Proper 23C – 2 Timothy 8-15

“Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David-- that is my gospel”
I had a whole sermon worked out dealing with the Gospel reading for today. I had mulled the Gospel passage over and over in my head, and found that it was probably going to be easy to preach on. Before I decided to start writing down this sermon, I went over all the readings again. This time, I only got as far the Epistle reading, and knew I had to get rid of the other sermon.
I had recently read an article by someone who was critiquing the preaching he heard regularly in the Episcopal Church. He said, that to him, he was disappointed when it felt like the preacher was talking about an issue they wanted to talk about an ignored what the Scriptures wanted to say.

Now in defense of preachers who sometimes preach on something not explicitly in the readings, well, I think it is ok on occasion. The job of the preacher is to preach about Jesus Christ and life in His church. Sometimes a bigger issue in the Church comes up, and the preacher needs to address how that bigger issue fits into the demands of the Gospel and life in the Church. An honest preacher knows that sometimes they simply have to let the Scriptures speak on their own, while they preach on another holy matter.

With this indictment of preachers who ignore the text ringing in my head, I went through the readings again. The Epistle jumped out at me. “Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David-- that is my gospel!”

This is only half a sentence, yet I was stopped dead in my tracks. We read these phrases all the time – Christ, descendent of David, resurrection – so much that I usually say “Yeah, yeah” and move on. The thing is, these are words of gigantic importance. These are loaded terms that split the religion of Israel in half.

St. Paul says in this part of his letter to St. Timothy “remember Jesus Christ.” We say Christ all the time, but what does Christ mean? Sometimes we say it as if it was Jesus’ proper last name, a man born of Mr. And Mrs. Christ.

We know that is not the case, his name was Jesus of Nazareth, perhaps called Jeshua Bar Joseph, (Jesus, son of Joseph) in his youth. Yet during his ministry and after his death and resurrection he is called the Christ, or Christ Jesus as St. Paul often phrases it.

So what and who is the Christ? Christ is the English version of the Greek word Christos, which was a translation of the Hebrew word Messiah. To the ancient Jews this meant a leader, a high priest who was anointed by God. The Messiah was the ruler of Israel, appointed by God to lead His people in His ways. We see this in the old testament where King David is called a messiah, a Christos, the ruler of Israel anointed and appointed by God. (2 Sam 23:1) To the ancient Jews a messiah was simply a divinely appointed ruler or priest.

By the time we get to the Judaism of Jesus’ age the expectations had changed. There was an expectation not of A christ, but of THE Christ. The Jews has been fighting with their overlords for centuries, sometimes winning, more often loosing. Their leaders had been called christs by their followers, but it wasn’t enough to free the Jews.

There became divisions amongst the Jews as to what to expect. They expected salvation from their Pagan rulers. But there was disagreement on how this salvation would come. Some expected that God would continue to send anointed leaders, small “c” christs who would lead the Children of Israel eventually to their freedom, somehow separating them from the pagans, by force, politics or both. Some of the more radical Jews thought a capital “C” Christ, in the singular, was promised to come. This Christ would come with a sword to deal out God’s Judgment against the Pagans with fire and bloodshed.

Amongst all this Jesus is born of the Blessed Virgin Mary into this world to deliver us all. Jesus’ followers and St. Paul later say to the world: this man, this God-Man, is the capital “c” Christ, the one to come and save all of us. To the Jewish world this is shocking. To those who expected many anointed leaders to eventually save the Children of Israel, St. Paul is saying “Stop looking!” The Christ came and already freed us – you just refuse to see it!” To the more radical Jews he tells them “You misunderstood! The Christ was not coming to deal with this world with ineffective human means. You expected a Christ with a sword, but God in His Wisdom sent the Christ to fight with the real enemy: the Devil and his friend Death.”

In case this was not enough, St. Paul adds to this. Not only is Jesus the Christ, but he is the descendant of David.

Those of you who have read through the Bible in its entirety know that you will often encounter genealogies. These long lists that seemingly come out nowhere seem an unimportant distraction to us Christians and we often skip over them. We know that these genealogies were very important to the Jews but we are not sure if they really matter to us. So when we open up the Gospel of Matthew and read the opening verse “An account of the genealogy of Jesus” we often skip right over it. Yet right in this first verse, St. Matthew makes the same point the St. Paul made earlier. That first verse of the Gospel says “Jesus the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham.” (Matt 1:1)

So once again we ask: why is this important? So what if Jesus was a descendent of David?
What it means is that God keeps his promises. God told Abraham “I will make you exceedingly fruitful; I will make nations of you, and Kings shall come from you.” (Gen 17:6) And indeed God did, for the great King David was born of Abraham.

We know that David was a great king who established the ancient kingdom of Israel, but his descendant did a horrible job. The worshiped the false gods of their neighbors and broke almost every promise they had made to God. As a result of all this heresy the kingdom fell and was scattered, only to be rebuilt and then conquered again! Yet the Jews knew this was not the end of the story. Psalm 89 tells us that God said “I have made a covenant with my chosen one, I have sworn an oath to David my servant: I will establish your line forever, and preserve your throne for all generations.” (Ps 89:3-4)

To the those who said “God has forsaken us, God promised that David’s throne and line would last forever, yet here we are in ruin!” St Paul says “No He hasn’t! David’s line came to its fulfillment in Jesus, who has become the great High Priest, greater than David ever was, and has freed us from the grip of this fallen world!”

Now these two statements, that Jesus is the Christ and the descendant of David are pretty radical but what is the boldest of all, is when St. Paul says that Jesus was raised from the dead. Now here is a statement that is still shocking to us today, just as much as it was when St. Paul made it: Jesus was raised from the dead! St. Paul was very clear about what had happened. This was no symbol, no metaphor, but a reality. Jesus was killed by us, by all mankind, on the cross and he suffered the death that all mankind was subject too. But then, on the third day, the tomb was found empty. The flesh and bones put in the tomb, gone. And as St. Mary Magdalene and the Apostles saw, this flesh and bone that had been really, truly, dead, was now alive again! And not in the reanimated way that Dr. Frankenstein’s monster had, but capital “R” Resurrection flesh and blood that had beat death, hallowed Hades, and come again amongst the living , then fully assumed to sit at the right hand of the Father.

It is no wonder that St. Paul called this all a “stumbling block to the Jews and a foolishness to the Gentiles.” (1 Cor 1:23) That was true yesterday just as much as it s today. We hear today from people who say “I just can’t believe in a religion that thinks some guy actually rose from the dead.” And sadly, ever from within parts of the Church we hear, “Well, the resurrection was a metaphor, or it has been misunderstood – the Resurrection was only Jesus’ spirit!” To these objections then and now, St. Paul says “No! Jesus literally died, and literally rose from the dead, all of Him!”

So this then is our faith: Jesus the Christ. Jesus came to save us all. Not to save us from the grip of the Greeks or Romans – but to save us from the death that awaited us all after Adam’s transgression and the damaged relationship with God that followed. Jesus, the Christ, came and undid the results of the fall and gave us a new and perfected relationship with God.

This also is our faith: Jesus, the descendant of David. God has invited us into several covenants, where we promise to serve God and He in turn promised to deliver us. We broke our promises to God, but God never broke His, He still continues the line of David just as He said He would in the Jesus the High Priest of the Kingdom of God.

Finally, this too is our faith: Jesus was raised from the dead. We all were destined for a death that separated us from each other and from God, but Jesus undid this. Jesus trampled down the Devil and Death, removing Death’s sting, allowing us to be united into His own death and resurrection so that we too might be delivered from the land of the Dead to join Him at the Heavenly Altar.

My Brothers and Sisters: Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David-- that is THE Gospel.