June 18, 2006 Sermon

Did the Church Invent Jesus?
Acts 5:27-32

The Yellow Pages have helpful guidewords at the top corner of each page. They tell you at a glance what part of the alphabetized list of businesses you can find on that page: “Duct Work-Electric”, for example, or “Gutters-Handyman”. Page 536 of the new edition of the Yellow Pages has this notation: “Trusses-Urgent.” When I first saw that I wondered where I could look up Unurgent trusses. Is there such a thing? Wouldn’t a person who needed a truss always feel an urgent desire to get one?

Turns out, of course, that the Yellow Pages refer to trusses used to support roofs, not hernias. Which leads me to a B.C. cartoon Bill Scott recently shared. A character looking at a picture book says, “Wow! What a beautiful cathedral!” His friend replies, “Yeah. Why do you suppose they used so many arches and cantilevers?”

The first guy answers, “Because ‘In God they trussed’.”

On what have you built your faith in God? What holds it up? Have you built your faith in God on the solid foundation of a relationship with Jesus as very God of very God, the Son of God fully divine? Build on Jesus, our God.

This is the last sermon in the series inspired by questions raised in the Da Vinci Code. But it turns out all these questions are just variations on one question: Who is Jesus of Nazareth? Is He God? Or did the Roman Catholic Church invent his “godness”? Dan Brown, author of the Da Vinci Code, makes excellent use of an ancient conspiracy theory. The theory goes like this: Jesus was a charismatic Jew. He taught great truths with great courage. He inspired people to drop everything else in their lives in order to follow Him. The Jews and Romans feared his growing political power and executed Him. End of story.

Except Jesus’ story did not end at the cross. The Book of Acts makes it clear that His followers were under terrible pressure to stop talking about Him. They faced whippings, imprisonment, possibly even crucifixions of their own. Yet they would not stop talking about Him as God.

We entered a story line in the Book of Acts in the middle. Jesus has died on the cross and risen from the dead. He has spent a few weeks with his followers then reunited with God. But before leaving he has commanded them to preach his message of love, repentance and forgiveness. Peter and the others have done just that, openly and courageously. They have landed in prison for their troubles. The Jewish high priest and his political supporters, enraged at what they consider lying about God, have arrested these impudent loudmouths. If the cross could not shut up all this talk about Jesus as the Messiah, maybe throwing all his preachers into jail will do the trick.

But God springs the preachers from jail. “Go,” God’s angel tells Peter, “stand in the temple and tell the people the whole message about this life.” The next morning the high priest sends for the prisoners. The temple police report the prisoners have escaped. Somebody runs in and announces they have gone back to the temple—the high priest’s home court—and resumed preaching Jesus. The high priest cannot ignore this slap in his face, but he fears the crowds who gather to hear about Jesus of Nazareth and his supposed coming back from the dead. So he sends a contingent to bring the preachers to him quietly, without violence.

We joined the story here. Peter and his fellow followers of Jesus stand before the high priest and the Jewish council. Their interrogators make their case. They had forbidden the preachers to preach about Jesus as the Messiah. Jerusalem had just quieted down after the dangerous days surrounding his execution. But the preachers kept preaching. Now the mobs have gotten excited again. Their Roman masters, who hate fear disorder, will enforce “peace”. But their methods of enforcement will be anything but peaceful. Nobody wants the military solution—least of all the high priest, who will lose his privileged position, and maybe his life.

But Peter and the apostles answer, “We must obey God rather than any human authority.” They add a summary of their beliefs, including Jesus’ resurrection and their calling to preach forgiveness of sins for those who follow Him. This is where we stopped reading, but the story continues for another ten verses. Though some Council members want to kill the preachers before things get even more out of hand, a wise elder prevents them. Peter and the others get off with “only” a flogging and deportation to the countryside. But back to Jerusalem they come. And back to preaching Jesus they go.

Why in the world would Peter keep preaching Jesus if he did not really believe in Him as God on earth? The preachers had every reason to shut up. Their lives were on the line. But that is precisely the point. Their lives—and the lives of all people—were on the line. They had followed Jesus. They had seen him perform miracles. They had listened to him preach. They had watched him perform acts of mercy for all sorts of people. They had watched him die and seen him after he came back to life. They believed he was the Messiah, God on earth leading believers to salvation. From their point of view the question was not, “Why preach about Jesus?” but, “How can we not preach about Jesus?”

Conspiracy theories abound. John F. Kennedy was killed by men acting on behalf of Lyndon Johnson. Ronald Reagan secretly arranged with the Iranian mullahs not to release the American hostages they held at our embassy until after he had defeated President Carter in the 1980 election. Author Dan Brown based his Da Vinci Code on the old conspiracy theory that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, had children and died. But this theory has a fundamental problem. In order for a conspiracy to form, there must be a reward for its creators. Vice President Johnson wanted to be president so badly, the theory goes, he hired a hit man to kill the president. Ditto for Reagan, that theory goes, except he made a deal with the devils in Iran in order to “win” office.

But what possible reward could Peter and the preachers get for defying the religious authorities? What was in it for them? Death. Death at the hands of the Jewish mobs who longed to stone them, or death at the hands of the Romans who would nail them to crosses of their own? Peter died, in fact, on a cross. Either he was one of the most deluded conspirators of all time, or he preached Jesus for exactly the reason he stated in front of the Jewish Council: because he believed in Him as the Son of God who takes away the sins of the world.

Which do you think it was? Did Peter preach Jesus as part of some grand conspiracy, or did he preach Jesus because he believed? What do you believe?

The Apostles did not invent Jesus. They did not invent his divinity, his “godness”. They had no reason to take the risk of preaching such a story. Nor did the Church, in later years, invent this story (as the Da Vinci Code would have it). The story goes back well before there was any profit in it. Men and women died to tell it. Now we have heard it. What will we do about it?

Today people in Afghanistan and India risk their lives to become Christians. If they convert, radical Muslims and Hindus in their villages may burn their houses, steal their children to “protect” them from Christianity, or even murder them. What possible reason could these people have for taking such risks? They do it because the Holy Spirit of God lays it upon their hearts. They see Jesus as their risen savior.

Today people leave behind successful careers in business, medicine and construction to become ministers or missionaries in the name of Jesus. People volunteer to live in primitive conditions to bring healing to the impoverished third world in the name of Jesus. People speak out to bring justice to the oppressed in the name of Jesus. People have no reason to do any of these things except the Holy Spirit has laid it upon their hearts. They see Jesus as their risen savior and feel compelled to serve him.

Meanwhile what do we, for whom being a Christian is so easy, do to preach Jesus as our risen savior? The real story here is not the conspiracy theories behind the Da Vinci Code. The real story is Jesus as God. We need to get about the business of telling that story with more courage. We need a little more “Trusses-Urgent” in our lives. We need to build, build faith in Jesus in ourselves and in the world. Build on Jesus as God.