[Propertalk] The Incomparable Christ - Proper 16 | Ordinary Time 21

[Joe Parrish]

http://www.sermonsuite.com/content.php?i=26097&key=yIdbw6zc4zuamgXp

(see above for beginning; below, in conclusion:)
Salvation Of The Whole Person
	
Another uniqueness of Jesus is his emphasis on the well--being of the whole person.
	
If I become a Muslim, my religion promises to make me right with Allah, god. But it offers me no relationship with myself or creation. Arabs raped Palestine ecologically, and their religious leaders make them into car bombs constantly.
	
If I become a pantheist, I get right with nature but ignore my relations with God and other people.
	
If I become a Hindu, through diet and meditation, I achieve a relationship with myself, but have nothing with God, people, or creation.
	
In Christ, however, I am promised a relationship that is based on love that intellectually, emotionally, and willfully includes God, self, neighbor, and creation. This is the exceeding breadth of the great commandment of Christ - to love God and my neighbor as myself. See in 1 Thessalonians 5:23 God's interest in the whole person: "May the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be kept sound and blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ."
	
No one cares for all that I am and for all my basic relationships like Jesus Christ!

Philosophical Epistemology
	Epistemology is the philosophy of knowing. It asks the question, "How do I know something is true?" And basically, it works out to four means:
 
	
1.	Experience: "I know fire burns because I touched it."
	
2.	Reason: "I know 2+2=4 because it is reasonable." 
	
3.	Authority: "I know man walked on the moon because NBC News told me so."
	
4.	Revelation: "I know there is a God because my conscience bears witness."

	
The interesting thing about world religions is that they all appeal to epistemological verification in at least one of these four areas and to varying levels of quality. Jesus Christ, however, can be verified in all four areas and to the highest levels of quality.
	
As James 3:17 teaches, "The wisdom from above (Christ) is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, open to reason...."
	
Consider:

	
1.	Experience: All varieties of people on every continent have experienced Jesus Christ for 2,000 years.
	
2.	Reason: Jesus and his Bible are the most scrutinized of all. There has been more debate, writing, thinking, and teaching about him than any other. Christian apologetics is well documented. And the most intelligent of history have believed in him - T. S. Eliot, Shakespeare, Rem--brandt, Handel, Tolstoy, C. S. Lewis, and the like. 
	
3.	Conscience, revelation: I read this word and I am strangely calmed. We keep coming back to him, rediscovering him. He's the man we cannot avoid, the one revealed from heaven. 
	
4.	Authority: Here there is the Bible, the church, Christian universities, families - human authority and beyond - all chorusing, "Jesus is truth!"

	
Oswald Spangler called Jesus "an incomparable figure." Ibsen said he is "the greatest rebel who ever lived." Will Durant called him "God's highest incarnation." Charles Lamb observed, "If all the illustrious men of history were gathered together and Shake--speare should enter their presence, they would arise to do him honor; but if Jesus Christ should come in they would all fall down and worship him."
	
It was Napoleon who wrote of Christ: "I know men, and I tell you, Jesus was more than a man. Comparison is impossible between him and any other being who ever lived because he was the Son of God."

Incarnation
	
The Bible says Jesus is "the word" that "became flesh and dwelt among us."
	
I asked a young Oriental student at the university why he had become a Christian. "I was in a deep pit," he testified. "I wanted out but was in too deep and was entirely too weak to climb out. Confucius looked in and said, 'You are in a deep pit. You should have been more careful. If you ever get out, come and see me and I will teach you wisdom.' Next Buddha looked in on me. He said, 'Quit struggling, my son. There is peace in the pit. Only meditate on my words.' Next Moses visited. He gave me ten rules and told me to build my life around them. There followed, then, the man Jesus Christ. He looked down into the pit, saw me and didn't say a word. He simply climbed down into the pit, embraced me and carried me out on his back. Now, every day he walks with me teaching me how to love like him."
	
Such is the incarnational love of Jesus. He comes among us, feeds us, heals us, numbers the hairs of our head, calls us by name, dies in our place, and bids us, "Cast all your cares upon me because I care about you."

His Miracles
	
Yet a final distinctive of Jesus Christ is his miracles.
	
What did he do? What didn't he do! He turned water into wine, healed the lame, the blind, and the deaf. Calmed a storm, multiplied a little food to feed 5,000, raised the dead, even resurrected himself from death!
	
Look at it this way. If you were walking down the road in life, and the road came to a fork and you didn't know which way to go, you'd ask directions. Let's say four people are there, three dead and one alive; who will you ask?
	
Buddha, Mohammed, and Moses are dead, but Jesus Christ is alive. He is unique among religious leaders of the world in that he alone has no tomb. He alone is alive, eternal, and reigning!

Conclusion
	Almost 2,000 years ago a man was born contrary to the laws of nature. This person lived in poverty, was reared in obscurity. Never did he travel extensively. Only one or twice did he cross the boundary of Israel. He possessed neither wealth nor influence. His family had little education. In infancy, he startled a monarch. In childhood, he puzzled scholars. In adulthood, he ruled nature walking upon the sea and hushing a storm.
	
He healed the multitudes of blind, lame, mute, possessed, and he did it without medicine and made no charge for his services. He never wrote anything down, and yet the libraries of the world bulge with the volumes written about him. He never wrote a song or painted a picture or molded clay and yet he has furnished the theme for more art than all others combined.
	
He never practiced medicine and yet he has healed more broken spirits and hearts than modern medicine far and near. He never started a university, yet all the colleges of the world cannot boast of having as many disciples.
	
He never commanded an army, fired a gun, drafted a soldier, or ran for political office. Yet no officer or king ever had more volunteers who have, under his orders, marched into every valley of human need to begin orphanages, schools, hospitals, to right wrongs, and institute justice.
	
Every Lord's Day, the wheels of commerce cease their churning and multitudes assemble in churches worldwide to worship him as Savior and Lord.
	
The names of athletes, senators, artists, emperors, and soldiers have come and gone; but the name of this person grows with time. Though nearly 2,000 years from his birth, yet he still lives! Herod could not kill him. Satan could not seduce him. Death could not obliterate him. The grave could not hold him.
	
He stands forth upon the earth as God Incarnate, the King of glory, Jesus Christ, Savior and Lord.
	
Proclaimed by prophets, heralded by angels, worshiped by saints, feared by devils, he asks, "Who do you say that I am?"

Stephen M. Crotts


 


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