Divine or Human? - Communion sermon Sept 20, 2015

“Divine or Human?”

Rev. Alison Longstaff, Sept 20, 2015

Bath Church of the New Jerusalem

Psalm 8; Matthew 16:13-17; Doctrine of the Lord 29 

 I am going to say a big word.  Brace yourself.

“Christology.”

 

We learned lots of big words in seminary.  Christology was one of them. All of those big words annoyed me at first, because I felt left behind whenever someone used one.  If didn’t know the meaning, I felt stupid.  I didn’t want to have to ask, and honestly, in that first year there were so many new words, I got tired of asking what they all meant again and again and again.

Hold on. Here it comes again: “Christology.”

 

Big words are invented for a reason.  They don’t exist just to make some people appear super educated in relation to everybody else, though sometimes it may seem that way.  Big words sum up a complex concept under one name. 

For example, instead of saying, “That flower that represents love and has thorns and sometimes has a long stem,” when we want to talk about one of those things, we just say, “Rose.”

 

So “Christology” is a fancy word that just means “how we understand who Jesus Christ was.”  Was Jesus more Divine or more human?  Was Jesus more Human or more Divine?  This debate has existed since the very beginning of Christianity—yes, all the way back to the disciples.  This debate is summed up under the word “Christology” and the two apparently opposing perspectives are called, “High Christology” and “Low Christology.”  Both perspectives have good aspects and not-so-good aspects.  Listen up.

High Christology likes Jesus to be as Divine as possible.  It puts distance between Jesus and the human condition.  Baby Jesus smiles with eternal wisdom from the manger.  Teenager and adult Jesus moves serenely and calmly through his already-wise life.  High Christology art has Jesus looking mildly uncomfortable in Gethsemane and a bit unhappy on the cross.  In movies, Jesus is played with almost no emotional expression. In one movie, his hair didn’t even move when the wind blew. 

High Christology shows up in the Vertical beam of the cross. The Vertical beam represents the Divine in relationship with humankind.  God is “up there” and we are “down here.” High Christology architecture has lofty pulpits from which the preacher looks down upon the people.  The churches tend to be linear in architecture with straight-backed pews and straight lines.  The buildings are straight and narrow.  There is often high ritual, with incense and statuary, pomp and circumstance—illustrating the exalted status of God as our Divine ruler.  After all, how else does one venerate the King of heaven?  How does one approach the royal court?  What does one wear?  How does one behave?  Disapproving stares teach children and fellow church worshipers to keep themselves in order, because “heaven forbid” one should be poorly dressed or wiggle or cough when the Great King passes by.

 

While the reformation pared down the fancy dress, pageantry, and gilded accessories of High Christology worship in favor of simplicity, nevertheless it still kept God on high and humanity down low. “Worm” theology appears during this time period.  Rather than emphasizing the Glory of God, worm theology focuses on the sinfulness of humans. We are “worms,” therefore sinners, filth, excrement, and nothing but evil in relationship with God.  A lot of shame and guilt and “fear of the fires of hell” enter the discourse at this point.  Corrective doctrine, extreme reverence, and purity of life become the path to salvation.  Striving for perfection in the face of our human depravity become the stark black and white focus of this perspective.  It is so important to be in right relationship with God that service to the neighbor becomes almost irrelevant. It is in there somewhere, but it is not a big focus.

Very few churches are this extreme.  Most have a blend of High and Low Christology.  Do you have any sense of where you would be most comfortable?

The things that I treasure about High Christology is the respect and reverence for all things Holy.  I love the vaulted ceilings and soaring stained glass windows of the ancient cathedrals.  I love how the very movements of the bodies in the high ritual communicate respect and reverence for the Creator.  I love listening to Gregorian chant in a dim and cavernous cathedral. I love the way a great organ work vibrates right through my body as though the earth itself was moved to praise God.

 

High Christology produced some of humankind’s most remarkable buildings. That grandeur—that imposition of the sacred on our senses was born from a focus on the Divinity of God.  Where would we be without our great cathedrals, or even the sacred peacefulness evoked by this graceful and airy space?

A down-side to high Christology is that Jesus can be kept so Divine that his temptations become an intellectual exercise.  Feelings are too human for this most perfect man.  He was born from the Divine, walked around already Divine and went back to the Divine.  This sets up Jesus’s human experience as something other than what we experience, which misses the most fundamental significance of his incarnation. If we push Jesus too high up, there really is no “God with Us.” We must watch out for this pushing away of God. When we hold God far away, religion stays as an intellectual exercise—rather like doing jigsaw puzzles—satisfying in some way, but having little effect on how we live.

Low Christology sees Jesus as right down at our level. With low Christology Jesus is someone just like us, who laughed and cried, was confused sometimes, sweated, bled, and even needed the latrine. In low Christology paintings, Jesus looks like he is suffering.  In the movies he has human feelings and does human things.  He smiles, dances, laughs, and plays with the children. His hair moves in the wind.  And during the whippings and torture and crucifixion, he bleeds and he cries out in pain. Mel Gibson’s “The Messiah” is so very low in its Christology the viewer is wading in the blood and gore. The Divine purpose was so far removed from the story that the resurrection was the merest whiff of an afterthought—it is barely acknowledged.

  

Low Christology is shown by the horizontal beam of the cross.  That beam symbolizes the human plane and human interconnection—“we are all in this together.”  Where the vertical beam represents our relationship with the Divine, the horizontal beam is our call to live in good relationship with each other.  That beam represents Creation, in all its messiness and imperfection and beauty. Low Christology architecture tends to be circular and communal.  If there is a pulpit at all, it is lower or right down at ground level with the people. The circular arrangement of the pews allows worshipers to see each other’s faces as they worship together. 

In Low Christology Jesus is seen as our friend.  He is right down here in the muck with us, and completely understands what we go through in this life.  Low Christology Christianity doesn’t care so much what someone wears to church.  It tends to emphasize social justice and service to our fellow human beings.  There is a strong sense of connection to Jesus as he walked among us—with an emphasis to do as he did and live as he lived.  There is no need to hold God at arm’s length or to feel unworthy or to worry about our sinfulness.  That is not where the energy and attention go.  It goes toward service to the neighbor and toward connection and community as the Body of Christ.  It is not about whether people feel “worthy or unworthy” in relationship to God.  Helping each other is the purpose.

I treasure the warmth and, well, the humanity of low Christology.  I almost never see disapproving stares.  Having spent so much of my life in a very high Christology, the relaxed and kindly lack of perfectionism has been a refreshing and healing corrective for an overly worried and “uptight” spirit.  I love the focus on service and the easing up on the constant self-flagellation and soul-bleaching efforts that was part and parcel (for me!) of feeling forever not good enough, as a result of the long-term effects of my high Christology childhood.

A down-side to low Christology is that Jesus can become so human that we lose any sense of his power to make a difference in our lives (save).  He is so “down here with us” that He is in the same sinking boat with us, unable to calm the wind and waves.  We can make Jesus “just another human,” which loses the most fundamental aspect of this ancient story.  If there was no miraculous birth nor resurrection, he was just a really good guy, but no more special than any other great prophet.  We can become so comfortable with Jesus, that he ceases to be able to perform miracles in our lives, because we have no sense of his Divinity.

The main reason to learn about Christology is that how we understand God affects how God can come into our lives.  Any recovering addict can tell you the powerful effect of asking God into one’s life. No matter what name or face you give that Higher Power, that Love awaits your simple invitation.  God will sweep you off your feet, or move you gently along a quiet river of transformation, according to your need, but you must ask.  God will wait forever for you to ask. A simple, “Yes please,” will invite that extraordinary power down into your ordinary life.

The two beams of the Cross: the vertical beam—Divine, and the horizontal beam—Human.  Only where these two meet do we have that potent point of intersection—when the Divine breaks into our human experience.  That powerful moment, that “Big Bang,” is where it all happens.  It happens every single time we invite God into our imperfect lives.  But if Jesus is too Divine, we won’t let Him near.  If Jesus is too mortal, we don’t believe he has the power to save.

The Divine/Human tension shows up even in the two creation stories.  In Genesis 1, God thinks, things happen, and God is pleased.  It is a sort of remote-control creation—very tidy. Male and females are created in one “poof”.  God thinks, and we are, and it is very good. 

In the second creation story, found in Genesis 2, God is down in the muck, shaping things with the Divine hands.  (Notice, the Divine has hands.) God tries things out, tips his head, and then makes improvements.  It is a process, and it evolves. Humans are shaped from the dust (and perhaps some Divine spittle) and called “AdAM” (dust) because he was made from the “AdaMAH” (dust of the earth).  But the Man is “lonely.” (Did the Divine make a mistake?) So God throws together a solution on the spot.  God creates a woman from a spare piece of the man and fixes things.

Which of these stories would you say aligns with high Christology and which with low Christology?  It is a pretty big difference, and most people are not even aware that there are two creation stories.  And yet the tension between the different ways we understand God is right there, at the beginning of the Bible—one might say, “From our very creation.”

These two general perspectives, these two ways of seeing the Divine, are not meant to oppose each other.  Like the left and right sides of the body, we need both all the time and we function best when they are balanced and working as one.  Like maleness and femaleness, High and Low Christology can often seem to be completely different animals, and it is only from the point of their union that the Divine can burst on the scene with transformation and new life.

The Divine IS Human.  The Human IS Divine.  When we invite God into our run-of-the-mill lives day after day after day, our very ordinary lives increasingly sing of something Divine.  When we allow God’s transformative love to crack us open, we become increasingly ready to say, “Yes please!” again and again to the Divine, drawing closer with each encounter.

As we celebrate the Holy Supper following the sermon, I encourage you to invite the Divine into your life, however you might understand that.  Each one of us that comes to this table understands the symbolism differently.  Whether you believe the elements are truly the body and blood of Christ, purely symbolic, or some version of a blend of those, you are welcome at the table.  You are not just welcome, God waits, God asks, God desires to come into your life through the bread and the wine.  However you understand it, the Holy Communion is an enactment of the Divine entering into its beloved Creation. It enacts the Infinite touching the finite, with all the impossibility of that.  As you feel the bread and wine change your body, know that God desires to change your life for the miraculous, that you might be blessed.

Welcome to Christology.

The Readings

Psalm 8

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

You have set your glory in the heavens.
Through the praise of children and infants you have established a stronghold against your enemies, to silence the foe and the avenger.
When I consider your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars,
    which you have set in place, what is humankind that you are mindful of them, or human beings that you care for them?

You have made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor.
You made them rulers over the works of your hands; you put everything under their feet:
all flocks and herds, and the animals of the wild, the birds in the sky, and the fish in the sea,
    all that swim the paths of the seas.

Lord, our Lord, how majestic is your name in all the earth!

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 has revealed it.”  

The Doctrine of the Lord #29

a.       The Lord from before time, sometimes called Jehovah, took on a human body to reconnect with the human race and turn us back to goodness. 

b.      The Lord turned that human body into something Divine because He was Divine.

c.       The Divine became human by taking on human mortal temptations through that body.

d.      He then completed the uniting of the Divine with that Human by the last and fiercest temptation which was the passion of the cross. 

e.       Step by step, through his life on earth Jesus transcended the merely physical/animal aspect of human nature, and this way united his human body with the Divine within Him. This is the Divine Human, and this is what we call the Son of God. 

f.       This is how God became fully Human, from the most initial elements, all the way down to this very flesh and blood existence.