long time. And there are many theories put forward as to
why it was a lie. But I realized a long time ago that people, such as Jesus’
disciples and followers, don’t willingly die for a lie. Every disciple, except
John, died a brutal death because of their spreading the gospel. If it was a
lie, what was their motivation? Many followers died brutally, or faced
oppression, because of their willingness to stand for what they not only
believed, but witnessed. This resurrection also said something about Christ. He
wasn’t and isn’t bound by the restrictions of the universe. He is something and
someone different because he can transcend the laws of the universe that we
think are fixed.
Also, Christianity is different because it teaches that
Christ isn’t just an historical figure but a present presence. This is
significantly different from what is taught about other figures from the past.
It’s what I preached about last week. In all the other religions, people look
back to the past to discern how to live in the present. They look to the writings
and wisdom of these ancient figures. There’s an element of this to
Christianity, too, but Christianity also teaches that Christ is alive today, in
us. This is what makes Jesus so fundamentally different from all the rest, and
it is summed up in John 14-16. I would encourage you to pick up a Bible and
read these passages because they really tell us how not only Jesus is
different, but how his teachings are fundamentally different from those of
figures such as Buddha, Confucius, and Mohammed.
As a result of what these chapters say, Christianity
believes in the idea that Jesus was the incarnation of God on earth, and still
is the incarnation of God in us. You can interpret this idea in a lot of
different ways in terms of what they mean, and many people do, for one simple
reason: we can’t really comprehend God. Because we can’t everyone has a thought
out explanation for what they can’t really comprehend. We all come up with our
own formulas for what God can and can’t do. We assume God could do this or that,
or that God couldn’t do this or that. So we determine who Jesus was based on
what we believe God would or could do, or wouldn’t or couldn’t do. We set our
beliefs about Jesus based on our limitations of what we believe about God. If
we believe that God created the universe, but cannot transcend the laws of the
universe God created (in essence making God subject to God’s own created laws)
then we will not be able to accept Jesus as anything more than a great man or
prophet. If we believe that God can, and does, transcend what we know of the
laws of the universe, then we believe Christ can be who Christians say Christ
is.
Let me take you back to 1985. What led me to finally
accept Christ as real, in the past and in the present, was the answer to my
crisis prayer back in 1985. Somewhere in my struggles that evening, I sensed a
voice, an urging, an impulse telling me to pray about it. So I did. I asked God
to help me understand Jesus. What I then sensed was a guiding to actually pray
to Jesus about it. That was odd and uncomfortable, but I asked Jesus, if Jesus
was there, to make himself known to me and to help me with my struggle. What I
sensed was a response of Christ saying to me, “Don’t worry about understanding me. Just follow and it will all fall
into place.” And in the end that’s what happened to me. It wasn’t a matter
of figuring it all out. It was a matter of opening up and having an experience
of Christ.
What I learned from that is an essential message, which I
believe is the key for any of us to understand Christ. And the message is this:
as long as we are trying to figure out with our rational brains who and what
Christ was and is, we will never understand because the attempt to understand
gets in the way of our understanding. But if we are willing to seek an
experience of Christ, one that passes understanding, it becomes the key to
understanding. It’s by letting go of the need to understand that we finally
begin to understand.
Amen.
