Who Are You Talking About?

The Rev. Dr. Whitworth Ferguson III

Manassas Presbyterian Church

Manassas, Virginia

March 6, 2011

Who Are You Talking About?

Matthew 17:1-9

“We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ…

eternally begotten by the Father,…

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father.”

These words of the Nicene Creed,

the Creed we said as we began our service, sound reasonable:

“we believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,…

of one Being with the Father.”

The word “begotten” may sound a little dated and obscure,

but it also sounds so appropriately “biblical”,

so perfectly “Old Testament.”

We say the Nicene Creed two or three times each year,

one of the eleven statements of faith

we Presbyterians have in our Book of Confessions.

Followers of Jesus Christ have been saying these words

for almost 1700 years,

saying what we believe,

Christians of all different denominations –

Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox -

all of us sharing a common affirmation of faith,

sharing a common belief in God,

Jesus Christ,

and the Holy Spirit,

the triune God.

We say this Creed in the peaceful setting of our church,

but the Nicene Creed was born of controversy,

born more of fire and heat than of water and sunshine.

It was the culmination of more than 300 years of argument

that often resembled today’s bitter political debates

more than what we would expect as

prayerful discussions among the church elite

in contemplative cloistered settings.

For the better part of 300 years

there was violent disagreement

of just who Jesus Christ was.

Born of a woman,

rabbi, healer, preacher.

The human part was easy;

Jesus in the flesh and blood.

The difficulty arose in how to reconcile the “divine” part,

Son of God; Messiah, the Christ.

We take it on faith that Jesus was

“fully human and fully divine,”

as we say in our Brief Statement of Faith,

our most recent Confession.

But in those early centuries of Christianity,

there was little agreement on what that meant,

or how that worked:

someone who was both human and divine.

Was Jesus born human, only to become divine later?

That’s what some thought,

a logical transforming moment happening at his baptism,

as he stood in the waters of the Jordan,

the Holy Spirit descending on him

in the form of a dove,

the voice of God breaking through the clouds.

Others thought the transforming moment

came in the setting of our lesson,

the story of the Transfiguration,

Jesus high on a mountaintop with Peter, James, and John,

“and he was transfigured before them,

and his face shone like the sun,

and his clothes became dazzling white.”

Matthew and Mark both say Jesus was “transfigured”,

“metamorphosized” is the word we find in the original Greek.

Luke doesn’t use that word, however,

agreeing only that Jesus face shone and his clothes dazzled,

but saying nothing about Jesus being transfigured,

transformed or metamorphosized.

Debate raged throughout the first three centuries.

Some argued that Jesus had a body that was human,

but with a divine spirit in place of human mind;

human from the neck down,

divine from the chin up.

Others said the divine and the human

were always within Jesus

but that they were separate, rather like oil and water,

each there, yet each retaining its own nature.

Still others argued that the human and divine

were mixed more like water and wine,

blended in Christ right from birth,

right through death

both natures always there.

It was the Emperor Constantine who

early in the fourth century told leaders of the church

that it was time to end the arguments.

In the year 325 he called church leaders from throughout the Empire

to gather at the town of Nicaea

to put an end to the arguments and

come to some form of agreement.

Nicaea was what today we’d call a resort town,

about 50 miles southeast of Constantinople,

the capital of Constantine’s empire,

the city we know now as Istanbul in Turkey.

Nicaea sits on the edge of a small inland lake,

in what was probably a serene, lovely setting,

ideal for an argumentative group

to gather and thrash out their ideas.

The group came up with an initial draft of the Nicene Creed,

but it would be another 56 years

before another generation of church leaders

finalized the Nicene Creed as we now know it:

Jesus: fully human, fully divine.

Son of God, yet God himself;

God and Jesus of one substance.

“The Word of God became flesh

and lived among us.”

(John 1:1ff)

Lived among us fully human;

Lived among us fully human to reveal God to us:

the loving Father,

the tender, nurturing mother,

the merciful, forgiving, compassionate God,

so different from the smoldering God

we encounter in the earliest books of the Bible.

Jesus, the Son of God,

and yet God himself;

the one who sits at the “right hand of God the Father Almighty”

and at the same time the one who walks at our side

saying to us,

“take my yoke upon you and learn from me,

for I am gentle and humble in heart,

and you will find rest for your souls,

for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

(Matthew 11:29)

Peter, James, and John witnessed the transfiguration,

but even they didn’t truly understand who Jesus was.

Before we turn the pages from chapter 17 to chapter 18

we find Jesus rebuking his disciples for their “little faith.”

It’s such a powerful reminder of the humanity of the disciples,

that even those who walked with Jesus

struggled to understand who their teacher really was.

But now we say boldly:

“We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ…

eternally begotten by the Father,…

begotten, not made,

of one Being with the Father.”

Jesus Christ, fully human, fully divine.

And this Jesus Christ, our Lord

calls us to our own transfigurations,

our own metamorphoses.

Not some instantaneous change,

but a lifelong transfiguration,

a lifelong transformation

as we live out our faith each day

working to become more holy,

more perfect,

more Christ-like

even as we remain fully human.

We are called by our Lord

to be transformed,

“changed into the one we see,”

the one who stands before us.

                          

It is why we say the words of the Creeds,

why we read the words of the Bible,

why we sing hymns,

why we lift up words of prayer;

why we work at growing in faith,

everything we do helping us in our own transformations

helping us to shine, to glow

to radiate the love and grace given us

by God in Jesus Christ.

Theologian William Placher wrote,

“By uniting humanity with the divine,

Christ changes what it is to be human.”

For “we share humanity with the Son of God,”

who in turn calls us to strive for the holy, the godly,

yes, even the divine.

Our Lord calls us to this Table

as part of our Transformation,

as part of metamorphosis.

Each time we share in this meal at our Lord’s Table

we are fed in spirit,

strengthened and nurtured in faith,

leaving the Table a little more holy,

a little more Christ-like.

So come, come to this Table,

fully human, each of us,

and share in this meal our Lord has prepared.

Come with the assurance that

when you go from the Table,

you will be a little closer to the divine.

AMEN