Sermon from July 6, 1997

Jesus and Christian Faith
The Mission of Jesus
Rev. Lonnie Richardson
Rev. Dr. Steven Peay
Sunday July 6, 1997

This is a church that wants to comprehend Jesus. A few monthsago, I asked you to let me know the questions which most perplexyou about the Christian faith. Overwhelmingly, your questionswere about the nature of Jesus Christ. Why is he important? Howis he the Son of God? Can we trust the biblical witness? I havedeveloped an approach to your questions and a way to introducehim to you by way of four themes. It is not a quest for thehistorical Jesus but a quest for faith seeking understanding,exploring the biblical Jesus and the significance of his life.

Today we look at the mission of Jesus. What was hisunderstanding of his purpose?

July 13 The message of Jesus. What did he say?

July 20 The method of Jesus. How did he organize to serve?

July 27 The model of Jesus. How did he live his life?"The pioneer and perfecter of the faith"

Some things about the claim of Jesus which is significant tounderscore as one launches into a systematic exploration of Jesusand the Christian faith. If this were a comparative study of thegreat world religions one could begin by analyzing the personalclaims of their founder. Confucius, Buddha, Mohammed, and evenMoses were direction bearers to the way of religious fulfillmentin their tradition. None claimed to be the way. They pointed tothe way. Jesus is the only one who said "I am" and thisis why Jesus is difficult for some.

There is what's know as the "I am" statements ofJesus. They are his understandings which shaped his mission. Hereare some of them:

I am the light of the world
John 9:5 While I am in the world, I am the light of theworld."

I am the door
John 10:9 I am the door; whoever enters through me will berescued. He will come in and go out, and find pasture.

I am the good shepherd
John 10:11 "I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd laysdown his life for the sheep.

I am the way, truth and life
John 14:6 Jesus answered, "I am the way and the truth andthe life. No one comes to the father except through me.

I am the bread of life
This is the statement of Jesus we are going to look further intotoday. He is the bread of life.

Hear these words from the Bible ...

John 6:33-40

For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven andgives life to the world." "Sir," they said,"from now on give us this bread." Then Jesus declared,"I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never gohungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty. But as Itold you, you have seen me and still you do not believe. All thatthe father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me Iwill never drive away. For I have come down from heaven not to domy will but to do the will of him who sent me. And this is thewill of him who sent me, that I shall lose none of all that hehas given me, but raise them up at the last day. For my father'swill is that everyone who looks to the son and believes in himshall have eternal life, and I will raise him up at the lastday."

Jesus' discourse takes place in the synagogue at Capernaum, onthe north shore of the Sea of Galilee. Some of you who have beenin Israel have stood on the very site of this message. Asynagogue has been excavated there, and, though the present ruinsprobably date from a century later than this event in John'sgospel, the site is exactly the place where Jesus stood when hegave this great message.

During the French Revolution, when the mobs of Paris wererioting and demonstrating outside the palace of Queen MarieAntionette, protesting the poverty in which they lived, the Queeninquired what was the trouble. They said to her, "They haveno bread." Marie Antionette is remembered for herhard-hearted and indifferent reply, "then let them eatcake." In this story a crowd of people are saying to Jesus,in effect, "We have no bread," but his reply is verydifferent.

Jesus recognizes the universal hunger for bread beyondphysical bread. "They said to him, 'Lord, give us this breadalways.'" This was a mixed crowd of believers andunbelievers, but when they caught some sense that Jesus wastalking about something other than physical bread theyimmediately wanted it. And giving the bread, becoming the bread,being the bread is intertwined in the mission of Jesus to be thebread of life.

I find this to be true everywhere. You cannot go anywherewithout finding people hungry for something more than a fullbelly and a comfortable home. There is a restlessness about usthat cries for more. Jesus recognized this. Everyone in thiscrowd wanted whatever it was he was offering. They did notunderstand what it was, but they wanted it. They sensed there wasmore to life than bread.

I recently spent time with a young person who told me hebelieved religion was nothing but eccentricity. He called himselfan agnostic, but when we parted after a full evening together Isaid to him, "You know, I believe that every man ought tohave something bigger than himself to believe in." He lookedme right in the eye and said, "My God, how right youare!" What is that but saying, "Give me this bread thatis more than physical bread."

Then Jesus tells the crowd plainly (in verse 35) how toeat and partake of the bread of life. How to get into hismission. He uses two simple things everyone understands: hungerand thirst: "He who comes to me shall never hunger, and hewho believes in me shall never thirst." What do you do whenyou are hungry? You eat, and if you keep on eating regularly youwill never hunger. What do you do when you are thirsty? Youdrink, and if you keep on drinking you will never thirst. WhatJesus is saying is that eating him is coming to him, or coming tohim is to eat of him. "Coming" means to see him aspresent in your life and expecting him to do something -- to act,to comfort, to strengthen, whatever it is. "Eating"means a sense of expectancy that he is available and that he willact.

Rev. Steven A. Peay, Ph.D.

What is the mission of Jesus -- how does the 'Bread of Life'come to us? We gain insight from Paul's letter to the Galatians:

"When the time was fully come, God sent forth his Son, born of a woman, born under the Law, to redeem those under the Law that they might have the status of Sons." [Gal 4:4-6]

and from Jesus himself in Luke's Gospel:

"And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he went to the synagogue, as his custom was, on the sabbath day. And he stood up to read; and there was given to him the book of the prophet Isaiah. He opened the book and found the place where it was written, 'The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.' And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fixed on him. And he began to say to them, 'Today, this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.'" [Luke 4:16-21]

The mission of Jesus is the restoration of humanity to properrelationship with its Creator, with the rest of created reality,with its self. We are made in the "image and likeness"of God, Genesis tells us, and the Psalmist writes of how"fearfully and wonderfully" we are made, "littlelower than the angels." That image is stamped on us. It isthe image of God which gives us our creativity, our ability tothink, our compassion, our love of order, our desire for all thatis good, and true and beautiful. It give humanity an incredibledignity, listen to what Basil the Great wrote:

"Man is a great thing, and pitiful man is something honorable," (Prov. 20:6) who has his honor in his natural constitution. For, what other things on earth have been made according to the image of the Creator? To which of the animals that live on the land, or in the water, or in the air, has the rule and power over all things been given? He has fallen a little below the dignity of the angels because of his union with the earthly body...But still, the power of understanding and recognizing their own Creator and Maker belongs to men. "And he breathed into his nostrils" (Gen. 2:7), that is to say He placed in man some share of his own grace, in order that he might recognize likeness through likeness. Nevertheless, being in such great honor because he was created in the image of the Creator, he is honored above the heavens, above the sun, above the choirs of stars. For, which of the heavenly bodies was said to be an image of the most high God? What sort of an image of his Creator does the sun preserve?...They possess only inanimate and material bodies that are clearly discernible, but in which nowhere is there a mind, no voluntary motions, no free will.1

Yet humanity is flawed, because the likeness is lost. How wasit lost? Through self-centeredness, self-love; this is what, theFathers of the Church tell us, was the real sin of Adam. Made inthe image and likeness of God we decided that we could be our owngod, do things our own way, and in doing so have put ourselves inconflict -- externally and internally -- ever since. Humanityseparated from God was like a headless body and every attempt byGod to restore the head, through covenant or prophet, just didn'tseem to get humanity functioning as it should. So, as Paul wroteto the Ephesians God, "made known to us the mystery of hiswill according to his good pleasure, which he purposed in Christ,to be put into effect when the times will have reached theirfulfillment -- to bring all things in heaven and earth togetherunder one head, even Christ." [Eph.1:10] Drew Universitytheologian, Thomas Oden, sums it up nicely using the writings ofIrenaeus:

Accordingly Christ gathered up (re-headed) all things in himself. "God recapitulated in Himself the ancient formation of man, that he might kill sin, deprive death of its power and vivify man" (Irenaeus `Against the Heresies'). The Son recapitulated "the long line of human beings and furnished us in compendio with salvation; so that what we had lost in Adam -- namely, to be according to the image and likeness of God -- that we might recover in Christ Jesus." (Irenaeus `Against the Heresies')2

So, the Incarnation, the life, death and resurrection of Jesusis God's response to the need he saw in the human family hecreated.

In Jesus the Christ, God identified himself with his creation.The implications of this for us are staggering (and over the nextfew Sundays I will explore some of them with you), because we arethen able to identify with and become one with the Creator of allreality. I like what one of my professors, Belden Lane haswritten in his book Landscapes of the Sacred:

In Christian thought,the one great practical truth of the incarnation is that the ordinary is no longer at all what it appears. Common things, common actions, common relationships are all granted new definition because the holy has once and for all become ordinary in Jesus Christ. G.K. Chesterton's Father Brown became the uncannily clever detective that he was simply because he knew this truth. While others were always ready to evoke the occult and supernatural in their efforts to explain the most difficult crimes, it was this balding and unassuming Catholic priest who invariably solved the mystery by means of the most everyday, commonplace observations. As a believer in the incarnation, he really could not do otherwise. Having become accustomed to expecting the holy in the undistinguished form of human flesh, he now looked upon every ordinary detail with more than usual attention. What struck him as conventional and natural, seen with his eye for the peculiarly "normal," impressed others -- ironically -- as miraculous. Similarly, Dietrich Bonhoeffer sought a this-worldly Christianity, knowing Christ to be the center even of that which fails to recognize him as such. Christianity is simply the process whereby men and women are restored to normal humanity, reclaiming everyday existence. "The Christian is not a homo religiosus, but a man, pure and simple, just as Jesus was man," Bonhoeffer states. "Human beings fully alive!" shouted Irenaeus, "Such is the glory of God."3

So, what is the mission of Jesus? To make the world ordinaryagain, in the way God intended it to be. Jesus came to tell uswhat God is like and tell us what we are like. He came to restorewhat had been lost and to open up, again, the destiny ofhumanity. "God's glory, humanity fully alive!"

Rev. Lonnie Richardson

Let me leave you with the Lord's question, "What are youworking for?" Why are you going back to work tomorrow? Is itmerely to earn a living, to put some food on the table, to payyour rent, or buy a TV? Is that it?

If you live like that you are missing out on all God intendsfor you.

Go to work, but go with the expectation that in the people youmeet, the situations you face and the difficult decisions youhave to make, Jesus is present with you. Negotiate the challengesof life through the eyes of the possibilities of faith. Hismission is for you to know and in knowing him you come to knowGod.

1Basil quoted in George Maloney, SJ Pilgrimageof the Heart (New York: Harper and Row, 1983), p. 64-65.

2Thomas Oden The Word of Life: SystematicTheology vol. II (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1992), p. 128.

3Belden C. Lane Landscapes of the Sacred:Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality (New York:Paulist Press, 1988), pp. 37-38.

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