Would Jesus be A Christian?

Jesus is Lord: Matthew 7:21-28, Psalm 72, Ephesians 4:1-5
Intro
Christianity throughout the world is expressed in an enormous variety of ways. So much so that if you put two divergent groups together you might wonder if they bore any relationship to one another.
One might even wonder that if Jesus showed up at the gathering of certain Christian groups whether he would identify himself as a Christian.
Can Jesus be a Southern Baptist, a Korean Pentecostal, a Russian Orthdox, a South American Catholic and a Quaker?
There are many factors that go into explaining the vast difference in Christian expression. One is that at the heart of the gospel is an enormous amount of freedom. The bible does not in fact prescribe, how we should worship, what we should eat or wear. It does not lay out black and white answers to life’s complex problems as much as we wish it might. Secondly each Christina community is unique in its history and experience, factors which enormously influence our understanding of life and faith. Thirdly each Christian community is embedded in layers of culture. Culture not only affects the way we do things it affects the way we see things and understand things.
Our Christian experience and expression and witness are influenced by a multiplicity of factors so much so that it can be difficult to see the common core. It can also be difficult to gain a healthy perspective about your own faith and commitments because of the many layers that make up what we believe and what we think we know.
So I think it is a legitimate question to ask. Would Jesus be a Christian? I don’t want to ask it about Southern Baptists or Greek Orthodox. But I want to ask it about the style and type of Christianity that I am a part of here in New Zealand. And so how do we do that?
We have to try and get to the core of the matter the foundation of our faith and ask some key questions about Jesus and then reflect on what that means for us who claim to be Christian people. Are we being Christian in a way that Jesus would if he were alive as a human being among us now?
Over the next few weeks I’m going to look at some of the key Christological Claims that the bible makes and the church affirms. Jesus is Lord, Jesus is Saviour, Jesus is Christ, and bring it to some form of conclusion on the last Sunday of the month which is Christ the King Sunday.
What do we mean when we say Jesus is Lord? More importantly what did the early church and the writers of the New Testament mean when they called Jesus Lord? The Greek Word Kurios has three basic meanings and one further important connotation that we will explore.
Just and Noble King and Sovereign
One of the meanings of “Lord” is simply the king or sovereign ruler of a group of people. Now we don’t have much appreciation of this idea in our modern culture or even as we look back over history. The idea of a king being just and noble is more of a myth, as in King Arthur, than it is in any actual historical situation.
We’re used to the idea the power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, history is on the side of this well worn cliché. We have two models of monarchy the one being a despotic and brutal dictator with absolute power of his people or that of a toothless figurehead who is good at pomp and ceremony but with no real power.
How then do we apply the term Lord to Jesus? Hopefully in neither of these ways.
In spite of a succession of bad kings throughout Israel’s history the people retained the hope of a good king. From time to time they saw the fruit of Godly leadership, some of their kings acted justly and nobly some of the time. Psalm 72 expresses that hope in the form of a prayer which begins

Endow the king with your justice, O God, the royal son with your righteousness.
2 He will judge your people in righteousness, your afflicted ones with justice.
3 The mountains will bring prosperity to the people, the hills the fruit of righteousness.
4 He will defend the afflicted among the people and save the children of the needy; he will crush the oppressor.
Imagine being subject to any number of brutal kings that ruled throughout history. No hope, no justice, no safety, no prosperity. The thought of a Good king was a wonderful dream.
The good king would bring hope, and prosperity, he would protect his people, ensure that the service and infrastructure for a good society were in place and so on. The good king would bring life and liberty.
Here then is the hope we live by when we proclaim Jesus is Lord. We believe that Jesus sets us free from all other tyranny so that we may live in freedom and enjoy the life we have been given.
We reject on the one hand the idea that Jesus is a dictator who rules over us with an iron fist, and we reject the idea that he is a toothless lion who is nothing more than a figure head representing a set of good ideas and worthy aspirations. Jesus is the rightful Lord of All, his kingdom will endure forever, it is a kingdom of justice that we may enter into by swearing our allegiance to Jesus as Lord forsaking all other Lords and kings.
Master of Servants
The second meaning of Lord is related, it’s a little more domestic than political. In Jesus time a Lord would be one who had servants under him. Servants obey their master; they are enslaved to him or her at his or her beck and call. Often the servant or slave was treated as little more than a chattel whose sole reason for being was the advancement of the Lord’s needs and wants.
The Master had total control over the slave dictating what and when the slave ate, when and where they slept and arose, who they associated with, what they said, what they wore. The slave did not have a life of his or her own but was an appendage of the master’s life, all meaning and purpose were derivative from the master.
Of critical importance here is the character of the master. Once a slave is owned by one person the slave could be sold like any other chattel or beast of burden. A good and caring master could make the slave’s life bearable; a cruel master could make the slave’s life intolerably miserable.
As Bob Dylan famously wrote and sung, “You’ve gotta serve somebody”
You may be an ambassador to England or FranceYou may like to gamble, you might like to danceYou may be the heavyweight champion of the worldYou may be a socialite with a long string of pearls.But you're gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeedYou're gonna have to serve somebody,It may be the devil or it may be the LordBut you're gonna have to serve somebody.Might be a rock'n' roll adict prancing on the stageMight have money and drugs at your commands, women in a cageYou may be a business man or some high degree thiefThey may call you Doctor or they may call you Chief.
That which we serve that which we submit to and give our life to that is the thing or person that gives our life meaning and gives us our sense of who we are. A slave in the first century Palestine might have had a miserable lot at the hands of his earthly Lord, but if he knew Jesus as Master and Lord, he had a higher sense of purpose a greater sense of self-worth, he could rise above his oppression and realise his human potential.
We are in a different situation our slavery is seldom to earthly an lord but many people are enslaved to chemical addiction, bad habits, unhealthy ways of relating to others, addicted to materialism, individualism, success, social advancement, power, adrenalin and so on and so forth. That which we are enslaved to dictates our lives makes us who we are and we have a choice we can choose to give up other masters and serve Jesus as Lord.
Master/Teacher of apprentice/learners
The Other common use of the word Kurios or Lord in Jesus time was that used for a master/teacher/Rabbi by his students or disciples. We use the word master in a similar way today. We talk about master builders, or master violinists, or a master craftsman and so on. A master is a person who has mastered a set of skills so perfectly that they are embodied within them. The master sculpture doesn’t need to consult a book when she is creating a masterpiece, the creativity flows. A surgeon operates with such skill and knowledge and instinct that it is almost second nature for her to operate.
But how do people arrive at being masters in their field, they submit to a process of learning through disciplined practice. The young violinists observes the masters, copies the master and practices what she has copied over and over again until the new skill becomes ingrained, it just flows naturally without conscious thought
When we say Jesus is Lord this is in part what we mean. Jesus is the master of life and living. We submit to his tutelage, we become his apprentices, his students, his disciples learning the discipline of love and faith and life and hope and grace and so on. We try to copy Jesus actions, to imitate his attitudes, to follow his lead, until we find that living the Jesus way comes naturally.
This analogy is limited in one respect. For in most other master student relationships, having reached a degree of near perfection the student themselves eventually become masters. When it comes to living the Jesus way we never quite master it. Perfection is always just beyond our reach; well actually it’s a long way beyond our reach. And the reason for this I will explain in the fourth meaning or connotation of the word Lord in the New Testament.
When the Greek Translators got a hold of the Hebrew Bible that is our Old Testament they decided that instead of Translating or transliterating the Hebrew word Yahweh the personal name of God if you like, the decided that they word just insert the words “The LORD” In most English translation where this tradition is followed “The Lord” is typed with small caps, the Hebrew behind this Phrase is Yahweh the name of God.
In a few cases in the New Testament the Hebrew Bible quotes an Old Testament passage that use “THE LORD” in small caps and it is clearly meant to refer to Jesus, here is an example. From Romans 10.
That if you confess with your mouth, "Jesus is Lord," and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. 10 For it is with your heart that you believe and are justified, and it is with your mouth that you confess and are saved. 11As the Scripture says, "Anyone who trusts in him will never be put to shame." 12For there is no difference between Jew and Gentile—the same Lord is Lord of all and richly blesses all who call on him, 13for, "Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”
The last section is a quote from Joel 2:32. A direct Hebrew translation would be "Everyone who calls on the name of YHWH will be saved”. However Paul clearly identifies this with Jesus. So in saying that Jesus is Lord we are also saying that Jesus and YHWH are one in being, they are one and the same, Jesus is God.
So going back through our three meanings of Lord; when we say Jesus is Lord we declare that
He is sovereign King creator of all things perfectly good and reliable, rescuing us from all bad kings, rulers and despots
Jesus is our Master, the one who we submit to in preference to all else that would seek to have control over us for good or bad, we submit not to Jesus a 1st Century Jew but to Jesus one in being with God.
And Jesus is our teacher/master/Rabbi, Jesus models for us how to live, love and be, he does this not merely as a really good philosopher and healer, but as one in being with God and one who subjected himself to the tutelage of God the Father only doing what God the Father did, so that we in turn might become his disciples following in his footsteps.
Would Jesus be a Christian?
If Jesus arrived among us in the flesh would he recognise our worship and our lifestyle as a faithful expression of loving and serving God the Lord of all?
It’s not up to us to answer that question for other people, but from time to time it is good to look at our own lifestyle and see if we really mean it when we declare Jesus is Lord.
Are we serving as faithful subjects in his kingdom?Are we progressively dismissing all other lords giving up all those things which control our lives to serve Jesus alone?Are we learning from the master, living as he would live?
These are our questions.
You and Jesus know the answers!