Sermon for 4th Sunday of Easter. Christian Identity.

Deuteronomy 6: 1 - 9

These are the commands, decrees and laws the Lord your God directed me to teach you to observe in the land that you are crossing the Jordan to possess, 2 so that you, your children and their children after them may fear the Lord your God as long as you live by keeping all his decrees and commands that I give you, and so that you may enjoy long life. 3 Hear, Israel, and be careful to obey so that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly in a land flowing with milk and honey, just as the Lord, the God of your ancestors, promised you.

4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. 6 These commandments that I give you today are to be on your hearts. 7 Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. 8 Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. 9 Write them on the doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

John 10; 22 - 30

22Then came the Feast of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, 23and Jesus was in the temple area walking in Solomon's Colonnade. 24The Jews gathered around him, saying, "How long will you keep us in suspense? If you are the Christ, tell us plainly."

 25Jesus answered, "I did tell you, but you do not believe. The miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me, 26but you do not believe because you are not my sheep. 27My sheep listen to my voice; I know them, and they follow me. 28I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; no one can snatch them out of my hand. 29My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all; no one can snatch them out of my Father's hand. 30I and the Father are one."

Time and place can have symbolic significance, we heard John’s account of a confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish authorities that took place under the Portico of Solomon on the east side of the Temple in Jerusalem, on the Feast of Dedication.

That Portico was believed to be a part of the original Temple built by King Solomon, and as such was a marker of Jewish identity that stretched back centuries.

The Feast of Dedication celebrated the rededication of the Temple after the desecration by the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, about a 160 years before before the events John is recounting concerning Jesus. Antiochus Epiphanes attempted to maintain his rule by destroying Jewish identity. He attacked Jerusalem, and then instituted a horrific reign of terror, outlawing the very things that gave Jews their national and religious identity. He ruled that possessing a copy of the Old Testament was punishable by death, mothers who circumcised their children were crucified with their children hanging around their necks, the Temple was rededicated to Zeus, and used as a brothel, pigs where sacrificed on the great altar, and tens of thousands of Jews were killed or sold into slavery. A rebellion led by Judas Maccabeus ended the repression, and eventually led to a time of national independence, and to the rededication of the Temple.

This confrontation between Jesus and the Jewish authorities is in a place, and on a date, of great significance for Jewish identity.

It is demanded of Jesus, ‘if you are the Christ, tell us plainly."

They were hoping for a Messiah – a saviour, to permanently liberate them from foreign oppression, getting rid of the Syrians had just opened the door for the Romans. They wanted a new ' Judas Maccabeus', only this time a definitive one to set them free permanently.

Jesus at first just responds, ‘the miracles I do in my Father's name speak for me.'

Everything Jesus said and did spoke of his identity as the Messiah. The miracles, the teachings, his life story, everything thing he says and does in the four accounts we have of his ministry, like pieces of a mosaic, when put together form a picture of who he is. The testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and with them the early Church, is that Jesus is the Christ – the one anointed by God to bring salvation.

That’s why when we read of miracles in stories with other bible characters we do not conclude they too are divine – because it is not a systematic pattern in their lives.

If you believe in God, but not think God can perform miracles, I don't understand you.

If you accept the early Church, proclaimed Jesus as the Christ, and were even called Christians because of this, but then say you don't believe in the miracles that helped to convinced them, I don't understand you.

According to John, Jesus had been saying things that were leading people to believe he was the Messiah,

John 6: 38 “…for I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me..”

John 5: 39 “"You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.”

John 7: 28 & 29 “…I have not come on my own. But the one who sent me is true, and you do not know him. I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”."

And now, just to be absolutely clear, under the Portico of Solomon on the east side of the Temple in Jerusalem, on the Feast of Dedication. Jesus says, “‘I and the Father are one.”

In John’s Greek the phrase, ‘I and the Father are one’, does not mean one person, but it means one nature, or essence. Jesus and the Father are of one nature.

Our reading stops the narrative at this point, however the following three verses drive home the issue that is at stake here, the passage continues,

‘...the Jews picked up stones to stone him, but Jesus said to them, "I have shown you many great miracles from the Father. For which of these do you stone me?" "We are not stoning you for any of these," replied the Jews, "but for blasphemy, because you, a mere man, claim to be God."

No wonder that Jesus had avoided direct verbal assertions of his divine nature, to do so was blasphemy, the penalty for which was death.

The classic confession of Jewish faith is Deuteronomy 6:4

“Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God, the LORD is one! You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength.”

That the Lord is one was a rejection of the idea there were many gods. God is a unity, an eternal spirit, totally beyond humanity, invulnerable, all powerful, cosmic, abstract, ethereal, incorporeal, and certainly not the ‘son of a carpenter’.

Jews and Muslims at times criticise Christians for saying there are three gods, god the Father, god the Son, and god the Holy Spirit. That is to miss hear what we proclaim, we believe there is one God, who is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Three persons who are one in nature and being – as Jesus says, “I and the Father are one.” God is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each is God, but not the sum of God. If God is love, as the bible says, then how could God be anything other than a community of love? To love you need a beloved.

There’s even an indicator of that in the great commandment of Deuteronomy 6:4, the Hebrew word used for ‘one’ is ‘echad’ meaning a single entity made up of more than one part – that is unity in diversity. There is a Hebrew word that means ‘one’ as in ‘singularity’, and that is ‘yacheed’ – but Deuteronomy 6:4 does not use that.

The Jewish religious authorities had suspected Jesus was a blasphemer, what they suspected now became clear, that Jesus was not one of them – he did not seem to share their understanding of God. It must have seemed to them that Jesus was subverting their history and identity, and doing so under the Portico of Solomon, on the Feast of Dedication!

The New Testament and the early Church disagreed with this judgement, they proclaimed Jesus as a new revelation of the God of Abraham, Isaac and Moses. That which had been suggested about the divine nature of God in the Old Testament had now became apparent in Jesus. The Disciples saw in Jesus continuity with the Old Testament, the Pharisees saw in Jesus grievous discontinuity with the Old Testament.

I have heard it said by theologians and ministers that Jesus was not a Christian. By this they mean that Christianity came later, that Christianity is a matter of cultural identity that developed over centuries, and that Jesus was Jewish. I think this is said to promote peaceful interfaith relationships by smudging the boundaries of religions, so that Christians, Jews, and Muslims can have a common claim on Jesus as a prophet. You may even hear it said that Jesus did not claim to be God, that this was a later Christian development.

It is true that Jesus was Jewish, he went to the synagogue, he was circumcised, he sang Psalms, he was ethnically, geographically and historically Jewish. However, it is also true that Jesus spoke of God as Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he instructed his disciples to baptise in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, he initiated the Bread and Wine of Communion, he spoke of building His Church, and He understood Himself to be “one with the Father,” all things that the Jewish authorities could not accept. The only Jews who accepted these things were the disciples who became the early Church. There, under the Portico of Solomon, the realisation that Christian and Jewish identity was distinct became clear for many of those present. Including the Jewish writer of this account – the disciple John.

Our identity as Christians has a Jewish heritage, but Jesus was Christian – nothing makes sense if that is not true – a Christian is someone who follows the teachings of Christ – no one more than Christ followed the teachings of Christ – he totally embodied them – he was them! Nobody can be more Christian than Christ, nobody even comes remotely close.

To be even more challenging to contemporary sensibilities, follow the logic - if Jesus is a Christian – then so is God, because Jesus is the image of the invisible God – the Father and the Son are one. That does not mean Christians are better than Jews or Muslims, it means we must love our neighbour, our Jewish neighbour, our Muslim neighbour, our polytheistic neighbour, our atheist neighbour, our ‘can’t be bothered to think about it neighbour’ - that we must love them as radically and deeply as Christ loved us. Christians shouldn't throw stones at those who disagree with us.

Christianity is to be found primarily in the teachings of Jesus and the New Testament, not in the centuries of religious and cultural traditions that have grown out of the early Church, some of which have spoken faithfully of the good news of Jesus, and some of which have contradicted that good news. The Reformation reminded us that Christian identity must be consistent with the teaching of Jesus - we should make sure our identity is grounded and formed by the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and love the Lord our God with all our heart, with all our soul, and with all our strength, and love our neighbours as ourselves.

Amen.