Visions From Our Story: Jesus the Messiah

So why didn't everyone flock to Jesus and declare him to be the chosen one of God? This is a question that has disturbed people from the time of Jesus until now. When we read the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) we read stories of amazing healings, transformational encounters and miracles of feeding and forgiveness. From our lenses (that of 21^st century Christians) we can see what we believe to be the obvious. Jesus was the messiah, the Son of God and God incarnate. We shake our heads and wonder about those who were near him, that they could be so obtuse and not see what we see.

The problem with this kind of thinking is that we have the advantage of two thousand years of Christian interpretation and the Gospels themselves to show us the way to our particular set of beliefs. What we need to remember is that in the time of Second Temple Judaism (this is how the time of Jesus is referred to…the time of the second Temple in Jerusalem…the first one being destroyed by the Babylonians and then a new one built after the people returned from exile) there was no consensus as to who the messiah would be or how he would accomplish his task. And the idea that a human being could somehow be God incarnate was a heresy to be avoided at all costs.

While there was no clear consensus as to the "who" or "how" of the messiah there was consensus as to the "what" of the messiah. The "what" was the messiah would drive the Roman's from the land and restore Israel to its status as an independent nation where God's rule and reign and law would be observed. They would establish a political Kingdom of God. Israel would become a theocracy (in some ways like modern day Iran) where only God's people were allowed. Ultimately Jerusalem would become the center of all worship throughout the world as people realized that the God of Israel was the one, true God.

Looking at the life of Jesus through this lens then what we see is that Jesus was not fulfilling these expectations. Jesus was offering a very different version of the Kingdom of God. The Kingdom of God in Jesus' teachings was the fulfillment of God's rule and reign and not Israel's. What I mean by that is that Jesus had come to lead the transformation of the entire world into the world that God had originally intended for God's creation. This is a world in which people live in loving relationships with God, one another and with the world around them. This is a world in which people strive for peace and justice; caring and compassion.

This mission in which Jesus was engaged then pitted him against many people, both Jews and Gentiles. It pitted him against those who desired a political overthrow of the Romans. It pitted him against those who used the Law of God (the Law that is the Torah...the first five books of the Bible) as a way to exclude people from the community of faith and from God's Kingdom. It pitted Jesus against those who believed the Temple (and its rituals) in Jerusalem was the be all and end all of faith. It pitted Jesus against the Romans who believed that all people needed to give allegiance to them above and beyond any other allegiance. What Jesus was doing then was redefining (or actually clarifying) the role of the messiah as the one who was bringing the Kingdom of God for all people.

In terms of our vision then we would be wise to see Jesus in this role…as kingdom bringer and not merely saver of souls. By so doing we honor his work and find our own calling and mission in the world. For if we follow the kingdom bringer then perhaps we are kingdom co-workers with him.

Visions From Our Story: The Promise Made Flesh

The Promise was now held captive by those who believed it was a promise just for them. The Promise that God would use Israel to restore all of creation (the fulfillment of God's promise that Israel would be a blessing to the entire world) did not seem possible since Israel believed that the blessing was simply the restoration of their political independence. In other words the Promise was all about Israel and not the world. We can't blame Israel for losing sight of its larger purpose. In the midst of war, exile and poverty it is easy to lose the big picture and focus instead on immediate needs and desires. God however had not lost sight of the larger picture.

God's promises are eternal. God does not get sidetracked but constantly moves forward with God's plans to restore creation and remake the world. Thus, as our communion liturgy puts it, "when the time was right God sent his only son Jesus into the world." God was going to complete God's plan even when the people who were supposed to be helping to complete it were part of the problem.

The sending of Jesus into the world was not "plan B" for God. Some people have intimated that God had hoped that the restoration of the world would ultimately be accomplished by Israel's obedience to the Law (Plan A) and only when they were unable to accomplish the task did God decide to send Jesus. This view does not coincide with scripture. From the beginning of the Biblical story Israel was to be the incubator of the fulfillment of the Promise, not its completer. The final fulfillment was always to be an act of God. Humanity, because of its self-centeredness, would never be capable on its own of breaking the power of sin in the world. Only God could accomplish this and God would do so through Jesus.

The Bible looks at Jesus through many lenses. The scriptures describe him as a prophet, teacher, rabbi, messiah (Christ), Son of God, Son of Man and The Word. (Next week we will look at how Jesus defined himself and his mission). The Apostle Paul shines his own light on Jesus and Jesus' work here on earth referring to Jesus as "our peace" (Ephesians 2:14), one who was "in the form of God" (Philippians 2:6), "the first born of all creation" (Colossians 1:15), and "Lord" on multiple occasions. Each of these descriptions adds something to our understanding of the person and work of Jesus.

Ultimately our tradition (the Orthodox Christian tradition accepted by the vast majority of Christians over the past 1,500 years) affirmed above all other views of Jesus that in the person of Jesus we see the fullness of both God and humanity at work. This view was not always taken for granted but was arrived at through Bible study, prayer and debate. One of the reasons the church arrived at this conclusion, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to God, was the very fact that scripture makes it clear that human beings (as noted above) cannot fulfill the Promise themselves. And since Jesus' actions initiated the fulfillment of the Promise to save and restore the world then God must have been at work in Jesus in a way God is not and cannot be at work in and through other human beings.

Where this leaves us in terms of our own vision is that this Jesus whom we worship and follow shows us the very heart of God. By making Jesus Christ the center of our lives we are making God the center of our lives and our corporate vision. Thus the Promise can live through us.

Visions From Our Story: The Promise Held Captive

We began this series of weekly updates with a vision of a marvelous creation (Genesis 1 and 2) in which God was living in right relationship with all of God's creation (humans, animals and creation itself); and all of creation (humans, animals and creation itself) were living in right relationship with God and with one another. This good creation was disrupted by humanity's self-centeredness and refusal to listen to the will of a creating and loving God.

The story continued with a vision of God's efforts to restore the marvelous balance and relationships which were the intent of God's creative work. We watched God work with Abram (through which God promised to bring about the restoration of the good creation), with King David (from whose lineage God promised a new king would come) and ultimately with King Cyrus of Persia who restored Israel (after her exile) in order that the promise might be fulfilled.

What we might wish for at this moment in the story (the last 500 years before the birth of Jesus) was that the nation of Israel would realize its calling and set its mind and will to the task of working with God to restore the creation. Unfortunately this is not what happened. The trauma of loss (of its freedom and sense of invulnerability) made the people of Israel grow inward rather than reach outward. The leadership of the nation believed the only way to maintain its identity as a distinct people of God was to erect higher and higher walls in order to be separate from the peoples around them.

We see this in the two books of Ezra and Nehemiah. These twin books (they are in fact one story in two parts) tell of the amazing and heroic return of the God's people to the land. We can read of the bravery of ordinary men and women who stood against immense pressure to give up the quest to restore Israel. The dark side of this return however was that the leadership did everything it could to insulate the Jewish people from the people who loved around them. This even took the form of having Jewish men who had married foreign women during the exile divorce their wives and commit to never again marry outside the faith.

It was during this time as well that the party known as Pharisees had its beginnings (though it would only take final shape in the time of Jesus). The Pharisees were those who believed that one way to insure the separateness of the Jewish people was by keeping the laws of God in minute detail. They were not legalists as such, but they were determined to maintain the integrity of the Jewish people at all cost. This desire for separateness meant that the promise of God to restore creation was held captive because of the fear of outsiders. In fact even the vision of this restoration was lost and replaced with a vision of restoring Israel only…a fact with which Jesus would have to contend.

The challenge before us a renewed people of God in Christ, is to never hold the promise hostage. Our calling is to usher the promise into the world in order that the world might be slowly, but surely redeemed. Granted none of us can complete this task of restoration, only God can do that. None-the-less we are baptized into the body of Christ in order that we might be co-workers in Christ to restore what humanity rent apart. So any vision to which we ought to conform our lives should be one that sets the promise free, rather than one that holds it tightly for as if it is our possession and not God's promise for the world.

Visions From Our Story: The Promise Comes Home

The story of the people of God is a long and complicated one. Within this complicated story one of the great themes that emerges over and over again is that of exile and return. This is in fact the overarching framework of the entire Bible. Thinking back to the beginning of our story we remember that creation was the perfect home for Adam and Eve. Their unwillingness to listen to God had them "exiled" from paradise, thus causing all of creation to groan and long for the perfection of the original creation. The Promise given to Abraham, that through his family the world would be blessed, is the promise that God would work to bring all of creation (humanity and the physical creation) back to the condition in which God originally created it.

This theme of exile and return once again comes into focus when the people of Israel traveled down into Egypt and became captives. Through Moses the people were freed and after a forty year journey traveled home to the land "flowing with milk and honey." They came home to the land promised to Abraham.

The next exile episode is the one we read about last week in which the Judah was destroyed by the Babylonians in 587 B.C. E. (one of the great Middle Eastern empires) and the Jewish leadership was sent into exile in Babylon, which is modern day Iraq. The people of God struggled with this exile as much or more than with any of those that had preceded it. They struggled because they had believed that because they possessed the Temple (what they thought was the very throne of God) that God would not allow them to be destroyed. Fortunately the prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel let the people know 1) that the nation fell because of its self-centered vanity and not because the gods of Babylon were greater than the God of Israel and 2) the fall was not the end. God would indeed, one day bring God's people back home.

This return began in 538 B.C.E. when the Persians under Cyrus obliterated the Babylonian Empire and instituted a new way of dealing with subject peoples. The Persians allowed each nation to worship and live as they pleased as long as they paid their taxes. In fact Cyrus not only allowed the Jews to return home but sent money to help them rebuild Jerusalem and its Temple. For this reason the scriptures refer to Cyrus as "messiah", the only time that such a term is used for a non-Jew. The story of this return and rebuilding can be found in the books of Ezra and Nehemiah.

The story of exile and return is a reminder to us that the way of following God is not always a straight and easy path. The church, as with Israel, lives in a real world with real issues and real pressures to take paths that do not always conform to the way of Jesus (see our Revelation 2:12-17 as an example). The challenge before us as we seek our particular vision is to trust that even when we do get off track God in Christ is always ready to redirect us (to bring us home from exile). This means that we do not have to wait for the perfect vision for our church family. We can, as Martin Luther put it, "sin boldly", meaning we can do our best to serve God trusting that in God's grace even when we are not perfect God will still use us. The challenge is to find a vision, get going and trust the Spirit will use us to do great things. So as we progress in our vision casting process, realize this process will be ongoing as we travel together in the way of Jesus.

Visions From Our Story: the Promise in Peril

Things were looking up for Judah. While their northern neighbor Israel had been annihilated by the Assyrians, Judah had escaped. Through a miraculous intervention of God (or a highly unlikely set of fortuitous events…given one's take on history) Jerusalem, Judah's capitol, was never captured and its leaders never put to death by the Assyrians.

Unfortunately as we have witnessed so often with God's people, the blessings of one generation were not appreciated by the next. The kings that followed this escape were mostly a pretty sad lot. Some were quite evil (Manasseh who erected altars to other gods and returned to child sacrifice) while others simply were inept. There was one bright spot, Josiah. Josiah reinstituted the Torah, removed foreign gods and tried his best to return the nation to a more God-centered way of life. Unfortunately he was killed while trying to defend his nation from the Babylonians (the Empire that annihilated the Assyrians).

The kings who followed Josiah seemed to have learned nothing from his efforts or the fate of Israel. The prophets had declared that Israel was destroyed because they had failed to be a nation of justice, compassion and inclusion and were instead a people of oppression and greed. One would think that Judah would, at all costs, attempt to live otherwise. Regrettably Judah believed itself to be invulnerable because God would never forsake them and could therefore live as it pleased.

Judah believed they were invulnerable for two reasons. The first reason was that the Assyrians never conquered Jerusalem. The people of Judah saw their miraculous escape as God's promise that God would always protect them. The second reason was that Jerusalem housed the Temple, the very throne of God. Surely Judah believed, God would never allow God's own house to fall. Thus Judah believed they could do as they pleased and God would look the other way.

The Prophet Jeremiah proclaimed that this was not so. He declared, "Do not trust in these words: the temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord, the Temple of the Lord" (Jeremiah 7:4)…Behold you trust in deceptive words to no avail. Will you steal, murder…and burn incense to Baal..and then come and stand before me in this house (the temple) and say…we are delivered! – only to go on doing these things which are abominations?" (Jeremiah 7:8-11) In other words Jeremiah was telling Judah that if it did not get its act together it would suffer the same fate as did Israel…which is exactly what happened. The Babylonians destroyed Jerusalem and the temple and carried the leaders of the nation into exile. The Promise (of God's worldwide restorative work) was now in peril for the people of God were scattered across the face of the earth.

For you and I this story ought to remind us that our vision needs to be one that guides us in establishing a community that reflects God's desires for justice, compassion and inclusion. If we are to be the bearers of God's promise then our church ought to reflect these virtues that were at the heart of both the Torah and the teachings of Jesus. By creating such a community we allow the promise of God's restoring work to be experienced by all those with whom we have contact. By becoming such a community we allow the promise to live in us. Though we will never be perfect, we can with God's help, lead a very different life than Judah and Israel.

Visions From Our Story: The Promise Saved

One became two and then two become one. God's people had created, under the leadership of King David, one nation; one nation capable of carrying God's promise for the world. Unfortunately as we discovered, that one nation lasted only a matter of two generations. David's son, Solomon and his grandson, Rehoboam, broke the nation in two through oppression, abusive taxation and a refusal to listen to the needs of the people.

The two nations (Israel in the north and Judah in the south) engaged in an elaborate dance for several hundred years. Sometimes they would wage war against one another. At other times they would work together for a common cause. Ultimately Israel chose to go down a road that not only led them away from God (worshipping the gods of their neighbors and engaging in economic oppression and child sacrifice) but led them to an arrogance that ignored geo-political reality. Their demise was a brutal demonstration of the power of the Assyrian Empire and the foolishness of Israel's leadership. They would no longer be a factor in bringing the promise of God to fruition.

In the face of this defeat and destruction Judah (the remaining bearer of the promise) was blessed to have a king who did all he could to be faithful to God. Hezekiah was one of the bright spots in the life of God's people. His reign began a few years after the fall of Israel. The scriptures say that "he did what was right in the sight of God." He pushed out the gods of neighboring peoples, destroyed the bronze serpent that Moses had created in the wilderness (it had become an object of worship), defeated Israel's enemies, obeyed the Laws of God and then refused to pay tribute to Assyria (who by this time was elsewhere occupied). For a moment things were looking up.

Unfortunately for Hezekiah and Judah, the Assyrians returned. Hezekiah attempted to buy off the Assyrian King Sennacherib with silver and gold, but that would not suffice. The Assyrians were out to destroy Jerusalem. Hezekiah did not know what to do and so he sought the wisdom and advice of the great prophet Isaiah. Isaiah sought the wisdom and advice of God. The word that came to Isaiah was that Hezekiah should not fear. The Assyrians would never take Jerusalem.

It is at this point that the scriptures and history are in agreement with the outcome of the events, but not the cause behind the outcome. With the Assyrians encamped around Jerusalem, ready to destroy it, a miracle occured. Literally one morning the residents of Jerusalem awoke and the Assyrians had vanished, leaving behind much of their equipment and food. While the scriptures attribute this to God's hand (an angel who slew 143,000 of the Assyrians), there is speculation that either a plague broke out amongst the army, or the king of Assyria heard rumors of a rebellion at home and returned to protect what was his (he was assassinated by his sons shortly after arriving home). Regardless of the reason Jerusalem and the people of God were saved. The Promise would live for another day.

Where I believe this story helps us with our vision is to remind us that even in the most difficult of times, God is willing and able to assist us in fulfilling our vision. We can see this in the life of our church. Over the last twenty years, even with the rotating door of pastors and interim pastors and the economic meltdown in the area, First Presbyterian has made a difference in the world. By being faithful to the call of God to love neighbor and work for the reconciliation of the world you changed lives and communities. This story reminds us that even as Jerusalem could count on God so can we.

Visions From Our Story: the Promise Diminished

Scripture offers us a wide variety of images of God. God is the creating one who brings everything into being; the covenanting one who calls Abraham; the liberating one who frees God's people from captivity; the patient one who puts up with God's people in the wilderness; the seeking one who sent prophets to call God's people back to life and to faithfulness; the Promise keeping one who does whatever it takes to insure that the promise to bless the world will become a reality.

The book of Second Kings however shows us another image of God which is not quite as nice as those that had come before. This book tells the story of the Israel's relationship with Assyria. In 755BC Tiglath-Pileser III came to the Assyrian throne and began a dramatic expansion of the kingdom including sweeping into Israel and Judah. Those nations surrendered and agreed to pay tribute. Over the next 33 years Israel would have a series of kings who were at first obedient to Assyria and then would rebel. Most of the kings were ultimately assassinated either by those who wanted to rebel or those who wanted to give into Assyria. Ultimately Assyria had had enough of Israel and after a three year siege captured Israel's capital, burned it to the ground and either killed or deported 90% of its people. Those who were deported would never be heard from again.

While these events could be seen from a strictly geo-political point of view they offered a difficult theological conundrum for God's people. If Israel was part of the people of the Promise how could God allow them to be destroyed and diminish the Promise? The answer came from the writer of Second Kings who put it this way,

"Now this came about, because the sons of Israel had sinned against the Lord their God, who had brought them up from the land of Egypt from under the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt, and they
worshipped other gods and walked in the customs of the nations whom the Lord had driven out before the sons of Israel, and in the customs of the kings of Israel which they had introduced. (2 Kings 17:7-8).

 

In other words God had had enough of Israel and let them suffer the consequences of their greed, pride and idolatry. This new image showed that God's patience was not eternal; that ultimately God's promise did not insure the survival of all people of the Promise. If the people would not carry out their part of the mission they would be removed from the equation.

 

As we look to our own vision we need to keep this new image in mind. It is a constant reminder that we as a church have a mission…to work toward the releasing, renewing and restoring of God's world. We are not a spiritual country club but a missional agency. And if we are not faithful in our work we will fade away, and rightfully so. The good news though is that we know our calling and have the gifted, caring people to make it happen. So as we seek our vision for the future let us be mindful of our calling as God's covenant partners in God's amazing restorative work.