Who is Jesus?

I’ll never forget one of my final assignments, it was the spring of my senior year at university. Classes were winding down and our minds were beginning to wander. It was in this moment of mental milieu our professor assigned a task I thought bordered on heresy. “I want you to make a self-portrait of Christ.” Having spent the semester studying the ways Christ was portrayed for two-thousand years I should have seen this one coming. But the first image that came to mind was Albrecht Dur’s self-portrait of Christ, which was simply a painting of himself holding a fifteenth century gang-sign that meant Jesus. Having studied that painting in art history, the first thing I thought of was how arrogant it is to put our face on an image of Jesus, and say, “that’s me!” Because I considered Dur’s self-portrait to be a symbol of arrogance, I decided to do what university students do best, go against the grain and stick it to the man! Instead of producing a flat two dimensional image I did something abstract and three dimensional: I dug a stump out of the ground a put a twig in it. Although I made a conscious decision to stray from traditional art supplies, my inspiration came from our assigned studies. A seventeenth century French painting showed beams of light streaming around a wooden cross, isolated on top of a rocky mountain in a forest of pine trees. This painting made me nostalgic for the mountains and forests of the Pacific Northwest, the place where I grew up. It also reminded me of John 15:5 “I am the vine, you are the branches” With these two portraits of Christ in mind, I knew proceeded to carry out my daring act of rebellion. I turned to the tree and wilderness expert on campus, my mentor and friend who also happened to be the Dean and President of Student Development. How could he tell me no? With the help of his yard, axe, shovel, a long dead stump and my muscle I produced what I thought was quite possibly the most clever depiction of a self-portrait of Christ. All without having to use a single pencil, pen, or Photoshop stroke! On reveal day, everyone else maintained the tradition of two dimensional portraits. In a world of eight and a half by eleven sat my dirty dug-up sassafras stump, roots poking everywhere. My definition of Christ was indeed glorious, magnanimous and manly! And out of that stump poked a little twig of a pine tree with gentle green needles. My expression of myself, Northwest represent! The funny thing is I got in trouble for cutting the little branch off the pine tree, not digging a hole in my mentor’s lawn. Jesus was the vine I was the branch! I mean, Christ was the stump, I was the twig! I mean come on it was a piece of art!

What I love most about that assigned project, was not just the abstractness of my creation, but the visible and tangible reality that no two students picked the same portrait of Christ. We all chose something different, because we all saw something of ourselves in different historical and orthodox portraits of Jesus. Each portrait moved us individually, when we were asked to show what moved us we responded with a kaleidoscope of color from many cultures. Those cultures with their crazy colors always pointed us back to the truth of Jesus. We learned something very powerful through that semi-heretical sounding assignment. We can use different symbols to speak of Jesus, but still speak the same truth.

Today, I want to focus on a few of John’s descriptions of Jesus. John, whose gospel doesn’t look the same or tell most of the stories found in Matthew, Mark and Luke. John, the beloved disciple, who saw something different in Jesus that others missed. John opens his gospel not with a genealogy or the struggles of Mary and Joseph, but opens it with these powerful yet abstract words. “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.” Instead of focusing on the humanness of Jesus, he goes straight for a statement about Jesus’ deity.

John uses the Greek word logos to describe Jesus. Logos is thick with meaning. Not only does it encapsulate spoken and written word, but it also covers logic, the process by which we reason. In his opening statement about Jesus, John is not only declaring the substance and divinity of Christ, but also the formative reasoning through which the entire universe will be created.

John tell us this directly when he says, “Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.” John affirms the central logic of the universe. There are two categories: creator and created. The creator laid out such an organized creation that by simply studying the order and consistency of the world around us it points us back to God. Our ability to reason is the foundation of the scientific method, therefore the scientific method, when used logically, points us back to God. But who is this God? Surely he is more than reason alone. While reason tells us something about who God is, reason alone is not sufficient to describe God. Let me say again, reason alone is not sufficient to describe God. There are many philosophers whose minds bend towards who God is and God’s attributes, but refuse to take a leap of faith in what their minds tell them is truth. Reason is only a part of who God is, to discover more we need to travel back to the word logos and examine it again.

John’s use of logos isn’t just to describe a word, he uses it to describe The Word. As in the single most important aspect of which all words past, present and future will ever be founded upon. In short John is saying that Jesus is the embodiment of language and communication. John is saying that without Jesus none of our ability to describe and communicate what we see would be possible. Jesus is the fulfilment of human language. In the world of language and grammar, linguists search for the origin of language. For we know that the use of language separates us from everything else in the created order. We reason, communicate and produce words like no other creature in all of creation. As it is written in Genesis, we are created in the image of God. We are a reflection of God in a way that nothing else in the entire universe is. No star, gas giant, planet, or planetoid is like God the way we are. No ant, bee, bird, mammal or reptile can ever produce reason and language the way we can. Birds sing and bees dance, but their music is forever set apart from ours, for theirs is a limited vocabulary, frozen in the symphony of task, but ours extends to the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom and artistic expression. For human language is ever changing and shifting; it does not remain stagnant. It grows as we grow.

When we use our words to describe The Word, our vocabularies may not align, but the meaning behind our words will. If the meanings of which we use our individual and unique expressions do not align then we are not speaking of the same Jesus. This is the beauty of orthodoxy, for there is a right way to describe Jesus, not just one way. As there is a right way to describe Jesus, there is also a wrong way to describe him. This is called heresy, and it means we are creating picture of Jesus that does not describe him accurately. I can paint a picture showing Jesus putting the stars in their place and I can also paint a picture of Jesus healing a blind man. Both of these paintings are orthodox, for they each tell something true about who Jesus is. But if I were to only focus on Jesus as the star-maker, and forget Jesus as the healer, then I have created a heresy within orthodoxy. For we must remember that even though we may have a favorite image of Jesus, a way which speaks directly to our hearts, we must accept that he is larger than our depiction of him.

John knew this when he wrote Revelation. He knew that what he saw in heaven was beyond his capacity to write down and fully explain, yet his words are still sufficient to describe and communicate the truth he saw with his eyes. “… there before me was a throne in heaven with someone sitting on it. And the one who sat there had the appearance of jasper and carnelian.” John knows he’s not seeing jasper and carnelian. He knows he’s not looking at a man sitting on a throne, but at a someone who is not a man. He knows he’s looking at an image of God. He’s tells us about God through the colors he sees. With every appearance of created things related to the image of God, God used the opportunity to tell us something about Himself. Together, jasper and carnelian represent the first and last tribes of Israel, emphasizing God is the beginning and the end. By looking at the appearance of God John sees the beginning and the end. God represented himself to John in a way John could understand. John communicated that truth to his audience, and even though most of us today would miss out on that truth, we can still search it out and find its meaning. That’s the wonder of God, he’s more than what we can see, but what we see is enough to let us know who he is. We can be confident of who God is, even though we cannot completely see or understand him.

Ezekiel saw something similar, but describes God differently, “high above on the throne was a figure like that of a man. I saw that from what appeared to be his waist up he looked like glowing metal, as if full of fire, and that from there down he looked like fire; and brilliant light surrounded him. Like the appearance of a rainbow in the clouds on a rainy day, so was the radiance around him. This was the appearance of the likeness of the glory of the LORD.” Ezekiel sees God seated on the throne, meaning God reigns over everything, just as John’s revelation of God includes God seated on the throne. Both admit appearances and likenesses; they know what they are seeing is not fully God incarnate. Whereas John sees the beginning and the end when he sees the appearance of he-who-sits-on-the-throne, Ezekiel sees the fires of God’s wrath about to be poured out on heretical Jerusalem. He sees the coming of an end. John would see the coming of The End. Ezekiel saw the appearance of God six hundred years before John, and described it in a completely different language. Even though Ezekiel’s and John’s visions don’t perfectly line up, especially when we consider the linguistic differences, there is enough similarity to know they are looking at the same God. The God who exists above and beyond our ability to describe him.

In his gospel John uses another simple word to convey who Jesus is. Light. “In him was life, and that life was the light of men.” It is no coincidence then that seventeenth century Enlightenment period connected human reason to light. For John in his gospel said seventeen centuries earlier that the word is light. Light makes visible what has long been hidden. The foremost thinkers and innovators of the Enlightenment thought they were building a world of full of light, where nothing would be hidden, where humanity would finally be able to create a world of order, structure and governance, fully taking our place as rightful stewards and sovereign rulers of all the earth. Some of these men were devout Christians, others were the founders of the new atheism and evolution. For the Christian, the light of the world was Christ, and it was by studying His created world and His word that peace on earth could be made reality. For the atheist, reason had finally triumphed over the antiquated notion of God and a new world order was being put in place, one where God had no place, only the greatness of man’s reason. Both Christian and atheist were scientists. One trusted in the reason of God, the other in the reason of humanity. We still see this split today, the false idea that true reason leads away from God. The idea that life and light can be found apart from God. The atheist rightly identifies the heresies of image driven God worship, but the skepticism of atheism does not lead to orthodoxy. For atheism uses reason alone, and places no faith in the one who gives us reason: Jesus, who is the word. Jesus, who is light. This is why John said, “The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.” Reason without God is devoid of light and sits in darkness. Reason with God gives us light to see and understand, even though we cannot fully understand God. This is why in the Old Testament we see encounters with God including darkness. Darkness is used a symbol, showing an obscurity of understanding.

Abram’s first encounter with God included darkness, not because God is darkness, but because we cannot fully grasp who God is. God covers himself so we can understand what he is showing us about himself. Abram prepared a sacrifice before the LORD and waited for the LORD’s arrival, “As the sun was setting, Abram fell into a deep sleep, and a thick and dreadful darkness came over him… When the sun had set and darkness had fallen, a smoking firepot with a blazing torch appeared…” God represented himself to Abram through the darkness, not as the darkness. God revealed himself as the light shining in the darkness. The darkness serves not only to show us how we cannot fully understand who God is, but also to show us how great, wonderful, awesome and mighty his light is.

Just as Abram encountered God in darkness, so too did Moses. But when Moses left the presence of the LORD, the light of God made a lasting impression on him; his face shone, because he had been with the light of the world! “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tablets of the Testimony in his hands, he was not aware that his face was radiant because he had spoken with the LORD. When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, his face was radiant, and they were afraid to come near him… When Moses finished speaking to them he put a veil over his face.” Just as Moses veiled his face to keep from scaring the people, so too God veils himself when he speaks with us. God only unveils himself when he has a powerful message to deliver, and even in his unveiling we cannot fully understand what we see. God’s veiling of himself is only for our benefit, it is not because he is afraid of showing himself, it is that we are afraid when we see him and we cannot fully understand what it is we are seeing. We see the beginning and the end, we see the wrath God will pour out and it terrifies us. We see him seated on the throne and drop to our knees in reverence, keeping silent because of the awesomeness of his majesty. For this reason God veils himself, and even though veiled his truth still shines through.

Looking back to John’s gospel, John writes about someone who isn’t the light, but has understood it in it’s veiled form. “There came a man who was sent from God; his name was John. He came as a witness to testify concerning the light, so that through him all men might believe. He himself was not the light; he came only as a witness to the light.” We are not the light, even though we have witnessed it. This is the claim of all the biblical prophets and preachers, that though they have seen the light, they are not the light. Yet, even so the light shines through them because the light of God leaves an everlasting impression. An impression that cannot be denied by those who know God. This is orthodoxy, that no man is greater than the word he preaches. It is by the Word of God we preach and speak truth. It is by no other means that we speak, for we can use other words and concepts, but if they do not point back to the truth of God revealed through His Word, they are empty, misleading, and heresy.

How is it then, that we come to know God’s truth? “He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. Yet to all those who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God—children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision, or a husband’s will, but born of God.” The truth of God isn’t hereditary, it’s not something we gain through our parents or ancestors. It is not a decision we make. It is something God gives to us and we receive. He shines the light upon us, we can accept it or reject it, but we cannot choose if the light will shine on us. It simply does. He does not force himself upon us to make a choice. He invites us. When he revealed himself to his prophets, he did so with such majesty and mystery and magnificence because they were to become speakers of his word. The word of God is powerful, and so far above anything and everything in the created order we can wrap our reason around and understand. We need to recognize the inescapable gravity of who God is, even though he revealed himself to us by becoming human. “The word became flesh and made his dwelling among us. We have seen his glory, the glory of the One and Only, who came from the Father, full of grace and truth.” God made himself so ordinary we could overlook him. Because he wants us to make a choice. He wants us to choose him, because if we saw him as he actually is, we would all drop to our knees and confess he is Lord of all creation.

The sin of our day is that we have become so comfortable with God that we forget who he is. We forget the power, the wrath, the love, and the forgiveness. Just as God made the universe he could easily unmake us. Yet this all powerful God shows us grace. This God who is so unlike us chose to become like us and teach us his truth. He extends his hand to us, and offers us the opportunity to shine his light and speak his word. To proclaim him even though he is fully beyond our capacity to complete describe him. Yet even in our small-minded attempts we proclaim the greatest truth humanity has ever known: Jesus is the One and Only God.

One of the most enduring impressions from my senior year was a visit to a monastery. While everyone was swayed by the majesty of the architecture, the beauty of the liturgy and the simple-ness of monastic living, I was captivated by the windows. For by themselves windows have no glory, it is only the light that shines through them that makes them majestic. From the most complex and colorful stained glass masterpiece to the simplest of kitchen overlooks, they are only valuable because light shines through them. For a window without light is useless, but a window with light makes living possible. We are as the windows in that monastery. If we are stained glass windows then it is only the light shining through us that tells the story. If we are ordinary clear panes of glass then we help others see clearly what the creator has made. Both are valuable. It is by the grace of God his light shines through us. It is by the grace of God we can speak his word and communicate his truth. For we are not the truth. Jesus is the truth, and the light, and the word.

It is as John said in the closing of his gospel, “Jesus did many other things as well. If every one of them was written down, I suppose that even the whole world would not have room for the books that would be written.” There is simply not enough room in the world to tell all of the wonderful things of who Jesus is. We will continue to write, to think, to speak of who Jesus is, and the orthodox story will never grow old.