The Difference Jesus Makes
"Jesus is Lord and everything else is..."
Philippians 2.5-11
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, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death — even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.
There once was a bishop, thankfully from another denomination, who was in charge of recruiting candidates for a seminary. He would seek out those who felt called to serve and lead the church and he would end every interview the same way.
He would say, “Pretend, for a moment, that I’m not someone from the seminary. Tell me why I should go to church.”
And one of the candidates would wax lyrical about the value of being part of a community. But the bishop would say, “I’m in AA and I have all the community support I need.”
So then they would mention something about outreach and helping the needy. To which the bishop would say, “I’m a member of Rotary and I’m already involved in serving the needs of others.”
So then they would say something about the wonder and beauty of the church’s music ministries. And, again, the bishop would respond with something like, “I actually have season tickets to the symphony and get all the music I need.”
For a great many years this particular bishop recruited for the seminary and not a single candidate ever mentioned anything, specifically, about Jesus.
The church is not in the business of societal rearrangement even though it often happens because of the power of the Spirit moving through the community of faith. The church is not the paragons of community service even though we are deeply committed to the last, least, lost, little and even the dead. The church does not hoard all of the musical prodigies, even though we have the best band this side of the Mississippi.
If the church is serious about being the church then we really only have one thing to offer at all. It just so happens that this one thing is the difference that makes all the difference in the world: Jesus.
But who is Jesus?
The light in the darkness. The Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world. The King of kings. Every name and title and office we can apply to Jesus is outrageous and wild. But none of them are more wild than this.
Who is Jesus? Jesus is God.
Jesus, whose name literally means “the one who saves” is the Savior even though the rulers and authorities, the powers and the principalities, did everything they could think of to cross him out. Jesus is fully divine and fully human, capable of more than we could ever possibly imagine and yet finite and fragile in a way we all know all too well.
But, again, more importantly, Jesus is Lord. Which means, astonishingly enough, that even when he was coughing or sneezing, even when we was sweaty or irritable, his disciples worshipped him - not just God in him, or God through him, but him.
Because Jesus is Lord.
Lord is not just a nice and lofty title. Jesus is not just one ruler among other rulers. To confess Jesus as Lord is to say that Jesus is God. And that’s the whole thing right there. We confess that Jesus is Lord.
That’s a staggering claim! If we have the fortitude to take a step back from it all, take it all in at once, Jesus is simultaneously the second person of the Trinity, fully God… in the flesh who stubbed his toes, cried tears, and laughed until his belly hurt.
Philippians 2, the text we read this morning, is very likely the first Christian hymn. A song shared to help share the faith. Like the songs and hymns we sing today, it tells us about who this Jesus really is.
God, in a wild and reckless wisdom, chose not to exploit divinity, but instead embrace humanity. God took the form of a slave, born in human likeness, humble to the point of death - even death on a cross. Even so, Jesus is the one whose name is above every name, rising from the grave he is forever the author of salvation. In the light of his light, every knee shall bend, and every tongue shall confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.
I confess that there’s really no way to do justice to Paul’s words here. There is no sermon worthy of this song. These few verses contain all the splendor and the glory and the terror of Jesus. It’s the whole career of Christ in a hymn. From the shining light of the incarnation to the darkness of death on the cross.
Perhaps we’ve domesticated the cross. We hang it up in our living rooms, we plaster them in sanctuary, some of us wear them around our necks. But the cross was Rome’s way of saying to all with eyes to see: “Caesar is Lord, and don’t you forget it.”
Which is why the claim that Jesus is Lord is, and always will be, radical and revolutionary.
We cannot know Christ without the cross. It is so many things all at once.
The cross is a reminder us of our culpability, of turning from “Hosanna!” to “Crucify!” in less than a week.
The cross is a reminder of our underserved and unearned forgiveness, “Father forgive them. They don’t know what they’re doing.”
The cross is a reminder of God’s humiliation and humility, the condescension of the divine into the muck and mire or our own making.
Ultimately the cross is a reminder of Jesus’ love for those who return it, and even those who don’t.
It’s no wonder, then, that the heart of the Creed, the longest section, is all about Jesus.
And in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord:
who was conceived by the Holy Spirit,
born of the Virgin Mary,
suffered under Pontius Pilate,
was crucified, dead, and buried;*
the third day he rose from the dead;
he ascended into heaven,
and sitteth at the right hand of God the Father Almighty;
from thence he shall come to judge the quick and the dead.
This section of the creed is all about what Jesus did and what happened to him. But what Jesus did, and what happened to him, has now happened to us. And that happening changes our everything.
I am not a father, or a husband, or a brother, or a son, or a fan of the Washington Commanders who happens to be a Christian.
I am, instead, a Christian, who happens to be a father, husband, brother, son, and fan of a frustrating football franchise.
You see, every confession is a promise. I confess Jesus as Lord not because it’s my personal opinion, something relegated to my mind. I confess Jesus as Lord because Jesus has changed me and the whole of the cosmos. There are ramifications for this confession, because if Jesus is Lord, then everything else is bologna.
On Wednesday night I gathered here at the church with a small group for a class on the Apostles’ Creed. We started by trying to list everything we knew about Jesus. And we got all the highlights on the white board, many of which are included in the Apostles’ Creed.
Jesus was a teacher and a preacher, a healer and a helper. He did his work in places named Nazareth and Capernaum and Jerusalem. Born under bizarre circumstances to the least likely of people. Fully God. Fully human.
Again, all the highlights.
But someone in our group said something that really struck me. She said, “Jesus got angry.”
Which is true, of course. Jesus experienced and had all the emotions that we do. Joy and love and grief and sadness, he infamously wept over Lazarus. Jesus had to have all of these because, as Athanasius put it, that which is not assumed (taken on) cannot be redeemed. But Jesus was also angry.
I wonder how often we wonder about his anger.
There are a lot of paintings out there of Jesus. Pensive Jesus. Smiling Jesus. Consoling Jesus. Even laughing Jesus. But what about mad Jesus?
We tend to picture the Son of God as this ever peaceful hippy type wandering around during the first century. But he had a temple tantrum, flipping the tables, accusing the leaders of no longer leading.
Why does Jesus get so angry in that moment?
The short answer is given to us from the man himself: “My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations, but you’ve made it a den of robbers!”
In other words, Jesus is angry because the people of God were living as if God no longer made any difference. That is, they were living and moving and existing in a world in which they and there desires mattered more than anything else. And that made Jesus mad.
Have you ever felt that kind of anger? Have you ever turned on the news to see how Christians are behaving in the world and felt your fists clench tightly. Have you ever had to grit your teeth through a sermon because it had absolutely nothing to do with Jesus?
Or, put another way, what’s the point of all of this if not for the difference Jesus makes?
Stanley Hauerwas, former professor of mine, is known for his anger. He is angry, like Jesus in the Temple, because he finds himself surrounded by Christians for whom Jesus no longer makes any difference, Christians who move and live in the world regardless of whether Jesus rose from the dead.
He, that is Hauerwas, notes that his anger stems mostly from the great number of pastors who fail to challenge their churches to trust that without God, nothing is possible.
In other words, if Jesus is not raised from the dead, if Jesus is not at the center of every single thing we do as a church, then we are wasting our time.
We simply become one group among many groups trying to make it through life day after day. Instead, the church exists as something different, and that difference is possible because of Jesus.
Jesus is the one who comes to initiate and make manifest the Kingdom through healing, calling, preaching, teaching, challenging, dying, and rising. The story of Jesus is, quite literally, everything.
The church, this motley crew of saints and sinners, is a strange gathering of people who are able to sustain one another through the inevitable mountaintops and valleys of our lives because we know Jesus. We are able to do this work because the power of the Spirit empowers us to do so. We are people of a different story, a story told over and over again, a story that frees us from the shackles of sin and death that we might live freely right now in the light of salvation. The church is an ensign of the coming kingdom, the herald of Good News for a world drowning in bad news.
For us, Jesus makes a difference, all the difference.
We don’t have to do his work for him because we know the world has been saved. The only thing we have to do it live according to that different story, live in the difference Jesus makes.
Which, of course, is easier said than done.
Being part of the beloved community called church is no easy feat. It’s down right hard.
Holding fast to the trinity of forgiveness, trust, and grace is the most challenging work there is. It also happens to be the only work worth doing.
For, in ways big and small, we are those who believe that love and peace is actually possible in this life because trust is a deeper reality than distrust, because God’s justice is more profound than injustice, and because grace is given to all who are in disgrace.
But again, my words can’t do justice to the Word. And yet, there’s is another hymn, another song that comes close…