Sermon for Sunday, August 29, 2021

 

August 29, 2021            Sermon       Rev. Peter Hofstra

          Who are we as “Christians”?    What is the history of the name?  According to the Biblical record, the followers of Jesus were first called Christians in Antioch, according to Acts 11, when Barnabas brought Paul there to teach the disciples.  Antioch is outside of the Jewish homeland, is Gentile more than Jewish, so it makes sense.  There has been ongoing competition between the establishment Jewish faith and this upstart Jesus-cult.  So they are Christians, followers of Christ.  Earlier than that, in the book of Acts, Jesus’ religious movement, still well within Judaism, is referred to as ‘the Way’.

          So that is ‘when’, but does it answer the question ‘why’?  Last week, we considered what is in a name, particularly Jesus Christ of Nazareth, the name by which Peter claimed that the members of ‘the Way’ were  doing their work.  We spent some time on considering “Christ”.  This isn’t Jesus’ last name, he was not “Jesus Christ” like I am “Peter Hofstra”.  Rather, the Christ is ‘the Anointed one’, drawing on the Hebrew as ‘the Messiah’, the one called upon God, anointed to special purpose for God’s work here on Earth.  In Jesus’ case, it is carrying out God’s plan for the redemption of the world.

          So “Christians” naturally plays out as ‘those of the Christ’, those of the Anointed One.  But one detail we did not look to then was a consideration of when Jesus was anointed.  I used David, anointed to be king, and Aaron, anointed to be the high priest, as my examples for how one is anointed to a special role by God.  But I forgot one.  Isaiah, the prophet, tells us in chapter 61 of his prophecy, “The Spirit of the Almighty Lord is with me because the Lord has anointed me to deliver good news to humble people.”  So there is chapter and verse for Prophet, Priest, and King to be anoint ed, rolls that Jesus all took upon himself.  Didn’t the angels tell the shepherds about good news for all the people?

          But when was Jesus anointed?  For Isaiah, the mark of anointing connects to the Spirit of the Almighty Lord, the Holy Spirit.  And while we call it the baptism of Jesus, I would suggest to you that the baptism also serves as the anointing of Jesus, by the spirit and in the spirit, as the called one of God.  I make this suggestion based on our memory verse today, drawn from the first letter of John, 1 John 2: 27, where John says, “²⁷As for you, the anointing that you received from him abides in you, and so you do not need anyone to teach you.”  The anointing we received from him, that we received from Jesus, in the sacramental command that Jesus gave to us that we must be baptized.  For the early parts of Acts record baptism in two parts, by water AND by the Spirit.

          I would suggest that from John’s letter as well, we get more significance for the idea that we are called “Christians”.  It was not simply a nickname hung on Barnabas, Paul, and their crowd in Antioch.  It carries a deeper, more connected meaning to Jesus and who our Lord is.  Christ, the Anointed one, Christians, the anointed ones.  We believers in Jesus are anointed, by the act of baptism, anointed with the Spirit, to carry forward the work that Jesus himself was given by God for the redemption of the world. 

          John has a reason to call out the importance of the anointing that the followers have Jesus have received, calling out that it abides in them.  He says so that no one needs to teach them.  This is something to be understood in context.  This does not mean that once I have been baptized in the Holy Spirit, I know all there is to know about Jesus, the Faith, and everything.  It does mean that I know enough to know the salvation that comes in Jesus.

          When John wrote his gospel, one of the things he shared was Jesus’ teaching about the Holy Spirit.  How the Holy Spirit would be Jesus with the disciples when Jesus himself had gone back to heaven.  That comes back here.  The anointing that was received from Jesus abides in them, and in us, because the Holy Spirit, sent by Jesus, abides in them, and in us.  And that is enough for our salvation.  And that is so important at this moment in John’s letter because John is addressing a particular problem going on among the believers. 

          This problem begins our passage, in verse 18, “¹⁸Children, it is the last hour! As you have heard that antichrist is coming, so now many antichrists have come. From this we know that it is the last hour. ¹⁹They went out from us, but they did not belong to us; for if they had belonged to us, they would have remained with us. But by going out they made it plain that none of them belongs to us.”

          Now that is something we do not deal with a whole lot of in the mainline, the question of the antichrists, plural.  The idea of the Antichrist, the one who will rise up in Apocalyptic times as the contradiction to our Lord Jesus, that is a pretty popular one.  It’s in Revelation, it is a favorite trope in end times movies and television shows.  But John is not talking about THE Antichrist, but a whole plethora of them.

          The Antichrists…  Now, the popular culture around the End Times and the Antichrist is that there is a single supernatural being of diabolical origins that will face off against Jesus in some kind of supernatural wrestling cage match.  Jesus wins, but there is great cost to humanity.  Intriguingly enough, much of that imagery and metaphor is drawn from the book of Revelations, also attributed to John, the author of our letter.  But that does not seem to be where he is going with this.

          Rather, he seems to be looking at a more fundamental challenge to people of faith.  We Christians, we who are anointed in Jesus, the pro-Christs, face the ‘anti-Christs’.  And, according to John, these are those who rise up from within the movement.  These are not those who are ignorant of Christianity, but those who are actively opposed to it.  Those who are working against the anointing that we have received from Jesus, those seeking to destroy our faith and lead us astray.  And it is “Them”, not “Him”.  Not some charismatic parallel to our Savior. 

          Who are they?  Verse 22: ²²Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son.”  Now John does not come out and call us Christians in his letter, but the implication is laid there powerfully.  He calls us those who have received the anointing by the one who abides in us.  The anointing of Jesus, the Christ, the Anointed One.  The Anointed of the Anointed, as rough as that sounds.  Christians.  Another rough way to say it, “Pro-Christs”, versus the “Anti-Christs”.  The Christians, versus those who are seeking to pull us away from our Lord.

          John makes a very powerful promise to us when we are dealing with a world that would seek to undermine our faith.  There is a base knowledge that we have been anointed with as Christians which is sufficient against any assault.  This does not mean that there is not a lifetime of amazement and growth to be found in our faith, but that there is an immovable foundation.  As John says in verse 24, ²⁴Let what you heard from the beginning abide in you. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, then you will abide in the Son and in the Father.”  What did they hear in the beginning?  What John opens his letter with.

          First, in God, there is no darkness.  For John, darkness is not just a moonless night.  Go to the beginning of his gospel, Jesus is the light that shines in the darkness and the darkness shall not overcome it.  In Jesus was life, and the life was the light of all peoples.  It is the darkness of our separation from God.  But the overcoming of the darkness comes very specifically. 

          If we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another and the blood of Christ cleanses us from our sins.  What is sin?  The cause of the darkness that separates us from God.  The light is offered to us, in God.  The way to the light is offered to us, in the blood of Christ, the Anointed, the Son of God, in Jesus. 

          Finally, there comes our actions to receive the cleansing from our sin, when we confess our sins to the Lord.  We are sinners, we confess, we receive the cleansing of the blood of Jesus, we are restored to the light of God in our new life, our new eternal life.  That is the knowledge of the anointing we have received in Christ, from we derive our names as Christians.

          So, when I confess to being a Christian, that means something.  I am anointed in Jesus, as Jesus was Anointed, as my Christ.  Jesus was anointed to forgive us for our sins, something done by His blood in his death and resurrection.  That was the promise made to Joseph as Jesus’ birth, when Joseph was called upon to name Him Jesus.  I gain this forgiveness in the confession of my sins to receive the grace of forgiveness.  The result is that I walk in the light, having emerged from the darkness that is a world separated from God by the effects of our sins.

          So to call myself a Christian without anything else, that is just an empty title.  To be a Christian, to confess, to know forgiveness in Jesus, to walk in the light, it is sufficient to stand against any Anti-Christ that may rise up against us.  This is what it means to be a Christian.  As to why we are Christians, why we would do all this?  Same reason God does it, for love of God’s creation. 

          So to call Christianity a feeling, that misses the point.  Yes, we feel as Christians, but that comes from actions, very specific actions.  These are the actions that look at the world around us and realize that we need something more than ourselves to rise up.  If we denigrate what ‘sin’ is, we lose sight of what has brought the darkness upon us in the first place.  But it doesn’t mean we lose sight of the darkness.  Look around brothers and sisters, is the world a perfect place?  Nearly perfect?  Getting perfect?  Because it is not. 

          But if we don’t get where we came from, what it means to be a Christian, we are in serious trouble.  I am not saying the church is doomed, that would be so arrogant on my part.  God’s church will survive and thrive, because of God.  But if we don’t get what it means to be a Christian, it is such a loss to our own lives, now and into eternity.  How can we conceive of overcoming the darkness on our own?  In another place, a bible writer looked around and said that everything was vanity, everything was an affectation, without the truth of the Lord Jesus in us as Christians.

          Everywhere that we seek to turn back the darkness, in eco-justice, in combatting racism, in overcoming poverty, in bringing a word of comfort to someone in need, that will ultimately find success in the power of God.  But there are Anti-Christs, those that would pull us away from the delight of our faith, that would undercut our desire to make the world a better place, that would lead us to be part of the problem of the darkness that separates us from God.  Except that God is the power of the light in the world.  This power came in Christ, the Anointed One, by whose blood our sins-the Darkness-is taken away, if we but confess our sins to the Lord.  As we have been anointed to do.  That’s what it means for us to be called “Christian”.  Amen.