WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO JESUS?
February 26, 2006
Texts – Exodus 3: 1-12
Mark 9: 2-9
Two weeks ago USA Today published an article by a columnist for The Des Moines Register entitled “What has happened to America’s Jesus?”[1] A number of you mentioned it to me. One of our members who winters-over out in Arizona even mailed me a copy.
“I remember when Jesus Christ was about religion,” the article begins.
“That goes back to when he was caring and compassionate all the time, not just during the political campaign season. He used to bring people together and give them hope. He wouldn’t have his people get in your face and tell you to fight gay rights or you’ll burn in hell. That’s not what he was about.”
Whimsically, then, the author goes on to describe a trip he made recently to visit family in Italy for the first time. There he discovered a culture, he said, in which Jesus has not been politicized. “Several times during the week,” he writes,
“I thought about telling my family (about) what’s happened to Jesus in the United States — how he’s been kidnapped by politicians and preachers who decide what he does and doesn’t think. They speak for him, and it doesn’t always make sense. They say Jesus is ‘pro life,’ but he doesn’t seem to have a problem with the death penalty. And he thinks stem cell research — something that would save lives — is no different from murdering babies. They say he’s the embodiment of kindness, love, decency and compassion. But he hates gays, lesbians and Muslims. And he’s not too crazy about Buddhists, Hindus and the rest. Jews? He can put up with them if he has to . . . All week I went over that stuff in my head and decided not to mention any of it to the family. It would make America look ridiculous.”
Now obviously the article’s author has a political point of view, perhaps one that’s a little left of center (who knows?). Just as clearly, he’s a bit naive when it comes to judging other cultures – Italy would not be my first choice if asked to identify a place where Christianity is not involved in the political process. Seems to me they have something there called “the Vatican,” don’t they? But his thesis strikes a chord in me nevertheless, as it clearly did in some of you as well.
The doctrine of the separation of Church and State not withstanding, we are in a time when the Christian religion in this country has become highly politicized. For better or worse, we are identified around the world as a Christian nation. Our leaders regularly and ritually invoke God’s blessing on all that we do. Jesus has become a political player in our life together, like it or not. The problem is that we are all losers because of it.
class=Section2>I remember a time when I wanted more than anything to have the Church stand up and take a position on the pressing social issues of the day. I wanted the pastor of my church to clearly and unequivocally speak out in the name of Jesus on the moral issues the country faced. It frustrated me no end that he failed to do so.
I say “failed to do so,” but I should add: “in my eyes.” Oh sure, he preached about Civil Rights in 1964 and ‘65 – I think maybe two sermons. He preached another sermon about Vietnam in 1969 – but only one sermon. Honestly I no longer remember where he came down on either of those. What I do remember is how frustrated I was by the fact that the people who held opinions on those issues which differed from my own, and who were therefore racist and militarist in my eyes, still seemed to feel comfortable coming to worship each Sunday.
I wanted Dr. Stephens, you see, to “speak for Jesus,” to tell us “what Jesus did and did not think,” and he didn’t do it. He told us what “he himself” thought, occasionally, but he just couldn’t bring himself to step up to the responsibility I was certain belonged to his position. Maybe some of you feel that way about me.
We do not lack for preachers or politicians today who have little trouble spelling out in great detail what Jesus wants. To date the voices on the right far out weigh the voices from the left, in volume if not in number. It leads some of us to ask, “What has happened to Jesus?” Whatever became of the caring and compassionate One who seeks to bring people together and give them hope?
These are perennial questions in the history of Christianity. There were those who asked them two thousand years ago. It is what prompted Mark, I think, to write about the transfiguration which we read about today. “Jesus took with him Peter and James and John,” it begins,
“and he led them up a high mountain apart by themselves; and he was transfigured before them . . . And there appeared to them Elijah with Moses; and they were talking to Jesus. And Peter said to Jesus, ‘Master, it is well that we are here; let us make three booths . . .’ For he did not know what to say, for they were exceedingly afraid. And a cloud overshadowed them, and a voice came out of the cloud, ‘This is my beloved Son; listen to him.’” [Mark 9: 2, 4-7]
Peter, James and John – three disciples, of course, but also and especially by the time Mark wrote his gospel, three founders of three very different churches and three very distinctive schools of theology. Peter was the champion of the church in Rome – the church of Jews and Gentiles together. James was the leader of the church in Jerusalem – the “mother church” which held fast to Temple worship and faithful observance of Hebraic law. John, finally, was the father of churches all across Asia Minor – faith communities comprised in the main of Greek speaking Gentiles steeped in a gnostic world view. Each of these disciples, need I add, was widely believed to be able to “speak for Jesus,” even though their messages were often at odds with one another.
So “Jesus took with him Peter and James and John,” Mark says . . . he brought together these competing streams of church communities . . . “and he led them up a high mountain apart by themselves.” A holy place, a sacred space . . . a place not unlike that where Moses stood when he encountered the burning bush. But instead of a bush transformed – “burning yet . . . not consumed” – they experience their friend and teacher transfigured, clothed in garments glistening and intensely
class=Section3>(blindingly) white. And right away they do what we preachers so love to do – they start talking. They just can’t help themselves. Peter jumps right in, even though “he did not know what to say, for they were (all) exceedingly afraid,” Mark writes.
Do you see what’s going on here? It’s a parable, a teaching story. And what is its message? “Listen to him,” the voice says. “I talk . . . you listen” might be a fair paraphrase. I don’t need your interpretation, your elaboration, your explanation, God says; I can communicate quite well on my own, thank you. Your job – Peter, James, John – is to listen, and to invite others to join you in my discipleship. Yes I expect you to share what you hear, but never presume to speak for me to others. I will take care of that myself. You provide the introduction; I’ll take care of the rest.
What has happened to Jesus, the caring and compassionate One who seeks to bring people together and give them hope? The answer I hear is, “He is doing just fine, thank you. He is where he has always been – wherever two or three gather together in his name, ready to listen and to follow the Risen Christ who is in the midst of them.”
Jesus, I’ve come to realize as I’ve grown older, does not need me to speak authoritatively for him. “You have ears to hear, let them hear,” he used to say in the Galilee; “you have eyes to see, let them see.” I suspect the same words are being spoken now. We need not travel to Italy to hear them. They are as accessible in Burlington, Vermont, as they were in Capernaum and Jerusalem two thousand years ago.
Ah, but it’s hard – hard to hear . . . hard to see. Hard in part because there are so many loud (shall I say “shrill”?) voices which compete for our attention. And when we do not hear in those voices a message which resonates with what we believe the Spirit of Christ is saying, it is ever so tempting (isn’t it?) to raise the volume of our own voices and to add thereby to the discordant clamor of our society.
Dr. Samuel Kobia is the General Secretary of the World Council of Churches, which right now is holding its ninth General Assembly on the campus of the Pontifical Catholic University in Porto Alegre, Brazil. Since 1948, the World Council has been a meeting place for Christians from around the world – a place where members of the global Christian community are invited not only to share their understanding of the will of God but to also listen respectfully as other (often opposing) points of view are articulated. It is a daunting task in our increasingly polarized world.
Last summer, Dr. Kobia addressed the General Assembly of our partner church, the Disciples of Christ. “In today’s ideologically divisive atmosphere (within) North American culture,” he said,
“conservative evangelicals and political progressives are often portrayed as members of different species – unlikely ever to achieve common ground. But those of us who are ecumenical, who are committed to unity in God’s love, have some experience of initiating dialogue – even difficult dialogue – and of opening our consciousness to the possibility that there may yet be something more that we can learn from listening to others. It is up to us to take the lead.”[2]
I hear that as our calling as well. We must listen – to the voice of the caring and compassionate Risen Christ who seeks to bring people together and give them hope. That is what we are about here Sunday after Sunday – listening for the Word which God would have us hear through the words we read, speak, and hear together. It is also what we are about when we honestly share with one another our understandings of what is right and true and good. It is not necessary that we all agree on one particular point of view, be that theological or political. What is necessary is that loving God with all our heart, soul, mind and strength, we also love our neighbors as ourselves . . . and therefore listen carefully and respectfully to what each has to say.
So what has happened to Jesus? He is doing just fine. He’s about the same business he was involved in two thousand years ago – seeking to bring people together and to give them hope. He is still the caring and compassionate One we’ve always known. Let’s listen to him. Amen.