Last sermon given at Trinity Winchester
Scriptures: Zechariah 12:8-10;13:1; Galatians 3:23-29; Luke 9:18-24; Psalm 63:1-8
I’ll never forget a conversation I had once. This person contacted me because he’d seen something I’d written and I suppose he saw that I was a Christian.
I can’t recall what I had been discussing or debating in my writing, and I doubt it was very important, but I remember this guy contacting me and starting to ask me questions about Jesus.
As we talked he stopped asking so many questions and instead started to “inform” me of some of the things he knew about Jesus, my answers having revealed my ignorance of several events he thought were very important for Jesus’ life and teachings.
For example. “Did you know,” he said, “that Jesus went to India…”
Well, no, I didn’t know that… it’s not in the Bible and I really don’t think there’s any evidence outside….”
“Well” he interrupted, “you know that Jesus was a Druid, right? He went to England and Ireland with his uncle Joseph of Arimathea and learned from the Druids while he was there…”
If the DaVinci Code had been written I would’ve been sure I was speaking to Dan Brown’s cousin…and if this guy had read it, I don’t doubt I would have gotten a nice summary of all its theories as well.
It became apparent in our conversation he believed any claim about Jesus except the ones found in the scriptures.
It didn’t matter how much effort I put into trying to explain how improbable it would have been for Jesus or any of his relatives to travel to Britain and back, to say nothing of the fact that the Jews, despite those lapses in the Old Testament, weren’t known for their openness to foreign religion, and I’m sure Jesus would have been even less so.
In spite of all my efforts, I’m not sure I changed anything. He may have left our conversation believing that Jesus was really a Hindu-trained Druid while I, well, I still believed he was and is who the Bible says he is—the Son of God, the Word made flesh, my Lord and Savior.
You see, we all want to claim Jesus as our own. But too often we want to claim him on our terms, as a sort of trophy or trump card for what we already believe, rather than on his terms as our Lord.
And of course if we can truly claim Jesus, it is not because we have chosen him but because, as he says, he has chosen us.
One of the great Christian ethicists of the last century, H. Richard Niebuhr once said that Jesus:
can never be confused with a Socrates, a Plato or an Aristotle, a Gautama (Buddha), a Confucius, or a Mohammed, or even with Amos or Isaiah. Interpreted by a monk, he may take on monastic characteristics; delineated by a socialist, he may show the features of a radical reformer; portrayed by a Hoffman, he may appear as a mild gentleman. But there always remain the original portraits with which all later pictures may be compared and by which all caricatures may be corrected. And in these original portraits he is recognizably one and the same. (Niebuhr, 13)
We live in a day and age when people are trying to justify many things in the name of Jesus. Too often by claiming a Jesus of their creation.
But this isn’t a new thing. And thankfully we’ve been given some guidance.
Consider our gospel lesson this morning, where Jesus asked his disciples “‘Who do the crowds say that I am?’ They answered, ‘John the Baptist; but others, Elijah; and still others, that one of the ancient prophets has arisen.’ He said to them, ‘But who do you say that I am?’ Peter answered, ‘The Messiah of God.’”
There are lots of people out there claiming that Jesus is this or Jesus is that—that he’s John the Baptist, or Elijah, that he’s one of the Ancient prophets arisen.
Later on we know that there are enough people calling Christ a blasphemer and traitor to crucify him…
Today we might hear people saying “Jesus was a good man,” or “Jesus was a good teacher,” or “I like what Jesus said, but not what the Bible says he said…” Where exactly they’ve heard anything else legitimate, I don’t know.
We might hear people say that Jesus was a lot like Buddha—a good man who gives us a good example.
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