Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time . . . (again)

(thank you to Sue Kravits for the meme)

This blog post is based on my sermon from January 20, 2019.

Do you remember the first time you met Jesus?

Perhaps you grew up in the church and can't remember a time when you weren't hearing about Jesus, and, like most concrete-thinking three-year-olds, you naturally assumed that the pastor was Jesus. 

And as you grew older, you became even more aware that church was the place where they talked about Jesus. You may recall the story of a children's sermon in which the pastor asked the children, "What has two long ears, a cotton tail, and hops around?" There was a long period of silence. Finally, one child responded, "Well, it sounds like a rabbit, but since this is church, the answer must be Jesus."

Perhaps you did not grow up in the church, but there was something about a friend of yours who was a Christian that you found compelling. Perhaps this friend was an Evangelical Christian who invited you to pray what is often called "the prayer of salvation" or "the sinner's prayer," and you prayed that prayer, and asked Jesus to come into your heart, and for you there will always be this before and after moment that defines the rest of your life.

Or perhaps you were going through a very difficult time in life, many nights crying yourself awake, and then one night, as the tears ran down your cheeks, a warm presence filled the room and wrapped its arms around you.

Or maybe you were weighing whether or not to take a great risk and begin a new adventure, but you weren't sure if now was really the time or not. And in the night you had a dream. You were walking along a lakeshore at night, with a full moon, and Jesus suddenly appeared ahead of you, and said, "Follow me," and later, the next morning, you wondered whether that meant Jesus wanted you to go ahead, take the risk, and begin the adventure.

Or maybe you have issues with the premise of the question, because to you it makes about as much sense to ask someone about the first time that they met Jesus as it would to ask them about the first time that they met Julius Caesar or Cleopatra.

More than twenty years ago the late Marcus Borg wrote a bestselling book entitled, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. 

In that book Borg wrote,

[Jesus'] own self-understanding did not include thinking and speaking of himself as the Son of God whose historical intention or purpose was to die for the sins of the world, and his message was not about believing in him. Rather, he was a spirit person, subversive sage, social prophet, and movement founder who invited his followers and hearers into a transforming relationship with the same Spirit that he himself knew, and into a community whose social vision was shaped by the core value of compassion.

Borg, who at the time was a professor of Religion at Oregon State University, helped reignite the old debate about how closely the Jesus of History truly resembled the Christ of Faith. 

I want to be quick to say that I appreciate Borg and have learned much from his writings through the years. Nonetheless, one of the criticisms of Borg and other members of the Jesus Seminar is that the portrait of the Historical Jesus that finally emerges from their work is one that looks and sounds a lot like a professor of religion at a major university.

I suspect that most of us are guilty of trying to make Jesus into our own image.

Centuries before Borg, the Gospel writer Matthew could have written Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. (see comments by Patrick J. Willson in the Feasting on the Word lectionary commentary).

Most scholars believe that Matthew was writing from Antioch, in modern-day Syria, near the end of the first century. Matthew was hoping to introduce Jesus once again to a Christian community that was undergoing persecution and was starting to wonder exactly what kind of Messiah they were meant to follow. Who was this Jesus, this Christ, that they were already calling, "Lord?" That's the question that Matthew wants to answer.

Traditionally, this story of Jesus being tempted by the devil in the wilderness is read on the First Sunday of Lent. Most preachers (including me) are quick to make the leap between Jesus' forty days in the wilderness to our own forty-day journey during Lent. We are quick to jump from talking about how Jesus avoided temptation to talking about how we can avoid temptation.

The gift of reading a text like Matthew 4:1-11 in January is that it takes the focus off Lent and puts the focus back on Jesus, which is what Matthew intended.

Indeed, as others have pointed out, the temptations that Jesus faced in the wilderness are really Jesus' temptations and not ours.

Have you ever been tempted to feed the whole world in an instant by turning stones into bread?

Have you ever been tempted to jump from some high place simply to prove that God would miraculously save you? (I hope not!!)

Have you ever been tempted to rule over all the nations of the world, and to gain all the wealth and power and prestige in order to give it away to the poor, the oppressed, and the needy?

No. These are all temptations that Jesus faced. Indeed, we can make the argument that we are the ones who are tempting Jesus. We are constantly tempting Jesus to conform to our own expectations. We want to follow a Christ who will do it our way, who will feed the hungry once and for all because we have grown weary of all the appeals to feed the hungry.

My friend and mentor Roland Perdue, a retired Presbyterian pastor, describes a visit he made to Christ in the Desert Monastery in Albuquerque, New Mexico. It is near Georgia O'Keefe's ranch and up the road from Ghost Ranch, a Presbyterian Conference Center.

Monastery of Christ in the Desert

The chapel has a huge glass window above the altar. Through the glass you can observe the great red cliffs of New Mexico. And as the sun moves you can see different figures, different faces. As Roland tells the story, as he viewed all the different figures, it seemed to him that every gargoyle had his face on it. And he had an epiphany. He was the one trying to tempt Jesus. He was the one who wanted to know that giving over a half century of his life to ministry had been worth it, that there would be some great reward for all that he had done. He was the one who wanted Jesus to be his kind of guy. (from a sermon preached by Roland Perdue, White Memorial Presbyterian Church, Raleigh, NC, summer 2010).

Do you remember these lyrics from Jesus Christ Superstar?:

So, you are the Christ, you're the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you are divine; change my water into wine.
So, you are the Christ, the great Jesus Christ.
Prove to me that you're no fool; walk across my swimming pool.
Feed my household with this bread, you could do it on your head.


We want Jesus to do it our own way. But more often than not, Jesus says, "not so fast," and he refuses to turn our stones into bread.

The following is an oversimplification, and not entirely fair to Marcus Borg, but in some ways it seems to me that

For Marcus Borg, Jesus was a teacher of wisdom who never claimed to be the Son of God.

For the Gospel writer Matthew, Jesus is the Son of God who defies our conventional wisdom.

Matthew says to the ancient Christians in Antioch and to us, "You know about Jesus' deeds of power, but do you know about his humility? (see again comments by Patrick J. Willson in Feasting on the Word)

You know that Jesus preached about the kingdom of heaven, but have you put on the character that will enable you to live as citizens of that kingdom? . . . and that is where we will pick up next week when we talk about the Beatitudes in Matthew, chapter 5.

All glory and praise be to our God. Amen.

Questions for Discussion:

1. How would you describe the circumstances of your own first meeting of Jesus?

2. Was there a time in your life when you were reintroduced to Jesus in an entirely new way?

3. How well do you resonate with Borg's description of Jesus as a "spirit person, a subversive sage, social prophet, and movement founder"?

4. In what ways would you say that you have tempted Jesus? What would Jesus look and sound like if Jesus did conform to your own expectations?

5. In what ways has Jesus defied your own settled wisdom and upset your expectations?