Morning After Preaching, Fourth Sunday after Epiphany
How can one person be both God and man, as Christians believe? To ask the people in the synagogue’s very good question, “Is this not Joseph’s son?” How can Jesus say of himself: “Today the scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing”? (Luke 4:21-2)
One way to understand this person who is both human and divine is to say that who he is, is the Word, and who he becomes is a human, Jesus. He is God but he becomes man.
I have found St. Paul’s idea of self-emptying can help explain the paradox. Paul, writing to the Philippians, expressed the idea that Jesus Christ, “though he was in the form of God… emptied himself… [into] human likeness” (Phil. 2:7). This seems to fit neatly with the idea expressed in those famous words from John’s gospel: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). And, elsewhere in his letters, Paul refers to Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God” and here the feminine word, Sophia, wisdom, seems to complement John’s masculine, Logos or word (I Cor. 1:23-4).
This is Wisdom, this is Word, with a big-W. Jesus is God’s Sophia who was from the beginning, the Logos which God spoke before anything was, a Word so full of power that creation sprang forth upon God’s uttering it. This same Word has become a human being, Jesus Christ, and yet remains, in Paul’s terms, “the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
But precisely this “wisdom,” precisely this “power,” manifests itself in the form of earthly powerlessness. This is self-emptying means. The one who was with God in the beginning, the Almighty, shows his might in becoming something God is not – in becoming a human being, and a humble one at that, an itinerant rabbi, a friend of fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes and lepers. He is the Word of God, but he becomes the “son of Joseph,” born as a human, brought up in Nazareth. And as the son of Joseph, speaking in the synagogue in Nazareth, he declares what it is, as Word made flesh, that God has sent him to do: “to bring good news to the poor... to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk 4:18-19).
If you want to see what divine power looks like in human form, then you need to look at Jesus. The Word-become-flesh shows us God’s power – a power to open hearts, to heal and to release the sick, even to die as a criminal. This is the power, in the words Jesus’ parable, which leads a shepherd to give up ninety-nine sheep to go and search for the one sheep that is lost. This is the power, in the words of Paul, which gives up equality with God in order to be among humans. And to do what with this power? “To bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In our reading from Luke’s gospel today, right at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, we see what sort of reaction many people have to this shepherd. The people of Jesus’s hometown don’t like his presumption in claiming that he is the one whom God has sent. After all, they say, “isn’t this Joseph’s son?” – didn’t he go to school with our sons and daughters, what’s so special about him? The passage continues, “all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up and… led him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”
Jesus manages to escape. But over the next three years of his ministry, Jesus will find opposition to his mission in places far from his home town. In Jerusalem, opponents to this young upstart will arise among the religious and political authorities.
Whether or not we believe Caiaphas said the words put in his mouth in John’s gospel, the sound of worldly-wise power rings true. “It is better,” says Caiaphas, “to have one man die than to have the whole nation destroyed” (Jn 11:50). This person proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor – he’s trouble: do away with him.
These are words which lead to this observation by Donald MacKinnon, a theologian at Cambridge: “At the heart of the Christian story we may see the opposition between Christ and Caiaphas: of the one who asked as a rhetorical question what shepherd, if he lost one sheep, would not leave the ninety and nine to seek it out; and the one who gave counsel that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.”
MacKinnon shows us the opposition between one who wields earthly power and the one who is God’s power on earth. The Logos becomes human in order to find the lost sheep of Israel. This is divine power, divine wisdom, in the flesh.
And he has been sent to find you and me, the lost sheep of God’s family, Israel. Sent not to threaten us with earthly power, but to feed our spiritual poverty, to release us from those things that keep us captive to the world, to give us sight of what’s really important in life, and proclaim that the Lord’s favor is with us.
One way to understand this person who is both human and divine is to say that who he is, is the Word, and who he becomes is a human, Jesus. He is God but he becomes man.
I have found St. Paul’s idea of self-emptying can help explain the paradox. Paul, writing to the Philippians, expressed the idea that Jesus Christ, “though he was in the form of God… emptied himself… [into] human likeness” (Phil. 2:7). This seems to fit neatly with the idea expressed in those famous words from John’s gospel: “And the Word became flesh and lived among us” (John 1:14). And, elsewhere in his letters, Paul refers to Christ as “the power of God and the wisdom of God” and here the feminine word, Sophia, wisdom, seems to complement John’s masculine, Logos or word (I Cor. 1:23-4).
This is Wisdom, this is Word, with a big-W. Jesus is God’s Sophia who was from the beginning, the Logos which God spoke before anything was, a Word so full of power that creation sprang forth upon God’s uttering it. This same Word has become a human being, Jesus Christ, and yet remains, in Paul’s terms, “the power of God and the wisdom of God.”
But precisely this “wisdom,” precisely this “power,” manifests itself in the form of earthly powerlessness. This is self-emptying means. The one who was with God in the beginning, the Almighty, shows his might in becoming something God is not – in becoming a human being, and a humble one at that, an itinerant rabbi, a friend of fishermen, tax collectors, prostitutes and lepers. He is the Word of God, but he becomes the “son of Joseph,” born as a human, brought up in Nazareth. And as the son of Joseph, speaking in the synagogue in Nazareth, he declares what it is, as Word made flesh, that God has sent him to do: “to bring good news to the poor... to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor” (Lk 4:18-19).
If you want to see what divine power looks like in human form, then you need to look at Jesus. The Word-become-flesh shows us God’s power – a power to open hearts, to heal and to release the sick, even to die as a criminal. This is the power, in the words Jesus’ parable, which leads a shepherd to give up ninety-nine sheep to go and search for the one sheep that is lost. This is the power, in the words of Paul, which gives up equality with God in order to be among humans. And to do what with this power? “To bring good news to the poor, release to the captives, sight to the blind, and proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
In our reading from Luke’s gospel today, right at the beginning of Jesus’s ministry, we see what sort of reaction many people have to this shepherd. The people of Jesus’s hometown don’t like his presumption in claiming that he is the one whom God has sent. After all, they say, “isn’t this Joseph’s son?” – didn’t he go to school with our sons and daughters, what’s so special about him? The passage continues, “all in the synagogue were filled with rage. They got up and… led him to the brow of the hill on which the town was built, so that they might hurl him off the cliff.”
Jesus manages to escape. But over the next three years of his ministry, Jesus will find opposition to his mission in places far from his home town. In Jerusalem, opponents to this young upstart will arise among the religious and political authorities.
Whether or not we believe Caiaphas said the words put in his mouth in John’s gospel, the sound of worldly-wise power rings true. “It is better,” says Caiaphas, “to have one man die than to have the whole nation destroyed” (Jn 11:50). This person proclaiming the year of the Lord’s favor – he’s trouble: do away with him.
These are words which lead to this observation by Donald MacKinnon, a theologian at Cambridge: “At the heart of the Christian story we may see the opposition between Christ and Caiaphas: of the one who asked as a rhetorical question what shepherd, if he lost one sheep, would not leave the ninety and nine to seek it out; and the one who gave counsel that it was expedient that one man should die for the people.”
MacKinnon shows us the opposition between one who wields earthly power and the one who is God’s power on earth. The Logos becomes human in order to find the lost sheep of Israel. This is divine power, divine wisdom, in the flesh.
And he has been sent to find you and me, the lost sheep of God’s family, Israel. Sent not to threaten us with earthly power, but to feed our spiritual poverty, to release us from those things that keep us captive to the world, to give us sight of what’s really important in life, and proclaim that the Lord’s favor is with us.
posted by Ben+ at 10:19 AM
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