St.
Paul’s United Church Sunday,
June 11, 2006
The Truth About Jesus – Rev. David Mundy
Isaiah 6:1-8
Romans 8:12-17
John 3:1-17
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I have been pondering for weeks now whether I would say anything about
The Book and The Film. I hope you can
hear the capital letters as I say the words. You can probably figure out which
book and movie I’m alluding to – The Da Vinci Code.
The Da Vinci Code has been controversial for a number of
reasons. It contends that Jesus of Nazareth was married to Mary Madgalene and
fathered a child. The descendants of Jesus still walk the earth and the Roman
Catholic church knows it but suppresses this truth in dark and nefarious ways.
All we have to do is look at Leonardo Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper to
see Mary Magdalene at Jesus’ side. Shocking!
In the novel the champions of truth do a fair amount to running from the
evil church people, stopping along the way, not to catch their breath, but to
make lengthy pronouncements about church history. One of Brown’s characters
glibly offers that the Roman Emperor Constantine declared in the fourth century
that Jesus was God and chose the four gospels we have in our bible, effectively
ending the discussion.
As someone with degrees in art history and theology I have done a fair
amount of fulminating and grumbling about Dan Brown’s book. Although it claims
to be factual, it is not at many places which is misleading. It is just plain
wrong about much of its analysis of the artworks it cites and it is just plain
wrong in some of what it claims about Jesus.
I keep telling myself that it’s just a novel, which I have read, bye the
way, and now I calm myself by saying that it is just a motion picture which I
haven’t seen because of the poor reviews. But I don’t like what one writer has
described as the “truthiness” of Brown’s writing, by which he means saying
enough that is close to factual to make it sound authentic.
What is the truth about Jesus?
Was he human? Was he divine? If we need to take Dan Brown’s admittedly
fictional portrayal with a grain of salt, where do we get our image or images
of Jesus the Christ?
The reason I have decided to say something about the Da Vinci Code today
is because this is Trinity Sunday, the Sunday in the year when we draw
attention to the rather bewildering doctrine that God is one entity, yet three.
As I have said before, we are the religion of bad mathematics – one + one + one
= One! The notion of the triune God has always been demanding and at times
perplexing. Add to that the simple fact that words such as trinity and triune
can’t be found in the New Testament. Yet
this concept and doctrine became central to naming oneself a follower of Christ
– a Christian. Eventually the Christian community concluded that Jesus the man,
the human being who walked with them and talked with them, was also God. But
how could they worship one God and believe that Jesus is God as well?
The reason we heard the story we did from the gospel of John is that it
is as close to a trinitarian passage of scripture as we get.
A religious leader, a Pharisee named Nicodemus, visits Jesus in the
quiet of the evening to have an earnest chat about faith. Nicodemus is
obviously curious about Jesus, and open rather than suspicious. He addresses
Jesus with the respectful title of Rabbi, even though we don’t have any
evidence that Jesus had formal religious training.
Nicodemus appears to get more than he bargained for in this encounter.
In John’s gospel more than any of the others Jesus answers questions by not
really answering them, or at least not in expected ways. Jesus says that
entering life with God is like a birth, a rebirth. When his visitor wonders
aloud whether this will be like childbirth Jesus quickly moves to a discussion
of the work of Spirit which is akin to an unpredictable wind. If that isn’t
enough, there are allusions to his death and resurrection, but in a veiled
reference to Moses in the wilderness.
Finally Jesus says the words which are only found here in John chapter three are so familiar to us: “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. For God sent not his Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through him might be saved.”
For those of you who get annoyed that we are always reading from those newfangled renditions of the bible these days, please note that this is the King James Version with which many of you are more familiar. So, in this passage we hear about God the Creator and the Holy Spirit of God. At the heart of it all, though, is Jesus, the unique Son of God.
Would you agree that we are here today to discover the truth about
Jesus? Most of us can concede this to some degree, although it seems to be
harder and harder to find the Jesus we once thought we knew. We might wonder if
this is a conspiracy, although let’s leave that to The Da Vinci Code and
its ilk.
There are some writers who want
us to believe that the person named Yeshua, or Jesus as we call him, never existed as a flesh-and-blood person. In
his book the Pagan Christ Canadian author Tom Harpur has claimed that
Jesus was neither human nor divine because he was borrowed from other
traditions. Some speak of the Cosmic Christ, a sort of “Christ principle” which
doesn’t have much or anything to do with the Jesus described in the gospels.
There are many scholars who identify Jesus as a great moral and ethical
teacher, alongside comparable figures in other religions such as Buddha and
Confucius and Mohammed. In a way the fictional Da Vinci Code is another
entertaining attempt to create a portrait of an entirely human Jesus rather
than one who has the attributes of God as well.
The concern for us is not the notion that Jesus was married and that this
was covered up. After all, Christians affirm that marriage is a good thing, and
if the gospels told us that Jesus was married we would probably have accepted
it as . . . well, as gospel! It is whether we can still say in this pluralistic
world that Jesus’ relationship with God was unique and that in ways we may
never fully comprehend he represents God with us.
Today on Trinity Sunday we remind ourselves that Jesus was and is real,
with all his humanity and divinity and that we probably have a lot in common
with Nicodemus – we aren’t always sure where that will lead us.
Brian McLaren, the author of a book called A Generous Orthodoxy
and a member of the board for the Sojourners Christian Community in the
U.S. comments that while Dan Brown may be misleading in some respects he does
challenge us to ask who Jesus is for us.
For
all the flaws of Brown's book, I think what he's doing is suggesting that the
dominant religious institutions have created their own caricature of Jesus. And
I think people have a sense that that's true. The name "Jesus" and
the word "Christianity" are associated with something judgmental,
hostile, hypocritical, angry, negative, defensive, etc. Many of our churches,
even though they feel they represent the truth, actually are upholding
something that's distorted and false.
As I interpret this, McLaren is
cautioning us against our “truthiness” about Jesus, whereby we create him in
our image and for our convenience. We an all be guilty of using Jesus for our
purposes rather than allowing Jesus to be the Christ, the one who comes in
humility and power to bring a new order to this world.
The real promise of our time is that
we can move beyond some of our conventional thinking and at the same time
centre ourselves in Jesus who is the Risen Christ. I want to encourage you to
trust that there is still room for the Trinity in our thinking and living as
Christians. This is not some curious relic from the past, but our hope now.
One of my United Church colleagues,
someone I like a great deal, admitted to me recently that he would no longer
describe himself as Trinitarian, which I assumed meant that he no longer
considers Jesus to be God. It was a statement of fact really, not a confession,
and it made me sad. Why? We both had experiences in our teens where we were
convinced at the deepest level of our being that Christ came to us and awakened
us to the possibilities of the life in faith.
In both instances those encounters
with Christ changed us and eventually led us toward ministry. My sadness comes
from my conviction that Christ is still with me and still informing the choices
I make and the life I live, even though I often stumble and need to be helped
to my feet again. It is Christ who is there to help me find my balance and give
me hope. I want that to be the case for him. And for all of you.
When we are seeking the truth about Jesus it is not about finding or making the correct statements about him. We can repeat all the historic creeds and contemporary statements we like, but there is no guarantee that they will bring us closer to the Christ. We can read the best of scholarship on Jesus It is entering into the relationship with Christ which is rebirth and is the fresh and freeing experience of the Holy Spirit.
Earlier in worship the waters of baptism were applied to two children, in what I consider to be one of the great privileges of ministry, and then the words were said “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” All of us can experience that renewal of Christ’s presence today.
I’ll leave you with a prayer from the Celts, a tradition which honours both the Trinity and the living Christ:
Christ be with me, Christ within me,
Christ behind me, Christ before me,
Christ beside me, Christ to win me.
Christ to comfort and restore me,
Christ beneath me, Christ above me,
Christ in quiet, Christ in danger,
Christ in hearts of all that love me,
Christ in mouth of friend and stranger.
Amen!