Sunday, August 27, 2023
Spirit of Hope Lutheran Church, Lincoln, NE
Thirteenth Sunday after Pentecost (narrative lectionary)
watch this service online (reading starts around 20:53; children’s sermon starts around 23:44; sermon starts around 38:14)
Readings: John 1:1-18, 1 Corinthians 1:18-25
Today’s sermon I prefaced with a children’s message in which we went on a little field trip around the sanctuary, looking at the worship space from different seats and talking about how worship might be different for someone sitting in a different spot from us. From that, we got into talking about the importance of being able to put ourselves in other peoples’ shoes and see things from their perspective, and how we do this out of love for one another. And we talked about how God coming to earth as Jesus was a massive act of God choosing to come down and walk in our shoes, to look at things from our perspective, all because of how much God loves us — and we talked about how, through that, Jesus works to reconcile humanity with God.
Today, we’re continuing on our journey through the three parts of the Apostles’ Creed. There are a number of differences between the Apostles’ Creed and the Nicene Creed – aside from the time it takes to say each one. These differences are most noticeable in the middle section of the creed, which we’re diving into today. There’s a lot of language in the Nicene Creed that isn’t included in the Apostles’ Creed – and almost all of it has to do with how the church understands the nature of Jesus Christ.
The Apostle’s Creed just says, “I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord,” and calls it a day.
The Nicene Creed, as you probably recall, has a little bit more to say on the matter. The Nicene adds on that Jesus is:
“eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God!
Light from Light!
true God from true God!
begotten, not made!
of one Being with the Father –
through him all things were made!”
If this seems a bit like overkill to you, well, you’re not wrong. See, what had happened was that in the early centuries of the church, there were all these really heated debates about how to understand the nature of Jesus Christ – was he a god? was he a human? what’s the deal? A lot of this language in the Nicene Creed came out of an argument at the Council of Nicaea, where a bunch of church leaders gathered to hash out some of these theological questions. At Nicaea, the big, hot button issue was about whether Jesus was really fully divine, fully God – or if he was created by God, and therefore, not actually God.
Judging by the creed, I think you can probably guess which side won. 😜
And reading a passage like this one we heard today from John, you can see clearly that this notion that Jesus is fully God is strongly supported in scripture. You can even kind of tell how they were influenced by John’s language. John writes:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God… All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth… It is the only Son, himself God… who has made [the Father] known.”
John 1:1-3, 14, 18
Kinda hard to argue with that!
Anyway, as interesting as all that is – and important for understanding part of our history as the church – this actually isn’t the Christological controversy I wanted to talk to you about today. The controversy I came here to talk about today was a contentious battle that went on across multiple centuries. It drew in theologians of all stripes, priests and teachers and bishops – it even called on wisdom from physicians and philosophers! It all centered around one fundamental question, a question that really cut straight to the heart of things. And that question was:
Did Jesus poop?
Haha, I know you all think I’m joking, but I am actually quite serious about this. This is a real thing that real, grown-up people argued about for hundreds of years!
And the reason why actually has a lot to do with this argument that happened at the Council of Nicaea, over whether Jesus really is God. Because the thing is, if Jesus really is God, he’s supposed to be perfect – unblemished, divine, the spotless Lamb of God. In the ancient Jewish worldview, touching poop with any part of your body didn’t just make you physically unclean, it also made you ritually unclean – it left you needing to make yourself right again before God. And the idea that Jesus would need some kind of redemption or purification was a nonstarter for the early church.
You can imagine the kind of contorted theological positions people had to bend themselves into in order to make this make sense. Like: Oh, Jesus never actually ate, he was just fed on, like, pure divine energy. Or, okay, maybe he did eat, but his body was, like, more perfect than ours, so it just absorbed all the food until there was nothing left. Or – my favorite – a second century Christian teacher named Valentinus wrote that Jesus “was continent, enduring all things… he ate and drank in a special way without excreting…” Heh, I mentioned that last one to Jason (office admin) earlier this week, and he responded with, “Wow. No wonder Jesus died at 33.” 😆
But as silly as this debate might sound, it actually does get at something very important – and that is the true, full humanity of Jesus Christ. Because if Jesus didn’t actually eat, or if his “human” body was so radically different from ours that it just didn’t need one of our most vital biological functions, then that means that Jesus wasn’t actually human. That means that Jesus didn’t actually enter fully into our experience as humans – it means he still kept himself at a safe distance from our lived reality.
But that is not the Jesus we know. And it’s not the Jesus we encounter in scripture. The Jesus we know is at the table rubbing elbows with sinners and tax collectors. He’s the guy making *gallons* of wine at a wedding! He’s the one handing bread to his followers, saying, “Eat this – this is my body, given for you.” Jesus didn’t shy away from the messiness that comes with being human. He came right down into the midst of our brokenness and muck to meet us exactly where we are.
And the fact that he occasionally had to *ahem* take care of business just underscores how completely Jesus threw all in with humanity. He took us as we are – however flawed, however lost, however broken. And living as a human, Jesus had to endure much, much worse things than the potential defilement of pooping. While he was loved by his followers and respected as a teacher, Christ was hated by religious authorities, who constantly worked to undermine him. He was rejected by his own home community, betrayed by his closest friends, arrested, tortured, and finally executed in the most brutal and horrific way imaginable.
And the real kicker is – Christ didn’t *have* to do any of that. I mean, he was God! Surely he had the power to opt out at any time he wanted. He didn’t have to endure suffering; he didn’t have to be scorned and humiliated; he didn’t have to poop! He chose to live into the fullness of what it means to be human. He chose to walk alongside us, even into the valleys of our deepest shadows. And when he was faced with our anger and our violence, he chose not to resist – he chose to respond not with power or violence of his own, but with grace and forgiveness and love, right up to the very end.
Paul calls this the “foolishness of the cross.” It is foolishness that shames the wisdom of the world, because it contradicts the world’s wisdom in every way. Jesus is God made flesh, with all the almighty powers of the creator; and yet we continually see him emptying himself, selflessly serving other people, pouring himself out for others – even accepting death at the hands of the very people he came to save. Jesus’ every choice and action is motivated and guided by love. By the world’s calculations, this is a strategy that would most likely land on the scale somewhere between weak and naïve and just flat out insane.
But in the end, what looked like weakness actually turns out to be unimaginable strength. Because, three days after humanity thought it had solved its Jesus problem for good, he rises from the dead. Jesus rises from the dead and proves once and for all that it doesn’t matter what we throw at him – we can (and did) do our absolute worst – and it will simply never be a match for the love of God. Not even death stands a chance. Jesus lives as proof that there is absolutely nothing in all of creation that is stronger than God’s love.
This is the God in whom we profess our belief every time we say the creeds. We believe in an almighty God who chose to take on flesh and to become truly human, who even went so far as to die for us. We believe in a God whose ultimate superpower is love – and that love is the rule by which we are also called to live. We believe in a God whose love is unconditional and unending – a God who loves us enough to put up with all our crap.
Literally. 💩
This is the Day 
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