Confessing Jesus
Isaiah 50:4-9
Philippians 2:1-13
April 5, 2009
I want to pull out a single verse from our several readings this morning and offer a brief meditation upon it. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.
Thomas Merton wrote, “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how to comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person.”
Between these two answers.
Merton was not writing about Holy Week, but he could have been. For between the answers to the questions posed first by the drama of palms and passion and then by the empty tomb you can determine our identities as followers of Jesus.
In a few minutes we will ask again the foundational, ancient, confessional questions that Christians have posed for the better part of two millennia.
Who is your Lord and Savior?
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
What does it mean, today, to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
We could travel down some historical, Christological byways together, and consider the root words from which we draw “lord” and “savior,” and trace their respective meanings to such ideas as the feudal lord who was the keeper of the loaf, and the Latin roots of “savior” meaning healing and wholeness. Or we could look at the original political context of the ancient confession and note that confessing Christos Curios – Christ is Lord – was a direct and political subversion of the Roman pledge of allegiance Caesar Curios – Caesar is lord.
We could explore those links and roots in depth, and it might be interesting and fruitful to do so, but I’m not going there this morning.
I believe that we live our entire lives as if on a high wire stretched out between palms and passion, kept balanced on this wire by our real hope of resurrection, and by the real experience of rising again when we fall.
Confessing Jesus gives the journey meaning and grounds it in a story of rising, falling and rising again. That is to say, confessing Jesus grounds our lives in hope, and you cannot live without hope.
Each of us has countless opportunities to embody such hope. In broad strokes, embodying resurrection hope is what we are living for as followers of Jesus. What do we think is keeping us from living fully into that hope?
I was graced with a couple of such opportunities last week. First, on Monday, when I joined People of Faith for Equality Virginia in witnessing to God’s love in the face of the hate-filled presence of Westboro Baptist demonstrators at George Mason.
While standing with the GMU students I had a brief conversation with one of the kids, Carl -- or Carly, as this transvestite-for-a-day-of-solidarity introduced herself. Carly spoke of growing up in the Roman Catholic church and leaving it behind because the church has so little tolerance for so many friends.
There was sadness in this story because of what has been lost. There was a falling, a hitting ground, suffering, passion.
But there was compassion – suffering with – and a joyous rising as well as people of faith showed up to proclaim love in the face of hate, to say a bright, shining “yes” against an ugly “no,” and to witness to hope and the possibility of living fully into it.
Later in the week, I had the opportunity to sit down with a young man from Sri Lanka who works there with a small gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender rights organization. In Sri Lanka it is against the law to be in a same-sex relationship, and the work that Dilshan is engaged in can be dangerous. His church would not accept him if he were out and open in that context.
He was curious about how we had arrived at this point of, well, grace, and was eager for suggestions that might help his community.
What is keeping him from living fully for the thing he wants to live for? Well, to begin with, the very real threat of death.
How to stay on the high wire and not tumble to a very rocky landing?
How to live into hope in such a hopeless situation?
I don’t pretend to know the answers to such questions, so all I could offer to him is shared stories. Stories of solidarity, of commitments, of lives and risks shared to create a community committed to the radical welcome of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the end, that is all that we really have. Our own commitments. Our own stories. Our own lives stretched between palms and passion, between celebration and suffering, between birth and death … and rising again and again and again in the face of falling down.
For young gay men and lesbian women in places such as Sri Lanka we can offer our stories as a source of hope. For those at George Mason, we can offer our bodies as incarnate testimony to those same stories of hope. For those suffering from injustices and violence, we can offer our lives – our lives.
That is all that Jesus asks when he says, “follow me.”
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.
Let us pray.
Philippians 2:1-13
April 5, 2009
I want to pull out a single verse from our several readings this morning and offer a brief meditation upon it. Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.
Thomas Merton wrote, “If you want to identify me, ask me not where I live, or what I like to eat, or how to comb my hair, but ask me what I think I am living for, in detail, and ask me what I think is keeping me from living fully for the thing I want to live for. Between these two answers you can determine the identity of any person.”
Between these two answers.
Merton was not writing about Holy Week, but he could have been. For between the answers to the questions posed first by the drama of palms and passion and then by the empty tomb you can determine our identities as followers of Jesus.
In a few minutes we will ask again the foundational, ancient, confessional questions that Christians have posed for the better part of two millennia.
Who is your Lord and Savior?
Jesus Christ is my Lord and Savior.
What does it mean, today, to confess Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior.
We could travel down some historical, Christological byways together, and consider the root words from which we draw “lord” and “savior,” and trace their respective meanings to such ideas as the feudal lord who was the keeper of the loaf, and the Latin roots of “savior” meaning healing and wholeness. Or we could look at the original political context of the ancient confession and note that confessing Christos Curios – Christ is Lord – was a direct and political subversion of the Roman pledge of allegiance Caesar Curios – Caesar is lord.
We could explore those links and roots in depth, and it might be interesting and fruitful to do so, but I’m not going there this morning.
I believe that we live our entire lives as if on a high wire stretched out between palms and passion, kept balanced on this wire by our real hope of resurrection, and by the real experience of rising again when we fall.
Confessing Jesus gives the journey meaning and grounds it in a story of rising, falling and rising again. That is to say, confessing Jesus grounds our lives in hope, and you cannot live without hope.
Each of us has countless opportunities to embody such hope. In broad strokes, embodying resurrection hope is what we are living for as followers of Jesus. What do we think is keeping us from living fully into that hope?
I was graced with a couple of such opportunities last week. First, on Monday, when I joined People of Faith for Equality Virginia in witnessing to God’s love in the face of the hate-filled presence of Westboro Baptist demonstrators at George Mason.
While standing with the GMU students I had a brief conversation with one of the kids, Carl -- or Carly, as this transvestite-for-a-day-of-solidarity introduced herself. Carly spoke of growing up in the Roman Catholic church and leaving it behind because the church has so little tolerance for so many friends.
There was sadness in this story because of what has been lost. There was a falling, a hitting ground, suffering, passion.
But there was compassion – suffering with – and a joyous rising as well as people of faith showed up to proclaim love in the face of hate, to say a bright, shining “yes” against an ugly “no,” and to witness to hope and the possibility of living fully into it.
Later in the week, I had the opportunity to sit down with a young man from Sri Lanka who works there with a small gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender rights organization. In Sri Lanka it is against the law to be in a same-sex relationship, and the work that Dilshan is engaged in can be dangerous. His church would not accept him if he were out and open in that context.
He was curious about how we had arrived at this point of, well, grace, and was eager for suggestions that might help his community.
What is keeping him from living fully for the thing he wants to live for? Well, to begin with, the very real threat of death.
How to stay on the high wire and not tumble to a very rocky landing?
How to live into hope in such a hopeless situation?
I don’t pretend to know the answers to such questions, so all I could offer to him is shared stories. Stories of solidarity, of commitments, of lives and risks shared to create a community committed to the radical welcome of the gospel of Jesus Christ.
In the end, that is all that we really have. Our own commitments. Our own stories. Our own lives stretched between palms and passion, between celebration and suffering, between birth and death … and rising again and again and again in the face of falling down.
For young gay men and lesbian women in places such as Sri Lanka we can offer our stories as a source of hope. For those at George Mason, we can offer our bodies as incarnate testimony to those same stories of hope. For those suffering from injustices and violence, we can offer our lives – our lives.
That is all that Jesus asks when he says, “follow me.”
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself.
Let us pray.
posted by David Ensign at
2:24 PM
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