Mountainside UMC
July 20, 2014
Who is this Man?
Philippians 2:9-11 Therefore God exalted him to the highest
place
and gave him the name that is above every name, that at
the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth
and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus
Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father.
This morning I want to attempt to answer a repeated question in
our culture and sometimes to us individually when it comes to this
person called Jesus and the question is simply. Who is this Man?
(PIC 1) First to give credit where is due as the majority of this
comes from a message and book by John Ortberg of the same title.
Can you imagine someone who would change the world so much
that not only would your name be remembered over 2000 years
after your birth but your birthday would be celebrated all over the
planet every year for over 2000 years. It’s only happened once.
Several years ago Lindy and I travelled to attend the wedding of
her nephew in Napa Valley…we stayed about half a week touring
San Francisco, California. Why is there a San Francisco? Because
once there was a man named Francis of Assisi who inspired so
many people by his generosity and love and people named cities
after him and St. Francis did this because of a man named Jesus.
The capital of the state of California is Sacramento. Why is there a
Sacramento? Because a man named Jesus had a meal to express a
staggering idea that God loved his creation so much that he
sacrificed his own life on our behalf. This idea was expressed in a
meal that we call a sacrament of communion.
Needless to say there are just a few more cities in America
connected to Jesus and Christianity such as Bethlehem, Corpus
Christi, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Providence, San Antonio,
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San Diego, San Jose, Santa Fe, St. Augustine, St. Paul and St.
Petersburg. I could go on and list a total of over one thousand
cities just in the United States whose names are connected with
Jesus and those who chose to be his followers over the years. You
cannot look at a map of the world and not be reminded of this man.
The instrument on which Jesus enemies killed him marks more
graves adorns more jewelry and is the single most recognized
symbol in all the world. A symbol summarizing his love and his
message of which we are stewards of today, we who dare to call
ourselves Disciples of Jesus. So what are some of the amazing
realities of Jesus that we should know about him?
Let’s start with the obvious. It would be very hard to choose a less
likely candidate throughout the world. Jesus never held an office,
never led army, never wrote a book, never traveled abroad. His
followers were remarkably unimportant. The New Testament
identifies them as unschooled and ordinary men. And yet 2000
years later it is impossible to imagine the world without him.
To begin with he gave the world his most influential movement.
Imagine a world with no church, no Notre Dame, No St. Paul’s
cathedral, no store front churches, no house churches in China, no
churches anywhere, no Mountainside. No gatherings in Africa or
Asia or Australia, South or Central America or Europe or Middle
East or anywhere. No Peter, Paul, Matthew, Mark, Luke or John or
Timothy, Titus, Augustine. No Mary, Martha and Lazarus. No
Mother Theresa, John or Charles Wesley or Martin Luther. Just sta
But let’s go back to the beginning of an idea of a church. In the
ancient world, there were nations, there were families, there were
ethnic groups there were guilds. There were tribal religions, there
were philosophical schools. The N.T church was none of these.
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Paul says, “Here there is no Greek or Jew, circumcised or
uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave or free, but in Christ is
all and in all.” Colossians 3:11.
Where before the church was there a movement that actively
sought to include every single human being regardless of ethnicity,
status, language group, wealth or gender to be a single
transformational community? Not only has there never been such
community before, there had never been the idea of such a
community like that before. This was Jesus’ idea and vision.
Jesus changed how we think about history. In our day we expect to
see progress. It is the task of leaders who ask questions of how
will life be better for the next generation. What can we do to make
life better for the next generation? There was no predominant
thought like that in the Ancient world prior to Jesus and the
influence of Christianity. Most cultures thought of existence in the
context of cycles, an endless repetition of ups and downs. Events
were dated by rulers such as, “Year one of the reign of Augustus.”
But over time the power of every Caesar and the grip of their
influence on the world began to fade & replaced by another vision.
By the sixth century a Scythian monk proposed a new calendar that
was based not on the founding of Rome but on the birth of Jesus.
The creation of this calendar was not just a chronological
convenience, it was a declaration, a claim an idea that life is not a
random cycle, that it has meaning, that it is leading somewhere.
And that the critical event is the birth of this baby born in a humble
stable. It was to be based on Jesus lived and died and Caesar never
heard of his existence during his years of ministry.
But Jesus was called by his disciple John the Lord of Lords and the
King of Kings. Most of you understand that is not just a poetic
phrase. Imagine this, take all the Lords, all the great Leaders,
Kings, Generals, Caesars, Rulers and put them in a group.
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Jesus is the King over all of them. He is not just a King, he is the
King and the one to whom every leader, lord, ruler, king and every
single person who has ever drawn breath will have to stand before
and give an account for their life. In the final chapter of the final
book of the Bible Jesus says these words. Revelation 22:12-13.
“Behold, I am coming soon! My reward is with me, and I will give
to everyone according to what they have done. I am the Alpha and
Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End.”
As incredible as it sounds, one day in the future, Jesus will do
more than just make that declaration, he will permanently establish
his kingdom as Revelation 17:14 states,. 14 They will wage war
against the Lamb, but the Lamb will triumph over them because he
is Lord of lords and King of kings—and with him will be his called,
chosen and faithful followers.”
Now in the first century when Jesus only had a small group of
followers such a claim seemed only laughable. But if you were
around back then and you had to bet on whose influence would last
longer either Jesus or the Roman Empire you would not put your
money on the carpenter and his motley crew. And yet today two
thousand years later we give our children’s Bible names like Peter,
Paul, Michael, Elijah, Jacob, Sarah, Hannah and Mary and we
name our dogs names like Caesar, Nero and Thor.
Two thousand years after this man’s birth anywhere any person
looks at a date we are reminded that Jesus Christ has become the
hinge of history. That Nero died in “The Year of our Lord” 68 or
68 A.D. (Anno Domini)that Napoleon died the Year of our Lord,
1821, that dictator Stalin died the Year of our Lord 1953. How
interesting is it that every ruler who ever reigned, every nation that
rises and falls must be dated in reference to the birth of this humble
carpenter, rabbi who died on a cross. Who is this man?
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Jesus changed and reshaped how the world expresses and
manifests compassion. All human beings have a capacity for
compassion, but Jesus shaped this in ways that we often do not
think about. In ancient Greece and Rome, it was often noble, the
beautiful and the strong that were admired. The wealthy might
give money for public works but it was generally a means by
which to demonstrate the rich man’s greatness.
The weak and the marginal were not generally valued in the
ancient world. A first century Roman writer named Seneca wrote,
“We drown children at birth when they are weak and abnormal.”
This is not covered up or thought to be embarrassing it is just the
way life was. In the ancient world a child could also be left to die
if it was the wrong gender. Anyone want to guess what the wrong
gender was? A guy by the name of Rodney Starks wrote about this
saying that there were in the ancient world around 1.4 million boys
for every 1 million girls mostly because the other 400 thousand
girls were left to die. This didn’t change by accident.
This little group of disciples of Jesus were once rebuked by him
when children approached him and they tried to block the children.
Jesus turned to his disciples saying, "Let the little children come to
me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to
such as these." And they stepped back and let the children by.
Not only did the early church with this transformed attitude toward
children, they begin to take in abandoned children and care for
them. The church began the practice of God-parents who would
care for a child if the natural parents died which happened a lot in
that time. Instead of leaving children to die or killing them at birth
the people would take them to the monasteries for them to be
raised by the church. This was the beginning of orphanages
overseen by churches dating back to the first century.
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As the influence of Christianity grew it transformed the view of the
Western culture from children being disposable or only useful to
be exploited as slaves or in brothels, to that of raising the value of
a child as a gift of God to be protected & treasured part of society.
Widows who were actually fined by Rome for surviving past their
husbands and perceived as a financial drain on the economy and
society, were taken in and cared for by the church. They did this
because they remember Jesus telling his friend to care for his
widowed mother. Jesus began a revolution in the status of women
and children that began transforming the world.
In the first three centuries of the church, there were two major
epidemics that took the life of a fourth and even up to a third of
many major cities of the world. One writer said that it created such
a panic in the Roman Empire that at the first onset of the disease,
they would cast our relatives and family out into the streets to help
avoid the spread of the disease to the rest of the family. Christians
however would go out into the street and bring in the diseased and
care for them because of Jesus’ words and call to serve the sick,
diseased, the outcasts and the lepers saying whatever you do for
the least of these you do for me. This action gripped the world.
In the fourth century what was essentially the first hospital was
begun by a follower of Jesus named Benedict. By the sixth century
monastic communities would have hospitals attached to them.
“Before and above all things, care must be taken of the sick, that
they be served in very truth as Christ is served.” The Rule of St.
Benedict. Many years later at the Geneva convention an
organization was begun to alleviate human suffering. They chose
as their symbol a large cross on a flag known as the Red Cross.
When you hear of groups like the Salvation Army, World Vision,
Compassion International, YMCA, Goodwill, Easter Seals, or
when you go to hospitals and they have names like Good Shepherd
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or Good Samaritan or Saint Anthony’s. The first health care came
to New Mexico in 1865 from the four Sisters of Charity of
Cincinnati who traveled to the “faraway west” – Santa Fe, in the
New Mexico Territory. They made the 1,400-mile trip by rail, boat
and stagecoach the end result was St. Vincent Hospital - the first
hospital built in the New Mexico Territory.
In 1881, Sister Blandina began a new mission in Albuquerque.
This resulted in the first public school and the Mt. St. Joseph
Sanatorium was built and opened in 1902. As the population of
Albuquerque grew, the Sisters of Charity expanded their ability to
meet the needs of the growing community. The Sisters of Charity
opened the first nursing school, the first schools for X-ray and
laboratory technicians and the first blood bank in New Mexico.
You see the touch of Jesus reaching out today to the disabled, the
wounded, the down-syndrome, the autistic, the broken. These were
viewed by our ancient ancestors as burdens to society and were to
be drowned or discarded to die. This is not to say that there would
be no compassion in this world apart from Christianity and very
often it is Christians who fall far short of this vision.
However one scholar writes this, “If you ask what is Jesus’
influence on medicine and compassion, I would suggest that
wherever you have an institutions for self-giving to the lowly, be it
through schools, hospitals, hospices, orphanages, for those who
will never be able to repay, this probably has its roots in the
movement of Jesus. Who is this man?
This Jesus movement shaped education. People throughout all
generations have loved to learn. However in the Roman-Greco
world formal education was always reserved for male children in
elite families. Not generally for girls and certainly not for slaves.
But then there is this odd community called the Christian church.
They remembered that they followed a man who taught everybody.
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His last command to them was to everywhere in the world and
teach everybody in all nations. So they went and began to teach
everybody, men and women, slave and free, young and old. In
about the fourth century some of Jesus’ followers began to learn in
monastic communities and for many centuries these were the only
institutions of Europe built for the preservation of not just biblical
texts but also the great pagan classical texts.
The churches began to build schools then universities. They built
The University of Paris around the 12th century, then Cambridge
and Oxford. The Motto of the University of Oxford is “The Lord is
My Light”- Psalm 27. Then Harvard and Yale. Ninety-two percent
of all universities that were started in the U.S. before the Civil War
were founded by Christian leaders, churches & followers of Jesus.
When the Great Reformation came in Europe, one of the driving
forces was the idea that every individual ought to be able to read
the Bible for themselves and not have it’s content limited to clergy.
This ignited a dream for universal literacy. Martin Luther took this
so seriously that he wrote a book about parents who neglected the
education of their children and he wrote this saying, “I shall really
go after the shameful, despicable, “blankable”(had to edit one of
his words) parents who are not parents at all but despicable hogs
and venomous beasts devouring their own young.” Clearly Luther
had a hard time expressing his emotions sometimes.
In America, the first law to require public funding for mass
education passed in Massachusetts in 1642 was called the “The
Olde Deluder Satan Act” because followers of Jesus believed that
ignorance was a dark satanic thing and that God wants people to
learn. They believed that education honored God and enables us to
think God’s thoughts especially be able to read Scriptures.
In fact, Alfred North Whitehead who was one of the dominant
thinkers of the 20th century asked him the question,
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“What made it possible for science to emerge.” He had a
fascinating response. He said, “It was the medival insistence on the
rationality of God.” It is not to say that science wouldn't’ have
developed otherwise but the fact is as one scholar said,“Science as
an organized and sustained enterprise arose only once in human
history in Europe in the civilization then called Christendom.
The greatest explosion of technology in all the middle ages, were
in Jesus following monastic communities. Mechanical clocks were
invented because monks needed to know when to pray. We
actually first hear about eyeglasses in a sermon as monks needed to
pour over texts. Dom Perignon was actually the name of a French
Benedictine monk who contributed tothe production of champagne
because there were no Baptist to tell him it was a sin to drink it.
What about written languages? In nation after nation it was the
Christian missionaries who risked their lives to find languages that
had not been committed to writing. In acts of heroism they set
about that task and still do and in many cases the first ever to set
about the scientific study of languages were followers of Jesus.
They composed the first dictionaries, the books on grammar, the
first alphabets in many languages. The first important proper name
written in more languages than any other is the name of Jesus. The
Gospels telling his story of his salvation is written in over 2200
languages more than any other writing in any language. No other
book in history is translated into 1/5 that many. Who is this man?
He caused a revolution in the arts. Without Jesus there is no Dante
whose works shaped the language of Italian. No Martin Luther
whose German Bible shaped the German language. No King
James Version which shaped the English language. No Johannes
Bach who signed all his works, “To the Glory of God.” No
Hallelujah chorus, no Mozart Requiem. Modern music notation is
an invention of the medieval church to spread the worship of Jesus.
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Jesus uniquely taught love of enemies. The idea that you were to
love your enemy was not a natural human idea. What was admired
in the ancient world was that you love your friends and you harm
your enemies. Jesus said, “Love your enemies and pray for those
who persecute you ….. He said Father for give them. … he said
that about those who were crucifying them.
Who is this Jesus? He is the hinge of History. He is the hope of the
oppressed. He is the inspiration of the despairing. He is the King of
Kings, he is the Lord of Lords. He is the greatest teacher that ever
taught, the greatest mind that ever thought. He authored the
greatest movement ever known. He offered the greatest gifts ever
given.
All these incredible things happened because people heard the
message of Jesus and one by one invited him to be Lord in their
life. They believed in Him for salvation. So for this purpose of
reflecting God’s glory and the life of Jesus into your soul, spirit,
mind and body, Jesus created you and the person next to you.
John 1:1-3, 17 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the
beginning. Through him all things were made; without him
nothing was made that has been made. 17 For the law was given
through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
Today we are the messengers of this truth and this grace. As
challenging as it may be, we are to be the one’s of whom Jesus
spoke of saying, “You are the salt of the earth and the light to the
world.” In the workplace, at home, other places where you serve,
anywhere you go. I want to close with this picture(PIC 2) of our
world at night. I heard one speaker challenging the listeners to
imagine such a picture giving insight to how the Lord sees us
today. Knowing we live in a land of spiritual darkness we give our
lives to reflect the light of the Son of God till even at the risk of
losing our light. Who is this man whom so many have given their
lives to show forth his great and glorious light?