Matthew 11:2-6; Psalm 2

Are you the ONE who can set us free?

If Christ be formed in us, as the apostle Paul suggested to the Christians in Galatia; if our faith in God is to be shaped by Jesus, then we must be reasonably sure who this Jesus was.

Let us therefore join John the Baptist and send our messengers to Jesus with the question: "Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another?" Are you the One to set your people free? More so: are you the One who can speak meaning and freedom into our conscience?

• Freedom from the oppressive need to prove ourselves.

• Freedom from the chains of selfishness and greed that keep us captive.

• Freedom from the fear of death.

• Freedom to accept and be who we are.

Are you the ONE who can set us free?

Jesus and his deeds

What does Jesus do?

He does not say: Go to John the Baptist and tell him that I am the Son of God. Indeed, according to modern scholarship Jesus, the historical Jesus, the Jesus before Easter, probably never said, never verbally claimed: "I am the Son of God." The "Son of God" title was used by his friends after Easter to describe who he really was.

So what does Jesus do to help people to know who he was?

He points them to his deeds!

"Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."

Indeed, my friends, you can't know a person, you can't judge who a person is apart from her or his deeds. Apert from their story. Apart from the difference that person has made to life, to the world, to history. The deeds make a person's identity known. The deeds reveal who we are. The deeds make visibly manifest what move us at the centre of our being.

It is the same with us. When some one asks you: who is Thorwald Lorenzen, you don't give them his measurements, you don't mention his eye colour or whether he has a wrinkled nose. You say that he derives from a certain culture, that he is concerned about certain matters in the world, that he tries to be a believer. You say what he is on about. Whether he is a good or bad husband. Whether you can trust him or not. Whether he is a good or bad preacher and whether he practices what he preaches. You explain who he is, by pointing to his life, his passions, his deeds. You tell his story.

So when we think of Jesus, we think of the story, the history that he has created. We can't know Jesus apart from considering:

• That he accepted responsibility for his vision of life and of God - even unto death.

• That he gathered people up, who had fallen by the way side, healed them and set them back on the road teaching them to walk again.

• That he even broke the law when the dignity and health of human life was at stake.

• That he gave hope and inspiration to millions of people through the ages for whom faith in Jesus was the most important reality in their life.

He inspired:

• Leo Tolstoy to radically follow the Sermon on the Mount and become a pacifist.

• Martin Luther King to trust in the power of non-violence.

• Nelson Mandela to trust in the power of truth.

• Steve Biko to trust in the power of justice.

He inspired:

• The great minds in history - people like Origene, Augustine, Aquinas, Anselm of Canterbury and Peter Abelard - to honour and glorify Jesus in their writings.

• Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli and Jean Calvin to lift up Jesus' name above the power of the church and thus change human history in the direction of freedom; a freedom that was further fuelled by the radical reformers such as Conrad Grebel, Balthasar Hubmaier, John Smyth, Thomas Helwys and Roger Williams.

• The Dominican priest Bartholomew de Las Casas (1474-1566) struggled hard with the regime in Spain to recognize the human dignity of Indians and give them a chance for a future.

• William Carey (1761-1834) and Adoniram Judson (1788-1850) respectively brought the gospel of freedom and with it culture, health and education to India and Burma. They are revered to the present day. In life and in death they clung to Jesus.

• William Wilberforce (1759-1833) and William Knibb (1803-1845) to bring freedom to slaves - although the powers of state and church resisted them.

• David Livingstone (1813-1873), the son of poor Scottish parents went to Africa. In the latter part of his life he was for four years without medicines which had been stolen from him. When in 1871 H. M. Stanley met him, Livingstone, reduced to a skeleton, refused to leave Africa until the "open sore" of slave trading is removed. Jesus was more important to him that his own health.

Enough, my friends - you know that I could go on!

Indeed I should go on and mention the millions and millions of women and men, of boys and girls - you! - for whom Jesus is not an empty or abstract name, but for whom Jesus has become the centre of their lives - whom they trust in life and in death.

Are you the ONE to set us free? Look at my story. Look at my history.

What kind of deeds?

Now before excitement and passion carry us away, we need to stop and recall another side of the story. You see, in the name of Jesus

• Weapons that kill and destroy have been blessed, and wars have been validated.

• Crusades have been fought and as people's heads were cut off the crusaders cried "Christ is Lord".

• Slavery and Anti-Semitism and women's subordination have all been validated with reference to Jesus.

• The church has been silent when human flesh has been traded cheaply, when economic gain and national security has been used as excuses to treat human beings, people whom God created and for whom Christ died, with disrespect and cruelty.

Therefore, my friends, it is not only important that we consider the deeds that Jesus did and the history that he set into motion, but also the kinds of deeds that he specifically named!

"Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them."

What are these deeds? They are deeds that make human life human! Human life in its wholeness is affirmed and expressed.

Two dimensions are specifically mentioned:

• The challenges, that are associated with this life. We know about the blind and the lame and the outcast and the poor. Indeed the last few days have shown us that the money and the good will are there when our hearts are touched.

When we think about Jesus we think about life. He came that we might have life. The story of Jesus is a life affirming story.

• But reality includes also the fact of death and the fears and uncertainty that are associated with death.

So my friends, there is a critical edge to Jesus. Not everything goes. You can't treat people with disrespect and claim to know Jesus. You can't start pre-emptive wars and claim to have Jesus on your side. You can't treat asylum seekers as numbers and claim to be a friend of Jesus.

Was Jesus the Son of God?

Since Jesus can't be considered apart from his deeds, apart from the history that he has created, we should better ask: Is Jesus the Son of God?

If you would have raised that question in Jesus' day, the answer would have been simple.

You see, Jesus was a Jew and most of his early followers were Jews. Their thinking was steeped in the Hebrew Bible. So, if you would ask them: is Jesus the Son of God, they would think of texts like Psalm 2, where God says about the appointment of the king:

"I have set my king on Zion, my holy hill..., "You are my son; today I have begotten you."

The King is God's son. He is appointed to do God's job on earth. He is the one who brings God's ways - what the Bible calls "kingdom of God" - into the world.

So, speaking about Jesus within that view of life would include two dimensions. Two focal points of an ellipse.

• There is the inward journey, what we moderns my call self-consciousness or self-awareness. It comes out in Jesus relating to God with the intimate "Daddy" ("Abba"). It is manifested by his Inner freedom and authority. Who else would break the law, heal on the Sabbath and forgive sins?!

• And then there is the outward journey, where his inner being is revealed. His live of solidarity and hope with the marginalized; his commitment to non-violence in a violent world; his speaking "God" as a word of hope into people's lives.

So, not that Jesus is different from us in a material , in a physical way. Within a Greek thought world things are different. They said about Alexander the Great that water instead of blood was flowing through his veins. In the ancient Greek world they said that famous philosophers and poets were born of a virgin to mark their difference from the rest of humanity. People have wondered whether Jesus had to go to the toilet or whether he had any sexual feelings. Some early church communities said that Jesus was born of a virgin and others applied that metaphor to Christians who are said to "be born of the Spirit" (John 3).

But when we understand and confess Jesus as Son of God, we are not saying that in any physical way he was different from us. He was truly human!

Yet his true humanity included such a closeness to God, such a radical obedience to God's will, such an insight into God's being, such an intimate solidarity with his fellow creatures - that we confess him to be a different league to ourselves.

Invitation

Jesus, are you the ONE to set us free? Are you the ONE whose story can give meaning and drive and passion to our life?

My friends, we all have to give our individual, our personal answer to that question. The evidence is strong. Indeed it is overwhelming. The invitation, the incitement to faith is there. It is knocking at the door of our life. Will we open the door and let Jesus in?

Then Christ will be formed in us and our faith in God will be shaped, not by ourselves, but by Jesus!