Hebrews 1: 1-4, 2: 5-12

Who is this Jesus?

Rev. Elizabeth Macaulay

October 8, 2006

Do you sometimes go along in life, tending your own challenging tasks, and then suddenly, you let the world in and WHAM you are aware of a huge issue that troubles your heart in a way that will not let go?

Here’s the thing that has me these days.

Who is this Jesus?

Who is this Jesus we gather to learn about and pray with and live in the way of?

And what has this Jesus to do with the movement, Christianity, that bears his name?

I have to tell you that as a woman ordained in the church of Jesus Christ, I sometimes wonder who the Jesus is I hear spoken of in the media.

Jesus has become a sort of window dressing for an ideology that I think would break his heart.

Our program and ministry coordinator, Linda Delph, is worshipping at a new worship service in South Minneapolis. She was telling us one day of a video clip shown at one of the first worship services. The clip was this:

A camera and interviewer were in the parking lot of Cub Foods, over on Nicollet. And they were interviewing people coming and going for their groceries.

The question they asked was this:

What about this thing called Christianity? What is your response to Christians?

They got many answers, most of them negative.

The one that struck my gut the most was the shortest.

The interviewer asked: when you think of Christians, what is your response?

The answer:

YUCK.

I spent Tuesday afternoon across the street from the Xcel Energy Center. Inside the Energy Center Dr. James Dobson was whipping up fear in order to get people to vote. He used Muslims to instill fear. He used gays and their supposed affront to the institution of marriage and family to whip up fear.

And most heartbreakingly to me, he used the name of the movement of Jesus - Christianity - to wrap all that fear mongering in.

Somehow it has become ok to use the name of Jesus to vilify others.

Somehow it has become ok to use the name of Jesus to create a cocoon of safe and warm against the threat of “others” who shake our sense of certainty.

I was asked to speak at the rally across the street from the Excel Center.

I was honored to be asked. Because I feel so strongly that this Jesus we seek to follow spoke and lived and lives yet in our midst in order that we might live the way of grace and compassion, not fear.

Who is this Jesus?

The book of Hebrews opens with one of the most lyrical tellings I have encountered.

Jesus is the hum of wisdom, present with God from the beginning of time.

Jesus is the inheritor of all that is God’s, the clearest flesh shaped sign of the character of God we have been blessed with. He is “the reflection of God’s glory ad the exact imprint of God’s very being.”

Jesus is the ongoing insistence upon justice taught throughout scripture and Jesus is the prophet of inclusion lived throughout his ministry and Jesus is not an American ----- unless he is also an Israeli and an Iraqi and a Saudi and an illegal immigrant and all of the other “others” we want to cast as enemies.

Listen. Jesus did not come into the world to teach us how to become rich and safe.

Jesus came into the world to teach us to open our hearts to the presence and needs of others IN ORDER that we might live God’s Shalom.

Jesus came into the world to teach us to open our hearts to the aches within ourselves.

Jesus came into the world to teach us the greatest commandment of them all: to love one another as we would love ourselves.

And loving one another does not mean demonizing others. Loving one another does not mean sowing fear of others in order to keep our privilege.

I am co-chairing an event unfolding Thursday night of this week at Hennepin Ave United Methodist Church. It is an event called “Voices United”. The conference seeks to end what we have called the “profanity of hate”.

The conference was born from the conviction that for too long churches have practiced tolerance, in some cases, and outright censure, in others, of persons who are gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered. A portion of our population - some would put that portion at 10% - has been pushed away from community because of who they love.

And that same portion of people - created by God in the image of God - has been told that if they insist on this way of being - as if they can choose their orientation - they ought keep their loving to themselves.

Have you ever been in love? Can you imagine what it would be like to be censured for holding your beloved’s hand or wanting to be present with them openly?

This is what the church has silently asked for so long.

The conference being held, at which one of our Bishops is preaching and to which our own Bishop will attend, will ask those pushed away from the church - GLBT persons of faith - to learn to trust the thing called Christianity as the movement seeking to live as compassionate and inclusive followers of Jesus.

And the conference will ask people of faith who are straight to be aware of the pain and the squandered resource of those who are “other” in the way of orientation. How can we open our doors so that the community grounded in the teachings of Jesus is open to all?

Because that is who this Jesus is. A prophet who called us to follow him in ministry - to the least, the last, the left out, the lonely…. And the powerful.

We are Jesus people when we sit at table with the community of the world and know it to be our own.

I end with the testimony of one of my sisters in Christ. Kate Warn is one of the women I have come to love through the Women Touched by Grace program - the three plus year gift I have had of going to learn and pray with thirty clergy women from across the US and Canada.

Kate is the Sr. Pastor of a big steeple church in Lancaster, PA. She, along with the rest of us, has been devastated by the school shootings that happened in the Amish community near her church.

I want to read her recent letter to the Women Touched by Grace community. Because this good woman of such grit and conviction and love reminds us of what it means to be the inclusive people of Jesus.

“Dear Sisters,

I’ve just come from helping lead a downtown service of prayer as the people of Lancaster continue to deal with the school shootings earlier this week. There is a palpable sense of grief and distress in the air here…even as people go on with their lives. Lancaster county really is unique in its sense of identity and community, and we have seen the county come together in the best of ways in recent days.

The local press and the local police have been wonderful in dealing with the events and the news in respectful and sensitive ways, and the witness given by the Amish community, pastors throughout the county and churches in general has been a source of light in the darkness. I have been especially struck once again by, and grateful for, the gift of community (in the church in particular) - how people come together to grieve and pray and hold each other in the midst of incredible, inexplicable tragedy.

The witness of outreach and concern both for the Amish community and the family of Charles Roberts (the shooter) has been remarkable and grace-filled. The Amish community is reaching out to Robert’s wife and children and proclaiming forgiveness and reconciliation, even as I read editorials and judgmental profound cements from other sources that continue to question and assault the Amish culture and their faith stance.

I am reminded once again of the privilege and responsibility we have as pastors to lead in times and context like this, and grateful to share that with all of you! Please add the people of Lancaster to your prayers, that the county might build bonds and bridges across cultural divides, and become a stronger, more peaceful community.”

Who is this Jesus we follow?

The expanse of our hearts will be the answer.

Amen