Announcements
– Consistory has met and talked about reopening. Over the next 2 weeks we’re gathering the best practices from the other churches in the Baltimore area and are going to then talk about how feasible it is for us, specifically. This also lets us see how this current spike in Ohio is handled.
– It’s food pantry Sunday! Many are going to fall off of the additional COVID benefits at the end of the month, but not yet have childcare, work, and so forth like they did before COVID. So expect a rise in hunger. Please help out by sending checks to the church noted for the Baltimore Area Food Pantry, or send them there directly. Together, we will be sure no one goes hungry. Jesus asks us to give a simple glass of water. A piece of bread is pretty similar!
– And did you know you guys rock? Because we have been faithful in our tithes, St. Michael’s has not fallen behind in bills although we have not been meeting in person. A lot of churches are struggling right now. We are not, and because of this, have continued to give to charities and special offerings and keep the building maintained.
– Keep checking our private Facebook page for prayer requests.
– Our next service is the 5th of July… so just technically after what would have been our fireworks. If you set any off yourselves… please be careful! We’ll have communion next Sunday and observe Independence Day.
Would you join me in centering ourselves for worship?
(based on Psalm 89:1-4, 15-18)
Holy God,
your faithful love toward us never ends!
It is as sure and dependable as the sky over our heads.
We praise You!
We’ve gathered together spiritually
to offer you our worship and our thanksgiving;
to declare to any who will listen
that You are our God, and we are Your people.
May Your Spirit be at work among us as we worship,
opening our eyes to the light of Your presence in this place.
To You alone,
Faithful Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer,
be all glory and honour,
now and forever.
Amen.
SCRIPTURE
Jesus has been giving his disciples the blessing to go out and proclaim the good news of God, and bring healing. He’s told them to go with no extra provisions but to rely on God. Told them to carry peace and not play favorites. And now, he explains why…
Matthew 10:40-42
“Whoever welcomes you welcomes me, and whoever welcomes me welcomes the one who sent me. Whoever welcomes a prophet in the name of a prophet will receive a prophet’s reward; and whoever welcomes a righteous person in the name of a righteous person will receive the reward of the righteous; and whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple—truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”
SERMON: Which Jesus?
You’ve probably seen the kerfuffle about images of Jesus as white are a kind of white supremacy. Or that “they” want to “cancel” Christianity. Activist Shaun King called for statues of white Jesus to be torn down along and the internet, our politics, and a lot of us reacted strongly.
Online, this is called “click bait” and “trolling.” It means inflammatory little snippets meant to elicit a strong reaction from you. It is supposed to make you feel strongly. A lot of facebook pages and websites that post these things get money each time someone clicks their image or shares it.
I want to arm you today with some Biblical scholarship on this matter. The upside – you’ll have a nuanced understanding to approach images of Jesus. The downside… it can’t be put into a pithy sentence or two. Nuance takes a lotta ink, words, and time.
There’s a reason “honk for Jesus!” is on bumper stickers and not the Nicene Creed. The first is simple and fast and gets a response. The second takes time to think through and read and understand.
It’s work.
So… get yourself some coffee or tea or water… and let’s work together!
This study of Jesus is called Christology, if you ever want to look it up on your own in a library or online. In Christology, the study of Christ, theologians and pastors understand that there are two very different Jesuses someone can be speaking about.
One is the historical Jesus. The man who walked and talked. Ate and slept. Died. This historical Jesus can be studied with archaeology and examining old texts. He can be studied with genetics and human sciences.
The other Jesus is the Cosmic Christ. The Christ who is the Word, who was with God and is God. The Cosmic Christ once took on the flesh of humanity, but is also resurrected and alive and not limited to a single human body.
These are two very different understandings of Christ. Both are scriptural. The Testaments speak of Jesus’ brothers and mother. Speaks of Jesus being Judean. Speaks of Jesus as a human. The Letters and Acts also speak of Jesus as divine. More than mere human. A presence who was and is and will be.
When we identify with Jesus the human, we have a low Christology. Not low as in bad, but low as in close to earth. Human. This is good. This is affirming our God knows what it is to be human. To suffer. To love. To be alive. But that’s not the whole story. Divinity, godhood, is being more than mortal. So we also speak of Jesus as the Son of God. Divine. This is a high Christology. High as in close to heaven, not as in better. It is also good because no human is able to cure ourselves of sin. We need more. No human is able to stop all evils. We need more. No human has created all of life. We need more. To have a functioning Christian faith, we need both a low Christology and a high Christology. A human and divine Jesus.
For centuries Christians literally fought each other over whether Jesus-the-Human or Jesus-the-Divine was better. We took swords to each other over if Jesus was adopted by God, born of God, an illusion of God who just appeared to have a human body, or even a demi-God like the Greek demigods. Goodness, Saint Michael’s, we fought! We had priests and bishops punching each other in the faces!
Out of all these battles and bloodshed came a series of creeds. Creeds are a statement of what a group believes. Creeds like… the Apostles. The Nicean. The Chalcedonian and finally the Athanasian about 500 years after Jesus’ birth. These creeds established what most of the Western Church believe: there is 1 god, made of 3 persons. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Spirit – three in one. Together they are God, or the Godhead. Now, the UCC is non-creedal. So you don’t have to believe this. However, it is what is mainstream in the UCC. If you believe otherwise, it’s okay.
But the Trinity matters in whether or not Jesus was a white guy. Because Jesus the human who walked and talked was only part of Jesus, the Godhead made flesh. The arguments “Jesus is white!” “Jesus is black!” completely ignore the question of … which Jesus? The historical Jesus, or the Second Person of the Trinity Jesus?
Because the answer to which Jesus is being spoken about changes the argument.
The Historical Jesus was called a quest. Many theologians have gone on it. Each one of them poured years and years into seeking evidence of a historical person named ישוע Yeshua who lived in Judea, about 2000 years ago, and led an uprising.
If you have a red-letter Bible, you have something the Questers produced. This was near the beginning of their efforts to uncover the Real Jesus. Some of the things they did were evaluate every statement of the Gospels to try to determine how likely it was that Jesus actually said that versus it was something a commentator remembered and added. For remember, in the original stories and text, there weren’t quotation marks or paragraphs. We added those over the years. And these were oral stories before written stories. So things changed. Much like when you’re planting a row of corn and it has a little crook in it. With each pass you plant using that row as your guide, that crook gets a bit bigger and bigger. Hence, we use trees to guide us or string. Scriptural copy errors happened the same way and it took awhile before they had old texts to try to guide their translating and copying.
Others took the Shroud of Turin, said to have covered Jesus, and reconstructed what that face looked like. Tried to get a picture of the True Face of Jesus. Others tracked genealogy. Others looked at ancient pictures and drawings from Christians.
In these old pictures, usually Egyptian or Roman, Jesus is not identified by Jewish clothes or appearance. He is identified by having a male holding loaves and fishes, or a shepherd crook. Jesus is drawn to appear like whatever the locals looks like. You know who it is by what he does – feed the hungry. Be a good shepherd.
In scripture, Jesus is known by what he does, too. Not what he looks like. Curing the ill. Casting out demons. Proclaiming the reign of God has drawn near. The gospels don’t focus on his appearance. Other Biblical people are described as red haired, or ruddy cheeked, or ebony skinned. But not Jesus.
The early Christians didn’t care what Jesus looked like. They cared what he did.
And the Historical Jesus Questers found that Jesus always ends up looking like… us. Ourselves. Whomever sets out to find Jesus’ True Words, True Face, True Deeds… finds themselves in Jesus. Jesus looks and acts and thinks and is like the seeker.
This brings us to … the Cosmic Christ. Throughout scripture, Jesus tells us that wherever two or three are gathered, there he is. He tells us that whoever welcomes us, welcomes him. Whoever does as little as give a glass of water – required in Jewish custom – to someone has given Jesus water. He reminds us that whatever we do to the least, we have done to him. He is in prison. He is hungry. He is naked. He is lonely. He is sick. And when we tend to each other, we are tending to him.
In other words… Jesus’ body… is us. What does Jesus look like? Us.
Jesus is a white middle aged mother. And a black man demanding liberty. Jesus is a confused elderly Asian man and a transgendered woman seeking medical respite. Jesus is a First People baby. Jesus is a Hispanic father separated from his kids at the border. Jesus has AIDS. Jesus has COVID. Jesus is addicted to drugs and Jesus is sitting on death row. Jesus is us. Whomever we are, wherever we are. We are the body of the Son of God. And we do good by the Son of God when we treat the body well. When we treat each other well.
Some are saying the images of Jesus as a white guy with flowing locks and blue eyes are a sign of white supremacy because some Christians think of Jesus ONLY as a white guy with blue eyes. They do not see Jesus in all of the diversity of humanity. If that is our only image of Christ, then… yes. It is a sign of white supremacy. Because Jesus is more. If it is one among a plethora of images we have of Christ… then it is not.
Let me show you something… this is my most favorite Easter card I’ve ever received. I’ve kept it for years. It is the ONLY non-white Jesus I’ve ever seen. It made me realize that of course the Jesus I colored in Sunday School isn’t the only Jesus! And THAT should be a sign of ourselves. We are forgetting Christ is all colors, all races, all people. I should be seeing pictures of Jesus in wheelchairs and walkers; Jesus in kimonos and parkas. But I don’t. Since I don’t, it can be a lot harder for me to remember that Jesus is not limited to one appearance.
It can be a lot harder for me to remember Jesus took on the flesh of all humanity… and comes to us in the guise of our sisters and brothers.
So. Conclusion. Was Jesus a white guy? – Are you speaking of the Historical Jesus? No one knows. But unlikely. Are you speaking of the Comic Christ? Yeah. He’s white. And she and he are also black, and red, and yellow, and brown and… looks just like you and me and everyone of all ages everywhere.
So may we offer Jesus a cup of cool water. Sit and speak with them. And welcome them in the name of the God we share who loves us all.
Amen.
Pastor Whitney Bruno Sermons 