by Rev. Dr John Evans
Sermon delivered 23 Nov. 2008
We have reached the end, perhaps it is the climax, of the Christian year.
We have passed through many different phases, stages, events in the life of Jesus who we believe to be the Christ, the Messiah, the Son of the living God. Next Sunday begins the season of Advent, the time of anticipation of God’s in breaking into our lives and the life of the world; there is then again the birth of Jesus – Christmas, his passion and death, resurrection Easter, the gift of the holy spirit – and then this day, this high and holy day where the letter to the Ephesians states that Christ is not only raised from the dead, but,
A Ukrainian icon of Christ Pantocrator
Christ is seated at God’s right hand in the heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the age to come. (Ephesians 1:20-21)
or as our famous passage about the sheep and goats says:
When the Son of Man comes in his glory and all the angels with him, then he will sit on the throne of his glory. (Matthew 25:31)
Wow! Can anything more be said about an individual, a person, a divine person than this – far above all rule, and authority, power and dominion – in this age and the age to come?
Or is it just “theological filler” and we expect this sort of language from scripture? Remember we have a progression here – child, good teacher, wise and popular sage, a leader cruelly killed lives on, and now is, well, ruler of the universe, or as the church has said, pantocrator. As I said, the climax to the Christian Year.
What however does this mean – how do we as modern people cope with such a claim? Can we make sense of it? Are we like Yuri Gagarin – the first Russian cosmonaut – who claimed on looking outside his space vehicle that there was no God nor, presumably, anyone sitting at God’s right hand. He saw nothing, so all of this godtalk was just rubbish. How do we understand this claim Jesus reigns, and sits on the right hand of God – really, does God have a right hand?
There are many ways we can unpack all of this. So is this hyperbole, extreme, almost meaningless, exaggeration – will not Jesus the wise teacher or perhaps better Jesus of Easter morn, do? There seems to be “my God’s better than your God” in this sort of language. Or do we “demythologise” such claims – and endeavour to express them in a way the scientific mind might understand? Sitting on the right hand of God, ruling the universe, as the language suggests, comes from the great myths, stories and images of ancient civilizations. What can we in today’s terms really say? And thus do we endeavour, like we are on an archaeological dig, endeavour to find the real Jesus buried beneath historical artefacts of texts, myths or traditions – like the Jesus Seminar – wanting to separate him from the church’s gospels, creeds and traditions.? Get at the true Jesus?
However, before we can deal with that claim, there is another issue we need to consider. Is there in fact really only the one, true, acceptable understanding of who Jesus is for us, for me, for you? Western scientific rationalism would say that there has to be just that view, and hence the passion of those within the Jesus Seminar, whereas increasingly in this postmodern world, we would say that there are other views, understandings, experiences of Jesus, the Christ, the son of the living God. Indeed there were different views in Scripture – there were, after all, four gospels. Rationality is important, but is it everything when it comes to our understanding of God and Jesus, and this understanding?
This past week I came across an interesting project of the Centre of Theological Inquiry at Princeton University in the States. I know several of us here have had close association with this institution – Nico Koopman who came earlier in the year was from Princeton. This centre has been running a project known as the Identity of Jesus Project, and it has just published a collection of essays on this project work called Seeking the Identity of Jesus: A Pilgrimage. The essence of this project, instead of stripping away all the accretions of the biblical canon, creed and tradition, whatever, has sought to see what all these different starting points offer with regard to clarifying the identity of Jesus’. They take the line from the Gerard Manly Hopkins poem The Kingfisher, of “Christ play[ing] in ten thousand places” seriously.
But how are those places recognised, and how do we then know we are actually encountering a Jesus who is real? So the project chooses to use the metaphor, not of an archaeological dig, such as with the Jesus Seminar, but a pilgrimage. As the project says,
Pilgrims begin their treks from differing locations and require varying equipment, but they all hope to converge at a common destination. And as they travel, they are reliably guided by the reports of those who have preceded them on the journey. In the same sense, our group worked with a variety of reports offered by the biblical canon, church tradition and contemporary experience.
I personally find this far more helpful for our contemporary times. It seeks a convergence of understanding, and it accepts a variety of starting points for that quest. So in its first publication, it offers some of the consensus on the identity of Jesus, given all of this. So to give you a flavour of this work here, very briefly, are some of the conclusions about their process and their consensus:
Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew.
The identity of Jesus is reliably attested and known in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments.
Indeed the entirety of the canonical witness is indispensable to a faithful rendering of the figure of Jesus – and to understand that identity.
The church must constantly engage in the practice of deep, sustained reading of these texts; the identity of Jesus is something that must be learned through long-term discipline.
The trajectory begun within the New Testament of interpreting Jesus’ identity in and for the church has continued through Christian history.
Jesus is not dead; he lives and because of this he remains a living presence, he can be encountered in the community of his people, the body of Christ – today.
And it is on this last thought I wish to particularly reflect this morning.
Remember we began with an image of the reign of Christ – difficult to grasp, foreign to our understanding, quite frankly an image we perhaps would be embarrassed to use or attest to, outside this building. It is up there; out there. However, from both of our passages the entrée suggested for us to understanding – to unpack and experience this identity of Jesus, this reign of Christ – is not because we sit in the great libraries of the world, but us being the body of Christ, being the Church of All Nations, here in Carlton. Again, Ephesians:
And God has put all things under his feet and had made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all in all.
To the people of Ephesus, the people of Carlton – you are the saints of God. In Ephesians there is a prayer of praise and thanks for their work and ministry. The prayer is that you may come to understand the fullness of Jesus Christ – but I suspect the people of Ephesus, like ourselves, have difficulty comprehending what that may in fact be – but not to worry – you, as the church, are his body, and you have the fullness of Jesus for you.
In the image/metaphor from the Identity of Jesus Project, the pilgrimage to understanding the fullness of Jesus, begins within the contemporary body of Christ, this congregation! . . . and that pilgrimage does not have to start with understanding every detail and aspect of the reign of Christ and what that might mean – but that begins from us, being the body of the living Christ.
Matthew 25 is, however, more radical. There, the pilgrimage to understanding, there the point of starting to unpack who is this Jesus, does not even begin within the Church. The journey to understanding who Jesus is for us begins with the hungry, the thirsty, the stranger, those without clothes, the sick and the imprisoned.
Our encounter with Christ, or to use the phrase for today – the reign of Christ – may take place in many ways: in preaching, in the study of the scriptures, in the sacraments and in the community’s life together in service. All these experiences are grounded in tradition, scripture and the life of the community itself. Here however, Jesus is boldly, radically, saying to the righteous and the unrighteous – you will encounter – the Son of Man in his glory and all of his angels, as he sits upon the throne of his glory – in the poor and the marginalised, the outcasts of society.
What a place to begin that journey and pilgrimage to understanding the reign of Christ?
The Princeton Group in their work repeatedly came up with the motif that Jesus is a disturbing and destabilising figure – and you would understand why, if you begin with the poor and marginalised. In his own time Jesus was a controversial figure – he became a threat, and he was executed as a dangerous revolutionary. Jesus over time has called people to radical and costly service. The Jesus we discern through scripture, the creeds, through engaging with the poor – does not leave us at ease – we are to deny ourselves and take up our cross.
For us here at the Church of All Nations, our engagement with the marginal and poor of Carlton is not just because we feel compelled to do something for them and simply ameliorate their lot. Even our mouthing claims of justice can sometimes look like this. We are called to encounter God as we live in solidarity with the poor, the stranger, the prison and marginalised . . . and I assume then that for all of us, the poor and the not poor, we will thus encounter the risen Christ, and be a part of Christ’s reign. In other words what we do here Monday to Friday is in the first instance profoundly spiritual . . . and as a mission of this Church I trust we will never lose sight of this.
So where and how do you encounter and understand the reign of Christ in your life?
