Have We "Dethroned" Jesus

 Richard L. Eslinger writes in his Theological perspective :

“One other temptation confronts the church….The tactic is familiar and chronic: when faced with a pluralistic world with all kinds of gods and causes, just ratchet down your Christology to make Jesus fit in. Diminish your Jesus until he will not disturb or upset anyone……...  But what if Jesus Christ is the image of God?  Imagine — all things created through him, all things fulfilled in him, creator of all that is, both seen and unseen.  Consider all these powers — these “thrones” and “dominions.”  If Christ is the “firstborn of all creation,” then these powers were created by him and through the cross have been “dethroned.”   They can no longer enslave. What if everything holds together in the One who is the image of God?”  (Feasting on the Word Year C, Volume 3, page 261)

Have we, in our cultural world, actually “dethroned” Jesus?

I invited you to reflect on that for some moments.

In my truth we have dethroned the One who came to reveal to us the God of all creation.

We have reduced his identity to just someone who once roamed the world doing Good, healing people and teaching about the love of God.

We don’t perceive nor understand the man Jesus as God.

I may have told you this but one evening, just before confirmation class, a young man came into my office and sat down.  He made a statement that caught my mind:  “Pastor Marcia I believe in God.  I just don’t get were Jesus fit.  What is the need for Jesus in the story?”

I don’t remember now what I answered.

However, that question clearly hangs out loud in our world today, doesn’t it?

There is an entire denomination that has moved away from Christianity because of such questions ask by that confirmation student that evening.

 

But what if Jesus Christ is the image of God?  

And why does this matter anyway?

In my imagination it matters because, in my understanding, the God of the Old Testament realized that his human creatures had gotten very mixed up and turned in opposite directions.  

They had lost the real truth about their God.

They needed some help coming back to the original purpose that God made them in the first place.

So God decided to actually come down to earth and walk among his confused people. 

            God incarnated!

                                   God actually with us in the skin of Jesus.

He came to begin again, in person, to adjust their understanding of the who, and what, and why of God; and God’s true character.

He came to broaden their archetype of this God that the human mind had limited by their lack of understanding.