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Christ Our Brother
Matthew 4:1-11
February 15, 1970

Communion: First Sunday in Lent
John M. Buchanan

How real, to you, is the man Jesus? That, I believe, is one of the serious
theological questions which must be asked continually. "How real, to you, is the
man Jesus?"

Not very, I would guess. In the sense that nothing is very real which occurred
2,000 years ago, we have trouble here. Historians tell us that we are locked into
our own "historicity"; that only by supreme intellectual effort can we break away
from our time, our situation, and see clearly the time and situation of someone who
lived in the past. And so Jesus is not real to us in the same way that Alexander
the Great, or Julius Caesar, or Herod are more like fairy tale characters than real
men, like us in every way.

The reality of Jesus, however, is further diminished by the image given to
him by the church, and thus, firmly instilled in the collective consciousness of
our whole civilization. We thought about this a little last week: how Sunday
School art portrays an ethereal, unearthly Christ. In his very fine little book,

The Meaning of Christ, Robert Clyde Johnson punctuates the dilemma. "Our modern

age has suffered from a somewhat nauseating tendency to sentimentalize this story,
until at times it is distorted almost beyond recognition. A few years ago one of
the Protestant denominations published a new hymnal for its children. The comment
of one reviewer was significant . .. 'This book is preoccupied with lambs', he
observed. ‘It will not be surprising if, when the children who have used this
book reach adulthood, they see little lambs hopping by whenever they hear a refer—
ence to Christionity.'" (p. 22) Johnson goes on to observe that most Christians
have a mental image of Jesus that is somewhat "velvety".

He is not very real to us. We are caught by the imagery. He comes across
as totally unreal. But on 2 deeper level we have trouble accepting and under—
standing his humanity, a humanity which was common with our own. I was invited to

speak at a conference once on the Doctrine of the Incarnation and my listeners

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gave me troublo only when wo got into the humanity of Jesus Christ. By asking
several loaded questions I discovered that a good number of thom felt that Jesus
knew the earth was round instead of flat. That is, he did not share the world—
view of his contemporarics. Likewise they felt he was clairvoyant; he knew, ahead
of time, everything that would happen to him. In the samo view, many of them had
trouble perceiving Jesus in terms of pain, anger, hunger, joy, impaticnce, and
death.

I'm not sure I know why, but something in us is threatened by o Christ who
is too real. People didn't like the image of Jesus in the Italian movie "The
Gospel according to Matthew't, because he was too much a man; he was too real. Far
preferable, the blasphomous “Hollywood and Vine Jesus" who floats through the end=-
less parade of Bible Bonanzas. I'm not sure I know why, but we don't want our
Christ to be too much. like us. Perhaps if he doesn't have much to do with the
common life: perhaps if we can keep him at arms length, we will have sufficient
justification for separating our faith from the rest of our lives; justification
for affirming his Lordship on Sunday and then living the rest of the weck as if
it is a giant hoax to be taken with a grain of salt.

This is the first Sunday in Lent, the season in the church year when we recall
the steady procession of events which lead inexorably ‘to calvary. Christians have
always felt that the most appropriate way to observe Lent is to participate in the
suffering and sacrifice of Christ. Well, that cannot be done; the impact of his
passion, his crucifixion and death, will be negligible, for any of us, until we
begin to sce this man as a man, one of us.

When he was about thirty years old Jesus was baptized by John in the Jordan
River. It was the turning point in his life. We don't know much about what
happened before then. An cducated guess is that Joseph, his father, must have dicd,
and Jesus assumed tho responsibilities of supporting his mother, brothers and
sister, as a carpenter in Nazareth. In any case he was among a crowd of poople
who had gone out to hear a strange but compelling man by the name of John. He
was one of the ones who stepped Sinaia’ 0 be sentinel in the waters of the river.

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And with that experionce Jesus knew himself appointed by God to a very special
life. Immediately he did what most men would do under the circumstances. He
went somewhere to be alone: to think: to reflect on the different roags ahead:
to plan and decide. He went into the wilderness.

Actually it was a barren, rocky wasteland, and for the Jesus it was the very
symbol of alonenoss. Nobody was in the wilderness ~ but the evil spirits ~ He stayed
there forty days, 2 Hebrew idiom moaning a very long time, and not to be under-
stood literally. He was visited by the devil — again an image which was current
in his day. The fact was that he was 2 man alone, alone with his humanity and the
call of God.

Three options prescnted themselves. He was hungry. His people werehungry.

A popular expectation of the Messiah's coming was that it would be a day of abund-
ance. No one would cver be hungry again. Why not turn the stones into bread?

The people expected the miraculous. In fact it was commonly believed that
the promised Nessioh would arrive on the wings of angels and appear suddenly on
the pinnacle of the Temple. Why not? Why not do it and then leap to the ground.

'g popularity would be 2 cinch. Poople would listen.
Judah was ripe for rebellion. In retrospect we can sce that the right person,

the charismatic revolutionary could well have organized an effective military

| revolt. Why not? Why not restore Judah to former glory? Why not be the kind of

Messiah people wanted and cxpocted. 7
Those are the thoughts of a man alone, reflecting on the possibilitics ahead.

None are outlandish. None are totally wrong. In each there is good. In fact,

each of them is loaded, and properly the subject of a single sermon.
The important thing this morning is for us to see that he was there; that

these options were very real to him; that each came from his own creative imagin-

ation; that he thought through cach, struggled with it and then chose, as o man,

not to do it. Tho important thing this morning is for us to sec, in tho words

of the writer of Hebrews: "For we havo not a high priest who is unable to

sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we

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all." [Heb. 4;15]

William Stringfellow has written very movingly about this event in the life
of Jesus, [Freo in Obodionce] and has pointed out that there is far more going on
here than "spiritual exercise and contemplation". This was Jesus Christ making
common couse with all men. This was the man Jesus in the samo wilderness as all
of us, struggling with the world's symbols of success and powor and influence, and
then chosing to cast his lot with us, to be one with us, to be our brother,

The prophet, conturics before, posed the question, “who has believed what
we have heard?" Well, when all the theological jargon is stripped away, when all
the ecclessiastical trimmings are discarded we are left with this fantastic assertion
- which indeed few belicve. God is for us, not against us. He is our judge -
but also our advocate. He is the jury, the prosecutor and also the defense. He
is so much for us that in tho man Jesus Christ he became one of us. In the life
of that man he walked our roads and experienced our feelings, and got inside our
skin, and felt our hurt - and dicd our death.

That's incredible - literally the unbelievable goodness of the Gospel.

&t was the philosopher Nietzsche, no believer himself, who observed that, "modorn
men, hardened as they are to oll Christian terminology, no longer appreciate the
horrible extravagance which lay in the formula; God on the crogs'! [ Johnson,
op cite p. 47]

I think he was right. ‘The story of the man Jesus is not play; it is not
divinely staged drama, with the main character simply pretending to be someone he
wos not. That is the worst heresy. He was for real — and his life for us = his
life poured out for others - was a real life, common with our own,

We remember him thus re a simple little ceremony, which first occurred
around a rough table as thirtcen men ate their last meal together. We have felt
constrained to decorate it lavishly - to use the finest linen and the best silver,
to accompany it with creative adornment and mysterious ritual. And sometimes wo

have forgotten that it is a reminder of his humanity, and that as we serve each

Renonbcr no a8 you do thie.

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Lot us commne now with cach other ~ and with Christ our Brother.

Cs A.