When I say the name “Jesus”, what image comes to
your mind?
Maybe it’s the traditional picture of Jesus, a fairly
good-looking man with a neatly-trimmed beard. Maybe it’s the picture of a
baby in a manger--if it was Christmastime, that would almost certainly be one
of the images that came to mind. Maybe it’s the picture of Jesus on the
cross, dying for our sins.
But the thing is, one of the great things about Jesus is
that he truly was God in human form. The divine Son--God the Son--part of
the Trinity. A God we could see, and
hear, and touch. A God who looks kind of
like us. A God we can relate to.
As Paul says in our reading for today, Jesus is “the image of the
invisible God.”
And there’s nothing wrong with any of that. That’s
one of the reasons God the Son came to earth. He truly was the fully
divine and yet fully human Christ. And the human side of Jesus is very
important. Jesus experienced all the
things we experience as we go through life. Joy and sorrow, pain and
happiness, loneliness and friendship, courage and fear, faith and doubt,
anxiety and peace. Jesus went through
all of that and more at various times in his life on earth. And that can
be a great comfort to us. It can help us
a lot to know that whatever we’re feeling, whatever we’re going through, there
was a time when Jesus felt it and went through it, too.
But while the human side of Jesus is very important, and
can be a great comfort to us, it’s also possible for us to emphasize that human
side too much. We run the risk of diminishing Jesus. We risk making him just this gentle, kindly
man who told us that we should be nice to people and treat them well.
But Jesus is so much more than
that. Again, Jesus is the divine Son of God. He’s the one who could
walk on water. He could turn water into
wine. He could heal the sick. He could
feed five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish. He
could even raise people from the dead.
Jesus had incredible power while he was on earth.
And Jesus has great power while he’s in heaven, too.
That’s what our reading from Colossians for today is about.
The Apostle Paul says of Jesus, “For in him all things were
created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, thrones or
powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and
for him.” Think of the power that involves. To have created everything on earth. Everything we will ever see or hear or touch
on earth was created by and through Jesus Christ. That’s true even of
man-made things, because it was in and through Christ that the materials were
created with which we make them, and it’s in and through Christ that humans
have the intelligence and ability to create them.
And in fact, it’s not just the things we see and hear and
touch that were created by and through Jesus Christ. It’s the things we
cannot see or hear or touch, too.
Remember, Paul says things “visible and invisible” were created in and
through Jesus Christ. That includes things like the wind, which we cannot
see, but it includes other things, too.
Things like love. Things like
mercy. Things like intelligence and
wisdom. Those things, too, were created in and through Jesus Christ.
And here’s the thing we don’t think about: it’s not
just the things on earth that were created in and through Jesus Christ.
It’s not even just the things in the known universe that were created in and
through Jesus Christ. Paul says, that things in heaven were also created
in and through Jesus Christ. We never
think about that, or at least I don’t. I tend to have this idea that
heaven just kind of always was. But
that’s not what the Bible says. Remember
Genesis says that God created the heavens and the earth. And here, Paul
says that all things in heaven were created by and through Jesus Christ.
Think about the power of that. To create everything
on earth and everything in heaven. Think of the awesomeness of that. I mean, seriously, does that not just blow
you away? To think of the incredible power of Jesus Christ?
But it’s not just raw power, as incredible as that
is. Listen to what else Paul says:
Jesus “is before all things, and in him all things hold together.”
In him all things hold together. Jesus is the
linchpin. Jesus is the one that holds
everything together. Without Jesus, things fall apart. Things fly off in every direction. With Jesus, things can hold together.
With Jesus, our lives can hold together.
That’s why, as Paul goes on to say, Jesus “is the head of
the body, the church.” It is only by putting Jesus in his rightful
position as head of the church that the church will hold together. That’s
true whether we’re talking about the Christian church as a whole, whether we’re
talking about a specific denomination like the United Methodist church, or
whether we’re talking about a local church like the Gettysburg/Onida/Agar
United Methodist church. If Jesus is not the head of it, if Jesus is not
the linchpin of the church, the church will fall apart. Things will fly off in every direction. It is only with Jesus that the church can
hold together, too.
That’s power, too, to hold
things together like that. But it’s not just raw power. It’s power exercised in love. The same
love that led Jesus to die on the cross for us, so that our sins can be
forgiven. That’s what Paul writes about next. He says that God was pleased, through Jesus,
“to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in
heaven, by making peace through [Jesus’] blood, shed on the cross.”
Think about what it took for Jesus to do that. Jesus,
through whom everything in heaven and on earth was created. Jesus, who is
the linchpin that holds everything together.
That same Jesus willingly died in the most horrible, painful way
possible, on a cross. And he did it for us, so that our sins could be
forgiven and so that we could once again come into the presence of God.
Think of the incredible love that took. To have all
that power and willingly give it up, even temporarily. To come and live
among these sinful, weak, ignorant human beings. People who, as John the Baptist says, are not
worthy to untie his sandals. People like you and me. To suffer the indignity, not just of his
death, but of his life on earth. Having
to deal with these so-called disciples who did not seem to have a clue what he
was doing no matter how hard he tried to tell them. To have to argue with
these “holy people” like the Pharisees and the Sadducees and the teachers of
the law, people thought they were so great when in fact they were nothing at
all compared to Jesus. Having mere human
beings patronize him, or insult him, or ignore him completely. And to go
through all that completely willingly and without complaint, in order to save
these same sinful, weak, ignorant human beings, people like you and me. What an incredible love that is.
It is through that incredible love that, as Paul says, we
are reconciled to God. Our sins are forgiven and we can have salvation
and eternal life. We are presented to
God, Paul says, “as holy in his sight, without blemish and free from
accusation.” If. If we continue in
our faith, “established and firm, and do not move from the hope held out in the
gospel.”
Again, Jesus is the linchpin that holds it all
together. That salvation and eternal life only comes if we continue in
our faith in Jesus, and do not move from the hope held out in the gospel.
This is why, again, it’s not enough to just say we have
faith in Jesus Christ. That’s a start, but Jesus needs to be at the
center of our lives. Our faith in Jesus
needs to be involved in every aspect of our lives. It’s not just
something we acknowledge on Sunday morning and then forget about the rest of
the week. Again, that’s a start. But our faith in Jesus needs to be something
we carry with us every day
The human Jesus is very important. The human Jesus
can help us relate to God, and we all need to be able to relate to God.
The human Jesus can give us great comfort, and we all have times when we need
comfort. The human Jesus gives us an
example of how we should live our lives, and we all need that example to try to
live up to.
But we should not diminish Jesus by only focusing on the
human Jesus. Because the divine Jesus is very important, too. Jesus has divine power, a power that goes far
beyond any human power. But Jesus also has divine love, a love that goes
far beyond any human love. A human could
not give us the chance for salvation and eternal life. Only the divine
Jesus can do that.
So let’s accept Jesus as the Savior, but let’s do more than
that. Let’s put our complete faith and trust in the fully human and yet
fully divine Jesus Christ. Let’s continue in our faith, established and
firm. Let’s not move from the hope held
out in the gospel. Let’s make Jesus the linchpin of our lives. Then, our lives will hold together, both on
earth and in heaven.
No comments:
Post a Comment