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October 24, 2004
We Believe In One Lord, Jesus Christ
We Believe In One Lord, Jesus Christ
Psalm 2 / Genesis 18: 1-8
Matthew 16: 13-20
October 24th, 2004
When we speak of Jesus, we sometimes call Him just “Jesus;” or “Jesus of Nazareth,” or “Jesus Christ,” and sometimes the longer name, “the Lord Jesus Christ.” When we say “Jesus of Nazareth,” it’s because Jesus was a popular name, Joshua or Yeshuah in Hebrew. It’s a particular Jesus we have in mind. The Gospels distinguish between the Yeshuah—the Jesus who died for our sins, the Son of Mary who grew up in Nazareth, and every other Yeshuah –Jesus of that day.
Some who say “Jesus Christ” may think that “Christ” was in some way Jesus’ last name. But “Christ” was really a title. More properly we should say, “Jesus, The Christ.” Because “Christ” was a Greek term corresponding to the Hebrew term “Messiah,” or anointed one. Calling Jesus “the Christ,” means He was The Messiah, the specially anointed One promised often in the Old Testament.
Very often those who feel a strong love for Jesus call Him “The Lord Jesus Christ.” It feels good to say that if you love Him. The words belong together. But I wonder if it’s clear to us all what we mean when we call Him “Lord.” Calling Jesus “Lord” is not like referring to “Lord Peter Wimsey,” Dorothy Sayers’ fictional detective, or to “Sir Walter Raleigh.” These are just titles of nobility.
When we call Jesus, “Lord,” we’re using His proper name. The special name for God the ancient people of Israel used was “Adonai” which means “Lord.” Actually God’s name was too sacred to say. The most devout Jews called God’s name “ha Shem,” which means “the Name,” instead of saying Lord or pronouncing the four letters which spelled Yahweh or Yahoo.
When we call Jesus Christ “Lord,” we’re referring to the name of God that fits Jesus as well as it fits God the Father. We should always use that name reverently.
You remember in the Christmas story that the angels announced to the shepherds on the night of Jesus’ birth, “To you is born this day in the city of David a Savior who is Christ, the Lord.” This baby is the Savior, the Christ. This baby is “Lord.”
What?! These Jewish shepherds were excited. They ran to Bethlehem as fast as they could. Why were they so excited? Because though they might not have known very much about the terms Savior or Christ, they knew that “Lord” was the name of God. What would Lord-God look like as a baby?
The shepherds ran to see what God looked like—as a baby. I wonder what they expected Him to look like. When they got there surely they didn’t gawk the way we stare at a sideshow. What a shock it must have been to feel the reverence that took them over in that cattle stall. They looked into the feed trough, with hay sticking out of it and saw a little baby all wrapped up to keep warm. This was the Lord-God the angels told them about?!!
The manger scenes we see at Christmas depict sheep and oxen sitting near by. This is how animals kneel. The shepherds too must have knelt down. Their hearts were hushed, aware of the contradiction that the baby Lord-God should be so humbly laid. They left that cattle stall and told everyone what they had seen. And all who heard them wondered at what the shepherds told them, even though shepherds as a class of people were held in general contempt.
At the time of the Council of Nicea, 1700 years ago, these early Christians thought it was of first importance to clarify who this Jesus was. An influential elder named Arius, from the great church in Alexandria, Egypt was teaching that Jesus was someone very special, but He was not actually Lord-God as the Gospels said. Arius said Jesus was divine, meaning there was something extraordinary about Him. He said God was somehow uniquely with Jesus as He had never been with any one before. But he balked at saying He was “Lord” as God told Moses in the Old Testament that His name was “Lord.”
In a later sermon I hope to clarify some of the complexity of this controversy. But I believe the problem for Arius was, in a nutshell, the issue many people have today. No one can understand that a baby human being was God. It’s a mystery. Some people believe it is nonsense.
If God became a baby, who was running the universe then? It is the kind of question people wonder about at Jesus’ crucifixion. Did God die when Jesus died on the cross? Well, yes and no. As Samuel Wesley put it, “’tis mystery the immortal dies.” The doctrine of the Trinity tries to address these mysterious questions. Jesus was God, and the Father is God, and the Holy Spirit is God, but there are not three Gods, just one. God was still managing the universe when the Son of God became a baby in the Virgin Mary. God was still in control when Jesus died on the cross. It is a mysterious matter that defies our ability to explain. But we can get some inklings of the purpose of this, even if we can’t understand it.
James S. Stewart, the pastor of North Morningside Church in Edinburgh in the middle of last century, remarked in one of his sermons that “It is the glory and doom of man to have been made for fellowship with God. Of all the faculties and capacities which he possesses, incomparably the greatest is his capacity for God . . . Reconciliation with God is therefore the cardinal issue, far and away the most crucial problem, confronting the soul of man today.”
Alienation is the great problem in the world. Look at the mess we’re in! There’s hostility, alienation all over. Iraq seethes with alienation. We live in social, cultural disintegration. Alienation is writ large over the world, over nations, communities, churches, and families. The cure to alienation is reconciliation. How can we be reconciled? To whom should we be reconciled?
Reconciliation between people who are estranged is very hard to achieve. Think of people with whom you once were close, perhaps a former boyfriend or girlfriend, perhaps a husband or wife, a teammate, a classmate, a colleague at work, a former friend at church. Something happened. There was a moment of sharp disagreement, a harsh word was spoken. You can’t forget. Perhaps it was unfaithfulness. She cheated on you.
Maybe it was something even worse than this. In some societies bearing a grudge when someone offends you is like wearing a badge of honor. Revenge is seen as a sacred duty.
Alienation between people is the cause of the great and enduring sorrow. In a family alienation is dreadfully painful. I conducted a funeral once where a son and his father were bitter enemies. The son told me so with tearless eyes when the funeral of his dad was over. I didn’t know what to say.
The slaughter of little children in the school in Beslan, in Russia, a few weeks ago was a vengeful act intended to produce the greatest sorrow. The alienation between the Chechnan Republic and Russia is deep. It is so deep that ordinary men who love their own children slaughtered the children of other parents who they knew loved these children. This would cause the bitterest pain of all. The cycle of alienation can fuel generations’ worth of violence that becomes part of the culture of a people.
The root of all this alienation is found in peoples’ alienation from God. Sin is the cause. Sin separates us from God, making Him seem repulsive. Sin is a disease that makes us yearn for what is ugly and perverse while being disgusted with what is good. The ultimate expression of sin is disgust with God who is seen as a competitor with myself as “god.”
It was this cycle of alienation that God stooped to conquer when He sent His Son to be born so humbly in Bethlehem. Jesus, the Son of God, was born and became human in order to put a human face to our alienation from God—and that, in order to put in human terms how to be reconciled to God.
When God was born in Bethlehem, He came face to face with us in the gentlest, most tactful way possible. He did not confront us in power that would overwhelm us but as a baby to disarm us.
As a rule the best way to try to end alienation is to go to the person who offended you unaggressively and say something like, “I want to restore what we lost.” Perhaps you bring a meaningful gift, a book on a theme beloved to the one to whom you want to be reconciled. You bring something that cost you something to break through the barrier of mistrust.
If you and I are alienated and we come face to face so that you can look into my eyes and I can see into yours too, there is a chance for reconciliation. Our eyes are the windows of our souls.
Well, when God, whose name is Lord, longed for reconciliation with us who had hurt Him, he stooped to become the most humble kind of human being, a baby, to get us to look into His eyes. God gave the costliest gift to us, wrapped in the most disarming form, a baby. And God wasn’t fussy about how we accepted this gift.
Remember that baby Jesus had a stable for his first crib because nobody would give up his room in the inn for Mary even though she was about to give birth. What discourtesy is found in Luke’s words, “She laid him in a manger because there was no room for them in the inn!” Of course, they didn’t realize Mary was about to give birth to God. They thought it was any old baby that this poor country girl would bear. I remember that Jesus later would teach us that whatever we do to the least of people we do unto Him. His mother looked like “the least” kind of person.
When God sent His Son to reconcile us to Himself, He did not take offense at this lack of hospitality.
The Apostle Paul wrote of Jesus, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.” This reconciliation began when He received human discourtesy at the time of His birth. It continued as “He came to His own people and they didn’t receive Him.” It reached its climax when Jesus hung from the cross.
The Apostle John tells us what this God-man says to us, “Look, I stand at your heart’s door and knock. If you will hear me and open the door, I will come in to you and eat with you.” Why does the Bible say this? It seems it is saying something similar to when Mary and Joseph knocked on the innkeeper’s door asking for a room where Jesus could be born. In the Christmas carol we sing so fondly, “Cast out our sin and enter in, be born in us today.” But the grown-up Jesus says, “Let me come in and eat with you.”
How courteous that God should come to us requesting that we invite Him in, as though we’re doing Him the honor. God’s humility before us is one of the most striking things about the Gospel.
Many people today still don’t know it is God who is knocking on their heart’s door. The gnawing they feel, the restlessness, the purposelessness of life are like the insistent sound of God knocking softly at the door of your heart and mine.
The purpose of the Creed in saying, “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,” is to clarify just who this One is who knocks at our heart’s door. It is God reaching out to you as He does to others, personally, to reconcile the world to Himself one person at a time.
The question then becomes, have we responded to God’s gentle request, “May I be born in you? May I come eat with you?” In one way it is very simple to respond. All we must do is say, “Yes, Lord-God-Jesus, here’s a bed to be born in; you are welcome at my dining room table.”
But Jesus doesn’t come in to us only to let us maintain all our other alienations. Our rejection of God often looks like the rejection of other people. Our refusal to forgive them is part of our refusal to accept that we need, desperately need, God’s forgiveness of our sin.
If you accept God’s offer of reconciliation to Himself, He draws you to be reconciled to those you have pushed away from you.
You can’t love God if you don’t love your brother or sister. Reconciliation is a package deal. A Christianity that keeps compartments, one for God and another for people, is schizophrenic.
For this reconciliation to God and each other to happen we have to offer back to God our will, the seat of our affections. Because when God reconciled us to Himself, He also gave us the ministry of reconciliation. It is a deliberate act. I urge you give Him your heart. You wonder how to give Him your heart? Begin by saying it, “Lord, take my heart and make it your throne.” There is great power in the words we say when we don’t know what words to say.
Clement of Alexandria, who lived in the third century, thought about all this and wrote, “God became like us in order that we might become like Him.”
I pray that we all do accept and believe with all our hearts that Jesus Christ is Lord. And I pray that we may all allow the reconciliation to happen that was the purpose of this vast act of Godly kindness. Trust that God was born in Bethlehem, and died on the cross to reconcile you to Him. Trusting this is so, let yourself be reconciled to others. It will be for you a sign of your reconciliation to God. Then deliberately start to act out your reconciliation. Say at the start of each day, “Lord, my life is yours today to use as you will.” Then remember throughout the day whose you are. Remember God has summoned you to join Him in the ministry of reconciliation, saying to the world in deed and word, ‘Be reconciled to God.”
Let us pray: Heavenly Father, we are grateful for the gift of Your holy Child Jesus, born as we were born to restore us to fellowship with You. Grant us grace to live as we believe. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at October 24, 2004 09:30 AM