The Meaning of Jesus - Was God Jesus?
Sunday, March 11, 2007 – Rev. David Tinney
Text: Galatians 1:11-17a
Theme:  We all have our own creeds that define the core essentials of our faith.  Today we are going to look at our understanding of Jesus’ divinity and determine is that one of the essentials for our Christian faith.

I came across some great new definitions for some old words.  I thought you might be amused at some of the clever new meanings.
ADULT - A person who has stopped growing at both ends and is now growing in the middle.
BEAUTY PARLOR - A place where women curl up and dye (as in dye your hair)
COMMITTEE - A body that keeps minutes and wastes hours.
EGOTIST - Someone who is usually me-deep in conversation.
GOSSIP - A person who will never tell a lie if the truth will do more damage.
HANDKERCHIEF - Cold Storage.
MOSQUITO - An insect that makes you like flies better.
SECRET - Something you tell to one person at a time.
TOMORROW - One of the greatest labor saving devices of today.
WRINKLES - Something other people have. You have character lines.

In just a few moments I am going to give you some other words that are part of our ongoing study of the book, “The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions,” that are a lot harder to understand and certainly not as entertaining.  Before I do I would like to set today’s sermon in context for those who are new or who missed a Sunday.  Today’s sermon is the third in a Lenten series based on the book I just mentioned.  This book was written by two theologians from different perspectives.  Marcus Borg is a self-proclaimed liberal revisionist of New Testament theology while N.T. Wright is much more traditional in his approach.  
Today’s sermon flows out of a parallel class that I teach two times on Wednesday and believe it or not the numbers are growing each week even though the lessons get harder and harder.  Each week I begin the class with a list of vocabulary words that need to be defined so that we can be on the same page in our discussion.  So this week I added supernatural theism, panentheism, and deism among others and would like to begin by defining them.
Supernatural theism is simply defined as God out there.  God is outside our lives and systems, leaving us alone to our own devices and failures, until they get so bad He or She has to intervene.  Panentheism is a newer understanding of God that describes the God out there as well as the God close by.  God is both transcendent and immanent.  God includes and penetrates the whole universe, so that every part of it exists in God.  This is different than pantheism which everyone knows as God existing in nature or the spirit of God existing in trees, rocks, hillsides, and clouds. 
Finally we have deism, which is an understanding or belief in God that comes from the mind or reason and not revelation.  Many of the founders of our country, especially Thomas Jefferson, prided themselves in being deists.  
Have you ever wondered why people need to define where God exists, how close God might be, and why God does what God does?  Since Adam turned to Eve and questioned the fruit tree that God put in the middle of the garden, humankind has been trying to understand God’s will, plan, presence, and our relationship with the divine.  We call this pondering of God – theology.  
In a way every one of us sitting in this room this morning are budding theologians because we are learning about God.  Now our conclusions may be very different when we get done and they will undoubtedly differ from those in other faiths, denominations, and countries but there are a few truths about theology that all faiths have in common.  
More often than not, theology reflects the culture in which it was generated.  If you remember the sermon I did recently on Hinduism I suggested that it was a reflection of the culture and geography of mother India.  Our current understanding of God in our culture reflects our understanding of science, medicine, and technology.  
 Theology is fluid and ever-changing even though its subject does not change.  Our ideas about God adjust to cultural, political, and economic changes.  For generations Jewish theology was grounded in the sacrificial system of the Temple, but when it was destroyed in 70 AD by the Romans and there was no place to sacrifice animals they made a giant theological change and called for individual repentance rather than animal blood.  
Theology can be exciting and liberating when it is freed of the constraints of a particular religion or institution.  But when a religious system embraces, or codifies, or sets into creed a particular theology it can become a tool of division and exclusion.  Theological creeds are not inherently bad but they do inherently separate.  The purpose of a creed is to act as a yardstick of correct belief.  A creed is an epitome, not a full definition, of what is required for orthodoxy.  It was hoped that by memorizing this summary of the faith, lay people without extensive theological training would still be able to recognize deviations from orthodox doctrines based on the Bible as interpreted in Christian Tradition.
How many here remember times in their churches that you recited the Apostles’ Creed at every worship service?  We do it now only in baptisms.  Did you know that it is the earliest formal creed in Christianity (legend has it that it was written by each Apostle shortly after Pentecost) and was developed because the Gnostic belief that Jesus was not fully human was starting to erode proper doctrine?  
Several years later in 325 AD when Constantine was in power in Rome and Christianity was the official religion of the state another heresy started to emerge.  Now a group of people called Arians called into question the full divinity of Jesus.  It seems like Jesus can’t get a break.  So Constantine called together more than 300 of the early church leaders, bishops, mystics, writers, hermits, and others in Nicea, Turkey and let them haggle it out.  It was not a pretty sight.  I always find it amazing how bad good church folk can be when you start messing with their beliefs.  
When the Council was finally over they voted on the first complete, ecumenical, summary of Christian doctrine forever to be known as the Nicene Creed.  This creed can be found on page 880 of your hymnal if you are interested.  It covers a lot of theological ground but most importantly it finally resolved the “substance of Christ.”  Jesus was fully human and fully divine and of the same substance as God.  Jesus was not lesser than God but the same as God.  
Unfortunately this did not put an end to the dispute.  In fact there would be other councils, more haggling, more creeds, and more speculation about who or better yet what Jesus was.  The book that we are reading for class clearly shows that the debate is still going on 1700 years later and theologians are still asking the question “Was Jesus God?”
To some this question would be heresy.  But to others this question is just the starting point to dozens of others like: If Jesus was God then who did Jesus pray to while on earth? Or, if Jesus is going to sit on the right hand of God in the Kingdom then aren’t we really worshiping two gods?  Or, how can God be in two places at the same time?
Great questions.  Perhaps I will preach another whole series on them when I have recovered from this series.  So let me tell you what Marcus Borg thinks on this issue.  Remember he is the radical revisionist of the Gospels.  Marcus contends that all the images of Jesus that include Son of God, Word of God, Lamb of God, Light of the World, and Messiah were added to Christ after he died by the early Christian community.  All of the “I am” statements in John, all of the claims of being divine, and all of the messianic claims are metaphoric.  They are not true literally but are true experientially in the early church community.  They are confessional statements of belief by the early church and were never spoken by Jesus.  If they had been spoken by Jesus then he would clearly be delusional because humans don’t walk around saying “I am the Son of God” without inviting institutionalization.  
Marcus has a problem with the early gospel writers (especially John) and their dependence on stories told too long after Jesus’ death and resurrection.  In some ways he is right.  Mark, the earliest of the gospels, was probably written thirty years after the crucifixion and was based on collected stories shaped in the early church.  So if we only had the gospels then I might be tempted to go along with Borg’s theory that the early church reinvented who Jesus was.  But we have more than the gospels.
The reading this morning comes from what is supposed to be the very document of the New Testament.  If biblical historians are accurate then he wrote this in 49 AD which would mean this was 16 years after Jesus’ death.  But even more important is that Paul does not rely on circulated stories.  He relies on his own revelation of Christ.  Listen to his words again. “The gospel that I am proclaiming is not from a human source, nor was I taught it, but was received through a revelation of Jesus Christ.” (Gal. 1:12)
Paul goes on to talk about Christ as the “son of God” and the one who gave himself for our sins and to save us from evil.  Paul has a high Christology that is not filled with metaphors and does not rely on circulated stories.  If Paul were asked the question “Is Jesus God?” the answer would be a resounding YES!
That would also be the answer of N.T. Wright, who is the collaborator of this book.  He would contend that the image and concept of Jesus as “son of God” and “messiah” fits perfectly with the metanarrative or the big story of the Bible.  Jesus fits right into God’s plan of redemption and was part of the plan from creation to crucifixion.  For Wright this is not God acting out of character but God acting as God always has.  Jesus was the true “Son of God” and had come to rescue Israel and for that matter all people from the hold of evil.  His resurrection was not defeat but part of the great plan of redemption and victory over evil.
Metaphoric or historic – these are the two ways presented in the book at looking at Jesus.  So I asked the morning class how does Borg’s controversial approach to Jesus change their theology and one small group responded, “It doesn’t.  We choose not to think about it.”  
I loved their answer.  It was honest, faithful, and blunt and for them the conversation was over.  But for many the intriguing ideas of Borg open up even more questions that demand at least examination.  Just so you know, I have not become a “closet Borgian” a term one member of the class used to describe a Catholic priest who agreed with Borg but was afraid to admit it to the other priests around him.  I have some issues with Borg that go beyond his metaphoric concepts of Christ.  
I believe he starts his discussions in the wrong place.  He begins in the middle part of the argument and makes huge assumptions that he and his peers take for granted – as if they have done all the research and it is universally accepted – and then says, “therefore….”  And off he goes on a line of logic that I feel is sufficiently unsupported.  Second, he gives up too much, too fast, for too little benefit.  I do not feel the need to strip down the historic view of Jesus, or to take away the powerful “I am statements,” or to reduce him to some sliver of his former self in order to make him fit into modern thought.
Finally the divinity of Christ is foundational to my understanding of salvation and atonement.  I have studied many of the new atonement theories that do away with sacrifice, blood, and suffering, and they leave me hollow.  Just because we post-moderns have a hard time understanding the sacrificial systems of atonement that existed two thousand years ago does not mean we have to change the events or the actors to our liking.  
We all have creeds.  They may not be as well formed as the Nicene Creed or as easily articulated as the Apostles Creed but we all have a mental belief system that is crucial to our understanding of God, salvation, atonement, and forgiveness.  My personal creed is going to differ from yours.  It will grow and change as I grow and change.  Because of the way I was raised, because of my cultural background, because of my training, because of my understanding of grace, and because of the way God and Jesus have revealed themselves to me I need the divinity of Christ with all the attachments.
For me God being Jesus and dwelling among us is not a great stretch.  For me God loving us so much that God died on the cross for me is a continuation and climax of a story that began at creation, enlarged in covenant, borne out in the many rescues or exoduses, proclaimed by the prophets, and culminated in Christ. When I believe that Jesus was God then the cross and the grave are no longer marks of failure but symbols of victory.