topleft05.jpg (18208 bytes)HOMILY
Solemnity of Christ the King (B)
22 November 09
 


 

“Do you say this on your own
or have others told you about me?”
 

You have to feel a bit sorry for old Pontius Pilate.  A political hack on the Emperor’s payroll, Pontius Pilate could care less about Jesus.  What Pontius Pilate did care about very much, however, is that there be no insurrection among the Jews.  That would require Pontius Pilate to call up the Roman legion to quell the disturbance.  There would be mayhem and bloodshed, for sure, and possibly more deaths.  So, Pontius Pilate decided, “I’ll put the question right to him and let him explain.  Why get myself into the middle of this mess?”

But, Jesus turned the tables on old Pontius Pilate.  Rather than answer his question directly, Jesus asked “Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?”

The question Jesus asked Pilate implies an important matter that we need to think about.  It concerns what others have told Pilate about Jesus.  What it appears they said was that Jesus was the longed-for Messiah, the “King of the Jews.”  Assuming those who said this believed it, they were testifying to their faith in Jesus, in effect answering in public the question Jesus put to his disciples at the end of his public ministry and just prior to his entry into Jerusalem.  That question was, “Who do you say I am?”

For two millennia, theologians, historians, philosophers, scientists, and just plain old folks like you and me have considered this question Jesus asked of his disciples.  Answering this question is a challenging endeavor because the answer will specify what we value and, then, in light of our values, how we should live our lives.  So, it is not unusual that before answering Jesus question, people will first ask questions which include:

·       Who was Jesus?

·       Was Jesus just a good human being?

·       Was Jesus one of many philosophers or gurus who have walked across the stage of world history and have bequeathed teachings that enable people to achieve happiness?

·       Was Jesus a prophet God sent to call all people to holiness of life?

·       Was Jesus another one of those religious zealots who truly believed he was divine or yet another one of those madmen or impostors who have claimed to be God’s son?

·       Did Jesus really exist or was he a cleverly-concocted fabrication by some people who foisted upon humanity what has become the “Greatest Myth Ever Told”?
 

The trouble with attempting to answer these and other similar questions is that even www.snopes.com can’t help us discover the truth.  The only key capable of unlocking the true answer to these questions is found not by answering the first question Jesus asked of his disciples, “Who do others say I am?”  No, the truth is discovered as we answer the second question Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say I am?”

Unfortunately, all too many people today spend too much of their time, like Pontius Pilate, demanding that Jesus explain himself or, like those of us who don’t really have a personal relationship with Jesus, answering that first question rather than the second question.  Searching for answers, some will watch two-hour network and cable TV specials or mini-series and read feature articles in magazines like Newsweek and Time, most of which cite scholars whose arguments repudiate scriptural accounts concerning what Jesus said and did as well as who Jesus claimed to be.  Searching for an answer, others will read books—bestsellers like Sam Harris’ Letter to a Christian Nation, Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Michael Rathford’s The Nostradamus Code—World War 3, or even some college theology textbooks—which assert that the Church transformed “Jesus the Man” into “Jesus the Son of God” over the course of decades, and perhaps even centuries and millennia.

The inevitable conclusion?  If all of those arguments put forth by all of those very bright people indicate that Jesus is not God’s only begotten Son, then who am I to question what they say?  Having sought what they hoped would be a simple answer to a profound mystery, these people experience themselves having grown increasingly skeptical.  And, for many, this unfortunately is where they terminate their journey in faith.

I understand this outcome because although I didn’t buy into the skepticism, I once read Albert Schweitzer’s book, The Quest for the Historical Jesus.  Schweitzera truly stupendous medical doctor and humanitarian who originally trained as a theologianbasically concluded that the quest to discover the historical Jesus was nothing more than foolishness and for two reasons.

The first reason: nothing can be known with certainty about Jesus other than that he was a Jew and was crucified sometime around 30 a.d.  The Jewish historian Josephus testifies to this in one passage of his book, The Antiquities of the Jews, where Josephus discusses Jesus’ career in one passage called “Testimonium Flavianum.”  However, some scholars since the 17th century have disputed the passage’s authenticity, primarily because it was written in the late first century, some fifty or sixty years after Jesus was crucified.  That hardly constitutes a first-hand account!

The second (and more compelling) reason: what Jesus taught, as excellent as his teaching was, Dr. Schweitzer believed to be what he called an “interim ethic.”  Jesus’ teaching held true only for that brief period Jesus had predicted between his death and before the coming cataclysmic end, the eschaton, which Jesus said would arrive very soon.  In light of the fact that Jesus had not returned for nearly two millennia, Schweitzer concluded that Jesus’ teaching was no longer relevant or valid.

As in generations past, many people today deny that Jesus is God’s only begotten Son.  Like Pilate, they make this denial because others have said so and offer no proof or, like those who don’t have a personal relationship with Jesus, aren’t able to say who he is because they haven’t met Jesus.  Generally speaking, denials like these are based on three rationalizations.

The first rationalization promotes an exalted view of humanity, likening all of us to “gods” or what the philosophers speculated were “demi-gods,” God-like in some ways but not the divinity itself.  While scripture attests that God has breathed into each of us His divine image and likeness and all of us possess divine potential, if Jesus is divine only in the same sense that all of us are potentially divine, then Jesus was not God, only an extraordinary human being.  There is a vast gulf of difference between an extraordinary human being and God!  Either/or works to settle the matter, but somewhere in between doesn’t.

The second rationalization attempts to explain away what the scriptures report about Jesus.  For example, many scientists and philosophers today brush aside as irrelevant and even ridiculous what scripture reports because none of it can be proven.  The hope these scientists and philosophers hold is that they will eventually be able to explain away everything supernatural and divine about Jesus—just as they eventually will be able to explain away God—demonstrating that Jesus was nothing more than a mere human being, just like you and me.  The scientists and philosophers holding this believe call those who believe in the miracles and supernatural events reported in scripture “superstitious” and “unenlightened.”

The third rationalization promotes the idea that Jesus divinity is revealed as he embodied what constitutes the perfection of human goodness.  Jesus was one heckuva great guy,” an exemplary human being.  The problem this rationalization presents is that “something less than” is not “something equal to,” making Jesus something less than God, although something more than you and me.  Those who hold this view make God more human, diminishing God’s divinity, in order to elevate in status some quasi-divine “Superman” whose name was Jesus.

This is all foolishness, resting upon an intellectual conceit, namely, that human beings can probe into, understand, explain, and thus, control the mystery of God!  In his book, Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis observed: “You can shut [Jesus] up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God.  But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher.  He has not left that open to us.  He did not intend to” (pp. 40-41).

Before any of the other disciples could answer Jesus’ question “Who do you say I am?”, Peter jumped in, replying: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”  Peter gave expression in human words to his deeply-held conviction that Jesus was the promised Messiah, the Son of the living God.  For Peter, Jesus was more than just a mere human being who taught some nifty ideas that possessed the power to change the world.  Jesus was God’s only begotten Son, the Word of God who possessed the power to change hearts by offering God’s mercy and forgiveness!

Is this what others had said and what necessitated Pontius Pilate to require Jesus to explain himself?

Likely not.  The phrase “King of the Jews” had a political meaning—what Pontius Pilate was worried about—and a theological meaning—what all of us should contemplate if our desire is to grow in faith by having a personal relationship with Jesus.

In every generation since Peter made his profession of faith, Christians have had to answer Jesus’ question “Who do you say I am?”  Women and men have wrestled with what this means and brought their own experiences and insights to bear as they attempted to answer that question.  In contrast to all of those many skeptics who today don’t believe that Jesus is God’s only begotten Son, many of these people have also failed, if only because the human mind is not capable of grasping a mystery such as this and expressing it in human terms.

When we acknowledge in faith what we cannot grasp with our minds—when we can say, along with Peter, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God”—we will find ourselves standing humbly before the mystery of God.  While our minds may not be able to grasp how God could come among us in our human form, our hearts will marvel at how God emptied Himself of his glory to come among us as a human being to shine His light on the darkness of our existence.  While our minds may not be able to grasp how God could come among us in our human form, our hearts will experience God’s abundant love and mercy revealed in His only begotten Son.  When we experience those things, we have encountered the God made human.

“Who do you say I am?”

We don’t need to engage ourselves in an intellectual quest to discover the historical Jesus because he is not hidden somewhere behind scripture and waiting for us to discover him there as if Jesus is nothing more than a nice idea that can be intuited from scripture.  No, the Christ, the Son of the living God who is the King of the Jews is revealed in scripture where we can meet him, learn from him, and invite him to walk alongside of us on our life’s journey because we know by faith and not by sight “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

“Do you say this on your own or have others told you about me?”

Our response to this question not only will determine what we personally hold and value.  Our response will also determine whether we will experience the joy that is to be ours when we testify to our what we know by faith and not by sight: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”

 

 

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