Rather than appreciating the full-orbed biblical
portrait of Jesus as Christ, Lord, God-in-the-flesh, Savior and
King, we American Christians seem to want a Jesus who’ll help us
make a better life for ourselves. We tend to see Jesus as a
good-buddy kind of God who’s there to help us out of a tough time
– a spare-tire kind of Jesus. We want Him to fix the broken pieces
of our lives when things go wrong, to ignore the brokenness of our
souls, and to give us His blessing as we chase after our
self-centered dreams and desires. There’s no need for repentance
if that’s all Jesus is.
There’s an old song that goes, I don’t care if
it rains or freezes, long as I got my plastic Jesus. . . Now
we won’t be singing that song at Mt. Olive any time soon. But it
does remind us of how easily we can come to look at Jesus as some
kind of good-luck charm. If we aren’t careful, we can forget that
He’s our only Savior from the triple threat of sin and death and
hell. Subtly, gradually, incrementally, we can come to view Jesus
as a talisman, whose chief purpose is to bring good fortune our
way.
But the biblical Jesus is not a
lucky-rabbit’s-foot-kind-of-Savior. There’s nothing plastic about
Him. He’s a flesh and blood Savior. You can’t manipulate Him.
You can’t bend Him to your will. You can’t talk Him into giving
you something He has no intention of giving, or doing something He
doesn’t want to do. You can only worship Him as Lord, Savior and
King, approaching Him on His terms and not your own.
The first chapter of St. John’s Gospel flashes in
our faces the facts about who Jesus is. According to John, Jesus
is the Word who was present with God in the beginning and who is
indeed Himself God. He is the One through whom all things were
made. He is the life and light of men. He became flesh and dwelt
among us as true man, taking to Himself a human nature like our
own. He is the only Son of the Father, full of grace and
truth. He is the One who has made God the Father known to
a sinful human race dwelling in darkness and unbelief.
But there’s more. John the Baptist identifies
Jesus as the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.
He is the Son of God, John says about Him, the One
whose way I came to prepare. He must increase, but I must
decrease, John says.
Once he baptizes Jesus, John does decrease – quite
literally, when Herod has his head cut off. The point is, John
steps aside in deference to Jesus. He tells his disciples that
they must follow Jesus now. John’s work was done. He’d prepared
the way. He’d pointed to Jesus as the true object of faith.
Behold, the Lamb of God, John says.
And so John’s disciples follow Jesus. And
following Him, they tell others about Him too. Andrew tells Simon
Peter, We have found the Messiah (that is, the
Christ), and brings Simon to Jesus. The next day
Jesus finds Philip and calls Philip to follow Him. Philip
promptly goes and finds Nathanael and tells him, We have
found the One Moses wrote about in the Law, and about whom the
prophets also wrote – Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.
When Philip says that Moses and the prophets wrote about
Jesus, he’s saying he’s convinced that Jesus is the Savior the Old
Testament Scriptures prophesied would come. You’ve got to meet
this Jesus, Philip tells Nathanael. In Him, God’s finally acting
to save His people from their bondage to sin and death.
Nathanael’s response to this may come across as a
shade sarcastic, to say the least. Can anything good come
out of Nazareth? But behind those sarcastic words, there
could well have lurked a knowledge of what the Old Testament
prophesied about the Christ. He was to come from Bethlehem, the
prophets said. Micah wrote some seven centuries before the fact:
And you, O Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, are by no means
least among the tribes of Judah, for from you shall come a ruler
who shall shepherd My people Israel. Nathanael apparently
knew that the Scriptures promised the Christ was to be born in
Bethlehem. So what was this nonsense about Him coming from
Nazareth?
Notice that Philip didn’t argue with Nathanael. He
simply said, Come and see. It’s like the Samaritan
woman Jesus met at the well in the village of Sychar, who told her
townspeople after she’d met Jesus, Come see a Man who told
me everything I ever did. That’s the simple invitation of
the Gospel. That’s what the Holy Spirit accomplishes through the
Church’s preaching and teaching. Come and see. Come and see
Jesus.
So Nathanael came with Philip and he saw. Jesus
greeted him as a true Israelite in whom there was nothing
false. Hearing this, Nathanael recalled how he’d smirked
when he heard that Jesus was from Nazareth. How do you know
me? he asked. And Jesus answered,
Before Philip called you I saw you while you were
sitting under the fig tree.
Not only did Nathanael see Jesus. Jesus saw
Nathanael. Jesus saw Nathanael’s skepticism. He saw his hope
that the Messiah would soon be revealed. He saw his fears, his
sins, his struggles. Jesus knows what’s inside a person’s heart,
Scripture says. He knows what’s in your heart and my heart. The
sin, the lusts, the jealousies, the spite and anger, the struggle
we all face to die to these things and live to God as we were
called to do in our Baptism. Jesus sees. And He knows. And He
loves us despite all that junk.
The things in our heart that would forever
disqualify us from being loved by other people, if they could see
the filth and murk festering in us, don’t disqualify us from the
love of Jesus. He died for us, to take our sins away. He gladly
went to the Cross, to suffer and die and be raised again so we
could be made a new creation in Him. He is the Lord our
Righteousness. Our Father in heaven counts us righteous for
Jesus’ sake. Indeed, Jesus is the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the whole world.
Jesus saw Nathanael under the fig tree and knew
him. And at Philip’s urging Nathanael saw Jesus and knew Him
too. Nathanael came to know Jesus and confessed that He was
the Son of God and the King of Israel.
Who is Jesus? Some of the answers we’ve heard
already. He is God. He is the Word made flesh. He is the Life
and Light of the world. He is the Lamb of God who takes away the
sin of the world. He is Son of God. And He is King.
Pretty exalted titles, aren’t they? Titles you
couldn’t rightly apply to anyone else. They’re properly applied to
Jesus, however. Think about those titles. Roll them around on
your tongue and in your mind. Jesus is the Son of God according
to His Divine Nature. According to His human ancestry from David,
Jesus is a King, high and lifted up. He was lifted up on the
Cross to draw all people to Himself as the suffering, dying
Savior. By His Cross He lifts us sinners up too. He lifts us up
in order to forgive us and save us and reconcile us to God. He
lifts us up that we might be justified and adopted as the beloved
children of His Father in heaven, by grace, through faith. Jesus
lifts us up to a new status and a new hope and a new life and a
new, eternal future of bliss and heavenly joy.
Louis the XIV of France was known as the Sun King
(spelled S-U-N) due to His pomp and power and majesty. Jesus,
however, is uniquely the Son-King (spelled S-O-N), who came
not to be served but to serve and give His life as a ransom
for you. You don’t scrape and grovel and grind yourself in the
dirt before Him, like you would before Louis XIV. This King loves
you. He cares for you. He has compassion on you. He died for
you to take your sins away. In Him you are forgiven. You have
access to the Father through faith in His Name. Heaven is open
and the angels of God ascend and descend upon Jesus, to show that
He’s the way to the Father.
He is Son of God. And He is King. And He is
present for you in Word and Sacrament to take your sins away
through the Gospel of forgiveness. He is among you, dear flock,
as One who serves you with forgiveness, life and salvation through
the washing of water with the Word, through the proclamation of
His peace, and through the gift of His Body and Blood in the bread
and wine of the Sacrament.
There’s nothing casual about any of this. It’s the
Church’s meat and potatoes, the Church’s staff of life. It’s your
staff of life – that Jesus, the Son-King, is present for you in
Word and Sacrament to claim you and keep you as His own dear
possession.
It’s been said that evangelism is one hungry beggar
telling another where food’s available. That’s what Andrew did
for his brother Simon. That’s what Philip did for his friend
Nathanael. That’s what pastors do when they preach Christ and Him
crucified. That’s what you do when you tell someone about Jesus,
when you invite them to come to the Divine Service with you, to
“come and see” Jesus as He’s present among us, and for us, in
Water, Word, and Bread and Wine.
The Church doesn’t evangelize in order to get more
people in to pay the bills. The Church evangelizes in order to
bring people to Jesus. In Jesus we have been forgiven all our
sins. We tell others where that forgiveness is found. In Jesus
we’ve been fed with the Bread of Life. We tell others where that
Bread of Life is found. That’s why we’re here – because of
Jesus. That’s why we study and learn God’s Word in order to know
Him more fully – because of Jesus. That’s why we tell others and
invite them to the Divine Service – because of Jesus. That’s why
we do all the day-to-day work that goes into keeping this
congregation going, why we give our tithes and offerings, why we
sacrifice our time, why we dedicate our talents to the service of
the Lord – because of Jesus.
So we don’t take Him casually. How can you take a
King casually? How can you take a Savior casually? How can you
take someone who loves you enough to die for you casually? How
can you take casually someone who gives you forgiveness and
eternal life? So we receive His gifts, and gladly hear His Word
every chance we can, and live each day in baptismal repentance and
faith precisely because we don’t take Jesus casually. For He is
God’s Son. He is our Savior. He is our King. And what He has to
give us – the forgiveness of all our sins; rescue from, death,
condemnation, and the devil; and a future and a hope beside which
everything else pales into insignificance – is exactly what we
need. These things Jesus gives are the most precious gifts of all.
In Nomine Patris. . .
