July 31, 2005

This I Believe: Exploring the Apostle’s Creed                                    Philippians 2:1-11

JESUS CHRIST, HIS ONLY SON

This morning we will continue our exploration of the Apostle’s Creed.  We will look particularly at the line, “And in Jesus Christ his only Son, Our Lord.”  The focus of this portion of the creed is on the relevance of Jesus Christ.  Let us realize that at the core of the Christian faith is a person, not a set of abstract beliefs.  Christianity is not “Jesusism” in any way similar to the relationship between Karl Marx and Marxism.  Christianity has always insisted that there is something absolutely unique about Jesus that sets him apart from all other religious and political teachers.  Why?  Because Jesus cannot, the church insists, be treated as an ordinary human being with exceptional teachings.  Jesus’ teachings are important – more important than this creed seems to imply.  Notice how it bounces over Jesus’ teaching ministry as if it didn’t exist.  This is clearly a weakness with the Apostle’s Creed.

But it does emphasize that what is central to our faith is not what Jesus taught – important as it was – but who Jesus actually was.  Frankly, most of Jesus’ teachings can be drawn from themes in the Old Testament and in the teachings of the rabbis of Jesus’ day.  Jews like to point out, for instance, that Rabbi Hillel also taught a Golden Rule – “Do not do to others what you do not want them to do to you.”  Teachings like this were known in the Rabbinic world.

When we say we believe in Jesus Christ, what are we saying?  We are saying that this very human person, Jesus was the Christ.  Christ is not Jesus’ last name – it is his office or calling.  Jesus full Jewish name would have been Yeshua Bar Yoseph - Jesus, Joseph’s boy.  Christ is Jesus’ office – it means Messiah in Greek.  It is a very literal translation of the Hebrew word Hamashiach which gets Latinized into Messiah.  So Jesus Christ means “Jesus the Messiah.”  We’re confessing we believe Jesus to be Messiah – the one who transformed and fulfilled Jewish prophetic expectations for deliverance.

We believe that this Yeshua Hamashiach was, in fact, the Son of God.  He wasn’t simply a human messianic deliverer like Moses or David.  Now, we are all God’s children.  But we are claiming that Jesus had a unique status as Son of God; that is, Jesus the Christ was a natural Son of God and believers are adopted sons (Rom 8:23).  The NT claim that Jesus was God’s Son (a central theme in Mark’s gospel – the earliest of all the gospels) is that God has come to us in a human form (called “incarnation”) in Jesus.  The unique status of Jesus is brought out by the creed in the words “his only son our Lord.”  The distinction between Jesus’ natural status and our adopted status is made clear by the Apostle Paul (Rom 8:23; 9:4; Eph. 1:5) and I John. 

When the term “Son of God” is used of Jesus, it is clear that the NT writers meant that Jesus the Christ partakes of the very nature of God.  This is seen in many ways.  Matthew 1:21 states that Jesus saves his people from their sins, yet the OT insists that it is God alone who saves and redeems his people (Isaiah 45:21-22)  The OT insists that only their God Yahweh is to be worshipped (the Shema – Deut. 6), yet early Jewish Christians, believing they continued to be loyal to their God, worshipped Jesus.  Paul, as a Christian, warned Christians in Rome against worshipping the creation rather than their creator.  This was idolatry and was the worst of all sins (Rom 1:23).  Yet, if Jesus were just another human being, a creature like the rest of us, Paul and all the rest were guilty of idolatry!  Christians were either the worst of sinners or worshipping their incarnate Lord.  That brings us to the next point.

OUR LORD . . .

The NT consistently uses the title “Lord” for Jesus Christ, as we see in the creed.  Sometimes, this may be little more than an honorific “Sir.”  Acts 2:36 states, “Let all Israel be assured of this: God has confirmed this Jesus, whom you crucified, both Lord and Christ.”  But how can we be certain it meant any more than “Sir” or the like?  I find this particularly fascinating, but it will take a little biblical spadework.  If you have a Bible, I recommend you follow closely.  But first, some background.

The word “Lord” is one of the most common in the OT.  But the history of the term is a little complicated.  When we see the word Lord in our O.T., one of two Hebrew words stands behind it.  If it is spelled Lord normally, the Hebrew word is Adonai, which means simply my Lord in Hebrew.  If it is spelled LORD with small caps, the Hebrew word is Yahweh.  This is the highly holy name of God, called the Tetragammaton, revealed to Moses at the burning bush.  Because the name was considered so holy, by the rabbis, they refused to pronounce the word.  There is no biblical injunction against this – it was rabbinic law.  Protestant translations, out of respect to Jewish sensibilities, refuse to translated Yahweh, and go with Adonai, which is the word most Jewish readers actually say when the come across the name Yahweh in the text.  Even in the 23 Psalm, the Hebrew reads, “Yahweh is my shepherd.”  But Jews, and us consequently, read, “The LORD (small caps) is my shepherd.”

“LORD” for Yahweh, gets translated into Greek as kyrios the very word that is applied to Jesus in the creed ‘Jesus is LORD.”  Really, we should spell Lord here with small caps, because what Christians are saying is, “The Yahweh of the OT has come to us in the person of Jesus the Messiah.”  That is the amplified version of “Jesus is Lord.”  Again, “Jesus is Lord” is claiming that the LORD (small caps - the Jewish word for Yahweh since rabbinic law forbid them from saying Yahweh) has come to us in Jesus.  You could also say it this way: Yashua is Yahweh.

Here is where we will need our Bibles.  You might not believe that a monotheistic Jew – even large scores of fiercely monotheistic Jews of the first century, could possibly make such a confession.  Think: these are people raised on the Shema: “Here O Israel, the Lord thy God is one Lord.”  People who believed they were still faithful to that Shema also believed that Jesus was Yahweh incarnate!  There are several places in the NT that make clear that this is exactly what the early Jewish church believed.

Our text today is Philippians 2:1-11, a famous passage in this regard.  There are several other texts that could be used, but this is one of the best.  In this famous passage, Paul declares that God has exalted Jesus so that “at the name of Jesus every knee should bow . . . and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”  Turn in your Bibles to Isaiah 45:23.  Paul draws upon a passage from Deutero-Isaiah, a section of this book which is fiercely monotheistic.  The writer has God speaking prophetically saying, “I’ve searched the universe to see if there is any other God than me.  Behold, I know not any.”  Deutero-Isaiah has tremendous fun with those who take a tree, use part of it to heat their homes, and part to carve into an idol for adoration.

Read Isaiah 45:23.  Detailed examination proves that Paul actually has Isaiah 45 in mind as he is writing Philippians.  It is what is called a midrash – Jewish interpretative speculation on an OT theme.  But in doing so, he applies this Yahweh language to the LORD Jesus.  This infuriated Jews at that time, and still makes Jews feel like their texts are being hijacked.  But Paul is simply convinced that in Jesus we encountered Yahweh who took up residence in a human body.  Jesus is Yahweh.  This is a direct and powerful claim about the divinity of Jesus Christ and a confession is Jesus’ equality with God.

IMPORTANCE OF CONFESSION

I want to address those of you who doubt.  Some of the dearest parishioners I’ve had the pleasure of serving as pastor struggled with doubt concerning the creed.  I know some of you may also doubt.  I want to let you know that the Methodist church has had a long-standing tradition of making room for doubters.  It isn’t our way to require all worshippers or even members to sign a doctrinal statement.  Wesley got lots of grief from others for this very reason; he only asked that those who joined the class meetings desire to “flee the wrath to come.”  That was it.  We need to make plenty of room for doubters in the church, yet realize the importance of the creed as the confession of the whole church. 

I want to note here just how central this confession is.  The church has always believed that Jesus Christ is the incarnation of God the creator of the universe.  This is a historical claim.  I want to say this as strongly as I feel it.  I’m going to put it in a way that some of you might find troubling or even offensive.  But I think it is this important.

If Jesus is not what the creed claims, if the church is wrong about this point, and if I could be convinced the church was wrong, I would walk out these doors and deny my faith.  I would probably convert to Judaism.  Another words, if the Da Vinci Code perspective – this Gnostic Jesus who was simply a Cynic preacher – who the church later transformed for political reasons into a divine Lord – if that is true, I would quit right now.  I would leave the United Methodist Church, I would convert to Judaism, and probably seek employment in a Jewish institution.  I’m hear, and the church exists, because of what we believe to be true.  This is a historical confession.

In other words, we confess that the historical Jesus Christ was the divine Son of God, the incarnation of the creator of the universe.  If it could be proved historically that this was a fallacy such that faith could be proven to be utterly irrational, I couldn’t be your pastor.  I would leave the church.  But the fact is this is historically plausible so long as you are theoretically open.  Well placed and very bright academic minds both disagree and agree.  But respected academics such as L.T. Johnson at Emory, Richard Bauckham at University of St. Andrews, Tom Wright formerly at Oxford, Ben Witherington at Asbury Seminary, et al., believe that the least that can be said is that Jesus’ first disciples, those who knew him best, confessed Jesus as Yahweh incarnate.  Many academicians disagree (Eileen Pagels and the Jesus Seminary folks) but at least we can say that it is fully rational.  It’s not like there is no evidence but I’m going to believe anyway because I had a spiritual experience and the church has always taught it.  So – it is important and it is fully rational.

TWO IMPLICATIONS

I’m going to close by pointing out two implications.  Firstly, the incarnation Tells us about God and it tells us about ourselves.  The incarnation tells us that God is self-giving love.  God himself has visited our planet, breathed our air.  Think of what this involves.  Think of all the weaknesses of your physical condition and person.  Think of all the limitations, temptations, pains, emotional heartaches associated with your humanness.  The God of eternal bliss and perpetual joy took on all its opposites.  This is the point of Phil. 2.

God has entered into our humanity, to join us, to participate with us.  We do this because, at Christmas, we see a little of God’s humble self-giving love.  This is the glory of the incarnation.  (story about my conversation with Somerset Muslim leaders on September 11, 2002)

Secondly, the incarnation tells us something about ourselves.  In the incarnation, God affirms the goodness of our humanity.  God affirmed us, with all of our silly pretensions and self-absorption, all of our craven self-protection and self-deprecations.  The incarnation affirms our value, our deep and abiding worth.  We are not only not just the result of the accidental collocations of chemicals.  We are more than created in God’s image.  One of us actually bore the very uncreated divine Spirit.  God entered into our humanity – our humanness was not below God’s dignity – and in doing so affirmed the beauty and value of our physicality. 

The Christian doctrine of Incarnation speaks of a mysterious intersection of the human and divine.  It speaks of a manger, a place where cattle stick their slimy noses to eat.  This manger, this woman, this man, these shepherds, these wise men, this night, this village – all of is sanctified with the glory of God that sanctifies us all.  In this way, they sanctify and affirm and bless all others.  Every other woman, girl really, about to give birth, can know “God entered into a belly such as this one.”  God the Son was raised and disciplined and loved by a father Joseph, not so different from me or you fathers.  Poor shepherds were honored to be the first to witness this miracle of God.  This gives value and honor to all humble laborers.  Students are honored by Jesus who took his studies seriously and so answered questions wisely when he was in the temple 

CONCLUSION