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For worship planning ideas on Lord’s Days 11-13 , please link to our ministry partner at the Calvin Institute of Christian Worship and specifically to this page where you will find ideas for constructing a service around the theme of the identity of Jesus as Savior, Lord, and Christ: (posted on 10/17/2005)

Comments, Observations, and Questions to Consider

  • The term “Christ” seems to be the most misunderstood part of the larger way by which we refer to Jesus. Lots of people seem to think that “Jesus Christ” is similar to “John Smith” wherein “Christ” is Jesus’ last name or something. We forget sometimes that “Christ” is first of all a title. Saying "Christ Jesus" is like saying "President Bush" or "Justice Souter." "Christ" is a title meaning "anointed" and is the Greek version of the Hebrew "messiah." In the ancient world, to be anointed was what today we might describe as ordained, set aside for a specific task. An anointing was like an inauguration, a swearing in, or a commissioning in which someone is vested with a certain amount of authority to carry out some very specific assignments.
  • In the case of Jesus as God's anointed Christ, the traditional triple designation that goes along with this are the duties associated with the offices of prophet, priest, and king. All three of those offices were the ones that required an anointing in ancient Israel. But back then a given person was either a prophet or a priest or a king, but no one was ever all three. Similarly in our own governmental structure, no one person may be the president, a Supreme Court justice, and a senator all at the same time. But because Jesus is God's own Son, the Christian tradition claims that in Christ all three anointed offices combine perfectly.
  • And so Jesus is anointed as prophet. A prophet is a teacher and so Jesus is the perfect instructor to teach us about God's nature, purpose, and truth. Jesus is anointed as priest. A priest is like a go-between who brings God and people back together. In Israel the priest did that by sacrificing animals to symbolize that forgiveness is always costly. But as priest, Jesus does something more marvelous than offer sacrifices outside of himself: Jesus is the sacrifice. And because he laid down himself, we know that our sins will always be forgiven. And finally Jesus is anointed as king. A king is the one who guides his people, sets policy for how life should go, protects the people, and secures true freedom, a space where joy can happen. In short, with Jesus as prophet, priest, and king, we have all that we need to be saved and to live joyfully.
  • But before Lord's Day 12 is finished, we are told a stunning thing: we now have been anointed, too. By way of extension, all the features of Jesus as Christ apply to our lives. We become mini-Christs, which is what the word Christian means in the first place. So we are mini-prophets who likewise teach the truth of the gospel. We are mini-priests who live sacrificially for the benefit of our neighbors. We are mini-kings who try to expand the borders of the kingdom already in this world.
  • Another thing we may not associate very readily with the term “Christ” is the tremendous pastoral comfort we can derive from this. As titles go, being God’s Messiah/Christ sounds pretty lofty. But notice how the Catechism brings this all home in very personal and warm ways. Jesus has “set us free” and what’s more, he “continually pleads our case with the Father.” In short, we’ve got the right man on our side (to borrow some language from the hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God”). We’re also told that in the kingly dimension of his Christhood, Jesus “guards and keeps us in the freedom he won for us.”
  • Similarly, our now being mini-Christs assures us, among other things, that when all our work and striving and persevering is finished, we will reign with Christ for all eternity. Again, this is a significant pastoral comfort that should not be missed.
  • Tragically, doesn’t this aspect of the title of “Christ” make it all the more profane, blasphemous, and finally downright sad to hear the word “Christ” being used as a kind of swear word—an expletive of anger and frustration?

Possible Biblical Texts

I Corinthians 12: This passage highlights nicely the idea that we now share Jesus’ anointing (Q&A 32) by discussing the evidences of our anointing in the form of various gifts of the Holy Spirit. Even as Jesus being the Christ of God meant not just one thing but as a matter of fact an array of things (prophet, priest, and king),so also when we share Christ’s anointing it will lead to a variety of tasks and gifts in the Body of Christ. Jesus may be a kind of all-in-one combination of traits, but for the rest of us, the tasks get parceled out among the wider membership of the Church

Mark 1:1-13: Clearly the baptism story of Jesus (which could be drawn out of the other gospels as well) shows Jesus’ earthly moment of anointing. We need not go in the direction of adoptionistic Christologies that claim this was the moment when Jesus became God’s Son in ways he had not been before but still we can spy here a definite anointing of the Spirit that formally launches the public phase of Jesus’ ministry. Another intriguing aspect of this story (see illustration ideas below) is the swift pivot in Mark between Jesus’ being declared the divine Son and his being hurled out into the wilderness where Jesus faced wild animals and all else that is chaotic about a fallen creation. This says a lot about what it means to be God’s Christ (your very purpose is to dive into difficult situations) as well as, by extension, what it means for us to share this anointing today.

Illustration Idea

Illustration Idea #1: For those of us who grew up in the church, hearing about Jesus as Prophet, Priest, and King has become so commonplace we scarcely bat an eye when the Catechism describes Jesus in these terms. But if you had not been marinated in such language your whole life, then surely these words would strike you as odd and arcane.

After all these days prophets are loopy folks wearing sandwich boards proclaiming "The End is Near" or they are cult leaders with bad hair and wild eyes out on the Texas prairie, leading a group of naive disciples to their doom. These days priests are not associated with sacrifices that can bring us to God. Instead priests are unmarried men in funny shirts who work for a pope who still excludes women from the club. And kings are blue-bloods in England the likes of whom we don't want in our country. Indeed, we fought an entire war to get rid of a monarchy and then designed a system of checks and balances because we do not want an imperial presidency, we do not want a king!

So calling Jesus Prophet, Priest, and King today either fails to connect or it connects in wrong ways. So this morning we need to recover the true meaning of these important titles--recover them not only for our own sakes but also for the sake of being better able to explain who Jesus is and why we love him so much as to gather in worship before him every Sunday.

Illustration Idea #2 (for a sermon based on Mark 1): In Mark 1, no sooner does God express his love for Jesus and suddenly the Spirit pitches Jesus headfirst into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. That hardly seems like a very loving thing for God to do! God no sooner declares ardent love for Jesus and he slaps Jesus into the wilderness, into the realm of death and evil. Why? Very simply: because such an engagement with evil is precisely what Jesus' baptism was all about. God did not send his beloved Son into our world just to be nice. Despite all the Jesus Seminar blather that is so much in vogue today, God did not go through the trouble of becoming a true human being just to spout memorable little platitudes destined to be cross-stitched onto wall hangings.

No, God was in Christ to reconcile the world to himself and for that very reason task number one was to engage the evil that holds our world captive. That's why there are those hints of violent activity in these few verses. We already mentioned how Jesus saw the heavens being violently ripped open. But then in verse 12, although the NIV translates it merely as the Spirit "sent" Jesus out into the desert, the Greek verb there actually carries with it the notion of being "thrown out." The Spirit descends like a gentle dove but suddenly transmogrifies into a kind of hawk who picks Jesus up in his talons and brutally hurls him out into the realm of the devil himself!

Clearly something cosmic is afoot. However, having said that, it needs to be admitted that Mark's text then seems to sputter a bit. Unlike Matthew and Luke who give us a lot of details on what went on between Jesus and Satan, Mark sums the whole thing up in just one verse, telling us Jesus was tempted for forty days, he was with the wild animals, and angels attended him. We're not even told how Jesus fared in his temptations! Did he resist or give in? Mark doesn't say.

Or at least he doesn't say in so many words. But if you pay attention, there are a couple of hints how things turned out. One hint is obvious: the angels were with Jesus. That probably indicates things turned out well. But the other hint is Mark's reference to the "wild animals." It's an odd detail to throw in. But think about it: when was the last time in the Bible you had one man alone among the animals? It was Adam. The first man lived in harmony with the animals of the Garden of Eden, calling them to his side, naming them. Of course, that was before sin arrived on the scene. Ever since then the lamb and lion and the lion and the human have not been known to curl up together for afternoon siestas. We don't go out for a stroll among the wild animals on the savannahs of Africa because we've all seen those National Geographic specials that feature gazelles being ripped to bloody shreds and we'd just as soon not end up being lunch for a lion or a hyena.

But Mark doesn't show Jesus fleeing the wild animals. Instead there is a hint here of Jesus' living harmoniously with the fierce critters of the desert. If it reminds you of Adam in Eden, that is precisely Mark's intention. By taking on the powers of evil, Jesus has begun life again for us all. Jesus is the Second Adam, doing it all over again but this time doing it right in order to set this cosmos back on the course God set for it in the beginning. Jesus goes out into as wild and chaotic a place as exists but instead of being consumed by it, he changes it into an oasis of shalom!

William Willimon recently noted that people in history, and certainly today, have been unceasing in their attempts to cut Jesus down to a more manageable size. We want to domesticate Jesus, tearing the claws off the Lion of Judah to make him a more cozy household tabby; wiping the blood off the Lamb of God to make him a more adorable little sheep like the nursery rhyme one whose fleece was white as snow and who followed Mary to school one day--a cute lamb instead of a bloody one that reminds us of our sins. But the more we try to tame Jesus, the less he is able to tame the wild animals or anything else in this wild and wooly world. No, what we need is God's own Anointed Prophet, Priest, and King. What we need is the Prophet who knows God so well he'll always teach us right, the Priest who can sacrifice himself for us yet still emerge the resurrected Victor, and the King who has our best interests at heart in the freedom of God's eternal kingdom. That's the One we need. That's the One God sent.