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| Who is Jesus? |
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Who is Jesus? John 4:3-29 (excerpts) Delivered by Andy Langford on January 24, 2010 So Jesus left Judea in the south and went back once more to Galilee in the north. Now Jesus had to go through Samaria. So he came to a town in Samaria called Sychar, . . . , and Jesus, tired as he was from the journey, sat down by the well. It was about noon. When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, AWill you give me a drink?. . . The Samaritan woman said to Jesus, AYou are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink? (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) Jesus answered her, AIf you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water. ASir, the woman said, Ayou have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water? . . . Jesus answered, A Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but those who drink the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. The woman said to Jesus, ASir, give me this water so that I won't get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water. . . . Jesus said to her, ABelieve me, a time is coming when you will worship God the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. . . . The woman said, A I know that the Messiah (called Christ) is coming. When the Messiah comes, he will explain everything to us. Then Jesus declared, AI, the one speaking to you - I am he. . . . Then, leaving her water jar, the woman went back to the town and said to the people, ACome, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this man be the Messiah? John 4:3-29 (excerpts, adapted) If someone walked up to you today, and asked a simple question, could you give a simple answer? If someone walked up to you and asked “Who was Jesus?” how would you answer? Was he a wise teacher? A social revolutionary? An ancient magician? A contemporary historian answers the question this way: Two thousand years ago a man [named Jesus] was born into a family of carpenters in occupied Palestine. He was a small-town Jew . . . . he preached a message of mercy, love and peace and was crucified for his trouble. This unlikely character has long been accounted the central figure of Western civilization. Even now, . . . though our supposedly post-Christian society often ignores and even ridicules Jesus, there are no serious suggestions for replacing him as the Icon of the West. [Thomas Cahill. Desire of the Everlasting Hills: The World Before and After Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1999, p. 8)] Most people hold Jesus in high esteem. Yet, we in the Church of Jesus Christ believe Jesus is unique. We believe that in Jesus, God came to earth. We Christians also believe that if we follow Jesus we will discover the meaning and purpose of our own lives. Following Jesus is what it means to be Christian. We, in the Church, begin by declaring that Jesus is the Son of God. We just celebrated this fact at Christmas. Christmas is a season of Agood cheer. Outdoor displays such as the one here at Central remind us of the familiar cast of characters Mary, Joseph, and the baby, lined up in front of a stable full of straw and animals. Christmas evokes in us life-affirming qualities like peace and joy (Luke 2: 1-20). Yet for Christians, the meaning of Christmas goes beyond warm feelings. Through the birth of Jesus, God allowed us to see who God really is. Jesus' birth is at its heart a love story, about God=s love for us. The message of Jesus' birth is found in one of the most popular lines of the Bible: "For God so loved the world that God gave us God's only son. (John 3:16)" Christmas reminds us that God is so passionately in love with us that God gives us God=s most precious possession. The God who was once "up there" is now "down here." The mysterious, unseen God was revealed in Bethlehem as a baby boy, a person who could be seen, touched, and known. Exactly how God became a human being is impossible to understand. But although we don't know "how" it happened, we are certain that when we encounter Jesus, we see our Creator God. This is why Christians call Jesus the Son of God. God becoming human in Jesus, however, is just the beginning of the story and the starting point of our faith. What actually happened when God was revealed in Jesus? The New Testament often depicts Jesus in three ways: as a healer, a teacher, and ultimately as messiah. Let us go further and unpack these three titles for Jesus. Jesus was best known in his day as Jesus the Healer. When Jesus was about thirty years old, he stood before his home synagogue in Nazareth and announced what God called him to do, "God's Spirit is on me; God has Y sent me to announce pardon to prisoners and recovery of sight to the blind, to set the burdened and battered free, to announce, "This is God's year to act!" (Luke 4:16-30, The Message). And Jesus began to live what he proclaimed. Wherever Jesus went, people were transformed by his presence. When people found out that Jesus had unusual healing power, they flocked to him. Jesus performed great miracles. Some people were cured of physical ailments such as blindness and paralysis. Other people were freed from emotional problems. In Africa today, almost every worship service includes physical and spiritual healing. Jesus is still known as God’s healer. When people wondered if Jesus was truly sent by God, Jesus described what was happening. One author [Frederick Buechner] paraphrased Jesus' response this way: "Tell [the skeptics] there are people who have sold their seeing-eye dogs and taken up bird-watching. There are people who have traded in aluminum walkers for hiking boots. The down-and-out have turned into the up-and-coming." One of the most healing characteristics of Jesus was the way he accepted people. Jesus welcomed one and all. He seemed to have enjoyed nothing more than a festive dinner with good friends. His friends included poor fishermen, oppressed women, crooked tax collectors, and the poor. Jesus welcomed the most unacceptable people of his day and left them transformed by his compassionate friendship. One of the persons that Jesus healed by his compassionate friendship was a woman from the region of Samaria (John 4:1-42). This Samaritan woman was shocked when Jesus approached her and asked for a drink of water. Samaritans were considered by Jews as untouchable. Even more so, women never interacted with men. But Jesus saw something more than a political enemy or outcast woman, he saw the deep desires of her heart. Jesus told the Samaritan woman things about herself that no stranger could have known. In response, this woman from Samaria discovered that Jesus was the savior for whom the world had been waiting. She ran through the streets of her town asking everyone, "Could this man be the Messiah?" She knew that something was missing from her life and discovered that this void could be filled by beginning a new life as a follower of Jesus. Jesus offered this Samaritan woman and many other people a way out of their brokenness. He offered living water that would satisfy people once and for all. In summary, Jesus was first of all a healer. But Jesus was more than just a miracle worker; he was also a teacher. Jesus’ was best known by many people by his title, Rabbi, which means teacher. Think back about your teachers. Can you remember a coach who leaned hard on you to help you reach your potential? Or a teacher whose passion for her subject stirred you? Great teachers do far more than convey information. Other teachers might be more entertaining, even more knowledgeable, but only truly great teachers ignite a spark in us that we never even knew was there. This was the kind of teacher that Jesus was. When Jesus taught C in the open air along country roads, on hillsides, and beside lake shores C he always attracted a crowd. To the people who came to hear him, what Jesus taught was unlike anything they had encountered. Speaking in riddles, parables, and unexpected paradoxes, Jesus often turned people's assumptions upside down. In many ways, Jesus= message was quite simple. God's love is absolute, and people should reflect God's love in everything they do. Jesus told us that when we discover God's love, in response we become lovers ourselves. As we grow to love like God, God then transforms us into something new. Some of Jesus' best known teachings are found in the series of sayings called the Beatitudes. "Beatitude" means blessed, and these sayings show us what it is like to live in God's kingdom. For example, the world tells us: You'll be happy when you reach the top of your game. You'll be happy when you have collected the most stuff. You'll be happy if you live like a celebrity, consuming, displaying, and then discarding everything you can get your hands on. Instead, Jesus tells us: You're blessed when you=re at the end of your rope. With less of you there is more of God and God's rule. You're blessed when you feel you have lost what is most dear to you. Only then can you be embraced by God. You're blessed when you=re content with just who you are B no more, no less. (Matthew 5: 3-5, The Message, alt.) Many of us have tried following the world's messages, only to discover that the world's values lead us to a dead-end. Being at the top of our game, collecting the most stuff, and pushing to get ahead do not give meaning to our lives. Especially in these days of the Great Recession, Jesus offers an alternative. He prescribes a life where by loving God and people we find our purpose. So Jesus, the Son of God, was first a healer, and then a teacher. But still there was more. Jesus also was our messiah, the one who turned the world upside down. Jesus began his ministry in this way. He traveled to the Jordan River where a cousin named John was preaching that the Christ was coming soon. John was called "the Baptist" because he used water to symbolize God's power to cleanse spirits. Jesus came to John and asked to be baptized. John was reluctant because there was something different about Jesus. But John consented and baptized Jesus. When Jesus came up out of the river, God=s voice from heaven said, "This is my Son, chosen and marked by my love, delight of my life (Mark 1:1B11)." When the crowd who had gathered at the river heard God's voice, the crowd thought that they knew what God meant. Jewish scriptures had promised that one day a messiah would be sent from God to re-establish the glory of the Jewish people. In Jesus' day, many of the Jews had developed some fairly specific ideas about who God would send to rescue them. The people expected the messiah to be a powerful warrior and a charismatic political leader (imagine combining General David Petraeus with President Barak Obama). The messiah would overturn Roman oppression and establish, once and for all, the glory of the nation of Israel. This is what the Jews expected their messiah to be. After Jesus' baptism, however, John shouted out about Jesus, "The Lamb of God!" The people thought: "Lamb? What do you mean, lamb? We were expecting a warrior-politician." Going back to the earliest days of Judaism, pure lambs were sacrificed in worship as a way to say to God, "I'm sorry for the sins I have committed." When John described Jesus as God's lamb, John saw that Jesus was going sacrifice himself and make amends for all that has gone wrong in our relationship with God. Jesus did become "The Lamb of God" who became the Savior of the World. Next week, we will consider how Jesus -- the healer, teacher, and messiah -- also became our savior. This morning, however, it is enough to consider that Jesus' friends came to recognize him as God-in-the-flesh. For the very first followers of Jesus, it was obvious that Jesus was human. His friends watched Jesus grow tired and hungry. They saw Jesus sleep soundly and eat until he was full. They watched him die a cruel death at the hand of Roman executioners. At the same time, there was something about Jesus that went beyond human limits. Jesus healed the sick. Jesus taught people about God with genuine authority. Jesus redefined their vision of the Messiah. Finally, and most importantly, Jesus’ followers saw Jesus raised from the dead. Even death had no power over Jesus. Witnessing Jesus= resurrection, his followers understood who Jesus was in a whole new way. The first Christians began to speak of Jesus not only as a personal friend but also as God. His followers prayed to Jesus. They worshiped Jesus. They looked to Jesus to set them on a path that was so radically different from what they previously expected, it was if they had been reborn to a second life. As I end this sermon, why should you care about Jesus? People are still looking to Jesus to heal them from everything that is broken in their lives. People yearn to have teachings that respond to the challenges of life. People still need someone to change their lives. For two thousand years, like the woman at the well, people have seen Jesus as a healer, teacher, and messiah. And that is just the start of his story. As we gather this morning, a nurse might be talking with Jesus about how to offer healing in a patient’s life. A business person may looking for wise advice to follow in these difficult days. An unemployed worker and a cancer patient may be asking the Lamb of God to lead them to God. And many of our friends and neighbors wonder if there are any answers when they are sick, troubled, or lost. Most of us in this congregation believe that we have found Jesus to be our healer, our teacher, our messiah, and even more. Over the next two months, I invite you to join me in these sermons to explore Jesus and our Christian faith even further. You may learn something new that may change your life even further. You may also be able to help a family member, a friend, a neighbor, or a colleague find some answers for their questions. Today, I simply invite you to keep an eye on Jesus and watch what he might do in your life in these days to come. "This I Believe" Jesus as the Icon of the West Jesus as the Son of God. Christmas as a sign of love The Son of God Jesus as Healer Jesus' first sermon in Nazareth Jesus' acceptance of people Jesus and the Samaritan woman Jesus as Teacher Message of love The Beatitudes Jesus as Messiah Baptism by John Popular images of the Messiah Jesus as the Lamb of God Jesus as human and divine Should You Care? |