For You.
My late father-in-law, The Very Rev. Peter Moore, loved to quote an interview with American writer Carl Sandberg. In the interview Sandberg was asked, “What do you think is the ugliest word in the English language?” He paused for a moment repeated the question a few times and then said, “The ugliest word in the English language is ‘exclusive.’” Exclusive. It is one of the driving forces in our consumer driven culture today. Be unique and spend more money for this special exclusive version of what everyone else can buy. Hurry fast because it’s a limited edition. Everything from our cars to our phones…we are attracted to exclusivity. Remember the launch of the iPhone back in the 2000s and the long lines of people waiting to be one of the first to buy the coolest new thing. Sadly, I fell prey to this years ago and went to the mall a couple hours before it opened and waited in line to buy exclusivity. Still, as my hero Tim Riggins from the television series Friday Night Lights always said, “No Regrets.”
Exclusivity is something that we simultaneously love and love to hate. It just depends on where you happen to be sitting. If you are in the exclusive club in question, then it can feel pretty good. But if you are one of the ones who are excluded, as the definition of the word says, then it feels pretty bad. I know all of us are good Christians, socially conscious, and above being into exclusive things, right?...but we’re also liars. We all want to be a part of the cool exclusive club because it makes us feel special even if that special feeling comes from the fact that you are above such materialistic and shallow behavior. You’re still trying to set yourself apart from everyone else. One of my dear friends once summarized his millennial generation saying, “We’re all told that we are beautiful butterflies.” Being special, being unique, all other ways of saying exclusive…are high values in our world whether we like it or not.
Exclusive is an ugly word because it hurts all of us at some point or another, and at the same time we are addicted to it. As Heidi Klum famously used to say on Project Runway, “One day you’re in, the next day you’re out.” Acceptance and rejection. So much of our lives are ruled by those words. And religion is often another place where we see this play out. Many carry wounds from feeling rejected or excluded because of religion. In group out group thinking is all over the place in religion. Christianity is no different. In fact, many argue that our Christian faith is one of the worst perpetrators of exclusivity when it comes to religion. It is pretty clear when you read the Bible and consider the creeds and church doctrine that Christianity makes some pretty exclusive claims, and I want to us hear how Luke 9 reveals one of the most particular parts of the Christian faith and at the same time one of the most inclusive aspects all wrapped up into one.
In Luke 9 we read about what is called the Transfiguration. The moment when Jesus takes Peter, James, and John up a high mountain and is transfigured before them into his glorified form…basically when they see him revealed as fully God in all of his majesty. It would have been a truly awesome experience seeing the Lord in all his glory, brighter than lightning. But that is not all they see. Appearing with Jesus are Moses and Elijah. Moses represents the law. He was the one that brought the law down from Mt. Sinai to the Israelites after he had led them out of Egypt in the book of Exodus. And Elijah represents the prophets. He was considered the greatest of the Old Testament prophets. So in this moment we see the whole of God’s revelation, his given word, to humanity. We see the Old Testament in Moses and Elijah and we see the fulfillment of them, the New Testament, in Jesus. John witnessing all of this would later refer to Jesus as the Word of God himself in his gospel account. So Peter, James, and John see the whole of God’s self-revelation in these three figures.
The Transfiguration account is intended to reveal to us the significance of Jesus himself, to emphasize him, his specialness. This is true for the disciples too. We hear Peter do his best to respond to a situation in which he was clearly out of his depth. I can relate to Peter. He was the guy that always felt like he had to say something even when it would have probably been best to just keep his mouth shut. The way Luke records it makes it sound like it was just Peter nervously talking because he was so afraid. Peter says to Jesus, “Master, it is good that we are here. Let us make three tents, one for you and one for Moses and one for Elijah.” Peter’s idea reveals that fact that he does not understand the significance of Jesus yet. His proposal puts Jesus on the same level as Moses and Elijah, someone very important, but equal to Moses and Elijah because he wants to give him the same honor as the others. The disciples did not get it yet, and it was no mistake in that very moment they were enveloped in a cloud and God the Father speaks and corrects Peter. He proclaims Jesus as His beloved Son and repeats what he said about Jesus at his baptism earlier in the gospel accounts. God the Father says, “ Listen to HIM!” Listen to Jesus, not Moses and Elijah, but Jesus. He reveals Jesus to be the pinnacle of His revelation to humanity, the most important, the One that encompasses all the others. So that begs the question, “What does Jesus say?” We will return to that in a moment.
After God speaks, all of sudden the cloud lifts, the disciples look around and see nothing but Jesus. Jesus alone. Moses and Elijah, the Law and the Prophets, are gone. They disappear because Jesus Christ himself, the very Son of God, has come and has fulfilled them. Everything the law and the prophets pointed to has come in Jesus. This is what Jesus said about himself when he taught in his sermon on the mount—”I have come to fulfill the law and the prophets,” and here we see it play out symbolically at the Transfiguration. He alone is what humanity needs. He alone is our hope. He alone is our perfection.
So, here we see the very particular nature of what Christianity has to say. Jesus Christ is THE Savior. He is God incarnate. He is the only way of salvation. These are very exclusive claims indeed. And many people object and say, “How can you say your way (meaning Jesus) is the only way? That’s so narrow-minded. What about all of the other faiths and belief systems out there?” People tend to get offended because such exclusive claims do not seem to be very tolerant. The irony of these objections is that it is also an exclusive claim to say that there is no one way but many ways. In that case you’re telling every Muslim, every Jew, every Christian, every Buddhist, and every atheist that they are wrong. Muslims, Jews, Christians, Buddhists all believe that there is one way to their version of heaven, and atheists don’t believe there is a heaven at all and therefore do not need a way or many ways. So we see the attempt to avoid exclusivity usually results in some form of exclusivity. But back to Jesus and the exclusive claims that He is the Son of God and the one true Savior.
This is often seen as a very narrow proposition, a very limiting claim, but there is something unique about the Christian belief, and that is it is for everyone. No one is excluded. Revelation 7 tells us that every nation, tribe, people, and language will be in his Kingdom. Jesus came for Jew and Gentile, man and woman, slave and free. He came for the world to save the world. He is the only door, but everyone is invited to enter through that door. Other faiths tend to emphasize one people group over another largely based on ethnicity. For Islam it is best to be an Arab, and even within the Arab world there are differing views on what kind of Arab is best Sunni or Shiite. In Judaism it’s obviously best to be a Jew. And so on. But in Christianity even though we too have different denominational groups that often think they are the best version (obviously Anglicanism is the best;)), there is nothing in the actual Scriptures and historically accepted doctrine that lays any exclusive claim over the faith to one people group. In fact, Christianity is truly liberal in that it is intended to be shared with anyone and everyone. It is a faith that can be translated into any language and adopted by any culture.
And at the center of it is indeed Jesus. Everyone must contend with Him. We all have to come to grips with Jesus as the one true Savior. And this is difficult for everyone on some level because we all have beliefs and convictions about how we are considered right and good…justified We all have systems by which we judge ourselves and the rest of the world, and all of that must contend with who Jesus is and what He said and did. Can any of our systems stand when we consider Jesus Christ? As the disciples saw on that awesome day on top of that mountain everything else pales in comparison to Jesus, to what he gives us. So what in fact did he say that we should listen to?
He said, “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the year of the Lord's favor” (Luke 4:18-21). He said, “Your sins are forgiven” (Luke 5:2). It is very good news that Jesus is the only way because he is the only way for people from every nation, tribe, color, and language to be set free from sin. Jesus is the way of grace for all of us. There is no one too poor. There is no one too rich. No one too dark and no one too light. There is no one too weak, too stupid, too dirty, too broken, too lost, too guilty, too bad, too anything to be excluded from Jesus Christ. He gives us grace, acceptance through him, because of him and not because of any other standard or system we might come up with. Jesus is the free gift of God to the world (John 3:16, Rom. 6:23, Eph. 2:8-9). Believe on him who the Father has sent (John 6:29).
He came for us, to take our sin for us, to live and die for us, to take all of the rejection and judgment for us, to be excluded for us, and then to rise again for us so that death may no longer reign over us. All of the different ways we judge ourselves and others cannot stand up against Jesus Christ. He takes them all and removes them through his cross, his death and resurrection and says, “You are forgiven. You are welcome. Come with me.” When we listen to Jesus Christ everything else fades into the background. He is the only one that stands with you unconditionally. That’s the proclamation and invitation. “Come with me, my love, and I will never leave you. I will stand for you. I will defend you. I will hold you. I will love you forever.” There is only one way, and it is the most generous, loving, forgiving, and accepting way for all…for YOU…because he is a free gift for you, and his name is Jesus.
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