The Unique Character Of Jesus #JesusFollowers

Guest sermon by Dr. William Ellery Channing

In the Gospels, we're struck with the uniqueness of the Author of Christianity: that while all other men are formed in a measure by the spirit of the age, we can discover in Jesus no impression of the period in which he lived. 

We know with considerable accuracy the state of society, the modes of thinking, the hopes and expectations of the country in which Jesus was born and grew up; and he is as free from them, and as exalted above them, as if he had lived in another world, or, with every sense closed to the objects around him.

His character has in it nothing local or temporary. It can be explained by nothing around him. His history shows him to us a solitary being, living for purposes which none but himself comprehended, and enjoying not so much as the sympathy of a single mind.

His apostles, his chosen companions, brought to him the spirit of the age; and nothing shows its strength more strikingly, than the slowness with which it yielded in these honest men to the instructions of Jesus

Jesus came to a nation expecting a Messiah; and he claimed this character. But instead of conforming to the opinions which prevailed in regard to the Messiah, he resisted them completely and without reserve to a people anticipating a triumphant leader, under whom vengeance as well as ambition was to be glutted by the prostration of their oppressors, he came as a spiritual leader, teaching humility and peace.

This hostility to the hopes and prejudices of his nation; this deliberate exposure of himself to rejection and hatred, cannot easily be explained by the common principles of human nature, and excludes the possibility of selfish aims in the Author of Christianity.

One striking peculiarity in Jesus is the extent and the vastness of his views. While all around him looked for a Messiah to liberate God's ancient people, while to every other Jew, Judea was the exclusive object of pride and hope, Jesus came, declaring himself to be the deliverer and light of the world, and in his whole teaching and life, you see a consciousness – which never forsakes him – of a relation to the whole human race. This idea of blessing mankind, of spreading a universal religion, was the most magnificent which had ever entered man's mind.

Compare next these views of Jesus with his station in life. He was of humble birth and education, with nothing in his lot, with no extensive means, no rank, or wealth, or patronage, to infuse vast thoughts and extravagant plans.

The shop of a carpenter, the village of Nazareth, were not spots for ripening a plan more aspiring and extensive than had ever been formed. It is a principle of human nature, that except in case of insanity, some proportion is observed between the power of an individual, and his plans and hopes. The purpose to which Jesus devoted himself was as ill-suited to his condition as an attempt to change the seasons, or to make the sun rise in the west.

That a young man, in obscure life, belonging to an oppressed nation, should seriously think of subverting the time-hallowed and deep-rooted religions of the world, is a strange fact; but with this purpose we see the mind of Jesus thoroughly imbued; and, sublime as it is, he never falls below it in his language or conduct, but speaks and acts with a consciousness of superiority, with a dignity and authority, becoming this unparalleled destination.

The most striking trait in Jesus was, undoubtedly, benevolence; and although this virtue had existed before, yet it had not been manifested in the same form and extent. Jesus' benevolence was distinguished first by its expansiveness. At that age, an unconfined philanthropy, proposing and toiling to do good without distinction of country or rank, was unknown.

Love to men as men, love, comprehending the hated Samaritan and the despised publican, was a feature which separated Jesus from the best men of his nation and of the world. Another characteristic of the benevolence of Jesus was its gentleness and tenderness, forming a strong contrast with the hardness and ferocity of the spirit and manners which then prevailed, and with that sternness and inflexibility which the purest philosophy of Greece and Rome inculcated as the perfection of virtue.

The character of Jesus, then, was real. Its reality is the only explanation of the mighty revolution produced by his religion. And how can we account for it, but by that cause to which he always referred it, a mission from the Father.

- Written by Dr. William Ellery Channing, 1826, adapted from "Discourses on the Evidences of Revealed Religion" in Tracts of the American Unitarian Association, Vol. 1, 1827.

The Beatitudes: Jesus' Doctrine of Happiness #JesusFollowers

            

The Beatitudes: Jesus' Doctrine of Happiness [#JesusFollowers Weekly Message]: 

Matt. 5:3-12; Luke 6:20-23

The Beatitudes contain Jesus Christ's doctrine of happiness. A strange doctrine it must sound to worldly ears! It seems a series of paradoxes, or even contradictions, amounting together to a declaration that the miserable are the happy. Nowhere does the boldness of the preacher of Galilee appear more conspicuously than in the opening sentences of the Sermon on the Mount.

This man has faith in the power of his Gospel to cope with every evil. He speaks as one who has Good News for all classes of men, and for all possible conditions. There is no human experience which Jesus regards with despair, and his doctrine is as original as it is bold. 

It is not to be confounded with that of any philosophical school. It is not Stoicism. The Stoic preached submission to misery as inevitable, and offered to his disciples the peace of despair. Jesus looks on evil as something that can be transmuted into good, and all sufferers have a hope, a reward, an outlook. It is not mere optimism, however. The optimist denies evil or explain It away, and thinks to cure human misery by fine praises. 

Jesus admits the evil that is in the world, And speak of it in plain terms; only, unlike the pessimist, he declines to regard it as final and unsurmountable. 

The kind of happiness that Jesus offers is obviously something different. Its both novel and peculiar. When he says blessed are the poor, the hungry, the sorrowful, he means either that they are blessed In spite of their misery or that they are blessed through their misery. In either case, the blessedness must be something different from what the world usually counts as happiness, something in the soul. Jesus invites us to reach felicity by the method of inwardness, Representing it as within the reach of all, just because that is the way to it.

These sayings on happiness prefixed to the Sermon on the Mount might have formed a part of the sermon in the synagogue of Nazareth on the Acceptable Year of the Lord. It is only once written in the Gospel narrative, but they might have been spoken by him many times. They would have served to show the nature of his message. They might have been, and probably were, themes sounded by Jesus many times in his ministry. 

They are certainly among the most characteristic utterances of the new era of Hope. It has been remarked of the Sermon on the Mount that it seems to be a mixture of two distinct sorts of doctrine, one specially suited for the ears of disciples, and the other such as would more suitably be addressed to the multitude. 

In the judgment of critics, the former kind of doctrine predominates, so that the Sermon may be represented as a disciple-discourse with popular elements, interspersed.

There is a certain amount of truth in this view, and the mixture, discernible throughout, is traceable at the commencement. Some of the Beatitudes are for all of humanity, while some are spoken specifically for the benefit of the disciples. 

One set seems specifically for the woes of humanity at large, another brings consolation for the tribulations of Believers. The distinction is most apparent in Luke's version of the Sermon. There, three Beatitudes are spoken to the hungry, the poor, those that weep; then follows one comprehensive Beatitude for the faithful servants of the Kingdom suffering for truth and righteousness. 

It was necessary that there should be Beatattudes for both. No Gospel is complete, which has no consolations for both ordinary suffering mortals and those saints who were already battling moral evil.

In Luke's version of the discourse, they seem to refer to literal poverty, hunger, and sorrow. Christ Jesus appears there, saying, "Blessed are you poor;” “Blessed are you that hunger now;” “Blessed are you who weep now.” 

In Matthew's version, the terms employed to describe the classes addressed in the two first sentences have attached to them qualifying  phrases which make the characteristics spiritual, and limit the scope of the sayings, turning them in fact into special Beatitudes pertaining to the children of the Kingdom.

If the question is asked: which of the two forms is the more original? Our judgment inclines to that of Luke. Speaking generally, the more pregnant, kernel-like form of any saying of  Jesus is always the more likely to have been likely to have been that actually used by Him. The briefer, less developed form is most in keeping with the striking originality of His teaching. 

Jesus, as befits the Sage, loved short, suggestive sentences,  revealing much, hiding much, arresting the attention of the memory, provoking thought, demanding explanation.

(Adapted from the book "Galilean Gospel" by Dr. Aleander Balmain Bruce, 1882)