"The Jesus We Want Or the Jesus We Need?"

When do you go to the mountains to get away from it all? This time of year to go skiing – our senior highs are in Durango this weekend skiing and enjoying the snow. In the summer we head for the mountains to escape the desert 100 plus degrees heat. Some of us have beautiful homes in the “high country” as we call it. The mountains of Arizona and Colorado are convenient places of retreat and relaxation.

This gospel story is about a couple of the disciples getting away from it all with Jesus up on a mountain. They’ve gone up on a prayer retreat. Sometimes we use prayer as an escape – do you remember the old song, “Sweet hour of prayer, sweet hour of prayer that takes me from a world of care.”?

But in this case getting away from it doesn’t happen. Some people can’t relax by sitting in a cabin in the mountains doing nothing, just “being.” For some, that’s concentrated work. Any of you identify with that description? I know a man who went off to a cabin near Payson to relax and get away but came home more up tight and stressed. He couldn’t bear to face the accumulation of repressed feelings that overwhelmed him when he stopped and did nothing. Sometimes, activity and busyness are a form of avoidance

a way to avoid thinking about all the things that may be unsettling in one’s life. This guy commented, “I got out there alone in the woods with no distractions, nobody out there but all that quietness, me and God. All the time in the world to think about all the things I usually avoid thinking about. I about went crazy. I came home, man.”

The disciples have gone up the mountain with Jesus to be alone and pray. If they think they, too, are going on a spiritual retreat to get away from it all they soon discover how wrong they are. On the mountain, in their prayer, with their eyes wide open they discover who Jesus really is. This mountain experience is a stunning moment of revelation for them. The veil is pulled back and they see the Messiah, and hear the voice of God, This is my son, listen to him.

Who is this Jesus? Who is this son of God? Valid questions. It’s a question on the minds of many people today, as it has been through the centuries.

The question was even on the mind of the Jesus’ contemporaries. His own disciples wondered aloud in Mark’s gospel, “Who is this that even the wind and sea obey him?”

In the last two thousand years people have sought Jesus in the ancient Biblical texts. This past week, one of the great Biblical scholars of the 20th century died, Dr. Bruce Metzger, a professor of Biblical languages who had tremendous influence on the many shifts and changes in the Bible. Dr. Paris, a colleague of Dr. Metzger’s at Princeton Seminary and I were musing this week. Dr. Metzger was such a humble person. Can you imagine “having your name in Bibles around the world?” The pew Bibles, the NRSV, were completed under Dr. Metzger’s leadership of a team of scholars.

With the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls and other ancient texts people have perceived that we truly have historical evidence of Jesus. In Biblical times Jesus was a very common name as it is now. There were probably dozens of Jesus’ sons of Josephs. It was important to pursue the historical Jesus.

The quest for the historical Jesus drove scholars for decades and centuries. The most well known name in this quest was probably Albert Schwitzer who observed that the Jesus described in the books about Jesus looks a lot like the authors of the books. “It’s like looking down into a deep well and seeing one’s own reflected image,” observed one scholar. The Jesus we get from our ponderings and ruminations is often the one we want before we started to ask, “Who is Jesus?”

More recently, about fifteen years ago, a new quest for Jesus in the scriptures surfaced under a group who called themselves, “The Jesus Seminar.” Culver Nelson, former pastor of the Church of the Beatitudes in Phoenix, a colleague, was one of the participants in that group. They asked the question, “Can we really know anything about Jesus?” They studied the scriptures and voted on what they perceived were the authentic words of Jesus, and even created a color code system of red, pink, and grey (which was discounted by other scholars) to denote which words of the New Testament were closest to the words of the real Jesus. The Jesus Seminar was subject to a lot of criticism but to their credit they put the question before us again, Who is Jesus?

In this lengthy historical quest there needs to be a distinction between the Jesus we want and the Jesus we need.

We want Jesus to be a source of comfort, solace, and support. I recall the old hymn sung as a child, “What a friend we have in Jesus, all our grief’s and pains to bear….”

We also want Jesus to be the source of wisdom and helpful teachings. We memorize portions of the Sermon on the Mount, the Lord’s Prayer; we study his parables for helpful insights into the nature of the relationship between God and humanity.

We want to believe that Jesus is truly divine and truly human, but many of us have deep doubts about that historic subject. I remember a ninth grader in a confirmation class years ago asking, “If Jesus was truly God in human life was God dead for two days between Good Friday and Easter morning?” She wasn’t just being smart–alecky but was genuinely pondering her question.

In seeking to know Jesus we tend to want approval, affirmation, and consolation on our terms. What we need in Jesus is quite different.

We need forgiveness, reconciliation, transformation, and redemption on God’s terms. We need to be pulled out of our comfort zone with sin. We live in times of whole bookstore sections on self–help, values clarification, and over coming addictions.

We are like the prodigal son who has wandered into a far country, and think, “How can I find my way home?”

If we are part of the “fall” of humanity in the story in Genesis are we fallen forever?

Are we doomed to alienation from God and one another forever?

When we make a terrible mistake of judgment are we cemented in that error eternally?

Is there any way to start over fresh, at the beginning? Is there a Jesus who is what we need?

Is he strong enough, resourceful enough, great enough for our need? As God says on the mountain, “This is my son, listen to him.” Hear what he has to say.

This morning we’re on the mountain. This is where the confrontation begins between the Jesus we want and the Jesus we need. Jesus is dramatically transfigured before our eyes. The cloud, the dazzling white garments are all biblical symbols of a transcendent moment. For a moment the veil is pulled back and the disciples see the glory of Jesus.

“This is my son, listen to him,” says the voice. Moses and Elijah, great historic figures of the faith, are transcended by this Jesus, God’s own son.

Are we ready to listen? As we’ve have moved through Luke’s gospel stories the last few Sunday’s it brings us to the doorstep of Lent. In Lent we will come face to face with the reality that:

• Jesus is more than a philosopher
• Jesus is more than a great moral example.
• Jesus is more than an inspired teacher.
• Jesus is more than our best friend.
• Jesus will descend the glory of the mountain to the degradation of the valley. Indeed, to the cross.

And in the next forty days on this journey from the top of the mountain to the cross we will encounter
  opposition,
      betrayal,
          resistance,
              cruelty,
                  denial,
                      lies,
                          violence and death.

In so many ways as we encounter Jesus in Lent we will see ourselves… sinners in the eyes of God, always – with the grace of God –
  forgiven,
      reconciled,
          redeemed,
              transformed,
and perhaps we will be able to join hands with one another in lives of deep gratitude to God. For as symbolized so dramatically in the cross behind me in the contrast between the tough, gnarly iron wood and the polished wood near the top of the cross, “In Christ the old is made new.” We will see not only who Jesus is – God’s very own son – but also who we are – forgiven disciples who are to listen to him. Amen.

I have relied heavily for this sermon on fine work by William H. Willimon in Pulpit Resource, February 2007.