“Christology: A Lofty Title for a Divisive Subject” - Sermon by Bishop C. Joseph Sprague, Feb. 10, 2008, at North Broadway United Methodist Church, Columbus, Ohio

Scripture: Matthew 4:1-11

How each of us and how the whole church understand who Jesus was is extremely important, fundamental even, to our personal discipleship and the ongoing mission and ministry of the church. Therefore, I want you to know my bias this morning, my core belief.

Jesus was fully human. His belovedness and his sonship were the result of his radical obedience to and absolute trust in the holy one he called Abba, Father. Jesus’ essence was no different than yours or mine. His life was no masquerade. He was the child of human parents, complete with a belly button and a distinct DNA. If not, it was all a charade and he could not serve as liberator and savior. He could not be, if he were not human, the normative role model for faithful discipleship, demonstrating in the process what a genuinely human life really looks like.

This morning I would suggest that we see his full humanity as well as his radical obedience to and absolute trust in Abba/Father/Mother/God in today’s text, Matthew’s account of Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness. In this provocative narrative, this graphic story, Jesus is spirit-driven, Satan-tempted and angel-visited. Having just heard the empowering affirmation “This is my Son, the beloved” in the Jordan at the hands of John when he was baptized, Matthew tells us that the spirit, not the devil, but that the spirit drove Jesus, led him up into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. From the lush oasis of a spiritual high, Jesus found himself in the arid valley of the lowly wilderness.

There in that lonesome valley Matthew tells us that Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. That is to say, he spent a time of kairos, a time of meaning, holy time in a demanding context, preparing to face the demonic tendencies of his very human vulnerability, vulnerability made the more so by his famishment. The force of evil, that seductive power which creeps up the back stairway of every human being’s life, especially when we are most vulnerable, when we are famished in body and spirit, that power enticed Jesus in his human vulnerability to elevate himself, to serve himself rather than God through self-aggrandizement, self-insulation and power-seeking that would indeed elevate him.

But Jesus, Jesus like the good United Methodist he was not, confronted the devil. That proclivity within himself, within each and every one of us, to whine through a strident voice for entitlement – he confronted that whining that says ‘I’m entitled, we are entitled’ – he confronted that with the resources of the faith, what we good United Methodists know as scripture, experience and tradition. “Get behind me, Satan.” “Human beings do not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” “Do not put the Lord your God to the test.” “Away with you Satan, for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God and serve only the Holy One.’”

Said plainly, clearly, instead of serving the self, Jesus, in his full humanity, armed with the disciplines of the faith, chose to anchor his life and discipleship in the Holy One by embracing absolute trust in and radical obedience to all that is eternal and holy.

And Matthew tells us that having purged his soul of the demonic tendencies present – at least for a little while; they’ll come back later – the angels visited him. That is, in the lonesome valley, he was not alone. Human beings never are. It just seems that way sometimes. We’re never left alone in the lonesome valley. It only seems that way. God’s ambassadors were there for Jesus as they are there for us, with sighs oftentimes too deep for words.

Now this is heavy stuff, heavy stuff to be sure. But what a difference-maker if we take the implication of Jesus’ full humanity seriously, both as individuals and as a congregation.

Two weeks ago today at just about this hour, the Rev. Fred Bracilano, deeply loved by many of you, known by most of us, died. It was a mighty good death. It was a mighty good death. Freddy – as friends and loved ones called him – died as he lived. It’s usually that way with human beings; we tend to die as we live. Freddy died as he lived, in nearly absolute trust in and radical obedience to the Holy One, the one Fred had seen revealed in faith in the life, the ministry, the death and resurrection of Jesus whom he claimed as Lord and Savior.

Diane and I had the very good fortune to be friends of Fred and Dottie’s for nearly 40 years. And so, on the occasion of Freddie’s death, we remembered many things. We remembered that almost 40 years ago, their four children and our four children and the four of us stuffed their dining room in Cincinnati, Ohio, when they invited us to dinner. Now you know when somebody invites you to dinner, if you have four little kids on a meager salary you’re going to run there and we did. But when you go to somebody’s suburban home, you expect that when you go into the dining room, you’re going to see rather, if not gaudy, beautiful wallpaper or paint that is just so, but not so in the Bracilano dining room because they had been through the Ecumenical Institute and they as lay people then were taking discipleship very seriously.

And so all across their dining room was hung newsprint, newsprint taped to the dining room walls on which was their family crest, their family song and job descriptions, not only for the two adults but for the four little children about how they were going to follow Jesus that week. Now if that were not enough, in the corner was a gong. In the Ecumenical Institute, the canonical hours are prayed. And so the little kids and the adults would be awakened by the gong clanging.

In the midst of that, Fred was called to ordained ministry at the age of 46. Off to METHESCO with kids in tow he and Dottie went. A little church was given him in Zanesfield. Almost immediately, a terrible automobile accident. Fred was in a body cast from here to here. Not to be deterred, Dottie went to class with the tape recorder, and then on Sundays she would take the sermon that Fred had preached into the tape recorder to the little church and put it on the altar table so that the folk there could hear.

Then after a wonderful stint down here at Maple Grove, they went to Fairborn. Now you need to know that Dottie and Fred were peaceniks from New Haven, Conn. So they’re at a church right by Wright-Patterson Air Force Base. What are peaceniks going to do in the midst of a military compound? Well, they did what they always did – they loved people, they listened to people, they sought common ground. Hostility was transformed into hospitality, the same kind of hospitality that some of us always remembered Fred and Dottie exhibiting at Lakeside at Annual Conference. They always had the house catty-cornered from Hoover Auditorium. Their home was a place where, particularly lay people, kept coming in order that they might be equipped for the ministry of the saints.

And some of you remember, when Fred was on staff here as the Minister of Evangelism, how he would line everybody up with the fellowship friends and he would not only tell about the new members but about the fellowship friends and how they were correlated. We thought, ‘Will this ever end?’ but most of the people who came into membership at that time are at the heart of this congregation now. Several of those folk are in ordained ministry. I ran into one lay person who was so radicalized that she’s running the refugee program here in Central Ohio now.

And so, when two days after Fred’s death Dottie asked me if I’d like to go downstairs and see his study, of course I wanted to do that. It was a work in progress, just like Fred. That is to say, in the midst of dangling oxygen cords and a lapsed memory were the evidences of a life still going on to perfection – not there, but going on to perfection – because Fred understood, not just in his head but in his heart that Jesus is not some god on a pedestal, but a human in the midst of life whose radical trust in and obedience to God is that which we are called to emulate.

And so when death came calling, Fred said, ‘Well, when I die today or tomorrow, at the service I want my picture up there, here are the people I want to do A, B and C, and son, Fred Jr., when you get on the plane in Seattle, say yes you’re coming to a party but it’s really your Dad’s death. That way they’ll give you a discount on the flight.’ The nurses were dumbfounded – ‘Just take the mask off. It’s time to die, and that’s OK.’ Because you see, it makes all the difference in the world how we see Jesus. That is to say, if he is our model – radical trust and obedience – in life, we know where that goes in death.

And so Fred exhibited what William Sloane Coffin said for us in our study just completed. Do you remember how he said, “The more we do God’s will, the less unfinished business we leave behind when we die. If our lives exemplify charity and the pursuit of social justice, then death will not be the enemy but rather the friendly angel leading us to the Holy One who longs to say to each one of us, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’”

Fred saw that reality in the very human Jesus and lived and died accordingly. Increasingly he came to believe, to live and to die, knowing that there’s no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey. As it was with Fred, so is it with the whole church. Many pundits have noted that in such a time as this – and it’s a tough time to be church, let’s don’t kid ourselves – many pundits have said that in such a time as this, a wilderness time, Jesus needs fewer worshipers and more followers; less elevated veneration and more down-and-dirty emulation.

Put bluntly, I am utterly convinced that the less human the church makes Jesus, the more the church fails to follow his example by giving away the self, whether the personal self or the institutional body in acts of love, mercy and justice.

Jesus didn’t pay it all. That’s nonsense. Jesus paved the way for us to do our part. Peacemaking...what would Jesus do? Follow him. Forgiving the enemy, welcoming the outsider, caring for the vulnerable, loving people – all kinds of people – and investing our resources to do so...what would Jesus do? Follow him.

To look Jesus in the eye, to examine the belly of his being and doing it not to navel-gaze but to follow, is to find our vocation, our voice for faithfulness. Thus, this informed declaration: Our Lenten study this year of who Jesus is, our hard wrestling with the many faces of Christology is not a mere academic exercise but a life and death issue, an intentional examination of who Jesus is for us and how we are guided by him as our liberator and savior, both as individuals and as the congregation here.

I am utterly convinced and am betting what’s left of my life on this: that the fully human Jesus models the kind of blessed trust and exemplifies the kind of radical obedience that sends demonic temptations of both the individual and the church scampering, thus transforming the desert of the arid wilderness of whining for presumed entitled privileges – oh, how we whine – into the lush wetness of a servant-style Fred-like discipleship, and converging the desolate wilderness of congregational hand-wringing regarding numbers and dollars into the fertile green oasis of such congregational vitality that the faithful will say, ‘We’ve never seen anything quite like this.’

May it be so, individually and corporately, in this Lenten season. The very human Jesus has pointed the way and he says, “Follow thou me.”