Broadway Christian Church · Columbia, Missouri

Morning Worship · February 18, 2007

Last Sunday After Epiphany

Prayer of the Day

Lord Jesus, we come to know you not by our own efforts, but rather through your gracious, mystical, awesome willingness to connect with us.  Help us in this hour of worship to hear you, receive you, and obey you!  Amen.

Scripture

Luke 9:28-36

Today is the final Sunday of Epiphany.  We have been talking about that for some weeks now since Christmas time.  We look for the manifestations, the signs of God’s presence and God’s amazing power in Christ Jesus.

Today’s text is found in Luke 9, beginning with verse 28.  Jesus has just been talking to those who say they believe. He says, “For those who want to believe and do believe, I ask you to deny yourself and take up your cross and follow me.”  That provides the context for what we are about to hear in today’s text.

Here begins the reading.

About eight days after Jesus had said these things, he took Peter, James, and John up onto the mountain to pray.  As he was praying, the appearance of his face changed, and his clothing became as bright as a flash of lightning.  Two men, Moses and Elijah, appeared in glorious splendor, talking to Jesus.  They spoke about his departure, which he was about to fulfillment in Jerusalem.  Peter and his companions were very sleepy, but when they became fully awake, they saw the glory and the two men standing with him.  As the men were leaving Jesus, Peter said to him, “Master, it is so good to be here.  Let’s build three shelters, three tents, three tabernacles – one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  (He did not know what he was asking.)

While he was speaking, a cloud appeared and enveloped all of them, and they were afraid.  A voice came from that cloud and said, “This is my Son, whom I have chosen; listen to him.”  When the voice had spoken, they found that Jesus was alone.  The disciples kept this to themselves, and told no one at that time what they had seen.

Message

The Jesus We Want, The Jesus We Need

Rick Frost

In today’s text, Jesus and his disciples go to the mountains.  Do you like to go to the mountains?  The mountains are good.  Jan and I like to go to the mountains.  It’s a place where we vacation sometimes.  It’s a great place, as many of you know, to get away from it all.  That’s often the reason we go on vacation.  Is it not?  We go on retreats, visits, outings.  The demands of daily living sometimes can be overwhelming, consuming.  We need, from time to time, to get away, to extricate ourselves from all the usual things that take up our days, to disengage sometimes from the responsibilities that people in this room and others take on.  It’s a good thing.  It’s a healthy thing.  We know that.  By the way, if you are not taking that time, if you are not making that time for you and for your family, you should, because it restores.  It renews.  It re-creates.  It’s a good thing.

But in our text today, Jesus and his disciples go up on a mountain, and it’s not a vacation.  It’s not a time to get away from it all.  It’s not a time for a retreat or disengagement.  They go up on the mountain, according to Luke today, with Jesus to pray.  Now if you think that prayer is a good way to get away from it all, I think as you hear today’s text, you will find out such a notion is a mistake.

The way most of us pray is interesting.  We’ve been taught, have we not, to bow our heads and to close our eyes, and then we talk, we speak to God.  We are told to speak whatever is on our hearts and our minds.  The idea is that if we close our eyes, and bow our heads, and do that, somehow we are shutting out all the noise of the world, so that we are, in theory, better able to focus on God.  Some of us even grew up with that wonderful old song, “Sweet Hour of Prayer, Sweet Hour of Prayer, that takes me from a world of care.”  It is as if somehow an hour or worship, as if coming to church is somehow designed to help us getaway from it all.  Church as retreat.  Church as mini-vacation.  Church as coping device.  Not so in today’s text.

In today’s text, we’re given another view of prayer.  On the mountain, in prayer with Jesus, the disciples have their eyes opened, not closed.  They see.  They see Jesus.  They see Jesus as he really is.  It’s a revelation.  It’s as if the veil gets pulled back.  They see.  In prayer, they see Jesus’ glory, his power, his majesty, Jesus as the Messiah, Jesus as the Christ of God, the Son of the Living God. 

I think that is why, and I’m sort of learning this, I think that is why many people come to worship.  I think that’s why people come to church.  I think that many people come to church, not to see you, not to see me.  I think many people come to church hoping to meet Jesus – the real Jesus, the true Christ, the Emmanuel, God with us. 

So, who?  That’s our concern today.  Who is the real Jesus?  You go to this church, and you hear that.  You go to that church, and you hear this.  You read this book. You read this information. You encounter people. You talk.  Who is this Jesus really?

Down through the centuries scholars have tried to find the real Jesus.  Years ago archeologists found an inscription.  Maybe some of you remember this.  It was on a rock.  They found it in Judea.  It had these words inscribed on it: “Jesus, son of Joseph, who…” and then it sort of fades off. 

That was a huge event.  It was very exciting for people.  I actually remember seeing pictures of it.  At last, you see, a solid piece of historical evidence about Jesus.  But then it was also discovered that Jesus and Joseph were very common names back in those days, as they are today in many parts of the world.  That means, of course, there were probably dozens, maybe even hundreds of people who would qualify for “Jesus, sons of Josephs.”  They could be all over the place. 

Well, that prompted scholars, as you may or may not know, over the past 60 or 70 years to go looking for the historical Jesus – what is called the “Real Jesus.”  You know what?  They didn’t find much.  Thus far, folks, history has refused to give us much more solid, historical evidence for the mysterious, unfathomable, inexplicable Jesus.

Indeed, what we have this very day, we have had, quite frankly, for a long, long time.  We have The Book.  And we have the witnesses, the testimonies of the people who have encountered him down through the ages.  And that’s it.  That’s all we have.

Now, that led about 20 years ago to a group of questors called the Jesus Seminar.  Have you ever heard of those people?  You may have heard about it.  They roamed around this country and gathered headlines like, “Can We Really Know Anything About Jesus?”  What they did was pretty interesting.  These Bible scholars, these academics, these professors got together, and they took the words of Jesus, the ones that are in red letters in many of your Bibles, and they voted.  They voted!  They voted on the authenticity, the legitimacy, the validity, the dependability of the words of Jesus in your Scripture and mine.  How democratic of them.  Oh, my goodness!

Now what many people don’t know is that has been going on for a long, long time.  Thomas Jefferson, one of the presidents and founders of this country, took his scissors out.  He took his New Testament, and he clipped out the sayings of Jesus he thought were good.  He complied them into his own New Testament.  How enlightened of him!  He just threw away the rest.  Amazing!

Well, when this Seminar got finished voting, there was, as you might guess, not much of Jesus left to know.  In fact, critics of the Seminar say that the supposed real Jesus, produced by these professors, looked suspiciously like guess who?  The professors themselves.  Amazing!

So, whether you have been inspired and have grown spiritually as the result of the presence of the Jesus Seminar, or whether you have never heard of it, and you don’t care, some of us in this room, myself among them, are grateful they have succeeded in putting the big question back on the table for Christians.  Who is the real Jesus?  What’s the big deal?

Folks, the big deal is this.  The big deal is that the Jesus we get, after all of our thinking, all of our brooding, all of our chewing, and questing, all of our paring, and cutting, and trimming is, quite frankly, too often the Jesus we want, rather than the Jesus we need.

Proposition:  The Jesus we need is the Jesus who is able to stand over against us when we are wrong, when our community is wrong, when our nation is wrong.  We need a Jesus who, at the same time, is a Jesus who is able to stand beside us, and stand up with us, and stand next to us when we are right, stand up beside us when our community is right, stand up beside us when our nation is right.  The Jesus we need is the Jesus who is enough like us to actually be with us, and yet enough unlike us to redeem us.  It is a biblical word that means “to free, to save, to deliver us from evil, from violence, from crime, from wrongdoing, from doing those things that harm and hurt other people.” 

In other words, we may not want, but we, in fact, need a Jesus who can and does call us out of our caughtness, our addictions, our destructive habits and behaviors, what the Bible calls our sins.  We need a Jesus who has the power to forgive us, the desire to love us, and what it takes to reconcile us, to transform us, to change us, so that we can live the way God created us to live.  Most of all, I think, we need a Jesus who has the power to look the faithful straight in the eye on the day we are ready to leave this earth and say on our last day, “You will be with me today in paradise.”  That’s the Jesus we need.

Folks, the scholars say the Jesus Seminar has given the public a Jesus that essentially is a wandering sage full of wise sayings and good advice.  I don’t know about you, but I learned a long time ago that if this world, or an individual, could be saved, could be freed, could be healed with good advice, we would have gotten a self-help book instead of Jesus.

I’ve seen so much good advice bounce off people.  I’ve seen so much good counsel just bounce around.  When it comes to good intentions, what’s the old adage?  “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

Point?  The point is this.  We don’t need more advice.  We don’t need good intentions.  We need redemption.  We need recovery.  We need to get back, to get liberated, to get transformed.

The question today: Is Jesus, the real Jesus, the one you embrace strong enough?  Is he resourceful enough?  Is he powerful enough?  Is he great enough to meet your real needs, and not just yours, but the whole world? 

Dr. Brueggemann, the great biblical scholar, says the goal of reaching out, the goal of sharing your faith story, the goal of preaching and teaching, and going to Bible study, and offering a helping hand to those who need it, the goal is to invite the listener to abandon, to let go of the script, the story line, the plot that up to this point has given their life meaning.  It doesn’t matter what it is.  There are people whose whole lives are oriented around their families.  There are people whose who lives are oriented around their work, or athletics, or achievement, or money, or military, or citizenship, or service, or social work, or anything.  It doesn’t matter.  Invite those people to let it go as the center of their lives, and then slowly introduce them to a different script, a different story.  A story, yes, but more, introduce them to the real Jesus, the Spirit of the Living Christ, the one who makes sense out of this life and life eternal in a very different and, quite frankly, a very counter-cultural way.  You see, when that kind of reimaging and changing and transforming takes place, for many people that is threatening.  It’s frightful.  It’s painful.  It’s even anger producing.

 Martin Luther said, “Here are words of one who confronts before he delivers.  Here is one who kills before he heals.  Here is one who damns before he blesses.”

In that sense, introducing somebody to Jesus, the real Jesus of our New Testament, is something akin to surgery.  Few people I know, and I see them all the time, approach surgery willingly.  Have you noticed that?  But when it becomes clear to them that this is what they need for a shot at health, and wholeness, and real life, they sign up.  They put their name on the bottom line.  They go under, and they entrust their very lives to the surgeon and his or her team.  Does that sound familiar?

This Wednesday is Ash Wednesday.  If you are new to the church, you may not know that it is the first of 40 days of what we call Lent.  It’s the season when Christians all over the world are invited to walk with, walk beside, walk off that mountain that we are going to leave today, and journey with Jesus through the valley of the shadow all the way to the cross. 

I know that the Jesus on the mountaintop in all of his radiant glory is the Jesus we want.  But the Jesus who says, “Follow me” is the Jesus we need, because maybe, just maybe, that crucified, risen Christ has just the surgery that we need, or that people we love need, or people that we know need, or that this world needs – a new life for now, and a life that awaits us in eternity.

And all the people say… “Amen.” 

Benediction

God of the mountaintop, you reign on high.  You are powerful and gracious.  In awe, we bow in the presence of your majesty!  Your Spirit dwells among us, asking us to listen and follow.  In the valley, we rise, hearing your call.  Make us your disciples whose needs are met when walking in your footsteps.  Amen.