Two Visions of Jesus: How do we know about Jesus?
Sunday, February 24, 2007 – Rev. David Tinney
Text:  John 2:1-11
Theme:  It is important to critically examine our understanding and concepts of Jesus to see if they are relevant, coherent, inspirational, and transformational.

This morning we are beginning a brand new sermon series that will extend all the way through Lent and to the Sunday after Easter.  It is a series that will be taken from a study many of us in this room are doing on Wednesday nights of a book entitled, “The Meaning of Jesus: Two Visions.”  This book was written by two very different authors who look at Jesus from two very different perspectives.  The most notable of the two is Marcus Borg, who is one of the leaders in the Jesus Seminars and the search for the “historical Jesus” and is very much a liberal, revisionist of the Gospel message.  The second author is N. T. Wright, who is a bishop in the Anglican church and much more traditional and much harder to understand.  
Last week when I announced that we were going to begin this sermon series this week one of our visitors, who happened to be a Lutheran pastor, came up after the worship and said, “You are very brave.”  What he didn’t say and probably meant to say was, “and very stupid.”  He went on to say that there are very few congregations where you can unleash Marcus Borg and survive.
It reminds me of the father who was very proud of his daughter’s report card that was filled with great grades.  He proudly remarked, “No doubt about it, the kid inherited my intelligence.”
His mother replied, “That’s true.  But I kept mine.”
In this case it might appear that I didn’t keep my God given intelligence when I launched into this series.  That became very apparent on Wednesday night when 35 adults crammed into the youth room for our first class.  I did my perfunctory welcome and introduction and then launched into about ten minutes of what I thought was fantastic explanation about the lesson and the two authors’ theological positions only to look out at the end of my spiel and see 35 mouths hanging open.  I asked if there were any questions and one of the students quickly replied, “What in the world did you just say?”  That’s when I knew I was in deep trouble.
Not the beauty of having the Wednesday classes prior to the Sunday sermon is that I can make my mistakes with them and they will lovingly and gently put me back on track so that at the end of this sermon there are not a couple hundred mouths hanging open.  So for all those who were not there on Wednesday you have 35 people to thank for changing today’s sermon.  
Let me explain what I hope to accomplish in this series and in the class.  First and foremost I would like each of us, whether in the class or in these sermons, to critically examine our understandings and concepts of Jesus to see if they are still relevant, coherent, inspirational, and transformational.  Many of us might still be using the images of Jesus that we embraced in our Sunday School days and have not explored any other images.  We may not even be aware that other images are there or that there might be other ways of interpreting the biblical texts that describe our Lord and his activities.  
Sometimes the way we learned about Jesus was constraining and we need to look at the stories in new ways with new possibilities.  Often these new perspectives will bring new life and new meaning to stories that were dull or dead.  Liberating the text often frees us to think of Jesus, God, and the believers in the early church in new and exciting ways.
Let me give you a personal example that I shared with the class.  When I was a younger Christian I wrestled with some of the Old Testament stories like the splitting of the Red Sea, or the walls of Jericho falling down, or the stopping of the Jordan River.  But the one that I couldn’t swallow was Jonah and the wall.  Sorry for the pun.  It was a stumbling block for me.  Several of my more conservative brothers told me that if I just had more faith then I could believe and that I was not really a good Christian because of my inadequate faith.  
As much as my brain told me they were wrong in their accusations there was something about what they said that haunted me.  In fact it haunted me all the way to seminary when finally an Old Testament professor liberated me by liberating the text.  He pointed out that the story of Jonah and the Whale was allegory and satire and was creatively written by a prophet of the day to prod the Israelites out of their exclusivist positions and take up their God-given role of being the light to the nations.  Then it all made sense.  The story exploded with new meaning.  The whale, boat, city, and broom tree took on new meaning and I could delight in the creativity and message of the author.  
The story moved from being a stumbling block to being one of my favorite stories in the entire Bible.  The same liberation is possible with some of the stories, texts, and miracles found in the Gospels that you and I might consider stumbling blocks.  Through study the Bible becomes more relevant.  We need to keep asking ourselves is the Jesus of my youth, or the Jesus of my young adult life, or of my mid years still relevant to the way I live my life today?
Has our image of Jesus moved beyond friend and companion to crusader for social justice?  Does our image inspire us to action or to strike out in an area of ministry to empower the marginalized, feed the hunger, house the homeless, and care for the sick?  Does our image of Jesus still speak to my heart in deep and unknown ways that call for repentance, transformation, and conformation into his likeness?  
I was asked on Wednesday evening if we already have faith then why do we need to keep studying.  What a great question.  The answer is we change, our life situations change, our challenges change, our health changes, and our families change and we need to stay in study to keep Christ relevant, inspirational, and transformational.  
But there is more.  As a United Methodist pastor I enjoy teaching what I call continuum classes.  I enjoy presenting theological options that arrive at the same point and letting you decide where you want to journey on that continuum.  My premise for doing this is that you and I were never asked to check our brains at the door or to march lock-step behind my theological position.  You are here because you enjoy doing the hard work of discerning your own theology as long as you have someone helping you in that journey so you don’t get lost or confused along the way.  
This is hard work.  Perhaps that is why many adults don’t participate in adult education.  It is hard work as we discovered Wednesday night.  But there is a huge reward at the end.  Hopefully you and I, whether you are in the class or in these sermons, will wrestle with new ideas and concepts and will embrace some and reject others but in the process will come away with a stronger understanding of Jesus than when you began.  Hopefully you will be able to emerge from this journey with a vision of Jesus that will withstand an encounter with a theological bully or the door-to-door religious sales teams.  
Many of us in this room worry about sharing our faith with others because we might encounter the super-know-it-all, Bible-verse-spitting, Christian who has all the answers and offers only one way to heaven and to hell.  My hope is that when we get done with sermon series like the one we will be doing or classes like the one going on now, you will be able to encounter those machine gunning proof texters with other options and context.  You will be able to paint a larger picture of possibilities and state clearly why you believe what you believe. 
That explains what I want to accomplish and the reason behind it, so now let me jump ankle deep into the discussion that we started this past week.  I asked the class “how do you know Jesus?” and eventually moved to the question “are the biblical texts that we use to understand Jesus and his saying accurate and authentic?”  That is a tough question and demands an answer that searches our souls and not just our Sunday School memories. 
The book we are reading begs the same questions but offers two very opposite answers from two very opposite writers.  On one end of the continuum (the liberal, revisionist end) Marcus Borg would say that most of the Gospel writings are metaphorical in nature.  Many of the stories we know and love are just that – stories created by the church community years after Jesus died to help them understand the nature, character, and message of Christ.  Even though they were created stories they contained experienced truth about the Risen Lord that touched the hearts of the believers.
On the other end of the continuum (the traditional and conservative side) N.T. Wright states that all the events in the Gospels are historically true and even though they may be hard to believe modern theologians and biblical interpreters should not find ways to accommodate the text but should embrace the text with faith.  This kind of no-holes-barred approach to history and faith eventually leads to the real truth of the Gospel bubbling over.
Now you can see why the class and this sermon series are going to be real challenges.  
Let me tell you a story that is a gentle way of introducing this continuum and the scripture lesson for the day.  In my first year in seminary we were asked repeatedly to empty out our “God boxes” and spill the contents on the ground and systematically repack it.  For me the Old Testament was far easier than the New Testament because you could mess with the old stories but you had better not touch those “red lettered” stories of Jesus.  
My professor started our New Testament studies with an assignment to do an exegesis (critical analysis and theological interpretation) on John 2:1-11.  I had always loved the story that launched Jesus’ ministry in the book of John.  It showed Jesus as a young man enjoying life, going to a party, having fun with his friends and new companions.  It showed him as being a regular guy rather than some aloof mystic or theologian.  But it also revealed his hesitancy in showing off his powers.  I don’t watch the new series “Heroes” but I have heard enough from those who have that this scene reminds me of those young men and women slowly discovering their powers and not knowing when to use them.  
It is written in such a way that you can feel his struggle where he even gets crosswise with his mother.  So when he finally agrees to do what she asked and produce some wine he goes to the extreme.  He creates 180 gallons of wine.  I can almost hear him say to his mother, “You wanted wine, and I gave it to you by the bucket load.”
So I wrote my first exegesis around my understanding of the traditional interpretation of John’s opening story on Jesus.  The bad news was it was a disaster.  The good news was almost every paper in the class took the same approach that I had.  We all were operating out of the traditional interpretive approaches taught in our churches.  The professor, who was known around the world for his wisdom and intellectual prowess, instructed us to do the work again but this time to view the story as metaphor.  
At first I resented the assignment but as I engaged in the exploration of the text from a new perspective the story exploded with new meaning.  I didn’t have to concern myself with how it happened or if it was possible to change water into wine.  I didn’t have to address why this story was only present in John and never mentioned in the others.  I could concentrate on what truths the story was trying to impart.  
I realized there were two levels to the story – the obvious surface level where turning water into wine satisfied the wishes of his mother and saved the wedding party and the secondary and not so obvious where everything he did could be seen as a sign of his ministry to come.  The wedding feast was a symbol of the Kingdom of God and Jesus had come to open it in new ways.  
The six stone jars represented the old way to purification and relationship with God.  Six was a number that means “incomplete” in Jewish culture and so the Old Law or the Old Ways were no longer sufficient for the new relationship with God.  Jesus was offering something better.  The finest wine, the finest offering, the new covenant had been saved to the end.  The wine, or as we would come to know it later, the blood of our Lord, would be poured out in overflowing abundance like the 180 gallons and there would be enough for all to partake.  
I wrote pages on my newfound understanding of a powerful story that had for most of my life been a fun introduction and nothing more.  It revealed new truths about Jesus and how the later community saw his mission from the very beginning to the very end.  
 The good news in this classroom exercise is that the professor did not insist ever again that we needed to look at future texts as being metaphor.  He just wanted to open our eyes to different ways of interpretation so that we understood the possibilities and truths that might await us if we were courageous enough to explore.  
In the days ahead we will be exploring together through the lens of two very different theologians.  Borg is on one extreme, Wright is on the other, but both have deep faiths.  Both would call Jesus Lord.  Both would call Jesus savior.  Both put their faith into action in ways that encounter the injustice of the world.  Both provide different paths to the same goal – a relevant, inspiring, transforming relationship with Jesus.