Note from the Pastor

By Rev. John Martin 
Church of the Foothills, U.C.C. 
Ventura, California 
February 2007

The Great Question: Who Do We Believe Jesus Is?

A New Question:  Who Does Jesus Believe We Are?

Over the last 2000 years a lot of ink and blood has been spilled over the answer to the question, "Who is Jesus?"  The early authors of the Nicene Creed and the Apostles Creed were so concerned about Jesus' divine identity that they never once stopped to read what Jesus said about ours.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament creation stories affirm our divine identity.  In Genesis it is revealed that we are made in the image of God (Gen. 1:27).  In the prologue of John it is revealed that we are created by the Word "that true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world" (Jn. 1:9). (Bold print here and throughout is mine.)  In the Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) time and again Jesus affirms our divine heritage.  When speaking to his disciples and the multitudes in Matthew, he cautions them, "Call no man on earth your father, for you have a Father  in heaven" (Mt. 23:9).  We are used to saying this about Jesus, but let us note that first Jesus said it about us -- the multitudes.

Similarly when Jesus tells his disciples how to pray in the sixth chapter of Matthew he tells them to go into their closets and "pray to your Father in secret."  The implication is that their Father is the same as Jesus' Father.  To remove any doubt about our common heritage, when Jesus is teaching his disciples the Lord's Prayer he starts by addressing God as "Our Father."  Jesus is always raising us up to his level.  To say that we are on the same level as Jesus is not to say that Jesus is "just another person like us," but  is an affirmation that each one of us human beings is as unique and beloved by God as is Jesus himself. Jesus,  in his teachings and offhand remarks, time and again affirms our divine identity.  He tell us "The Kingdom of God is in you" (Lk. 17:21).  He tells us, "you shall do greater things than these" -- i.e. the works and signs of his ministry (Jn. 14:12). He tells his disciples, "you are the light of the world" (Mt. 5:14).

As C. S. Lewis once wrote, "You have never met a mortal human being."  Whenever we mention immortality or "going to Heaven" is not our divinity assumed?  Karl Barth, one of the great Christian theologians of the 20th century went so far as to say, "Real anthropology is always Christology."  In other words, if we are not dealing with the divinity within the human being then our understanding of the human being is not complete.  The early Church Father, Ireneus, put our humanity and divinity together when he joyfully declared,

In John 10:22ff when Jesus is accused of blasphemy for assuming his divinity, he replies to these charges by quoting Old Testament Scripture, "Doesn't even your own law tell you, 'you are gods, children of the most high' ?" (Ps. 82:6).                   

Let us not forget that Paul echoes Jesus' affirmation of our divinity in such outbursts as, "I live, yet not I, Christ lives in me" (Gal. 2:20).  And "Christ in you, the hope of glory" (Col. 1:27).  (Let us remember that "Christ" is not Jesus' last name but a title revealing one's special status before God.  "Christ" is the Greek term for the Hebrew "Messiah" which means "God's anointed."  Not only was King David a "messiah" but so was Cyrus, the Assyrian king who delivered the Israelites from the Babylonians.) For a description of the experience of divinity within us, please read last month's essay on "The Kiss of God." 

In the great verse John 3:16 we are told that "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son, so that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life."  What does it mean to believe in Jesus, for you?  Using Marcus Borg's definition of believing as "trusting and obeying, pledging one's allegiance and loyalty to" -- for me, believing in Jesus means believing Jesus as God's revelation of who I am and who you are as human beings.  

Therefore we are made to give out love to others as God does to us (John 13:34).  Because of Jesus, we know that God forgives our sin when we forgive the sin our neighbor has committed against us (Mt. 6:14-14).  We can look forward to eternal life because if Jesus was raised from the dead then so will we be raised from the dead.  Indeed, if we are not raised from the dead then Jesus wasn't (I Cor. 15:16) as Paul affirms our identity with Christ.  Thomas Merton, the great Christian mystic explicitly equates our divinity with being "in Christ."  "...for this is what it is to be Christian: simply to be Christ and not realize it.  In this there is nothing but reasons for humility, because everybody is Christ.  But not everybody is able to work out the meaning of who they are.  Most people manage to obscure it and even deface it, sad to say."  (Thomas Merton The Road to Joy -- Letters to Old and New Friends ed. by Robert Daggy, Farrer Straus Giroux, 1989, pp. 33-4)

Christian theology, with its emphasis on Christ's crucifixion being the sinless sin offering God requires for establishing his justice (by having Jesus pay the price for our sin incurred by Adam and Eve) has obscured Jesus' "good news" of our divinity.  Not only are the words fall and original sin not mentioned in the Adam and Eve story, but nowhere in the Gospels does Jesus tell us that the purpose of his crucifixion is to satisfy God's justice by paying for our sin.  In fact, nowhere in Jesus' teaching is justice even a pre-requisite for forgiveness.

Jesus'  "good news" is that we are all God's beloved children, created to "grow in Christ" i.e. grow into our true selves as revealed through Jesus -- destined for immortality with all the privileges and responsibilities inherent in that exalted identity.  Our mission is to let people know that.