[AI translation] Dear brothers and sisters! On the first Sunday of Advent, two weeks ago today, you may remember that we have been dealing with the mystery of the person of Jesus in the sermon here. That is, how in his conception by the Holy Spirit and his virgin birth his twofold nature is expressed, his divine nature on the one hand and his human nature on the other. This wonderful mystery of his person was then revealed to us in the preaching of the Word. And now I want to turn again to the person of Jesus. And I am so concerned only with the wonderful person of Jesus himself that I must say in advance that I have almost no practical implications.That is how the apostles preached at one time, that is, they simply spoke about Jesus himself. They told without interruption what they saw about Jesus, what they heard about Jesus, what happened to Jesus, what Jesus did. This was the whole content of the apostolic preaching. No practical implications were attached to it. For it is the person of Jesus who means salvation for us. The person of Jesus means for us the gracious God. A personal relationship, a relationship of faith, with the person of Jesus means for us the possibility of redeemed life, life in general, here on this earth and in eternity.
But a question may arise about the person of Jesus, a question which perhaps has not been formulated in the hearts of many people - although it may be there - but which one of the brothers, in the course of the last week, has literally put it this way: "Perhaps all that has been written about the person of Jesus is not true! Brothers and sisters, I am not at all surprised that this thought should always tempt believers and scientists alike. So the idea that the whole Jesus legend is just a human idea and a product of religious enthusiasm. It may sound a bit scandalous to the ears of believers, but even believers are sometimes tempted by such thoughts. How often do we hear that the Bible was written by men. And then about Jesus: maybe it was just the fanciful imagination of the disciples that gave the colours to paint his figure...
Well, dear brothers and sisters, the cause of much controversy surrounding the person of Jesus is really the person of Jesus himself. And among them, in particular, this statement of Jesus, which I have just read, that you are from below, and I am from above. You are of this world, but I am not of this world. So it is no wonder that mankind cannot come to terms with such a person, even after two thousand years. And the debate is still going on, pro and con, about the reality of his person. For it is true that the figure of Jesus, as he appears in the Gospels, is beyond all human invention and human imagination. He is too great, too pure and too perfect to have been born in a human mind. It is indeed, as he says, from above here below, from another world here in this world. It's so different that you can't add anything to it.
They say there is a metal that cannot be dissolved, that cannot be mixed. Well then, brothers and sisters, this is the form, this is the person of Jesus, a "meteor" from another world. So much so that everything else that was added to it later, invented about it later, such as Lagerlöf Zelma's legends of Christ, are totally alien to his person, his true being. One immediately senses in them that they are really all human inventions and additions, but they do not fit him at all, they do not fit in any way with his very special personality and person.
Yes, brothers and sisters, there is a critical opinion that the figure of Jesus, the majestic, powerful, glorious One as he stands before us in the Gospels, was moulded into such a powerful figure by the enthusiastic imagination and great love of the disciples. Look, this view is inconceivable if only because Jesus' disciples were also devout Jews. And for the Jewish religion of the time, the most important feature of the figure of Jesus was his stumbling block. For a devout Jew, Jesus was an unheard-of stumbling block. His behaviour was downright scandalous on many occasions. The age in which Jesus was born was indeed full of Messianic expectation. Never before had the people of that age looked forward to something like they looked forward to the Messiah. To this day, the saying still stands that they were waiting as Jews for the Messiah. Well, they were waiting for the Messiah. But along with the expectation of the Messiah, a Messianic image was formed in the imagination of the people. They imagined him as a mighty warlord who would finally overthrow the hated Roman Empire and restore King David's throne to its former glory. So the people were expecting a Messiah who would also have political power, and indeed, primarily political power. And Jesus' behaviour was so far from meeting this expectation that the very people who were waiting for the Messiah were in no way willing or ready to recognise him as their Messiah, their Messiah-King. Moreover, they remembered how furiously and with what indignant indignation they shouted in the court of the high priest, "Crucify him, crucify him, we don't want him, we have an emperor, he is not our king! So, if the very people who were waiting for the Messiah were so dismayed by him, how could the Messianic contemporaries of the time have made him into their figure?
But why did they see the figure of Jesus, the person of Jesus, as so stumbling? For two reasons. One is that he was much, much bigger, and the other is that Jesus was much, much smaller than the Messiah was then imagined to be. So on the one hand, he was much bigger. Too big, too audacious, too incredible was Jesus' claim that he claimed to be equal to God. For the religious beliefs of the time, this was a mortal sin in itself, and he was condemned to death on that basis. The strongest belief in Israel at that time was monotheism. The very first commandment was, "I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me. And from that time on, the prophets proclaimed incessantly that 'there is no other god but me'. And "Hear, O Israel, there is one Lord and one God". And then imagine that someone comes along who says of himself that he is the Son of God. Who says of himself that I and the Father are one. He who has seen me has seen the Father, and that I have come from him and am coming to him. We cannot imagine today what a deadly stumbling block this was, what a blasphemy this was in the ears of a believing Jew at that time.
Then there is the fact that the religious belief of the time was that only God could forgive sins. So to forgive a sin, to release someone from the bondage of sin, that is absolutely a divine power, a divine dignity. And now imagine that someone appears and practices forgiveness of sins and proclaims forgiveness of sins as if he were God. No wonder, indeed, that he was indignantly stumbled at. If they had not heard all this from Jesus himself, and had not seen it as such from faithful Jews like Matthew, or John, or Luke, they would not have dared to write such things. A person who would have offended believers with such blasphemous statements could not have been imagined by the human imagination. When the evangelists write about these things, one can almost still feel the astonishing horror that ran through them when they wrote them.
On the one hand, then, Jesus said too great things about himself, by which he raised himself far above other men. And on the other hand, what was stumbling was that he stooped so low in his service among men, like an undemanding slave. Who could have conceived of one who would walk with his head held high before God, and stoop to the dust before men in the depths of service. Again, this is exactly the opposite of what one would imagine. So not only was Jesus stumbling because of his excessive greatness, but he was just as stumbling because of his excessive "lowliness". Nothing was further from him than some kind of glory, recognition by men, or a desire to assert himself. And his heart was always drawn to the simplest, poorest, most despised, most miserable people of his time. The suspicious, the stigmatised, the most guilty - these were his friends. He treated them in a very privileged way. He mingled with them, sat down to eat with them. These were the ones he always gathered around him, the ones he protected. With them he had complete solidarity. He sided with them. These were his brothers and sisters. So, even by the social standards of the time, he had stooped so low as to be considered scandalous behaviour in itself.
"Odi profanum vulgus et arceo!" [I hate the vile crowd and keep away from it!], cries Horace a few years before Jesus' birth, to the worldly wisdom. And Jesus, just the reverse: he opens his arms wide to the despised crowds and says: "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. He awaits his disciples at the farewell banquet in his honour like a common slave. With an apron tied in front of him, he knelt before a wash-basin, and washed the dusty, sweaty feet of twelve simple men in it. Even Peter stumbled over him. A saviour, a Messiah-king, was not what the people of his day had in mind. If Jesus had been a figment of human imagination, he would certainly not have been portrayed as such, so that there would be no pride in a man, no self-interest, no glory... It was simply unthinkable then and it is unthinkable now.
People were also shocked by the servile form in which he lived. Imagine that on the one hand he said, "All authority in heaven and earth has been given to me", and that "I and God are one", and then this person had nowhere to lay his head, and he didn't want to have one? Not a house, or a room, or even a bed to call his own. There was not a doghouse in the whole world that he could say was mine. This was not then, nor is it now, the way religious and secular thinking conceives of greatness. The great man, the great individual, the mighty.
And then his suffering and death were particularly stumbling. A Messiah who suffers, a Messiah-king who can be bound and executed, could not have been imagined by Israel. How can a Messiah-king be one who ultimately loses, who ultimately falls short, whose journey ends in a losing cause?! No, even the faith of the disciples was shaken by this terrible disappointment. Do you sense how terribly wrong it would be to believe that the Messianic triumph of the day provided the colours to paint the figure of Jesus? That if someone of that age had wanted to paint the figure of a Messiah from his own imagination, he would certainly not have painted such a figure as the apostles portrayed of Jesus, who was the exact opposite of everything a young Jew of that age expected and expected from the Messiah.
So stumbling was the figure of Jesus to Israel that one can really only accept what Jesus said, that you are from below and I am from above. You are of this world and I am not of this world.
Brothers and sisters, this face, this profile, is not drawn by human desire or religious fervour, it is so different from any other human idea that, seeing the figure of Jesus who stands before us in the Gospel, we can only bow our heads before him and say that here, truly, God is present in this Jesus. Well, it is so very different from any human idea because it is from above. Because he is not of this world. Because it is God! Because God, the Living God, is here among us!
And if to religious thought the person of Jesus was a stumbling block, to the Greek philosophical thought of the time it was foolishness, as the apostle Paul tells us. The Greco-Roman culture of the day did not portray the great man, the greatness, as the apostles and evangelists saw Jesus. This was simply not the ideal of man. You know what the ideal of man was? It is what Socrates says of the great man: to surpass your friend in doing good, to surpass your enemy in causing pain. And he also said that if a man could no longer avenge an insult on himself, he should at least bear it with the superiority of a proud woman - and that is the wisdom of the world today: to go to the scaffold with one's head held high, if one must. In this respect, too, Jesus behaved in a manner diametrically opposed to what one might think, and to what one might imagine one might think of another. If the figure of Jesus were really a figment of human imagination, imagine that his miracles would necessarily include a miracle of vengeance. For instance, when he is tortured there, nailed to the cross, and there he is mocked and teased, "Well, if you are the Son of God, now get off the cross, now show that you are really the Son of God. Brethren, the human imagination would not have missed this opportunity for sensation. A poetic Jesus would certainly have frightened his enemies to death with a breathtaking miracle. But the way in which Jesus tolerated insult, abuse and humiliation can only be a credible account of astonished witnesses, for it is not in any way in keeping with the thinking and taste of his time - or with the thinking and taste of today.
Then, finally, there is his silence. Others have stood before the courts and their greatness was shown precisely by the fact that they defended themselves mightily and, by their defence, almost overpowered their judges. The judges of Socrates, for example, sat there devastated during Socrates' defence as if they were the accused. Jesus remained silent. He is silent even before the chief priests. And before Pilate, before Herod, as if he had no excuse. As if he could not speak. As if he were truly guilty, for a guilty man is silent under the weight of the accusations that fall upon him. In the judgment of the world, a silent accused is really not an impressive person. A moved Jesus would say something strong, hard, if he could do nothing else. Or at least there would be a pride of contempt in him. But the way he behaves is foolishness to the world. Is it not folly for a man to let himself be condemned to death in the full knowledge of his own innocence?! A fictional Jesus would not have allowed this.
So, brothers and sisters, the image of Jesus that unfolds before us in the Gospels did not come about because a grateful congregation later on, by pinning on this person every good, every noble, every great thing that was known at the time, thus embellishing, thus idealising the figure of Jesus. No, an idealized Jesus would look very different, and not in total contrast to everything that was the religious or secular ideal of the time - so this person was not spent. This person is a real historical person. The evangelists were writing an authentic account of someone they themselves did not understand, but saw as such. They described the person they saw and what they heard from him. They saw and heard the one who said, "You are from below, I am from above. You are of this world, I am not of this world.
So is the Bible only written by men? Yes, but about someone who is not only human, someone who is as real today as he was then. Who speaks to you and me today with his word then; who helps and blesses us today with his kindness then; who surrounds us with his love then, who redeems us today with his death then, and gives us victory today with his resurrection then, over sin, hell and death.
So, brothers and sisters, redemption is true, forgiveness of sins is true, eternal life is true. It is true that you and I can have strength for all things in Christ who strengthens us. For every word that has been written about him and heard from him is true and authentic. So we can believe in him with courage and worship him as our redeeming Lord, because it is precisely through faith in him and worship that his wonderful person becomes a living reality for us today.
Amen.
Date: 17 December 1967.