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

Guilty Conscience

Salome receives the head of John the Baptist, by Aubrey Beardsley

Address given on Sunday 11 July 2021, the 5th after Trinity, in St Mary's Nenagh, when Josh William Thomas Platt was baptised, and at Killodiernan, without the baptismal reference.

I am going to share a shameful, guilty secret with you - I am a thief! At least I used to be…

When I was about 6 years old, in the village where I lived with my parents, I used to go to Mrs Pullan’s shop with my pocket money to buy sweets. And sometimes, when I thought she wasn’t looking, I would take a few extra and put them in my pocket. I stole them. I knew it was wrong, but I just couldn’t stop myself. It made me feel awful, as I scoffed them all by myself, but I still did it. I tried my best not to think about it, and I didn’t want anybody to know. I didn’t want to admit to myself or to anyone else what a bold, naughty boy I was. That’s the first time I can remember having a guilty conscience, but of course I’ve felt guilty about much worse things since then.

We have all felt the pricking of a guilty conscience, haven’t we? When we know we have done something bad, or not done something good that we should have done, we can’t stop thinking and worrying about it. It’s a horrid feeling. No matter how young or old we are, try as we might to be perfect - or even just ordinarily good - every one of us does what we know is wrong more often than we care to admit.

In the reading from Mark’s Gospel (Mark 6:14-29), we heard about King Herod’s guilty conscience. He had done something truly wicked – he had ordered his soldiers to behead John the Baptist, even though he thought John was a good person. So later, when Herod heard people talking about Jesus, he was afraid that Jesus must be John the Baptist come back from the dead to haunt him.

Let us remind ourselves again of how Herod came to do this wicked thing.

King Herod had taken his brother Philip’s wife Herodias and married her. John the Baptist had bravely told Herod that what he had done was not right - it was against the law. Herod didn’t want John going about making trouble by telling people this, so he had had John arrested and put him in prison.

Herodias nursed a grudge against John. She really hated him and wanted to have him killed, but she couldn’t do so straight away, because she knew Herod liked listening to John and respected him as ‘a righteous and holy man’, even if he didn’t always like what John said.

But Herodias got her chance for revenge when Herod gave a banquet on his birthday, for all the important people in his kingdom. Herodias’s daughter – tradition tells us her name was Salome – was brought in to dance for Herod and his guests. She must have been a good dancer, because the guests liked it; and Herod was so pleased with her that he did something very foolish. He told her that he would give her anything she asked for – even half the kingdom. And all the important guests heard him say it! Salome didn’t know what to ask for, so she went to ask her mother, ‘What should I ask for?’ And Herodias told her, ‘The head of John the baptiser!’

King Herod didn’t want to have John killed – ‘The king was deeply grieved’, we are told. But he had just told Salome she could have anything she asked for – absolutely anything - and he did not want to look weak or foolish in front of his important guests. So he gave the order and the soldiers chopped off John’s head. They brought it in on a big serving platter and gave it to the girl, who gave it to her mother Herodias.

It’s a horrid story, isn’t it! A story from which no one in Herod’s family comes out well.

Herodias must have been a thoroughly nasty piece of work to use her daughter to take such an awful revenge. Salome too asked for a ghastly present, but perhaps she was too young to be blamed for doing what her mother asked her. But it was Herod who gave that wicked order to behead John the Baptist, even though he knew it was wrong. Let’s focus on him to see what lessons we can learn. What should he have done differently that day to avoid the heavy burden of a guilty conscience?

Well, the first thing would have been not to make that foolish promise! If Herod hadn’t promised to give Salome anything she asked for, she couldn’t have asked for John’s head, and everything would have been different. 

This is the first lesson: we must be very careful what we promise!

Even after Herod had made that foolish promise, he did not have to give that wicked order! Herod was a coward, wasn’t he? He knew it would be wrong to give Salome what Herodias had told her to ask for. But he was afraid – afraid that his important guests would think he was weak. So he gave the order anyway. If Herod had been a braver man, not a coward, he would have listened to his conscience – that little voice inside each of us which tells us what is right and what is wrong. He would simply have said, ‘No, that would be wrong, ask for something else’, and John would have been saved. 

The second lesson is this: we must be brave and do what we know is right no matter what the consequence.

So Herod did the wrong thing. He gave the wicked order and suffered from a guilty conscience.

We are not told if he ever felt sorry for what he had done. But if Herod had listened to Jesus, he would have known what to do when he felt his guilty conscience pricking him. Because Jesus tells us that if we repent of our sins – that means if we admit we have done wrong, if we are sorry and try to make amends and to be better in future – then God, our loving Father in Heaven, will forgive us. The burden of guilt will be lifted from us, and we can find happiness living a new and better life.

So what about my own guilty conscience over stealing sweets when I was a child? Years later, when I was a university student and thought myself to be very grown up, I went back to the village and called on Mrs Pullan in her shop. She invited me in for tea and a chat, and when I came to leave, she filled a bag with all kinds of sweets and gave it to me. Suddenly I was 6 again, and my guilty conscience made me feel bad. I told her about stealing her sweets, and said I was sorry. With a laugh she said, ‘You don’t think you were the only little boy who nicked sweets, do you? I realised what you were doing. And of course I forgive you!’

This is the third lesson: if we repent of bad things we have done, God will forgive us, just as Mrs Pullan forgave me!

Today is a joyful occasion, a day for celebration, a day of baptism for Josh.

But what, you may ask, has the story of Herod’s foolish promise, his cowardice, and his wicked order to execute John, got to do with Josh’s baptism?

In a few moments Josh’s parents and godparents will promise, with the help of God, to care for him, and to help him take his place within the life and worship of Christ’s church. We pray that they will teach him, by their example and love, to be brave and do what is right. And we pray that they will also teach him to repent and seek forgiveness when he falls short.

It will be important for Josh, with their help, to learn from Herod’s story, because the lessons it teaches are tools to protect him from the pain of a guilty conscience.

So today it is right for us all to celebrate and rejoice in Josh’s baptism, with his family and his godparents, as he is joined with us into Christ’s body here on earth, the Church.

 Let me finish with a prayer:

O God our loving Father,
we thank you for the courage of people like John the Baptist,
who do what is right even when it costs them dearly.
Give us the courage to always try to do what is right;
and when we fail show us how to truly repent, and forgive us.
We ask you in Jesus’s name. Amen