THE BEAUTY OF HIS MISSION
Today we approach a third aspect of what makes Christ so beautiful. We have covered his humanity and his wisdom. Today I want to focus on his deeds. As we all know, talk is easy, but action is hard. The gospels spend as much time telling us what Jesus did as they do telling us what he taught, since in many respects “actions speak louder than words.” As Jesus himself taught, our actions reveal our true heart, and this was especially true in his own life.
Have you ever read the gospels with this question in mind: Just what did Jesus think he was actually accomplishing? Did he think he was creating a better world by giving it some good advice in his teachings? Was he trying to be a role model for people to emulate? Or did he think he was alleviating mankind’s suffering by going around doing a few good deeds?
Obviously people have approached this question in different ways, but let’s start by simply observing how Jesus spent his time. He wasn’t a recluse or a hermit. Yes, he regularly withdrew for brief periods to pray (sometimes all night). And toward the end of his public ministry, he seems to have spent more and more time focusing on a small band of his closest disciples. But generally he was a very public figure who was constantly surrounded by large crowds. Matthew’s gospel summarizes it well:
Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, preaching the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd (Matthew 9:35-36).
Teaching, preaching, and healing seemed to consume most of his time in all four gospels. But we shouldn’t overlook that even with such a public ministry he somehow found time to be available to individuals. For example, when a huge crowd was following him into the city of Jericho, he still managed to hear a desperate, blind beggar calling for help from the margins. Or when surrounded by a huge crowd and a sick woman came up behind him to merely touch the edge of his robe, he sensed her presence and responded accordingly.
Such examples are seen throughout the gospels and demonstrate the value Jesus placed on every individual. His parable of the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep in order to seek the lost one captures this very well. But not only did he value each individual, he always dealt with them as a whole person—physically, mentally, emotionally, and spiritually. He understood that human beings are multidimensional, and so he was just as attentive to people’s physical needs as their emotional and spiritual states. This is why the gospels dedicate so much space to how Jesus went around healing, feeding, comforting, and listening to people.
And yet, as we noted last week, he also understood very clearly that our spiritual center is really the controlling dynamic that shapes our life, and that our physical and mental well-being begins with whether God is at the very center of who we are. As he sat on the edge of a well near an outcast Samaritan woman, he put it to her this way: “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst.”
Or after miraculously feeding a large crowd, he tried to make them understand that physical food can only address a limited physical need, and that human existence requires so much more—the very life of God. And so he tells them: “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. …I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Because he understood this profound connection between a person’s spiritual core and their sense of well-being, he was able to diagnose with astonishing accuracy what a specific individual needed. And so, when a religiously pious and wealthy young man comes to Jesus and expresses an uncertainty about his spiritual state, Jesus doesn’t offer him some mystical remedy or religious activity. Rather, he makes a very concrete and practical suggestion. He puts his finger on what was really at the center of the young man’s struggle—his excessive attachment to his own personal wealth.
This pattern is repeated over and over in the gospels. With the confused Jesus was gentle and instructive, with the arrogant he could be confrontative, and with the complacent he would sometimes be uncomfortably shocking. And yet there was also a consistency about all his dealings. He didn’t treat the poor with condescension nor the rich with deference. He treated women as equals, children as valuable, lepers as approachable, and morally bankrupt people as redeemable human beings.
And especially noteworthy for the time and culture he was born into, Jesus treated non-Jews as equally worthy of God’s love as his own countrymen. For him all people were equally broken and in need of God’s forgiveness and renewal. Consequently, Jesus could be loyal to his friends and family, and yet still be willing to call them out when needed. And while he was always non-retaliatory toward his enemies, that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to expose their hypocrisy and evil when he saw it.
But of all the recorded deeds of Jesus, the most numerous (and yet the most difficult to believe for many people today) are his miracles. They virtually fill all four gospels and are sometimes so astonishing as to overshadow everything else. And because human history is filled with examples of famous people being ascribed exaggerated powers by their ardent followers, it’s easy for a reader today to assume that this is what is happening with Jesus. And with this assumption, of course, is the collateral belief that rational, educated, modern people are too smart to buy into all these miraculous events.
But the actual fact is that many such people do.
In fact, millions of rational, educated, modern people today fully embrace the historical reality of the miracles recorded in the New Testament. The list includes scientists, philosophers, academics, and people of every professional walk of life. So the bigger question is why do they find such stories to be true? And when I ask them, the answer usually lies not in the miracles themselves, but in how the miracles are such an essential part of the whole “Jesus reality” as portrayed in the gospels.
For example, as far back as the 18th century, people have been trying to separate the miracle stories from the “historical Jesus.” But in every case the resulting Jesus has proven to be merely the imaginary creation of the individual who’s doing the deconstruction. This is because if you remove the miracles, what is left is a mere phantom—a vaguely disembodied Jesus who loses all historical credibility. He’s not even “the great teacher” anymore, since many of his greatest teachings are thoroughly linked to specific miracles.
In part, the reason people struggle with the miraculous today is due to the very large dose of scientism and materialism we have all been inoculated with. The assumption has been pounded into our heads since childhood that we are locked within a material world that is completely controlled by a relentless cycle of cause and effect, an assumption that makes it extremely difficult for us to appreciate that there might be larger dimensions to reality. And yet even in spite of this inbred skepticism, the recent explosion of “spiritual but not religious” people bears witness to how untenable this assumption really is. For once someone awakens to the reality of God, then the whole materialist myth collapses. Suddenly reality has innumerable possibilities, including the miraculous.
In the end, it’s only within the context of the whole story of Jesus that we become aware of why the miracles are not only believable but just what you would expect from a person like Christ. Yes, they certainly astonish us, but they don’t have to offend our sense of what is possible. As Jesus told his own disciples, “With God all things are possible.”
But it’s also important to note how extremely careful Jesus was in not allowing belief in the miraculous to become a substitute for a genuine, healthy faith. He would heal someone, and then instruct them not to broadcast it about (a request that was often ignored). He understood the difference between a miraculous intervention of God and the merely sensational. He didn’t want the crowds to follow him in order to see a traveling “miracle show.” For him the miraculous was always meant to solicit faith in God’s grace and not something that would merely astonish people.
What is noteworthy in the gospels (and often overlooked) is that Jesus’ greatest “miracle” was how he could transform people’s lives. A prostitute, a religious ruler, a Samaritan woman, a hated tax collector—no one was outside Jesus’ ability to impact in a deeply transformative way. None of the crippling struggles that are common to us all—unbelief, obsession, shame, moral confusion, destructive habits of all kinds—nothing was outside his ability to heal.
And for myself, this ability of Christ to change people continues to have a profound effect on me. For I am just as broken and in need of healing as all these people who fill the gospels. Their stories are mine. Their doubts, fears, guilt, and pathos are mine too. These accounts are not meant to entertain us. They are signposts of who we are and what we can become if we allow Christ in.
Finally, and most importantly, in the midst of all the preaching, teaching, healing, and ministering that consumed the vast majority of Jesus’ time, there was always in the background some kind of “mission” that he was on, a mission that Jesus became increasingly specific and vocal about toward the end. In Matthew’s gospel, as he begins his final journey toward Jerusalem, on four occasions he describes his mission in these terms:
From that time on Jesus began to explain to his disciples that he must go to Jerusalem and suffer many things at the hands of the elders, chief priests and teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and on third day be raised to life.
In John’s gospel this mission is alluded to by the use of the word “hour.” On several occasions while teaching in the temple in Jerusalem, the authorities wanted to seize him but we are told they could not “because his hour had not yet come.” But when he journeys to Jerusalem for the last time, he announces: “The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified.”
In Luke’s gospel we have Jesus describing his ultimate mission in this way: “I have come to bring fire on the earth, and how I wish it were already kindled! But I have a baptism to undergo, and how distressed I am until it is completed!” And what was the central purpose of this mission? Quite simply, is was the conquest of sin and death through his atoning sacrifice. As he said to his disciples: “…the Son of Man did not come to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Although we do not have time in this sermon to explore this core mission with any kind of depth, let it be said for now that the death and resurrection of Christ are the central focus of all four gospels. 50% of John’s gospel, 40% of Mark, 28% of Matthew, and 25% of Luke cover just the last week of Jesus’ life. This was the consummation and goal of everything he taught and did, since his death and resurrection make possible the forgiveness of sins and renewal in the Holy Spirit. It is the central and most important theme to be found throughout scripture, the deepest insight we have into the very heart of God. As the apostle Paul writes: “God was in Christ, reconciling the world to himself…he who knew no sin became sin on our behalf, that we might become the righteousness of God in him.”
In short, Jesus came to die so that we might live. He took upon himself the consequences that our sins deserved. He was called to endure death so that he might conquer it once and for all, thereby saving all who trust in him from death. He knew this from the very beginning of his ministry, as did others such as John the Baptist, who at the very beginning proclaimed: “Behold the lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!”
But to have this mission and to accomplish it did not come easy. It required of Jesus the same kind of deep faith to which we are all called. And this is because Jesus was truly human, truly one of us. And nowhere is this seen as vividly than the events leading up to his death. Just prior to the last supper, as his enemies were circling ever closer, Jesus opened up to his disciples with a kind of vulnerability rarely seen before, as we read in John 12: “Now my soul is troubled, and what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? No, it was for this very reason I came to this hour.”
Here he begins to display two things at once—both a revulsion towards what lay ahead and yet a determination to see it through out of love and obedience to God. And what caused this struggle? Was it a fear of death? No, not at all. Many people throughout history have faced death squarely and bravely. No, what troubled Jesus so deeply was what the apostle Paul described in the passage I quoted above—“he who knew no sin became sin.” Although it’s impossible for any of us to fully enter into, by “becoming sin” Jesus suffered that very real separation from God that all sin produces, something the rest of know only too well. But it’s an experience Jesus had never known before.
There is a great mystery here, and we are entering holy ground, but we see this deep suffering of Jesus grow as the apostolic band traveled from the upper room to the garden of Gethsemane, as recorded in Matthew’s gospel:
Then Jesus went with his disciples to a place called Gethsemane, and he said to them, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” He took Peter and the two sons of Zebedee along with him, and he began to be sorrowful and troubled. Then he said to them, “My soul is overwhelmed with sorrow to the point of death. Stay here and keep watch with me.” (Matthew 26:36-38)
For the first time in the gospels that we know of, he reaches out to his closest friends for their support in prayer. The physical arrangement of this scene captures well how increasingly isolated and alone he was becoming. He leaves the larger group and takes three disciples. Then he leaves the three and walks ahead to a place by himself. Then we read: Going a little farther, he fell with his face to the ground and prayed, “My Father, if it is possible, may this cup be taken from me. Yet not as I will, but as you will.”
This moment captures so clearly what real faith looks like. These two opposing desires within Jesus are battling it out in the presence of God. Jesus doesn’t relish what lies ahead. He isn’t wanting to be separated from his Father, which is to experience hell itself. Even now—even at this late moment—he wants to know if it’s possible to take some other course. And yet, regardless of what happens, his most enduring desire is to do his Father’s will.
Soon Judas and a mob arrive to arrest him. He is dragged before the high priest, then Herod, and finally Pilate. Eventually he is beaten, flogged and sent off to be executed. They impale him on a wooden cross, while various groups stand around either mocking him or weeping for him. After about six hours he suddenly cries out: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?”
This was his darkest moment. Death was very near, and God seemed completely absent. Like all of us, his faith had nothing to hang on to except the one thing he knew to be true. His words are a quote from Psalm 22, which is a psalm composed by King David at a time of great desperation. Jesus seized upon these words because they captured where he was at. But he was also fully aware of how this psalm concludes. After his opening lament, David seizes upon the one sure thing he can hold on to when he says: “Yet you brought me out of the womb; you made me trust in you, even at my mother’s breast. From birth I was cast on you; from my mother’s womb you have been my God.”
Jesus knew, in spite of the present situation, that his Father could bring him through death, and so the last words of Christ recorded in the gospels are these: “It is finished! Father, into your hands I commit my spirit.” When he had said this, he breathed his last.
Jesus had a faith that could see beyond its own suffering and distinguish between those two realities we face every day—between our immediate experience and what we’ve learned over a lifetime regarding God’s faithfulness. It was a faith that could even see beyond the grave. And ultimately, it was a faith that saved us all.
This is the moment when the beauty of our Lord shines most brightly. And in that light we see God most clearly.
Thanks be to God.
Amen