Jesus: Fully Human and Fully Divine

Luke 9:28-33

Transfiguration

February 7, 2016

James and John and Peter, three of Jesus closest

friends and disciples go up to a mountaintop to pray.

It’s probably something they’ve all done before many times.

They probably thought this would end up like any of those other times.

But this time is different.

This time, Jesus starts glowing a brilliant, bright light.

And Moses and Elijah are there with them.

It’s a miraculous moment.

Really earth-shattering for the

three disciples watching this.

Because this is proof to the three of them that Jesus really is God.

Now they have been following Jesus for a while.

This mountaintop transfiguration

 is half-way through the story of Jesus.

Face of Jesus
Church of the Transfiguration, Orleans, MA 2002

They have already left everything and followed Jesus,

they knew that he was extraordinary for sure.

They loved his teaching, he had a charisma,

he was doing wonderful things with people

he seemed to be able to heal and cast out demons

and do other amazing things.

So they knew he was special.

But they also had been traveling with Jesus for

quite a while, and you really get to know someone’s

humanity when you travel with them, don’t you?

So the humanity of Jesus they knew.

But the whole Son of God and Messiah thing,

might not have been so obvious to them.

 Remember, the narrative of the miraculous birth of Jesus

with Mary and Gabriel and Joseph and Zachariah

and Simeon in the temple and all those other things

were not something that the disciples would have heard.

Up until this point, Jesus still might have seemed

like any other extraordinary religious leader or prophet.

But then there was this moment.

Now they knew that Jesus was divine too.

And this moment is important for the disciples.

They know that Jesus was God come to earth to live with us.

This question about the nature of Jesus:

is he human or is he God?

It’s kind of the original theological argument for Christians,

Many theological questions have come out of it.

The arguments over the Nicene creed

the long creed that we read together on festivals,

were about Jesus divinity vs. humanity.

The Athanasius creed  – the very long creed we don’t read –

was about Jesus’ humanity and divinity.

And all the greatest hits of heresies:

Docetism, Gnosticism, Ebonism, Adoptionism,

Arianism, Nestorianism, Appolloinarianism

were heresies that denied

or manipulated the idea that Jesus was

fully human and fully divine.

This field of study that is concerned with

the nature and person of Jesus is called Christology.

Now, you might say that Christology and  

all this kind of stuff is boring or irrelevant.

And you still might think it’s boring after I’m finished with my sermon,

but I think that theological ideas like this

are very important to the way we

live and believe and do ministry together in the church.

Remembering that Jesus was human

might have been easy for Peter and the disciples

that lived with him, but sometimes the church now

forgets that Jesus was human.

That he had all the same functions as other humans.

We have wanted to put him on a throne away from

everyone and everything and forget about his humanity.

But if we forget that Jesus was human,

we forget that he walked the earth,

that he suffered the same as us,

More importantly, we forget that God

loved us so much that God became human for us

to be with us, to understand us, to reach us.

So it’s important to see the human side of Jesus.

On the other hand, many people believe that Jesus

was special, but they deny that he was God.

This is not just for skeptics and atheists either.

The people of the church sometimes

don’t believe that Jesus was God.

But if we forget the divinity of Jesus,

then Jesus just becomes another teacher,

just another prophet, just another great guy.

And again, we lose the wonderful truth

that Jesus was God come to earth.

We also forget that when we follow Jesus,

we are following God, and we depend on God’s power and God’s will.

When we just follow the great teacher, the all human Jesus,

then the power is only in our hands,

it’s in our will and in our ability, not God’s.

So when Peter and James and John saw Jesus glowing

on that mountain top, it wasn’t just about a miraculous

event for those three guys up there.

It was a revelation about Jesus  and God

for them and for all of us.

It was about the future of the whole church and it’s ministry.

Because Christology doesn’t just stop at the nature

and person of Jesus,

it also leads us to understand the nature and make up

of the Body of Christ–the Church,

the mystical body that is formed

when you and me and all other Christians get together

and worship and learn and do ministry together.

What we understand about Jesus, we also understand about the Church.

Just like Jesus, the Church is both human and divine.

When we have forgotten about our humanity as a church,

we have forgotten that the church is fallible.

We have forgotten that the church can make mistakes.

We have forgotten that we need to change and correct ourselves.

When we remember our humanity,

we remember where we belong:  with God’s people.

We know that the Church can’t stay in gilded palaces

and sterile and safe church buildings

only thinking about high, lofty, and holy stuff.

We know that as the body of Christ,

we belong with the ones that Jesus chose to share his ministry with:

the poor, the blind, the imprisoned, the oppressed.

But the Church has also forgotten about its divinity.

When we do that,

we can become merely a service agency or a social club.

we only depended on hard evidence and planning

instead of depending on faith and God’s power.

We have forgotten that we are tied together and motivated

by something larger and stronger

 than human action and determination.

When we forget about the divinity of the church,

we sell ourselves short of God’s vision and plans.

And when we remember that the church is also divine,

we know that anything is possible with God.

We are part of God’s plan and power.

Peter and James and John and the rest

took a while to realize that Jesus was not just

another human.

But once Peter saw Jesus divinity revealed,

glowing up on that mountain top,,

he decided that he wanted to stay there.

He offers to make three dwelling places, temples.

Places to protect Jesus divinity and keep it holy

up there on the top of the mountain

and not be bothered, or touched,

to be safe from the riff raff below.

But even after the revelation on that mountain,

After the voice of God boomed, and told them

“this is my son, the chosen. Listen to him."

  

The divine, body of Jesus

the incarnation of the one true God,

still warm from his glowing episode

on the mountain top,

walked back down that mountain

to deal with a boy being thrashed

in the dirt by convulsions.

From the human to the divine to the human in

just a few short minutes.

This Epiphany, we open our eyes to who Jesus is.

Jesus of Nazareth, the son of the carpenter,

and the son of God: the prophet, the instigator,

the one who makes the party, the bridge builder,

When we see through the eyes of faith,

we know that Jesus is more than that,

he is the Alpha and the Omega,

the beginning and the end.

Fully human and fully divine.

God come to earth.

And when we see who Jesus really is,

we see who we really are:

Children of the living God,

tied to one another  by God’s Spirit

one body of Christ.