Today's Sermon

 

“The Spirit of Jesus – Spirit Series"

 

The Spirit of Jesus – Spirit Series

            Christianity makes a lot of professions about Jesus. Take last week. At the 10:00 service, we had a baptism. As part of that, by rule, we recite The Apostles’ Creed. I’m well aware this is a stumbling block for some. They don’t like its mention of hell, they aren’t so sure about the virgin birth, or they wonder why we would affirm the catholic church. That last one’s easy; “catholic” is with a lower case “c” and so it just means universal, not Roman Catholic.

            One of the things I like about The Apostles’ Creed is that it connects us to Christians of all times and places. What troubles me is what The Apostles’ Creed doesn’t say; it says nothing about what Jesus taught or did—his birth, his suffering, his death and then resurrection. There is a need to recover with just as much reverence for what Jesus’ life was about. In other words, the tradition may have become more committed to the things we say about Jesus than what Jesus himself said.

            How does Jesus frame his own mission? In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus’ ministry begins in chapter 4. He has just resisted temptation in the wilderness and heads to the synagogue. Listen to his focus.

Luke 4:16-21
16 When he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up, he went to the synagogue on the Sabbath day, as was his custom. He stood up to read, 17 and the scroll of the prophet Isaiah was given to him. He unrolled the scroll and found the place where it was written:

18 “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
    because he has anointed me
        to bring good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives
    and recovery of sight to the blind,
        to set free those who are oppressed,
19 to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

20 And he rolled up the scroll, gave it back to the attendant, and sat down. The eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. 21 Then he began to say to them, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”

            Jesus identifies himself and his mission with that of the prophet Isaiah: bringing good news to the poor, release to captives, and healing to the afflicted. He proclaims “the year of the Lord’s favor,” the jubilee year, the ancient Jewish concept detailed in Leviticus 25. The jubilee made periodic occasion for debts to be forgiven, land to be returned, slaves created through economic debt to be released, the land to be given a growing season off. It is a societal reset, an admonition about fraudulent business dealings, and all of it is rooted in the declaration that the land (and everything in it) belongs to God, verse 23. We are always and forever “aliens and tenants.” We hold things in trust, and only temporarily, and thus we should be gracious with what has been freely given us. This is how Jesus launches his ministry. Have we lost sight of that?

            We are in a sermon series on the Spirit, stretching from Resurrection Day/Easter to Pentecost, a festival where the Holy Spirit made a special appearance, and today we are looking at the Spirit of Jesus. How does the Spirit take up residence and manifest itself in the life of Jesus, but a material rebalancing of society, a mending of physical as well as spiritual wounds, a living, breathing, walking embodiment of jubilee. That’s how Jesus understood the Spirit’s work and therefore his. It’s right there in the text and its our work too.

            In his book Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, New Testament scholar Marcus Borg writes about how the Spirit bears particular fruit in both Jesus and the Apostle Paul, who was responsible for much of the spreading early Christianity beyond the bounds of Judaism. The Spirit inspires and equips us to relate to the world around us in a certain way.

…when Paul, in the great “love chapter” in 1 Corinthians 13, speaks of the greatest of the spiritual gifts as love, he is essentially saying that compassion is the primary fruit of the Spirit.

An image of the Christian life shaped by this image of Jesus would have the same two focal points: a relationship to the Spirit of God, and the embodiment of compassion in the world of the everyday. It is an image of the Christian life that provides both direction and growth. For Jesus and Paul, life in the Spirit begins a deepening process of internal transformation whose central quality is compassion. Indeed, growth in compassion is the sign of growth in the life of the Spirit.[1]

            The Spirit of God, the Spirit of Jesus is about compassion; it shows us in him how to live. I wonder how those turned off by our religion might feel if they saw us as focused primarily on compassion and not doctrinal confession.

            Last weekend, I was a part of an online retreat in Celtic Wisdom, through John Philip Newell’s “Earth and Soul.” In one of the lectures, Newell said something that really stuck with me. He noted that Christianity has come to speak seriously and quite confidently in its claims about Jesus, that he is co-equal with the Father, for example, but when it comes to taking seriously Jesus teachings, say, for example, about nonviolence, we quickly abandon the idea as naïve. It’s not naïve to call him Son of God, born to a virgin, or capable of walking on water, but committing to nonviolence as a means to conflict resolution and communal living is a bridge too far. I don’t argue against statements about Christ, good doctrines. I’m not asking you to choose, only to hold together what we profess about Jesus and what Jesus professed.

            Newell recalled writing a reflection on the anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb. It fell, pun intended, on the Feast of the Transfiguration. The transfiguration is the name for the story when Jesus goes up a mountain and meets Moses and Elijah from the other side. Jesus glows with the glory of God, and from the cloud a heavenly voice comes. Do you remember what the voice says? “This is my Son.” We got that part. What’s the next part? “Listen to him!” (Luke 9:35). That part we have not fully grasped? We would rather make grand claims about him than listen to him.  

            I am happy to recite The Apostles’ Creed in worship. I do wonder if we should add some other profession about our commitment to the way of Jesus. For, what does it mean to be a Christian, but also to take seriously that Jesus came to bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, recovery of sight to the blind, and set free those who are oppressed? For those who are creed averse, Borg says the word comes from the Latin credo, which doesn’t mean “I believe” as much as it means, “I give my heart to,” just as faith is about trust and loyalty as it is about intellectual assent. So, what do you give your heart to? We know what Jesus gave his to, to God and neighbor, particularly those in need. Let that also be our creed.  

            Amen.

[1] Marcus J. Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus & The Heart of Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994), 61.