ANOINTED FOR BURIAL (3 OF 19)
Scripture: Matthew 26:1-16
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Anointed for Burial (3 of 19)
Series: Cross Examination
Wyman Richardson
Matthew 26:1-16
Read Matthew 26:1-16
Some years ago, the following joke made the rounds on email and websites. The three men it mentions were all very intelligent and renowned theologians in their day.
Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr find themselves all at the same time at Caesarea Philippi. Who should come along but Jesus, and he asks the four famous theologians the same Christological question, ''Who do you say that I am?''
Karl Barth stands up and says: ''You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.''
Not prepared for Barth's brevity, Paul Tillich stumbles out: ''You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.''
Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one breath: ''You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.''
And Jesus writes in the sand, ''Huh?''
It is a humorous little joke, to be sure. The humor comes in the disconnect between the humility and self-sacrifice of Christ on the one hand and the self-promoting and ostentatious language of the theologians on the other. Even before we reach Jesus' ''Huh?'' we know that the pretensions of the theologians are going to fall flat. For if the average person knows anything at all about Jesus, it is that he came lowly, not haughtily. Even so, we all seem to paint Jesus in such a way that He ends up looking just like us, as William Blake recognized.
The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision's greatest ...
Series: Cross Examination
Wyman Richardson
Matthew 26:1-16
Read Matthew 26:1-16
Some years ago, the following joke made the rounds on email and websites. The three men it mentions were all very intelligent and renowned theologians in their day.
Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and Reinhold Niebuhr find themselves all at the same time at Caesarea Philippi. Who should come along but Jesus, and he asks the four famous theologians the same Christological question, ''Who do you say that I am?''
Karl Barth stands up and says: ''You are the totaliter aliter, the vestigious trinitatum who speaks to us in the modality of Christo-monism.''
Not prepared for Barth's brevity, Paul Tillich stumbles out: ''You are he who heals our ambiguities and overcomes the split of angst and existential estrangement; you are he who speaks of the theonomous viewpoint of the analogia entis, the analogy of our being and the ground of all possibilities.''
Reinhold Niebuhr gives a cough for effect and says, in one breath: ''You are the impossible possibility who brings to us, your children of light and children of darkness, the overwhelming oughtness in the midst of our fraught condition of estrangement and brokenness in the contiguity and existential anxieties of our ontological relationships.''
And Jesus writes in the sand, ''Huh?''
It is a humorous little joke, to be sure. The humor comes in the disconnect between the humility and self-sacrifice of Christ on the one hand and the self-promoting and ostentatious language of the theologians on the other. Even before we reach Jesus' ''Huh?'' we know that the pretensions of the theologians are going to fall flat. For if the average person knows anything at all about Jesus, it is that he came lowly, not haughtily. Even so, we all seem to paint Jesus in such a way that He ends up looking just like us, as William Blake recognized.
The vision of Christ that thou dost see
Is my vision's greatest ...
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