January 5, 2013 Searching for the “Historical” Jesus
Scripture: Luke 1:1-4
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been
fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were
eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully
from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you
may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.
From Pastor Adam Hamilton’s sermon, January 5, 2014:
Let’s begin with an easy question, as there is great consensus even among secular scholars, agnostics and atheists that Jesus actually lived. He was a real, historical person. Dr. Louise Antony, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Massachusetts and a noted atheist stated, “I don't personally know a single atheist who would deny that Jesus existed.” Bart Ehrman, a popular agnostic writer and professor at the University of North Carolina recently wrote a book called, Did Jesus Exist? in which he offers an emphatic yesThe question for many skeptics, and even for many Christians, is not whether Jesus existed, but to what degree the gospels and other New Testament writers accurately describe the Jesus who existed. That’s the question I’d like to focus our attention on in the rest of this message.Let’s consider what precipitates the question. In the gospels we find that Jesus is born of a virgin, he walks on water, he opens the eyes of the blind, he raises the dead, he feeds thousands with a few loaves of bread and a couple of fish. In the end, following his crucifixion and burial on Friday, he is resurrected on Sunday. The idea of Jesus the preacher and teacher who was crucified is not hard to believe. But Jesus the healer, the man who calms the storms, who walks on water, who casts out demons and who himself was raised from the dead, who was the divine son of God—this Jesus is harder to believe in Numerous theologians and biblical scholars have accepted two propositions: First, the miraculous or supernatural cannot happen. Second, early Christians, in their devotion to Jesus, described him and his impact upon their lives by telling stories of miracles he had supposedly worked that illustrated his impact upon their lives….There have been hundreds of books written under some variation of the title, “The Life of Jesus” that promised to reveal the real Jesus. The latest of these is Reza Aslan’s Zealot: The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth, which spent three weeks at #1 on the NY Times Bestseller List this fall.
I finished reading Zealot last week. Aslan lays out the premise of the book, writing: “In the end, there are only two hard historical facts about Jesus of Nazareth upon which we can confidently rely: the first is that Jesus was a Jew who led a popular Jewish movement in Palestine…the second is that Rome crucified him for doing so.” We can rely only upon these two facts because the gospels are unreliable sources of information about Jesus. They were written 40 to 60 years after Jesus’ death and reflect the faith of the early church, says Aslan….I watched an interview with Aslan recently, and he declared that Jesus never said things like, “Love your enemy.” Presumably he never said to pray for those who wrong you, or turn the other cheek, or the truly great among you will be your servant, or forgive others. I agree with a number of insights Aslan offers that I think are important, but in the picture of Jesus he paints, which is nearly the antithesis of Jesus as portrayed in the gospels, I think he widely misses the mark….
Are the gospels reasonably reliable sources of information about the historical or real Jesus? It is true that the gospels were likely written from 40 to 60 years after the death of Jesus. For some that makes them immediately suspect. So let me start by questioning the assumption that something written 40 years after an event would be unreliable….
My Aunt Celia Belle was over for Thanksgiving. We call her Aunt Ce Ce. She’s 98 years old, but she is amazing. She is the living repository of our family history….She handed me these papers on Thanksgiving—the story of my great-grandfather and great-grandmother, her parents. She titled it “Memories of Henry Leonard and Bertha Belmear Richardson, which have been lovingly recorded so their descendents will have a better appreciation of their long and useful lives.” I love this. She tells their stories, going back to the research she’d done on their childhoods and the stories they told about their childhoods. Then the years she knew them as her parents. My Aunt is describing events beginning with the late 1800’s and throughout the 1900’s. Both of her parents died more than 40 years ago.Here’s the question: Do you think these accounts are reasonably reliable and trustworthy accounts of what my great grandparents were like, what they said and did? Or do I need to set aside all but the bare outlines she’s provided and begin my quest for the historical Henry and Bertha as opposed to this history so lovingly prepared?...At the start of his gospel, Luke says that he has carefully investigated everything, that his sources include material from those who were eyewitnesses, the earliest disciples. He notes that others before him had written accounts of Jesus. These gospel Searching for the “Historical” Jesus 4
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January 19, 2014 Jesus: Myth, Madman or Messiah?
Scripture:
Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God, and saying, “The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news.”
– Mark 1:14-15
Once Jesus was asked by the Pharisees when the kingdom of God was coming, and he
answered, “The kingdom of God is not coming with things that can be observed; nor will they say, ‘Look, here it is!’ or ‘There it is!’ For, in fact, the kingdom of God is among you.”
– Luke 17:20-21
Scripture: Luke 19:1-10
Jesus entered Jericho and was passing through. A man was there by the name of
Zacchaeus; he was a chief tax collector and was wealthy. He wanted to see who Jesus was, but because he was short he could not see over the crowd. So he ran ahead and climbed a sycamore- fig tree to see him, since Jesus was coming that way. When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly. All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.” But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.” Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.
From Pastor Adam Hamilton’s sermon, January 12, 2014:
When someone tells me they struggle with believing in the Virgin Birth my answer is, “Joseph did too!” When Mary told him the story that the messenger of God had said she was to have a child, though she had not been with a man, how did Joseph respond? He was going to break off the engagement. If Joseph struggled to believe Mary when she told him this story, of course many of us will struggle when we read the story in Matthew and Luke. As our understanding of biology and genetics increased, the story became increasingly problematic for some people….How was Jesus conceived apart from the supply of a sperm cell?I don’t get too hung up on this. To me, what is it for the God who wrote the masterful piece of code that is human DNA to provide a piece of DNA so small the eye cannot see it in order to form the human flesh of Jesus? I’m not too terribly troubled by the idea that Jesus was born of a Virgin.But the Virgin Birth was not primarily about explaining biology, genetics and conception. It was a way of asserting something far more profound….The Virgin Birth is about God becoming like us, walking among us in the mess we make of things, being near us, with us, in order to help, comfort and save us. It is meant to tell us that when we look at Jesus we’re seeing the heart and character of God. You may not need the Virgin Birth to get this—to understand that in Jesus God came near to us, to save and redeem us and reveal himself to us. But I think that is what the Virgin Birth is meant to help us see. It is why the story was told….If I never heard about the Virgin Birth, I would still be a follower of Jesus. But personally, I love the story of the Virgin Birth Was Jesus really married; a marriage the gospel writers chose to keep a secret? No one has done more to popularize this idea than Dan Brown in his multi-million best selling work of fiction, The DaVinci Code. The book was a fun read, and what made it so believable was that Brown drew upon bits and pieces of historical documents and told the story in actual places.Girls married around the time that they had their first period, but no younger than 12 (according to the Talmud). Boys were no younger than 13 but typically between 14 and 18. The key for the boy was his ability to support a wife and children by his work. Brown and others suggest that it would have been inappropriate for Jesus not to have married. But not all Jewish men married. The Essene sect, for instance, a sect of Jews with whom Jesus shared a great deal in common, did not marry. They were very religious Jews who believed that marriage would inhibit their pursuit of God. They were admired by others, according to the first century Jewish historian, Josephus, for their choice of celibacy.Nothing in the gospels from the first century suggests Jesus was married. Had he been, there would have been no reason for the first century writers to hide it. It was normal, expected, and it was a bit odd if you didn’t marry.The gospels do mention Mary Magdalene four or five times. She clearly was an important person in Jesus’ life. She was said to have been delivered from demons by Jesus. She and a group of other women provided funds for Jesus and the disciples in their ministry. She stood by as Jesus was crucified, was there when he was buried, wept at his tomb, and was the first to see the resurrected Christ. While the gospels don’t mention any romantic interest, it is easy imagine that Mary Magdalene was in love with Jesus. I love that song from Jesus Christ Superstar, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him,” that captures so well what we imagine Mary’s feelings for Jesus might have been. What we don’t find in the gospels is even a hint that he returned this love.
In the second through fourth centuries there was a sect of Christians (using philosophical ideas that spread beyond Christianity) called Gnostics. Hundreds of their writings have been found in Egypt. This group gave Mary Magdalene a larger role. They suggested that Jesus passed on secret teachings to her, and attributed some of their own beliefs to this secret knowledge. In one of these Gnostic gospels, dated 150 to 200 years after the time of Jesus, there is a suggestion that Mary and Jesus were romantically involved. Several years ago a fragment of another document was translated by a Harvard professor. It too was one of these Gnostic gospels, and in it Jesus refers to Mary as his wife. I’ve tried to think whether Jesus being married to Mary Magdalene would change my faith, the gospel or the message of Jesus in any way. I don’t think so. And I rather believe that Jesus, as a man, would have longed for this kind of companionship and no doubt knew the struggles we have with temptation in the area of sexuality. If he were a man, he would know the hunger we feel, and the confused relationships, and how things in this area of our lives sometimes lead to sin.
The Humanity of Jesus 4
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January 26, 2014 Jesus: Myth, Madman or Messiah?
Scripture:
While we were still weak, at the right time Christ died for the ungodly. Indeed, rarely will
anyone die for a righteous person—though perhaps for a good person someone might
actually dare to die. But God proves his love for us in that while we still were sinners Christ died for us. Romans 5:6-8
The message about the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. I Corinthians 1:18
From Pastor Adam Hamilton’s sermon, January 19, 2014:
The scholars of the Jesus Seminar developed a set of rules and assumptions about the kinds of things Jesus actually said. Then they measured each recorded saying of Jesus in the gospels in the light of their rules and assumptions. Here’s the question: on what basis did you develop the assumptions? For instance, among the 2% of the words of Jesus the Jesus Seminar said was undoubtedly authentic was the saying, “Love your enemies.” But we learned two weeks ago that Reza Aslan in the bestseller Zealot about Jesus, came to the exact opposite conclusion—Jesus most certainly did not say, “Love your enemies.” Both the Jesus Seminar and Aslan made assumptions about Jesus, then discounted the things he said that did not fit their assumptions.It is important to recognize, however, that the sayings of Jesus in the gospels were not verbatim accounts of what Jesus said. There were no court reporters taking down his words. This is what people remembered, and how they remembered them and how the gospel writers interpreted these things. I’ll give you a side-by-side example of how the gospels sometimes differ:In Luke we read that Jesus said to his disciples:“Blessed are you who are poor for yours is the kingdom of God.” “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled.”But now consider how Matthew records the same saying:“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.”“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.”Many scholars think Matthew was writing to a more affluent congregation, Luke writing with a particular concern for the poor, and each adapted Jesus’ words. But generally, Matthew, Mark and Luke sound very much alike. When we compare these three gospels, usually called the “synoptics” from the Greek “to see together,” with John, you’ll see that there is a huge gap. In Matthew, Mark and Luke (the Synoptics) Jesus speaks in parables, but in John he rarely speaks in parables—he uses metaphors instead. In Matthew, Mark and Luke he refers to the Kingdom of God or the Kingdom of Heaven 84 times; in John, only twice. John’s Jesus uses the personal pronoun “I” twice as much as the Synoptics. The Synoptic Jesus is focused on ethical living and he calls people to follow him. In John the focus is on an internal spiritual faith, and Jesus calls people to believe in himHere’s the point I want you to see—we need both John and the Synoptics to have a balanced and complete Christian life. We need a relationship with Christ that transforms us and gives us life, and we need to hear the ethical call of the Kingdom of God Jesus often speaks in a way that clearly he does not intend us to take literally, but he does intend we take seriously. LaVon and I fight over the thermostat….The other night she was going to bed and said, “If you don’t turn that thermostat down, I’m going to die.” Was she really going to die, or was she exaggerating to make a point? Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which you make a clearly over-the-top statement to dramatically make your point. You can think of others: “I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” Or, “I’ve got a million things to do today.” This is how Jesus often speaks in Matthew, Mark and Luke. He uses hyperbole to make a point. He also speaks in prophetic absolutes, not trying to consider all of the possible exceptions to the rule.So when Jesus says “If your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out,” he means, “Lust can be deadly. It can make you a slave.” Jesus also said: “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God.” Since most of us are wealthy relative to the developing world, we’d better hope Jesus meant to be taken seriously but not literally. He was saying that wealth, our fixation on it, our tendency to hoard it can destroy our souls and keep us from God’s kingdom.I want us to end by focusing on the crux of Jesus’ message. In John that message is largely an inner spiritual message. John is best known for one verse that captures in many ways what Jesus, in John’s gospel, demands. You know the words: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whoever believes in him will not perish but have everlasting life.” Jesus never says anything quite like that in Matthew, Mark and Luke. But it captures the personal, spiritual life. In John, Jesus uses agricultural metaphors to describe the relationship of the believer to him—he is the vine, we are the branches, and we’re to bear fruit. That fruit, he repeatedly says, is love. So Jesus says things like this on several occasions: “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.” Did Jesus Really Say That? 4
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From Pastor Adam Hamilton’s sermon, January 26, 2014:
I came to understand three insights several years ago that helped me in making sense of the death of Christ. The first I’ve already mentioned: there is not one theory of the atonement, but multiple ways of understanding the meaning of Christ death. The second, I think, is hugely important: Jesus’ death was a dramatic act that is more like poetry than like economic or judicial theory. Poetry or art is not a logical argument, but something that stirs your soul and speaks to your heart. Finally, Jesus’ death was not about changing God, satisfying God, or placating or appeasing God and God’s justice. It is about changing us. God did not need Jesus death to forgive, nor to show mercy. We needed Jesus death, to understand our need for forgiveness, and the costliness of mercyLet’s start with the most common view of the atonement among evangelical Christians today: PENAL SUBSTITUTIONARY ATONEMENT. The idea is that sin requires punishment, that if God is just he cannot leave sin unpunished. God cannot forgive sin without some kind of punishment, but being merciful, he sends Jesus, his Son, to suffer and die as a substitute for humans. The punishment we deserved is placed upon Jesus. By accepting his death, trusting in it, and asking for his mercy, our sins are placed upon him on the cross, and his righteousness is credited to us….In many ways, the picture of God this idea of atonement paints seems inconsistent with the portrait of God Jesus paints in the gospels. Jesus tells parables like the Prodigal Son in which God is merciful despite the stupid sins we commit. He offers forgiveness even before we ask. Jesus eats with sinners and forgives their sins before he ever died for them. His portrait of God is one who seeks to save the lost, who has compassion upon lost sheep. God can forgive whomever God wishes to forgive—it is his divine prerogative.Yet there are things I value in the penal substitutionary atonement theory, and truths it holds. Jesus clearly understood his death to be about forgiveness. Seen as a metaphor or divine message, not as a judicial theory, this view of atonement is critical for us at times. I regularly speak with people whose sins have landed them in situations where they are overwhelmed with shame and guilt, where they’ve made such a mess of things there seems no way out. In those moments we may feel the wrath of God—the displeasure of God and the weight of the horrible thing we’ve done. Often I’ve brought people into the sanctuary to look at the cross, to kneel before it, or to wrap your arms around it, and to recognize that Christ bore your sins on the cross. This is part of the message of the cross—forgiveness, redemption, healing, a new beginning. Listen to Paul’s words: “All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood, effective through faith.” We sin, we fall short of God’s glory, and in this dramatic act, Christ offers himself for our atonement and redemption. We have forgiveness and a new beginning through him….
Another approach we might call the COVENANTAL THEORY OF ATONEMENT. At the Last Supper Jesus offers a different picture of his death. He takes bread and wine, part of the Jewish Passover Seder meal, and he says, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me.” He did the same with the cup after supper, saying, “This cup that is poured out for you is the new covenant in my blood.” (Luke 22:19-20) Jesus transforms the Passover Seder meal from the story of Israel’s liberation from slavery in Egypt, an event that was accompanied by the sacrifice of lambs, to a meal to remember his own death In addition, at the Last Supper, Jesus links his impending death to the idea of the New Covenant that Jeremiah the prophet foretells when he writes on behalf of God, “The days are surely coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah.” In the ancient Near East covenants or binding agreements were made with an animal sacrifice, and sometime with each party cutting their hand, grasping one another’s hands and co-mingling their blood. This was a blood promise. At the Last Supper, on the night before he is crucified, Jesus speaks of his impending death as the rite initiating a new binding agreement between God and humanity. So the cross is seen as the sacrifice that initiated a new covenant between God and humanity, one that supersedes the Old Testament covenant, and now, not by obeying the Law of Moses, but by trusting in Christ and living according to the Spirit, we are the children of God.Another theory of atonement is called the MORAL THEORY OF ATONEMENT. This has various permutations, but the idea is that Christ’s death is about changing our hearts and influencing us by showing us the depth of God’s love and a picture of what
The Meaning of Christ’s Death 4
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February 2, 2014 Jesus: Myth, Madman or Messiah?
Scripture: Matthew 16:13-17
Now when Jesus came into the district of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, “Who do people say that the Son of Man is?” And they said, “Some say John the Baptist, but others Elijah, and still others Jeremiah or one of the prophets.” He said to them, “But who do you say that I am?” Simon Peter answered, “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus answered him, “Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah! For flesh and blood has not revealed this to you, but my Father in heaven.”
From Pastor Adam Hamilton’s sermon, February 2, 2014:
Last week we studied Jesus’ crucifixion. Jesus died on what we now call Good Friday….That should have been the end of the story of Jesus of Nazareth. The Romans crucified tens of thousands of Jews. In the 100 years surrounding the birth of Jesus there were more than a dozen would-be Messiah’s the Romans put to death. All of them stayed very dead. But in Jesus’ case, the gospels report that when Sunday morning came, several women went to the tomb and found the stone had been rolled away….
When someone tells me they struggle to believe the resurrection I remind them that they are in good company. The women did not believe until they saw Christ. The disciples did not believe the women when they said he was alive. Thomas didn’t believe the disciples when they told him this. Paul the apostle did not believe at first and went so far as to persecute and even sanction the death of Christians until one day when he had an encounter with the risen Jesus.e was rolled away and the tomb was empty. Something happened—Jesus’ body was missing. Either the disciples stole his body, someone came to desecrate his body, or he was raised. If he had not been raised, the easiest way to demonstrate that was for his opponents to produce his body.2. The “Sightings” of Jesus. The disciples claimed to have seen Jesus alive, raised from the dead. They claimed to have seen him, touched him, eaten with him, spoken to him. Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 15, between the year 55 and 65, about the sightings of Jesus, saying, in effect, “Listen, there are hundreds of these folks who saw him—they live in Judea. I’ve spoken to them! 3. The Impact On the Disciples. The fact that each of the disciples went on to preach that Christ was raised, even though this meant imprisonment, torture and in most cases death, is seen as evidence of their personal belief that Jesus was in fact raised. The birth of the church—the fact that within weeks of Jesus resurrection, the disciples were proclaiming Christ’s resurrection, and that Jesus was unlike any other messianic figure, and that there were even priests in Jerusalem who came to believe their testimony—is witness to the resurrection of Christ. Paul, the man who was arresting and persecuting Christians, became one himself after a vision in which he heard the voice of Jesus. He became a vocal proponent of Christ, convinced he had met the risen Lord. He would be persecuted, imprisoned, beaten, and finally beheaded for this faith.4. The inherent logic of the resurrection. I came to believe in the resurrection by reading the gospels. I read Matthew, but when I came to the resurrection I did not believe it. I read Mark, and when I came to the empty tomb I thought, “I wish the story ended that way, but I don’t believe it.” Then I read Luke, and now I thought, “If God sent Jesus, and he came to proclaim God’s kingdom and to show the human race who God is and what God’s will is for us, how could this story end any other way?” If Christ had been tortured and killed and left in the tomb, it seemed to me, then evil, hate, sin and death had the final word. They won. The resurrection seemed to me to be God’ response—Christ is risen, victor over evil, hate, sin and even death.This week I sat with a member of our congregation who is dying. What I loved was her hope, her smile, her ability to laugh. She did not want to die, but knowing she was going to die she said, “I can’t wait to see what is on the other side.” She not only believes in the resurrection, she’s counting on it—which is far different from someone in her same circumstances who lives without hope.It is impossible to prove the resurrection. I can show reasons to believe in this unbelievable event, but we each must decide whether we trust it or not. If you struggle to accept the resurrection literally, perhaps you can see it as others who struggled finally accepted it—a vision of the risen Christ, an awareness that his life, his message, his kingdom, did not end with his death, but continues. As for me, I believe the tomb was empty, and Jesus was literally raised. I not only believe it, I’m counting on it.
This leads me to another question often asked about Jesus: Was he divine? That is, was he God come in human flesh, what does that mean and why does it matter? The official orthodox Christian position is that Jesus was, according to the Nicene Creed of AD 325, “God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.”… Who Do You Say that I Am?
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