First Church in Cambridge, Congregational UCC
6 February 2005
Jesus, the Center of Our Faith
In this strange episode on the mountain top, three of Jesus' close companions suddenly see him in an altogether new light (literally!)—his body is suffused with a radiant glory; Moses and Elijah, long-dead luminaries of God's People, appear in the glow to talk with him; a voice from an overshadowing cloud names him 'Beloved Child.' And those three disciples end up flat on their faces, awe-struck.
When I ponder this story, I like to imagine that those startling phenomena shook up all the certainties that the disciples had formed about Jesus, their teacher and friend. They knew from the beginning of their association with him that he was "someone," great and special, perhaps even the long-awaited Messiah—but this? What could this vision mean? In that moment, and throughout the rest of their lives, I like to think that they asked themselves that question a million times.
What could it mean that Jesus' body dazzled with light? Was he not human after all, but a divine being, a demi-god, an angel? Or was it that a great biblical truth had materialized before their eyes—the truth that human beings are made in the image of God, beautiful, glorious and good? Were they seeing a manifestation in Jesus of the glory of God that is tucked away inside us all? Could it be, were we to go through the world seeing aright, that we would behold that glory pour out from everybody; and that instead of despising and fearing each other, we would drop to our knees in awe of each other; and that instead of plotting to kill each other, we would hurry to set up many dwellings for the perpetual contemplation of each other's marvelous humanity?
Or perhaps, as another preacher has suggested, the light that the three disciples saw glowing in Jesus was the visible form of the great light that he had been shedding on the world all along—a radically new light in which the poor, who had been regarded as unloved by God, came to be seen for who they really are, special objects of God's favor; and tax collectors and prostitutes, who were ritually shunned, came to know themselves as more than good enough to sit down and eat with God's Holy One.
What did it mean, subsequent generations would continue to wonder, that Jesus shone so brilliantly, that he conversed with Moses and Elijah, that a cloud overshadowed him and a voice named him 'The Beloved'? And what did it mean that he commanded them not to tell a soul about the vision until he had been raised from the dead? Who is he?
It would take the Christian community a long time to sort out the questions about Jesus that this story and others like it prompted. Well, I guess I should say that it is taking us a long time to sort them all out, because this kind of meditation and discernment is not the work of just one generation, or even two or three. It is work without end, work for all times and places.
What is the answer to the question about Jesus that arise from all this pondering over time? There are many, and none of them is exactly what you'd call a straight answer! They are the hymns in which we celebrate him, the communities in which we remember him, the doctrines by which we explain and define him, the saints who have befriended and embodied him, the worship and ritual by which we enact him and through which are somehow met by him, the acts of justice, mercy and hospitality by which we emulate him, and the long deep silences in which we know him so near that answers are the last things on our minds.
And out of all this variety and difference, all this worship and theology and practice of ministry in his name, many more questions are generated about who he is, and many more responses to those new questions take shape. This is the way that faith grows. This is the way that tradition thickens and complexifies. This is the way that the life of a community quickens and thrives. This is the way that the church has gathered and keeps regathering around Jesus, the center of it all.
I don't know if you noticed this, but among the questions I put to the ten new members who joined the church just a moment ago was this one: Do you affirm Jesus Christ as the center of your faith? The question did not come out of the blue for them. One of the things I normally do in the course of preparing folks for membership is to send them a copy of the Order for the Reception of New Members so that they can read and ponder ahead of time the promises they'll be asked to make on the day they join. Inevitably, more than one person gets back to me with a concern about this question about Jesus, the center of our faith.
"What exactly are you asking me to say about Jesus?" they want to know. "I'm not sure what I think about him. I need some clarification before I can say yes to this one."
Some of the people who question what it would mean for them to affirm that Jesus is the center of their faith have backgrounds in religious communities that demanded intellectual assent to particular theological propositions about Jesus. In those churches, if their conscience would not let them agree to those precise doctrinal formulations, or if they felt that the Jesus they were being asked to affirm was too lofty, too perfect, too removed from real life to be believable, let alone followable, then they were crossed off the A-list of believers and made to feel a little unclean.
In other cases, Jesus was wielded against them like a cudgel in angry rejection of their gender or their sexuality or their politics, or simply because they persistently raised honest theological questions, and the resultant injury made things too painful for them to stay in that church, and they gave up on the Jesus who had, in effect, driven them out. So when some of our new friends here at First Church read the question, "Do you affirm Jesus as the center of your faith?" they wonder if we are trying to lead them back into the narrowness and pain they have worked so hard to leave behind.
There are many other reasons why people have trouble with affirming Jesus as the center of their faith. But most people who balk a bit at this question are reassured when I respond to their concern in the broad spirit that is characteristic of First Church's pluralism, of the UCC generally, and I think, of Jesus himself. I tell them what I myself believe, and it is usually something like this:
To affirm Jesus as the center of one's faith is not necessarily to subscribe to anything doctrinally specific about him, such as that he is the Son of God and the pre-existent Second Person of the Trinity, as many in our congregation believe, and many others do not. It could be to make a doctrinal statement about him, but it does not have to be. To say that he is the center of our faith is to acknowledge, however, that Jesus really matters; that the church can't do without him; that he is always showing up in the middle of things when it comes to faith in God and the way we live our lives. It is to say that we find ourselves always taking into account his example, his ministry, his preaching, and the traditions of subsequent centuries that have to do with him; and that we are always going to have to "negotiate" him in some form or another as we go along the journey of faith, of life, and of life-together in the church.
To say that he is the center of our faith is also to embrace the fact that the church stems from him—the church as a whole, and this one, First Church, the one that is our family of faith by freely-entered covenant. It is also to say that the church has always been (however imperfectly) shaped by the memory of him. But not just by his memory—we believe that somehow he is a living reality and has never left us; that somehow we can know him now and that, mysteriously, we can continue to be shaped by him as he is now. It is to say that our community's principle business is to wrestle seriously and unceasingly with this Presence in the Spirit, to attend to his vital legacy and his daily challenge. It is also to acknowledge the power of the Good News he preached to re-create us according to its contours and rhythms, its instincts and hopes, and mold us into truly human beings who live as he did for God, for our neighbors and for the whole created world.
To say that Jesus is the center of our faith is to say many more and many other things than just this; but it is to say at least this, and for joining this community that gathers in his name , "at least this" is sufficient.
During the season of Lent, as you will see on the blue bulletin insert, our congregation will focus on this question of what it might mean to say that "Jesus is the center of our faith," or that he is (in the words of Marcus Borg) the "Heart of God." As we read and talk and pray together over the next six weeks, I hope that we will see that for Christians the centrality of Jesus has never meant, and indeed cannot ever legitimately mean just one thing. Every Christian generation that has heard and pondered the gospels, produced genuine saints, adopted the rhythms of Christian prayer and praise, and served a neighbor on bended knee in Christ's name has added new data to the discussion.
Data gleaned from Christian practice in the daily rub of life and ministry in the present. Data gleaned from engagement with this gorgeous and suffering world. Data gleaned from on-going conversation with the insights of the Christian past. Data gleaned from inspired visions of the future in the light of the restless Spirit. Data gathered from our own hearts when finally we turn from speculation about Jesus and risk conversation with him, when finally we dare to turn from intellectual inquiry to direct address.
Those of you who have been around this congregation a while know that in the ritual life of First Church we routinely put the question about the centrality of Jesus to just about everyone—to new members joining the church, to parents and godparents of babies being baptized, to newly-elected deacons about to be ordained, to young people presenting themselves for confirmation, to the congregation on the night of Epiphany when we renew our baptismal vows. I am glad that we ask it so earnestly and so often. And I want us to be clear about why we do.
It is not a doctrinal quiz. The question is not put to anyone to elicit a right answer or a best answer. Rather, it is so that we might keep the question itself alive. And it is so that we might never stop hearing in this question the Spirit's urgent invitation to wade into this long, wide stream of experience; to engage this thick tradition of multiple pathways and epiphanies; to participate in this diverse community of practice and praise, and to become, by God's grace, more mature, more devout and more disciplined in our discipleship.
And we ask it and keep on asking it so that we too, in our own time and place, might come to see light from Light—glory poured out onto this world by God, glory poured back from every human being in it, made in the image of God, glory that transfigures you and me. We ask it and keep on asking it so that we might bequeath to the future this particular way of brilliant solidarity and hope we call Christian faith. We ask it and keep on asking it so that we too might enrich the church and the world with our own contribution to the varied, vital and ever-growing treasure of experience and thought concerning Jesus—this Jesus, God's Delight, whom (as Borg says) we are always meeting again for the first time.
© 2005, J Mary Luti