Putting the Pieces Together

Texts: Isaiah 6:1-8; Romans 8:12-17; John 3:1-17 At the time of preparing this sermon on Friday I was conscious of the fact that in Christchurch the jury was out in the Bain re-trial; and it occurred to me that the task facing them was very similar to the task facing the Church in its infancy.  The jury had a mass of pieces of evidence before it, and their task was to try to arrange those pieces of evidence into a complete coherent picture, so that in the end they could confidently speak with one voice: guilty or not guilty.  The task facing the Church was also to arrive at a unanimous view on the central question it faced: given all the extraordinary evidence about the life, death, resurrection and ascension of Jesus of Nazareth, followed by the coming of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost, who do we say Jesus was and is? And if I were a judge summing up to a jury charged with answering that question, I would say something along these lines.  "Members of the jury, the time has come for you to have your say, to make your determination on this question.  You might feel overwhelmed by all the evidence you have heard, much of it straining credibility in terms of your everyday human experience.  You have heard about sight being restored to the blind, and hearing to the deaf.  You have heard about the paralytic getting up off their beds and walking again – in fact, leaping and dancing with joy.  You have heard about the demonically possessed being set free, or (if you prefer) the psychiatrically disordered restored to full mental health. You have heard about vast crowds being fed from a handful of food.  You have heard about storms being quelled, the wind ceasing and huge waves calming down instantly in response to a word of command...  You have heard about teaching that has blown the minds of those who heard it. "Above all, members of the jury, you have heard that this man, this Jesus of Nazareth, was put to death in full view of the public one Friday afternoon, taken down from the cross on which he was crucified, and placed in a tomb that was then sealed.  Yet, say the many, many witnesses who have testified before you, that tomb was found to be empty on the following Sunday, and that man was found to be alive again.  Furthermore, you have heard it said to you that eye-witnesses saw that man ascend into heaven some weeks after his death, but even that, so it has been said to you, wasn't the end of the matter; for 10 days later another extraordinary event, again apparently observed by many people, is said to have taken place in Jerusalem.  You were told that the close followers of this Jesus of Nazareth were together in one place, when their leaders, all Galileans, started speaking in all sorts of languages they could not possibly know. "So much for the eye-witness accounts that have been brought before you, and which you must consider carefully and make what sense of them you can.  But you have also heard from certain experts of a religious nature.  Their evidence is of a different nature; we might call it interpretative.  They have offered their wisdom on how we might understand and interpret the extraordinary events to which those eye-witnesses have testified.  Some you might think have, in laymen's terms, an axe to grind; either they are committed to what I might call the Jesus movement and are trying to persuade you of an interpretation of the facts that supports that case, or they are vehemently opposed to the claims and objects of that movement and have tried to discount that case. "Thus, in respect of the so-called resurrection – perhaps the centre-piece of the Church's argument and certainly the most startling of its claims – the opposing side claims that the body was removed from the grave, either by supporters of Jesus to bolster their case for the resurrection, or by simple grave-robbers hoping to make a bit of money out of selling it to a medical institution or something.  It is for you, members of the jury, to assess the strength of those arguments, but I will draw your attention to one fact on which you may feel some certainty.  As I understand this particular part of the case, it is accepted by both sides that the tomb was empty. "A second major point of contention concerns what has been dubbed in the media, I understand, the Pentecost palaver.  Again, let me remind you that there is much common ground between the two sides.  Clearly, some sort of public brouhaha erupted on that occasion.  You will recall that this great city of Jerusalem, at the times of the great feasts and festivals of the Jewish faith, attracts worshippers from all parts of the world.  They come to worship the one and only God, but they bring with them their own languages and understandings.  On this Day of Pentecost this is precisely what had happened; the city was full of people of many different ethnicities, nationalities and languages. "And according to many witnesses who have told you their story, there was a sudden and deafening noise in the area of a building in which many of Jesus' followers were gathered; and following that noise, the leaders of that assembly were heard preaching their faith in many different languages.  Or so says the Church.  Others, who agree that something strange took place, insist that the leaders were drunk, and were in fact babbling nonsense.  That, members of the jury, is again a matter for you to decide. "So what assistance can I give to you to help you in your most difficult task?  At the risk of over-simplification, I want to suggest to you that the real question before you comes to this: was Jesus of Nazareth, as his critics claim, only a human being, or was he (is he), as the Church claims, God?  That is a startling question, but it necessarily arises if you accept that the sort of evidence that has been brought before you in this case is, in the broad sense, true.  That, I say again, is for you to determine. "But let me say this: do not concern yourself with each detail of every instance mentioned in the vast amount of evidence that has been put forward.  You may feel that the better approach is to take a few specific cases and weigh the evidence relating to those instances.  Take the case of the man born blind: are you satisfied by the evidence before you that he was born blind, and that many years later his sight was restored by this man called Jesus?  What about the feeding of the five thousand?  Or the story of Jesus walking on the Lake and calming the storm?  Of course, you may decide that these and other specific cases are concocted nonsense, in which case you will find against the Church.  But if you find yourself convinced beyond a reasonable doubt you may then wish to ask yourself, drawing on your own human experience and commonsense, could any ordinary human being have done those things, or must he be something more than a mere human being?  And when you have done that exercise, you may think you should approach the issue of the resurrection in a similar way.  Are the accounts credible, and if they are, what does that tell you about the identity of the one who was not in the tomb on that Sunday morning? "Members of the jury, the opposition says there is only one God; and that to claim that Jesus of Nazareth is God means that there are now two Gods.  That is a powerful argument, and if it cannot be answered then the Church's claim is fatally flawed.  But the Church says it has an answer; a complicated, mind-numbing answer it calls, in shorthand, the doctrine of the Trinity.  It says that the one God that we all worship and recognise is a Community of Three Persons, whom it calls the Father, Son and Holy Spirit.  It says that the Father is the one whom Jesus called "Abba"; that Jesus himself is the Son; and the Holy Spirit is the one who caused such a commotion at Pentecost. "It is an ingenious explanation, and one that is not without its critics.  All I want to do as I finish this summing-up is to remind you of this.  The central question for you is this: is Jesus divine or not?  If he is not, then you can safely throw out this whole idea of the Trinity and get on with your life.  But if you are convinced that Jesus is divine, then you may feel that this mysterious doctrine, or something very like it, is essential to explain how that can be. "The question is now for you to decide.  May God bless you and guide you in your deliberations, this day and always.  Amen."