Jesus and God Are One
A Sermon Delivered by
The Rev. John D. Painter
at Centenary United Methodist Church
Metuchen, New Jersey
May 24, 2009
(Ascension Sunday)
Text: John 17:6-19
“I have made your name known to those whom you gave me from the world. They were yours, and you gave them to me, and they have kept your word. Now they know that everything you have given me is from you; for the words that you gave to me I have given to them, and they have received them and know in truth that I came from you; and they have believed that you sent me. I am asking on their behalf; I am not asking on behalf of the world, but on behalf of those whom you gave me, because they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine; and I have been glorified in them. And now I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, protect them in your name that you have given
me, so that they may be one, as we are one. While I was with them, I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them, and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the scripture might be fulfilled. But now I am coming to you, and I speak these things in the world so that they may have my joy made complete in themselves. I have given them your word, and the world has hated them because they do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. I am not asking you to take them out of the world, but I ask you to protect them from the evil one. They do not belong to the world, just as I do not belong to the world. Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth. As you have sent me into the world, so I have sent them into the world. And for their sakes I sanctify myself, so that they also may be sanctified in truth.”
—John 17:6-19, NRSV
God is… What is God like? God is by definition large and indefinable. In his book, Your God Is Too Small, 20th-century theologian J. B. Phillips declares that if we think we have defined the ultimate nature of God, the God we have defined is too small to be God. Philips explains that the trouble facing many of us today is that we have not found a God big enough for our modern needs. In a world where our experience of life has grown in numerous directions, and our mental horizons have been expanded to the point of bewilderment by world events and scientific discov-eries, our ideas of God have remained largely static. It is nearly impossible, Phillips argues, for an adult to worship the conception of God that exists in the mind of a child of Sunday-school age—the “God-in-a-box” notion, limiting God to such inadequate conceptions as “Resident Po-liceman,” “Grand Old Man,” “Meek-and-Mild,” “Managing Director,” or, as I mentioned last week, “The Man Upstairs.” As a result of these insufficient ideas of God, many people live with an inner dissatisfaction, or without any faith at all.
Some theologians of previous centuries thought that it was easier to define God by de-scribing what God is not. So God is neither male nor female, for example. God is neither grasp-able, nor definable. Islam forbids representation of God—any images, portrayals, or other artistic attempts to contain or delimit God. Orthodox Judaism historically refuses even to utter aloud the name of G-d. You know the Commandment: Thou shalt not make any graven image for the holy, unmentionable God.
Even in Christian theology there is this approach called “negative theology”—we can’t say for sure what God is. We can say only what God is not—not a creature, not a principle, not a thing.
But this kind of “negative theology” simply will not do. I can’t pray to a principle; I can’t feel affection for an abstraction, can you? You, or someone you love deeply, clings to life, grasp-ing, fighting the final enemy. I make a hospital call and stand at the side the bed and pray, “O great spiritual otherness, beyond my comprehension, O highest human aspiration, thou vast, im-portant idea…” Comforting, isn’t it?!
No. When you walk down some darkened path, when you stumble, when you don’t know where to turn, when you lose your way—you don’t expect a noble, though indefinable, faceless, nameless, bloodless idea to take your hand. You’re not praying for some fickle feeling to hold you safe.
Sometimes, especially in the Gospel of John, Jesus seems elusive and even evasive. It is not always clear just who he is. But here in the seventeenth chapter, in the midst of his great prayer for the unity of his disciples, the veil is lifted, and Jesus says clearly—God and I are one. If you have seen me, you’ve seen God.
Most English teachers do not like double negatives. But in Jesus, God is not unreason-able, not indefinable, not incomprehensible. Jesus and God are one. When we look at Jesus we see God—not a form of God, not a reflection of God. When we look at this Jew from Nazareth—who was weirdly born, briefly lived, unjustly condemned, violently died, and unexpectedly raised from the dead—we have seen as much of God as we can ever hope to see.
“How odd of God to choose the Jews.” That couplet, written by British journalist William Norman Ewer (1885-1976), seems to have provoked a distressing response from Ogden Nash: “But not so odd/As those who choose/A Jewish God/Yet spurn the Jews.” Some have felt that Ewer’s original couplet was perhaps anti-Semitic, and I can certainly understand how one might justifiably come to that conclusion. But I suspect he was genuinely seeking to explore the mys-tery of what some have come to call the “Scandal of Particularity:” That the Almighty Creator of the universe would choose an obscure, nomadic band of desert dwellers to become God’s “Cho-sen People.”
For many it is that same feeling of a “Scandal of Particularity” when we Christians affirm that there is no other God behind Jesus. There is no greater knowledge of God to be had than looking at this first-century, Jewish man from Nazareth in whom the fullness of God chose to dwell.
We preachers constantly labor to bring this scandal to understandable speech. I heard of a preacher struggling to speak of the Incarnation by saying, “If you take enough Coke bottles down to the ocean and fill them up to the brim with the ocean water, that’s something like the relation-ship of God to Jesus.” No. That won’t do.
Jesus was not a bit of Almighty God stuffed into a human form…or a Coke bottle. Jesus Christ is the fullness of God. “In the beginning was the Word. And the Word (the Christ) was with God… And the Word was God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That’s how John’s Gospel opens. Majestic words. Beautiful words. We read them at Christmas, espe-cially, and marvel at the mystery. “The Word was God!” But then, in the succeeding chapters, when Jesus blows open a wedding party, whips folk out of the temple, confuses us by his words and deeds, is rejected, suffers, dies in ignominy on a cross and calls it “glory,” well then the words “Jesus is God” take on a peculiar edge.
So how would you begin to define Christianity…or, at least, a Christian? One possible way is to say that Christians are those who believe that in this first-century Jewish man from Nazareth—in his words (including the most outrageous and confusing of them) and in his deeds (including the most offensive and incomprehensible of them)—we have seen the very fullness of God.
How do you know if you’re a Christian? You probably are if you are somebody seeking after, trying to figure out, struggling to imitate, falling in love with, trying to look like this first-century Jew from Nazareth who was one with God.
In the end, when it is all said and done, it is our relationship with Christ that gives us our faith. That—more than any dry, dusty doctrines or complicated creeds of the church—gives us our hope. And in our times of desperation, that is the reality toward which we return—Jesus is the relationship upon which our hope and our faith is based. Jesus is that loving friend to whom we turn in prayer.
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PRAYER
Almighty God, in your Son, Jesus Christ, you came to us. You would not rest until you came close to us, until you revealed yourself to us, walked beside us, prayed for us, suffered with us and because of us, and thus brought us your salvation. All this you did in your Son Jesus Christ.
Thus we gather this day to celebrate your revelation, to give thanks for your presence among us, and to explore your loving purposes for us. Amen.