A sermon preached in Geraldton Anglican Cathedral 21st March 2021
We are working our way through a very early statement of Christian belief—from after the time of Jesus and his apostles, but stating what happened in their time, and distilling their main teachings. Statements of faith are a feature of Christianity. They appear at times of great controversy, when Christians are forced to clarify their thinking over against a rival belief system. In the early centuries the big issues were about Jesus’ person: is he truly God, did he really become human, how can a person be God and man at the same time? It was in this era that the three Creeds were produced. At the time of the Reformation people were divided over what basis God accepts people on. Our Thirty Nine Articles and the other Reformed confessions of faith reflect that controversy. At the present time what it means to be a man and a woman is the issue that is splitting the church (and the world). The Jerusalem Declaration sets out the Christian position on marriage and sexuality. Creeds, then, are statements of Christian belief on disputed matters.
Today we come to an affirmation about Jesus’ death: “Crucified, dead, and buried …” Notice that nothing is said about his life and teachings! That is because everyone agreed he was a great teacher who ministered in Palestine in the first century. But was it ever a dispute whether he died and was buried?
There was an African American preacher who I guess had not had time to prepare his sermon for Sunday who started like this: “Brothers and sisters, there are people who say there is no God … but I believe in God the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth.” These guys often have an echo group so they came in with, “Brothers, sisters, he believes in God the Father, maker of heaven and earth.” He went on: “And there are people who don’t believe that Jesus is the Son of God … but I believe in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord.” “Brothers, sisters, he believes in Jesus Christ, God’s only Son, our Lord.” And so it went on. It was a jolly fine sermon, I have to say. But I don’t remember what he said when he got to today’s part of the Creed. Does anyone not believe that Jesus was crucified, died, and was buried?
Strangely, in 2012 I found myself at a public meeting at the University of Cape Town debating this very issue with a Muslim scholar. I have spoken at lot about Islam in this series on the Creed; you are probably getting sick of it. It is because Islam has so much to say on these issues. You will understand Christianity better if you know some of the alternatives. But in case anyone thinks I am hostile towards Muslims, or am trying to stir up bad feeling, let me say that all my interactions with them have been friendly. That night in Cape Town was organized by the Islamic Propagation Centre International. They had a lecture room that seated 300. Fifteen hundred people turned up, about half and half Muslims and others. The squashed 500 into the room, 500 listened outside, and 500 were turned away. And though we were in each other’s personal space, there was a lot of goodwill flowing in both directions. I was asked to give a Christian answer to the question, did Jesus really die and rise from the dead. Muslims believe he didn’t. It has to do with their theology of victory. God would never have allowed his prophet to die in that way. The Qur’an says of the Jews:
They said, ‘We killed Christ Jesus the son of Mary, the Messenger of Allah;’ but they did not kill him, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to him …” (4:157)
There are different interpretations of this passage; one popular view is that God substituted the man who carried Jesus’ cross (Simon of Cyrene), and caught Jesus up to heaven. Needless to say, I did my best to present the historical evidence for Jesus’ crucifixion and resurrection, and their meaning. The debate is still on uTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbT88fqLkmo or google: “Seccombe Ali”
So, the question of Jesus’ death and burial is still a live one. Apart from Islam, there are people who still argue that his whole life is a made-up legend. But this is not the problem our Creed is opposing, nor is it the challenge of Islam; Muhammad didn’t have his revelations until about AD 600. No, there is something earlier which made it necessary to assert that Jesus was crucified, dead, and buried. We don’t have to look past the New Testament to find out what it was.
Already in the first century a belief arose in the Church that Jesus was not a real human being. I suppose this was the original “Christological heresy”. You would think the first thing people would have doubted was whether Jesus was God, but no, strange as it seems, amongst Christians in the first century that was hardly doubted. The problem they wrestled with was whether God could dirty himself with human flesh. The background to this was Greek culture which had a love-hate relationship with the human form. On the one hand they glorified it, did some of the most wonderful sculptures, and pictured their gods in human form, but on the other, they drew a line between the physical and the spiritual, and saw anything material as inferior and defiling. For Plato the body was the prison-house of the soul. When Socrates drank poison, he was looking forward to being released into the spiritual realm.
You can understand this way of thinking. Did the one they had come to worship really travel through a woman’s birth canal? Could he really have puked all over the place as a baby? Did God really go the toilet? The minds of many revolted at such thoughts. It became popular to think that he only seemed to be human. This is where the name of this belief system came from: “Docetism” means “seem-ism”, “appearance-ism.” It started in the first century and was strong in the second. I wonder whether the Qur’an has a trace of this idea when it says Jesus was a spirit. There was someone in the congregation at Corinth in the mid-first century who stood up in one of their church meetings, and apparently in the Spirit said, “Jesus be cursed.” And it was accepted. I doubt he was saying “Christ be cursed!” He was drawing a distinction between the Lord Christ, and the human appearance of Jesus. If you have friends who are Rosicrucians, you may have come across something similar.
One problem with Docetism is that Jesus’ death turns out not to be real, and his resurrection means something quite different to what is in the New Testament. And these two things strikes at the heart of the gospel which saves us. Paul reminds the Christians in Corinth about the gospel he preached to them: “You believed it,” he says. “You stand in it, you are saved by it, if you hold it fast—unless you believe in vain.” And then he says how he preached it.
1 Corinthians 15.3 For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received: that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day in accordance with the Scriptures …
It sounds like the first step in the formation of our Creed: very matter-of-fact. Jesus died, was buried and came alive again—the message that saves us.
A related problem in Corinth was that people were thinking Jesus couldn’t have come alive in a flesh and blood body, because bodies are not spiritual, they are part of the trash that is left behind when we move into a truly spiritual state. The resurrection couldn’t be bodily; it must mean something spiritual. This was a first step towards Docetism.
In the First Letter of John we find that a second step has been taken. John is up against people who are saying Jesus was not really a man and didn’t really die. “Who will be saved,” he asks. “Whoever believes in the Son of God,” he answers. And then he adds:
This is he who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the one who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.
He insists that the Son of God came by water and blood. He came by water means he was a natural human being who was born in a rush of fluid from his mother’s birth canal. He came by blood because he really did end his life in a bloody death. The Holy Spirit is the third witness. The first witness is his earthly life, the second is his death, and the third is the Spirit who convinces us inwardly of the truth of it all.
But why did it matter so much that it required to be stated in the Creed?
I want to focus our attention now on a chapter in the New Testament that helps us answer this question. The Letter to the Hebrews is a deliberately anonymous writing, almost certainly written by Paul or for Paul, probably in the early sixties of the first century. In the first chapter he establishes what was known to every Christian, but not believed by the Jewish leadership. Whereas in years past God had spoken to his people through prophets, in these last days he has spoken through his Son. Jesus is the radiance of God’s glory. He came to make purification for sin, and now sits at God’s right hand in heaven. Paul then produces a string of quotations from the Old Testament backing this up.
In chapter 2, the passage I want us to think about, he directs attention to Jesus’ humanity. God’s eternal plan is to place the universe under the leadership of human beings. What about angels? People tend to see angels as a grade above humans in the spiritual pecking order; surely if they are above us, then the universe is subject to them. But no, says Paul, amgels were created to serve humans. It is true that as things stand, we appear lower, as Jesus in his time on earth also appeared lower. But he has now been exalted to his right position. Listen:
In putting everything under him (that is, under human beings—think of God’s command to Adam to rule over creation) God left nothing that has not been subject to him (this includes angels). Yet at present we do not see everything subject to him. But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower that the angels, now crowned with glory and honour, because he suffered death, so that by the grace of God he might taste death for everyone.
This is where it becomes clear that Jesus’ humanity matters. What does it mean that he tasted death for us? It means that because of his death, we are spared from the full horror of death.
Since the children share flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might strip away the power of him who holds the power of death – that is, the Devil – and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.
He goes on to show how Jesus became a mediator between us and God, making atonement for our sins and becoming our eternal High Priest.
The point is this, Jesus did something for us on the cross which enables God not to exclude us from the coming new world. The Devil would have us condemned and destroyed, but Jesus has come to our rescue and made atonement for our rebellion and sin. We may not understand just why that was necessary, and how it worked, but one thing we can see clearly from this chapter: he could only do it by becoming a human being, by sharing our flesh and blood, yes, by becoming our brother.
Look at the passages Hebrews appeals to in the Old Testament:
For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, “I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.” And again, “I will put my trust in him.” And again, “Behold, I and the children God has given me.”
That is why the early Christians were so sensitive about any suggestion that Jesus might not be human: whether God, and therefore not human, or an angel, as some Jews suggested, and Jehovah’s Witnesses still believe.
No, Jesus was (and remains) fully human, and like us died and was buried. As Jesus himself said before this took place: “The Son of Man came to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
I was eighteen years old when I first realized that Jesus died for our sins. This meant he died for my sins. When I came home on my next holiday, I couldn’t wait to explain it to my Dad: “We have sinned. We deserve to die. Jesus died in our place. We can now have eternal life.” It seemed so logical to me, but not to him. “How can it be right for someone to be punished for someone else’s crimes?” he said. I hadn’t seen that, and had no answer. Part of the answer is shown us in this second chapter of Hebrews. Jesus shared our human nature and did for us what only a human being could do. He substituted himself for us. But how could he do that? If someone is guilty of a crime, could one of their friends come along and offer to be punished instead? If it was a fine that had to be paid, they might, but if imprisonment, or death? But the Jesus who comes to our rescue is not just a friend, he is also our king. I had understood that Jesus was our substitute, but not what the New Testament says so often, that he is also our representative. And he was able to represent us, because he is our king. We have run out of time and will have to leave it here. The king of the universe, your king—if you will have him—interposed himself between you and the inevitable judgement of God, carried our sins in his body on the cross, “so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness. By his wounds we are healed.” No longer are we enslaved by the inevitability of death and the Devil’s accusations. We are set free—set free to live for God. That is why for the early Christians it was vital to say of the Son of God, that he was “crucified, dead, and buried.”
Next week we will explore that strange idea that he descended into hell. Why would Christians have wanted to assert that?