Who is Jesus?

An early representation of Jesus Christ with a beard,
Catacombe di Commodilla, Rome

Address given in St Mary's Nenagh and Killodiernan Church on Sunday 14th July 2024, the 7th after Trinity

The theme linking today’s readings is this question, ‘Who is Jesus?’

It is a question Christians have wrestled with from the very beginning.

 There are things to help us answer it. We have the Gospels. They are stories of Jesus’s life and ministry written more than a generation after his death, which do not always agree with each other. We have the Epistles and the Acts of the Apostles, which tell us about how the earliest churches developed, and something of what the first Christians believed about Jesus.

We also have the creeds. Over the following centuries church theologians continued like terriers on a rabbit to toss the question about.  Amid highly charged politics and power-struggles, they often disagreed with each other, and they frequently denounced their opponents as heretics. Out of those disputes the creeds were crafted in the C4th. They became more or less generally accepted, though details are still disputed, between Western Churches like ours, the Eastern Orthodox, and the Oriental Orthodox. And even Christians who agree on the words may disagree on what the words mean.

For many, such ancient disputes seem pointless. Yet if we are to follow Jesus, if we are to call ourselves Christians, it is surely essential that each one of us can answer the question, ‘Who is Jesus?’. We need to wrestle with scripture and the creeds to find who Jesus is for ourselves. But in humility we must also recognise that we may be wrong and others may be right.

 

In the 2^nd reading, from Mark’s Gospel (6: 14-29), Jesus has been making a noise, and attracting attention.

He has been travelling around the villages teaching and healing, proclaiming his message, ‘Repent and believe the Good News’. He has also sent his chosen 12 apostles out in pairs to multiply his message – I see it as a kind of training exercise for apostles.

Now everyone is talking about him, and the people are asking themselves, ‘Who is this man Jesus?’. Even King Herod.

Mark tells us, “Some were saying, ‘John the baptizer has been raised from the dead; and for this reason these powers are at work in him.’ But others said, ‘It is Elijah.’ And others said, ‘It is a prophet, like one of the prophets of old.’ But when Herod heard of it, he said, ‘John, whom I beheaded, has been raised.’”

King Herod has a guilty conscience, and so he should. The story of how King Herod came to order the beheading of John the Baptist explains why. Herod tries to appear strong, but shows he is weak. Because he fears being shamed in front of his guests, he denies his better instincts. Herodias is a manipulative monster. And her daughter allows her mother to use her. It’s a real horror story, isn’t it?

At this time, early in Jesus’s ministry, everyone could see that Jesus was in some way special. But no one could understand his true significance, not even his disciples. Jesus’s true nature and significance could only become clear much later, after his crucifixion and resurrection. It took his followers generations to begin to understand it.

St Paul summarises his own answer to the question, ‘Who is Jesus?’ in our 1^st reading from his letter to the Ephesians (1:3-14).

Paul is writing a full generation after Jesus’s death and resurrection, in what is probably a circular letter to the rapidly growing gentile churches he has helped to establish. His words may echo the liturgy of some of the earliest Christian worship. Clearly the earliest Christians have been thinking deeply about who Jesus is, and what this means for them.

It is an amazing, poetic passage. It’s a single sentence in the original Greek. The subordinate clauses break one after another like waves on a seashore, pounding in Paul’s message that God ‘has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places’. The word Christ, from the Greek, literally means ‘the anointed one’, and unambiguously refers to Jesus.

The name of Christ Jesus echoes and re-echoes through Paul’s words:

• ‘In Christ’, God ‘chose us … before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless before him in love’.

We are not Christians because we choose to be, but because God has chosen us to be - and we can trust God not to change his mind, because he chose us from the very beginning.

• ‘Through Jesus Christ’ God has ‘destined us for adoption as his children …, according to the good pleasure of his will’.

God adopts us as his beloved children, full members of the household of God, because his Son Jesus introduces us to him.

• ‘Through (Christ’s) blood we have redemption and the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace that he lavished on us’.

It is Jesus’s example of self-sacrifice upon the cross which shows us the way to redemption and forgiveness. It is a gift from God we do not deserve.

• In Christ, God has revealed ‘the mystery of his will … as a plan for the fullness of time, to gather up all things in him’, that is in Jesus, ‘things in heaven and things on earth’.

‘Oikonomia’ is the Greek word translated here as ‘plan’. It literally means the stewardship or overseeing of a household or institution. I think Paul is saying here that God’s purpose in overseeing his creation is that the whole of it should be drawn together in Jesus Christ. The whole of creation, chosen, adopted, redeemed and forgiven, all in Jesus Christ - what a breath-taking cosmic vision!

• ‘In Christ we have also obtained an inheritance’. Those who hear his ‘word of truth, the gospel of salvation and … believe in him’, are ‘marked with the seal of the promised Holy Spirit’ And ‘this is the pledge of our inheritance towards redemption as God’s own people’.

It is precisely because we can feel the Holy Spirit at work in and through us, the Spirit Jesus promised us, that we can be sure that God has chosen and adopted us as his children, and has redeemed and forgiven us.      

Paul bludgeons us to recognise that we must start with Jesus, with Christ, who is God’s anointed one! This is Paul’s key message. This is the message which I hope you will take away from my words today. We must start with Jesus – everything else, including the church as a human institution, can only be secondary to Jesus.

I shall finish in prayer with the Collect of the Word for today.

Generous God,
we thank you that, by your grace,
you have made your Son known to us,
and have adopted us as your children,
marking us with the seal of your Spirit.
Help us to praise you with all our might
and to bless others in all our deeds
through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen