Tantalizing Titles

As you know, I spent four weeks of my recent sabbatical on the Appalachian Trail (the AT). Now some folks who hike the AT adopt trail names. Instead of using their real names, they’ll use adopted names on the trail. Like the fellow from New Jersey whose trail name was “Jersey;” except of course it sounded more like “Joysey.” Another fellow was “Bear Fodder.” Not the name that I would’ve chosen when hiking through bear country. The logic is that you’re encountering people whom you don’t know on the trail, and you don’t want to reveal too much of your identity to complete strangers.

I decided not to use a trail name. My strategy was to not use my name at all if I had any inkling that the person with whom I was talking was not trustworthy, and even when I did use my name I generally used only my first name. So I understand the logic of trail names.

Anyway, some folks seem to turn this trail name business into an end unto itself. For them, part of the fun of being on the AT is telling you their trail name and finding out yours. Like the fellow whom I met in Virginia. He was walking south, I was walking north, and almost the first thing out of his mouth was, “What’s your trail name?” And he was more than happy to tell me his; and his wife’s. Well, if that’s how some folks have fun on the AT I guess that’s okay, but I thought the point of the trail was to hike it, not to waste time coming up with witty names. However, the fellow told me about a hostel a few miles ahead where I could get pizza and pop and ice cream and a shower, so I didn’t begrudge him his preoccupation with trail names.

Some hikers get carried away with trail names. Just like sometimes the church gets carried away with the various names and tantalizing titles which have been applied to a Palestinian peasant named Jesus.

There is certainly no shortage of titles for Jesus in the New Testament: Son of Man, Son of God, Messiah, Christ, Lamb of God, Prince of Peace, Bread of Life, Light of the World, the Way. And sometimes the titles are helpful because they tell us something about the nature of Jesus or the message of Jesus or the ministry of Jesus. But some times titles can get in your way. When I have lunch on Tuesdays with our homeless neighbours, if I threw around a title like “the Rev. Mr. Ervin” I wouldn’t get anywhere with them. So I’m just Bruce, or at most Pastor Bruce. When I’m engaged in conversation with people, I want to let them know who I really am, and I want to find out who they really are. And sometimes titles can get in the way.

Let’s be clear: Jesus is the Messiah, which means the one whom God has chosen – or anointed – to a mission of leadership among God’s people. Jesus is the Christ, which is simply the Greek word for the Hebrew Messiah. Jesus is the Prince of Peace and the Bread of Life and the Way; and next week we’ll say more about how Jesus is the Way. When Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?,” Peter answers “You are the Messiah.” Through the use of that title we learn something about who Jesus is (see Matthew 16:16).

But these titles may tell us more about the insights of the early Church than they tell us about what Jesus actually said. A lot of biblical scholars think that Jesus did not use these titles himself. Rather, they reveal the early Church trying to understand who Jesus was, and then reading these titles back into the story of Jesus’ life.

Now why would some scholar claim this? Why not just take the Bible at its word and assume that if the Bible says that Jesus said something, then he must’ve said it? Well, in fact, the Bible itself gives us a clue that these titles reflect the language of someone other than Jesus. In the three synoptic gospels (Matthew, Mark and Luke), which are generally understood to be the more historical gospels, it’s usually not Jesus who’s saying that he’s the Son of God or the Messiah or whatever the title might be; it’s usually someone else who’s saying these things about Jesus. In today’s text, Peter says that Jesus is the Messiah. In the first chapter of Luke, it’s the angel who says that Jesus will be called “Son of God” (Luke 1:35). In Mark’s gospel, it’s Pilate who calls Jesus “the King of the Jews” (Mark 15:2). It’s in John’s gospel where we find Jesus himself saying, “I am the bread of life” (John 6:35) or “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12). But John is the last gospel to be written; at least 60 years after Jesus’ death and with few references to the documents that are the closest in time to the historical Jesus. There’s lots of room there for the early Church to develop its own interpretations about Jesus and put those interpretations into Jesus’ mouth. Lots of scholars agree that the older the source, the more likely it is to reflect what Jesus actually said. So we look especially to Mark, and to a lost document which stands behind Matthew and Luke, to make our best guess about who the historical Jesus was and what he said.

In fact, the title that Jesus used to describe himself is “Son of Man.” Jesus didn’t call himself “the Son of God;” when we see that title in the Bible it’s almost always someone else talking. Jesus called himself “the Son of Man,” or, “the Human One.” According to my count, the synoptics (again, that’s Matthew, Mark and Luke) use “Son of God” 36 times, and 28 of those references are others speaking about Jesus. But there are 71 times when Jesus refers to himself as the Son of Man.

Looking at all of these titles that Jesus probably never used makes me think of the sayings that have been attributed to the great New York Yankee catcher Yogi Berra. He’s the guy who supposedly said, “It ain’t over until it’s over.” Speaking of baseball he said, “90% of this game is mental; the other half is physical.” Yogi said a lot of interesting things. In fact, he once said, “Half the things I said, I never said.” Putting a pithy line in the mouth of a famous person is a time-honoured tradition. And the more famous the person is, the more likely we are to attribute something to him that he didn’t actually say; or she didn’t actually say. So if we’re going to attribute quotable quotes that he didn’t really say to Yogi Berra, how much more likely are we to attribute such quotes to Jesus?

Why is this important? It’s important because if we focus too much on the early church’s titles for Jesus, which point toward his divinity, we may lose sight of Jesus’ humanity. You see, in the final analysis, Jesus was not a god to be worshipped but a man to be followed. To be sure, God was “in Christ” (2 Corinthians 5:19), and we encounter God through Christ, but we must always remember that Jesus of Nazareth was a human being. The Word of God really did become flesh and dwell among us (John 1:14). Jesus was a human being. And he said, “Follow me.” And he said, “Be like me.” He said, “The works that I do, you will do too; in fact, you will do even greater works than I have done” (John 14:12). If we focus too much on the divinity of Jesus, we may lose sight of the humanity of Jesus. Jesus wasn’t God in human disguise, Jesus was the human face of God. Church tradition states very clearly that he was fully human. Which means that in many ways, Jesus was just like you and me. Or at least, he was just like what you and I can be. If we make Jesus too high and exalted – if we forget about his humanity and think of him only as the Son of God come down from heaven – then we can make his norms an impossible goal, and let ourselves off the hook. You know, we can say, “Jesus could live a life of such extraordinary love and courage and compassion because he was God, but I’m just a human being, so I won’t even try.” But Jesus was a human being too. He was the Son of Man; the Human One. When he said, “Follow me,” he meant just that: “Follow me, be like me. If I can do it, you can do it; ‘cause we’re both human. The power of God by which I can do extraordinary things is the same power by which you can do extraordinary things. Because that same power is at work within you” (see Philippians 2:13).

Now I must tell you: right after I typed that last paragraph on Saturday morning, I went into the kitchen to pour myself a cup of tea, and it was a wonderful synchronistic moment because there was Josh Grobin on the radio singing:

Your raise me up so I can stand on mountains,

Your raise me up to walk on stormy seas.

I am strong when I am on your shoulders,

You raise me up to more than I can be.

Now I don’t know who Josh thinks he’s singing about, but I think he’s singing about you and about me and about the power of God within us all. As God raised up Jesus, so God can raise you up to be all that you can be and more than you think you can be. As God raised up Jesus, so God can raise you up to be all that God made you to be.

That’s what Jesus came into this world to do: not to disempower you by placing before you impossible ideals and saying, “Na, na, na, na, na; I can do this but you can’t; because I am God and you’re not.” No, that’s not what Jesus was about. Jesus came into this world as a human being so that we might have abundant life, just like Jesus had. So that we might perform acts of extraordinary power according to the gifts that God has given us (see Romans 12:6-8). So that, like Jesus, we might do the things that we’re afraid to do and in so doing discover that we too are people of extraordinary courage.

You see, in the final analysis the Bible is not about adoration, it’s about transformation (Romans 12:2). I mean, it’s okay to praise Jesus as the Bread of Life or the Bread of Heaven, but what Jesus says back to us is, “That’s fine, bud, but what are you going to do about it? Are you just going to sit there and praise me, or are you going to eat that bread, and allow it to transform you, and then go out and transform the world?

Karl Barth said that the Bible is a very human book. This great theologian said that God can speak to us through this book, but the book itself is still very human, reflecting the history and the culture of the people who created it. And so it was that the early Christians who wrote the gospels created extraordinary titles to speak of an extraordinary man. But Marcus Borg suggests that if we told Jesus all of the tantalizing titles which have been created for him – Lamb of God and Bread of Heaven and the Word through whom everything was made – Jesus would say, “That’s supposed to be me? No, no; it’s not about me. It’s about God, and it’s about transformation. But if you all will follow me, let’s see what we can do together.” Amen.

Text: Matthew 16:16
Preached by Bruce D. Ervin
24 August 2008