JESUS THE MAN FEBRUARY 27, 1972

MARK 1:9-15 JOHN M. BUCHANAN
15: 16-20
16: 1-8

it's really a rather simple story. From the standpoint of pure objectivity
it might sound something like this. Jesus of Nazareth, son of Joseph the
Carpenter, when he was about thirty years of age stepped into the waters of the
Jordan River and was baptised by a strange man named John, who - it is reported
was a distant relative. Many others were responding to Jahn's cal! to repentance
and cleansing by being baptised, but for Jesus of Nazareth it appears to be the
turning point In his life, which heretofore was not noticeably different from
any other young man of Nazareth. After his baptism experience this Jesus spent
some time in the dessert contemplating his future. He next chose a small group
of men to be his helpers and traveling companions - and called them his disciples.
With his small entourage in tow he commenced to travel about Galilea - a Northern
sector of Palestine, teaching, preaching and healing.

The essence of his teaching seems to have been a probing beneath the
accepted ethical norms as set out in Jewish law. The law said that killing was
wrong, but this man dug beneath the word of tho law and suggested that its
spirit and intent made anger with one's brother also a matter of moral concern.
On the positive side he redefined morality in terms of an active, specific
serving of one's brother. He suggested that a man could obey the law competely
and still be a sinner - until he learned to love other men in a very concrete
way.

The essence of his preaching was that the Kingdom of God was now present
in the life of the world. This proclaimation needs to be understood in light
of the religious faith of his people which was that God would one day intercede
in human history in the person of the Messiah. Jesus said that this long-
awalted event had happened. Some pele thought he was claiming the messianic
title for himself. Sometimes he discouraged that kind of thinking: at other
times he seemed to have gone out of his way to encourage if.

Throughout this Galilean period he was known also as a healer. Wherever

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he went the blind saw, the lame walked, the disturbed found peace.

An important part of the story is the opposition he encountered from the
very beginning. Everytime he taught, preached or healed there seems to have been
representatives of the religious estab! ishment present to challenge him and
argue with him. He presented a distinct threat to the religious status quo, and
the story is incomplete apart from this deep and increasingly intense conflict
he had with the important men of his time. In Galilea, however, this opposition
took the form of harrasement by Pharisees and Scribes - and it presented only
an occassional threat to his safety.

But then he decided to go South into Palestine - to the city of Juresalem
itself. He chose the first day of Passover week to enter the city and the
story of that week occupies nearly half of the record. In Jerusalem the opposi-
tion to him had power. While in Galilea the Scribes and Pharisees might not
like what he was saying, in Jerusalem they had access to the judicial power of
Rome. And so the earlier conflict was repeated, this time in the Capital City:
this time magnified by the fact that Jerusalem was the religious and political
and social center of the nation. And in five short days the religious authori-
ties managed to convince the Roman political authorities that this Jesus was a
distinct threat to them as well. A frantic procession of hearings and trials
was hastily arranged with the Romans trying not to get involved in what they
regarded as an internal religious squabble amoag their Jewish subjects. Finally,
a minor politician by the name of Pontius Pilate gave in to intense pressure and
ordered him executed This was donc on the day before the Sabbath along with
the routine execution of other criminals, on a hill outside the city, near the
garbage dump. Tho official charge seems to have been treason, although everyone
knew that his real offense was .plasphemy, a religious crime that really didn't
impress the Romans.

In any case, when the soldiers responsible for executions were convinced
that he was dead, they took him down from the cross, gave the body to one of his

friends, who prepared it and buried in his own private tomb.

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That's the story, objectively stated. Of course his followers claimed that
he rose from his grave: that he appeared to them: and several weeks later they
surfaced in Jerusalem with the asserting that he was the Messiah = and the
hsitory of mankind has never been the same since.

It's a simple story really, shorn of tradition and interpretation and
theological conviction. And { think every now and then we need to do what we have
Just done: go back and look at it, in its simplicity. Because that syory plays
such a decisive role in who we are, and where we are that it is virtually
impossible to contemptate the last 2,000 years of history without it. That
came home to me on two successive evenings last week. On Wednesday evening the
officers of the church saw pictures and heard the story of the Church of Scotland
astory that begins around the third century A.D. And even though | am somewhat
familiar with the story, | was impressed again with the fact that apart from
Christianity - there is no history of Scotland. The wars, the struggles, the
fantastic amount of blood shed, the evolution of the Goreenvital institutions,
education, culture - all of revolves around Christianity - and behind that, the
simple story of Jesus of Nazareth. The rxt evening | sat in Elliot Hall of
Music for one of the most remarkable musical events | have ever experienced.
Virgil Fox, superb organist played the music of J. S. Bach for two hours and
Twenty minutes, accompanied by a very sophisticated psychedelic lighting display.
And in between the musical presentations he talked about Bach Ina way that would
put a hell-fire and brimstone preacher to shame. What he really was talking
about was the religious faith of the composer - and when the evening was finally
over the audience had heard the Gospel: when Fox explained Bach's theology and then
played “Come Sweet Death", it was a remarkably intense moment. He received
standing ovations: he plaed four encores: the audience was responding in a way
| assumed was reserved for the Rolling Stones. And it was impossible to listen
to that music without knowing and feeling that it too depends on the simple
story of Jesus of Nazareth.

Now let's talk about the Clinker in the story. For the uninitiated, a

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“clinker” is a piece of coai, so impure that it doesn't burn completely, which
then lodges in the gratc: of the furnace and makes it impossible to shake the
ashes out.of the fire box. Some of my more exciting childhood memories have to
do with my father extracting clinkers from the furnace. In any case, the clinker
in the simpte little story of Jesus of Nazareth is the non=objective assertion
of the Church that the story of Jesus is really the story of Almighty God: that
it wasn't just a carpenters!’ son that taught, preached, healed and got executed,
if was God himse!f: that the subject of the story - Jesus of Nazareth- was jn
fact Jesus the Christ, God incarnate - God in the flesh. Suddenly the simpte
story is not so simple. Suddenly it becomes the most important story ever told.
Suddenty everything ifs subject said and did takes on new significance.

And so we begin this morning a Lenten series of sermons, in which } hope
we can go back and turn the soi! over again - by fooking at the story - and the man.
In subsequent weeks we shal! be thinking ab.wt Jesus, the teacher, the healer,
the savior, the offender, the Lord. But today, in the time remaining, Jesus
the man.

The Church, since the early centuries, nas held that the truth about Jesus
is expressed in two separate and quite opposite statements. Jesus was fully God
and Jesus was fully man. That's called a paradox: it doesn't fit logically:
it cannot be explained nationally. But the churchtas stubbornly maintained that
to ¢liminate the paradox ~ to emphasize one of the assertions at the expense of
the other ts to miss the truth altogether.

in times past one or the other has been the focus of the church's theotogy.
in certain periods of history the divinity of Christ has been emphasized to the
degree that his humanity was forgotten. Likewise the reverse has happened as
well. {t's very tempting, because if we elliminate the paradox we are then able
to understand. We can handle the assertion that Jesus was God = just pretenging
to be a man: or that he was a great man who taught us a lot of good things about
God. But the doctrine of the incarnation is that he was both - at the same time.

1 have the feeling that the real temptations for us is not so much to

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swing the pendulum in one direction or the other, as it is to leave it dangling
in the middte: failing ta take either assertion very seriously. The result is
a "Sunday School Jesus" who is neither God nor a man but something in between. We
have real trouble regarding Jesus as God - praying to Jesus, for instance: and
at the same time ! sense that we are most uncomfortable with him as a man -
like us in every way. And so we create our own Jesus - the sentimentalized,
slightly effeminate creature in a long white robe, immortalized in Salman's
"Head of Christ’: the Jesus Robert Clyde Johnson cails "velvety".

My assumption is that we must know him first as a man: that we must jearn
to be comfortable with his humanity: that we must tearn to affirm his commoness
with us. My assumption is that true commitment to him happens when we know
that our Lord was a flesh and blood human being. that he knew what it means to
suffer, that he hurt physically, that he bled emotionally: that he didn't want
to die: that he toved his friends: that he got discouraged and angry: that he
laughed and wept: that the prospect of getting naited to a cross did the same
thing to him that it would do to you or me,

We are being helped today to rediscover the manhood of Jesus by our own
culture. Jesus has suddenly become a hero. He's on the news: he's on Broadway:
on records and tapes. The young ~ and God bless them for this - have discovered
something the Church may have forgotten: namely that the man Jesus is a very
Interesting and intriguing person: that his story - all by itself- is a great
and inspiring story: that if you're looking for a hero = a modet you can do worse
than Jesus of Nazareth.

Whatever else you want to say about Jmsus Christ Superstar Jesus comes

through as a man, a real, flesh and blood man. And it Is not insignificant that

more people aave hcard and been moved by "I Don't Know How to Love Him’, than
are ever going to hear “Stand Up, Stand Up, For Jesus". The story of Jesus
the man - whenever it is honestly told, - is far more compelling - than the

insipid Sunday School Jesus that most of us found in the church.

My assumption is that we need to affirm his humanity - tn order to experience

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his Lordship. And | should like, in conclusion, to share with you the three
aspects of his humanity that speakmos+ intimately to me as a man and which |
find most compedling about him as a man. Whon | see them in him | am moved to
feel good about who | am - because | know | can be that kind of man as well.
At the same time, to see them in him is to know that | never am all that |
could be - all that he was - all that he calls me to be.

First - freedom. tn the very best sense of the word Jesus was a free man.
When | think of the ways we are not free, the ways we fall into all kinds of
Slavery - slavery to success, slavery to accomplish, and slavery to our bank
accounts, slavery to the image we hope to project, | realize that here at least
was one man who made it. Here was one man unrestricted by all the self-imposed
shackles we insist on wearing. Yet, ina special way, a way we have trouble
understanding - he became a slave - a slave of God's will, an obedient man: a
man who gave it all away because of what he believed.

Second - honesty. | perceive in Jesus of Nazareth the most honest man
who ever lived. He saw hypocricy in the lives of religious people: he saw
phoniness in the behavior of respectable people: he saw dignity in the down -
trodden. And when ! contemplate the comprémises you and | make every day, the
little dishonesties we have come to regard as necessary, this man motivates me
to scrutinize my own life very carefully.

Third - compassion. Somehow you and | have been conditioned to look at
starving people, refugees of war, victims of racism and poverty - and fee! noth-
ing. Somehow we have been conditioned to hear about the tons of bombs being
dropped over Vietnam and Laos and Cambodia without even thinking about the torn
bodies of little children and old men. In Jesus of Nazareth | see a man who
fett compassion: who could not resist the urge to pick up a little child; who
hurt Instde at the rampant obscenity of leprosy: who wept when he sensed the grief
of a young widow: who felt - in himself- the emotional hurts inflicted on the
poor = the outcasts - the lonely.

There are many more, of course. But for me, these three are compelling

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aspects of the man that | cannot forget.

As Christians we believe - in whatever words you wish to use - that he was
God in our midst. Let us not forget that he was man in our midst as well:
man as God created everyone of us to be. And so as we proceed through this Lenten
season - let us discover him again as our savior - our Lord - our Redeemer - but
let us begin on this day - with his humanity. For he is Jesus our brother:

Jesus the Man. AMEN

Father, we are grateful that in Jesus you have shown us what you intended in
your creation. Forgive us when we fall short: and help us to see in him -

what you want us to be AMEN