The Risen Christ As a Trans-historical Protean Reality

5 Lent   B          March 25, 2012     

Jer. 31:31-34      Ps. 51:11-16        

Heb. 5:1-10        John 12:20-33     

 Lectionary Link

  The writer of the Gospel of John records an agriculture metaphor from the mouth of Jesus is our Gospel reading today.  “Unless a seed of wheat dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit.”

  If I were to expand that metaphor to understand the various Christian social realities that have come into social expression during the last 2000 years, I might say that the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a seed has become an entire forest of trees.  The one acorn of the life of Jesus that developed within the community of Judaism has now become a great forest of community trees.

  We now live in an Anglican/Episcopal tree of Christianity with many branches that exists in a forest of other trees all claiming one acorn or seed person as the origin and inspiration of our corporate life together.  That there are different kinds of Christian trees in this great forest is seen as a scandal of division to some, but to others the diversity of trees has to do with the different kinds of success of the message of the Gospel in different times, different places with different people.  Should we be surprised that from one acorn an entire forest of trees can arise?  Should we be surprised that from one genius in human history, the genius of Jesus Christ, that an entire forest of Christian communities has developed?  For people who want a forced unity of a mono-lingual Christianity, a world-wide Christian Empire, the great forest of Christian diversity is scandalous division.  But for those who attribute the success of Christianity to the ability to become diverse expressions in different places, such people see this diversity as a major reason for the success of the Christian Gospel.

  The Gospel of John is written long after the life of Jesus of Nazareth but it uses narrative teachings of Jesus of Nazareth to teach the theological practice of an established Christian community.  The writer of the Gospel is trying to weave together the relationship of what had already happened within the community of beloved disciple with the oral tradition of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.  The writer is trying to answer this question.  How did the fame of Jesus of Nazareth extend way beyond Jerusalem, Galilee and the Jewish Community?  The writer of John’s Gospel is also actually writing you and me into the Gospel.  How so?  The Gospel declares Jesus of Nazareth to be identified with the Word of God.  And so Word of God is a Person who speaks the oral words of language.  And yet the spoken words of Jesus had no infallible technology of memory; oral tradition is not very exact when compared with our recording technologies of today.  The writer of John’s Gospel used written words of language as a significant technology of memory. About the authors own words, the writer wrote: “These words are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.”  This is where you and I enter into the Gospel of John because we are readers, and in reading the Gospel of John we help fulfill the Jeremian prediction of the laws of God being written or inscribed upon our hearts.

  The writer of John’s Gospel is tracing the fame or glory of Jesus.  How did this singular individual Jesus of Nazareth attain fame or glory beyond his time and place?  Why did this community of John continue to meet together in memory of Jesus even when Jerusalem had been sacked and leveled and when the followers of Jesus had scattered into many cities?  Ephesus is often believed to be the community of location for the writing of the Gospel of John, and it is far from Jerusalem.

  And so the Risen Christ was an always present oracle that spoke within the followers of Jesus, and the Risen Christ inspires a teaching in story form about the origins of his fame and glory.  The Greeks who came to Jerusalem saying, “We wish to see Jesus” are all of us who have come to manifest a curiosity about this person who is not really of our time and place.  We have been those who have said in various ways, “We wish to see Jesus…we wish to wonder about his relevance to our lives….we wish to share the relevance of his life to others.” 

  And so the writer of John’s Gospel is reflecting upon the origin of the fame and glory of Christ that was significant six to nine decades after Jesus was no longer present to see and touch.  How indeed can people have this trans historical experience and presume to know a person who is no longer present to sight and touch and face to face questioning?

  What we can say about Jesus of Nazareth in his appearances in the lives of people after he lived, is that Jesus is perhaps the most protean personality of all history.  Proteus was the Greek god who could morph into any form in order to avoid having to predict the future.  The word protean has come to mean, “becoming all things to all people.”  Jesus as the Risen Christ has truly become protean; he has become available in all of the forms that the words which are written on our hearts can become.

  Jesus as the Risen Christ has died to the limitations of being a historical person located in the body of Jesus of Nazareth so that his message and law of love can now be written upon the hearts of everyone who wants to partake of this protean presence of the Risen Christ.  Can any of us deny the protean reality and fame of Jesus of Nazareth?

  If we deny this protean reality of the glory and fame of Christ, you and I are to be most pitied for being at this altar today to find the Risen Christ in the bread and the wine.  And if we are finding the protean presence of Christ in bread and wine, where else are we finding the loving presence of God so lovingly communicated to us in such individual and personal ways that we are drawn to respond and worship and say, Thank you, O God in Christ?

  You and I may not hear audible angelic voices declare about Jesus, “I have glorified the name of God and will continue to do so for ever” but the proof of history as redounding to the glory and fame of the protean Risen Christ is more significant proof than angelic voices from heaven.

  The writer of the Gospel of John wrote his community’s experience of the protean Risen Christ as originating in the life of  Jesus of Nazareth and in so doing, he wrote your experience of Christ and mine, and everyone’s experience of Jesus into this Gospel too.  Viva la difference!  Viva the protean manifestations of the Risen Christ.  God’s glory has been achieved even as the law of Christ’s love and presence has been written upon our heart.  And to this we can only say, “Thanks be to God!”  Amen.