16 Pentecost, a p21, September 28, 2014
Lectionary Link
I think that one of the most
baffling things for us today might be the reason we are in church today. Here
we are today almost two thousand years after Jesus of Nazareth left this earth,
claiming to have a relationship with Christ and continuing to meet to celebrate
this relationship. This is rather
amazing and the reason that we don't find it amazing is because it has become
such a cultural habit that we don't ever stop to think about the fact that it
might really be classified as absurd behavior.
In psychology, there is a condition of a mutually shared delusion between
two people known as Folie à deux. You've probably drunk the wine with the same
name, which I believe was a winery started by two psychiatrists as their shared
delusional project. Folie à deux is one thing but what about Folie à milliards, a shared delusion of billions? Here we are under the "irrational
delusions" of being in relationship with a person who left almost 2000
years ago. Surely if billions have
shared this delusion, it would qualify for the being objective truth by sheer
number of participants. Why call us
crazy if so many of us share it? On the
other hand does popular practice guarantee the sanity or meaningfulness of a
practice?
It is this widespread condition which calls for explanation. It was this widespread condition early on in
the life of the church which called for an explanation and an origin narrative
for why this condition prevailed. I
would call this condition the lingering authority of Jesus Christ. This authority is characterized by the
confession of so many people who claim to be under the persuasive influence of
Jesus Christ even though he has not been seen or heard or touched for almost two
thousand years.
The earliest followers of Jesus were truly baffled by the continuing
authority of Jesus Christ in their lives and in the ability of this persuasive
authority of the Spirit of Christ to be able to inspire people to live in
community with each other and to achieve the state of fellowship in face of the
ethnic and social diversities which were known in the urbanization which took
place in the cities of the Roman Empire.
The Gospel writers tried to track the source of this pervasive authority
back to the origin events in the life of Jesus.
And so it was obvious that the question of the authority Jesus began in
the original setting of his life ministry.
Those who had official authority in their religious leadership roles
were presented as questioning the authority of Jesus in his ministry. And Jesus responded, "Are you going to
question the popular authority of John the Baptist too?" Authority does not necessarily come by the words
that one says about oneself; it comes in the actual performance of love and
justice. And so there was a parable of
Jesus given to illustrate the importance of obedient action. There
were official religious people who were saying that they were obeying God and
they had seminary degrees to prove it; but in actual practice they did not
practice love, mercy, forgiveness and justice.
And then there were tax-collectors, prostitutes, peasants and fisherfolk
and obvious sinners who made no profession of official religious standing but
in their actions they had come to obey God and love God and do the works of
righteousness. The punchline of the
parable is this: The proof of authority is in the doing. By their fruits you shall know the
authenticity of their faith and belief in God.
Where does authority lie? Does it
lie in obvious visible offices of power, those which are couched in the
appearances of wealth, physical strength, power and social and political
position? The authority of Moses was to
be found in willingness to be the one who interceded on behalf of the people
who were dependent upon him. The dependent
children of Israel needed food and water in the wilderness and Moses was
presented as the one who approached everything that he did out of a motive of
care for the people who needed it.
The people in the churches of St. Paul knew that Jesus was not a god
like the gods and goddesses of the Roman Empire. They knew that Jesus was not a god because
like the Caesar he was declared to be god or son of a god by the Roman
Senate. So if Jesus did not look like a
Roman god or like the divinized Caesar, what kind of God was Jesus and how
could one characterize the strength and nature of the authority of Jesus?
And so we have this wonderful Christological hymn or poem about the
essence of the divinity of Jesus. It was
to be found in his humility to empty himself of looking like the way in which
an earthly god would look. Jesus was God
who empty himself of looking like God and taking upon himself the complete
identity of humanity so that humanity might recognize what true godliness was
and begin to express human godliness in finding the most excellent way to be
human.
The humility of Jesus in denying the "office of being God" in
order to do and perform the fullness of being human was proof that Jesus both
obeyed God in taking on human form but he also completely performed humanity as
a human person. He put his words of
obedience together with his actions of assuming complete humanity. He became God hidden in a human person.
And that is the authority of Christ which remains for us today. Jesus exposed God as hidden within the
created order as a wonderful and caring personal Spirit. And so after Jesus left this earth, his
followers continued within this tradition of knowing God as personal dynamic
Holy Spirit hidden within the created order but not so hidden as to escape recognition
in the influencing the lives of many, many people who have come to know God as a
loving, caring, dynamic, immanent personally present Being.
This is the authority of Christ which caused the Gospels to be
written. This is the authority Christ which
continues to witness to us today because Christ shows us that God as incognito
in the created order can still be known as loving and caring dynamic personal
Holy Spirit who can be a higher power and friend to us in the midst of
living. Let us rejoice in this continuing
authority of Christ today. Amen.
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