What Sort of Christ?
Rev. Dr. Tom Sorenson
March, 2019
Scripture: Luke 3:41-53; Luke 4:1-11
Let us pray: May the words of my mouth and the meditations
of all of our hearts be acceptable in your sight O God, our strength and our
redeemer. Amen.
Preparation. So many things in life require preparation.
Going on a long trip? Prepare. Plan your itinerary. Figure out what you’ll need
to take with you and how much you’ll be able to take with you. Then pack and
go. Want to have your first child? Read up on pregnancy, childbirth, and caring
for infants. Buy all the stuff you’ll need. You’ll think you’re ready (although
those of us who have had children know that you really aren’t). Want a new career?
Discern what you want and/or need around that career. Explore employment possibilities
in that career. Get the education or training you’ll need. Quit your old job.
Start a new one. Prepare, prepare, prepare. Big things in life, and even small
ones, require us to prepare. To get ready. To figure out as best we can what
this thing we’re going to do is and how we’re going to do it.
The Gospels, or at least three of the four of them, tell us
that it was no different with Jesus.[1]
Yes, of course what had to prepare to do was a whole lot bigger and more
important than anything we have to prepare to do. And yes, he was both just
like us and totally different from us. Yet for all that he still had to prepare
to carry out the mission God had sent him to do. Here’s how we see that preparation
in Luke.
Luke says that Jesus was about thirty years told when he
began his work. Luke 3:23a. What had he been doing those thirty years? We know
virtually nothing about that. We have no reliable sources to tell us. Luke does
have that little story about Jesus in the temple in Jerusalem at age twelve.
Luke 2:41-52. The story says that Jesus was essentially teaching in the temple
though he was only twelve and that all who heard him “were amazed at his
understanding and his answers.” Luke 2:47. Taking these lines from Luke as the
only source we have on Jesus as he grew up without raising any annoying
academic questions about the story’s historicity we hear that by age twelve
Jesus was already wise, presumably wise in the sources and beliefs of his Jewish
faith. How did a twelve year old get so wise? Almost certainly through a lot of
preparation, through a combination of natural ability and hard work.
We also hear however that his appearance in the temple at
age twelve, wise as he already was, wasn’t the end of his development. Luke
tells us that after the age of twelve Jesus didn’t just get older, he “increased
in wisdom.” We learn that his preparation continued. We know what he was
preparing for, although it isn’t clear that he did yet. Luke tells us no more
about Jesus’ life between the ages of twelve and thirty. Since Luke says Jesus
increased in wisdom in those years we can safely assume that he kept studying.
Kept talking to wise elders of the faith. It’s a pretty safe bet that all
through those 18 years Jesus kept preparing. Then, at age thirty, he decided to
act. He went from his hometown of Nazareth of Galilee south to where John was
baptizing people in the River Jordan. There John baptized Jesus, and Jesus had
a liminal experience of a voice from heaven saying “You are my Son, the Beloved;
with you I am well pleased.” Luke 3:22.
You’d think that hearing God say that about you would mean
your prep work was done. You’re good. You’re set to go Well, apparently Jesus
wasn’t done with his preparation, for what comes next is Luke’s version of
Jesus’ temptations in the wilderness. Jesus is tempted for forty days—Bible speak
for a long time—by the devil. Those temptations tell us what Jesus was doing
all that time out there in the desert. He was trying to figure out just what it
meant that he was the Son of God with whom God was well pleased. He was trying
to figure out just what kind of Christ, that is what kind of Messiah, he would
be.
Luke, like Matthew, tells us of three temptations Jesus
wrestled with during this time of testing and preparation. They are the
temptation to turn stones to bread to feed his famished body, the temptation to
rule the whole world by worshipping the devil, and the temptation to tempt God
by throwing himself off the pinnacle of the temple and have God save him. By
rejecting those temptations Jesus tells us a lot about what kind of Christ he
decided to be.
The first two temptations have one important thing in
common. They are both temptations for Jesus to use his divine status for his
own benefit. You’re hungry, so turn these stones to bread so you can eat. Use
your divine power to benefit yourself the devil says. Jesus says no. He says in
effect that his being the Son of God isn’t about doing good things for himself.
By implication then it’s about doing good things for others.
You’re the Son of God on earth. You should rule the world in
a worldly way, the devil says. Worship me and you’ll have it all. Jesus says
no. He says in effect: I may be the Son of God with whom God is well pleased,
but that doesn’t mean I’m here to be rich and powerful in any worldly sense. My
role as the Christ is not self-aggrandizement. So no, I won’t worship you, Mr.
Devil, and rule the world the way you rule the world.
The third temptation is a bit different. It isn’t about
Jesus using his divine status for his own benefit. It is more about him using
his status as the Son of God the way the world might expect him to use it. To
use it for show. To use it to do magic tricks. Throw yourself off a high
building and wow people with how your Father God will save you. Again Jesus says
no. My being the Christ isn’t about getting people to be amazed at what God
will do for me. It’s more about getting people to be amazed at what God will do
for them.
So what kind of Christ does Jesus decide to be? Where does all
that preparation both before his wilderness experience and during it take him?
He decides to be a Christ for others not for himself. His preparation leads him
to the conviction that his status as the Son of God isn’t primarily about
himself. It is rather about being for God and all of God’s people. The rest of
Luke’s Gospel tells us that that is precisely the kind of Christ Jesus became.
The Gospel of Matthew calls him Emmanuel, God with us. Matthew 1:23. In all of
his preparation we see Jesus deciding to be God not just with us but for us as
well. Jesus decided to do a ministry for us not for himself. Thanks be to God!
But of course all of that is about Jesus. What about us? Let
me suggest something. In the wilderness the devil kept putting superficial,
worldly benefits before Jesus. The devil stayed on the surface, Jesus didn’t.
Jesus went to the depth dimension beneath and behind worldly considerations. He
sought and found spiritual truth not material truth. He found the truth beneath
the world’s truth, the truth of self-giving not self-serving, the truth of
quiet work not flashy showmanship. And here’s the thing: He calls us to do the
same. To seek and find the spiritual dimension in everything we see and do. To
move beyond narrow concern with the self into concern for God and all of God’s
creation. To the truth of caring. To the truth of peace. To the truth of
justice. To the truth of love. If we can do that we can meet and satisfy God’s
call to us just as Jesus met and satisfied God’s much greater call to him. May
it be so. Amen.
[1] In
John Jesus appears more or less whole and wholly prepared for his work. In the
other three we see greater or lesser indications of the time he spent in
preparation.
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