 As-salamu alaykum, as we say in our church may the peace of the Lord be with you. This is a compelling and fascinating topic we are discussing tonight. Who is the person of Jesus Christ and what role does he play in our faith? I also want to acknowledge that this is a deeply emotional topic because of the importance and centrality that Jesus occupies in the Abrahamic faiths and really in the western world. It touches deeply on our understanding of who we are, of who we are in God, and how we relate with others. Being an emotional topic, we are also well aware, as our two speakers just alluded to, that a great deal of destruction and violence has happened both very recently but also historically around this topic. So I want to acknowledge all that and I want to say that it is my prayer that in this dialogue we can find common ground where there is common ground and in the areas where we find points of disagreement and there certainly will be such that we can hold those points with compassion and curiosity. And it has certainly been my experience in this environment that that is exactly what we do. So I'm very grateful for that. So launching right into Who is Christ, I prepared several slides. They are going to quote various parts of scripture and I will be saying some things about that. But I also want to say that any and all verbal and intellectual rigor we might have in this topic in many of the Christian churches would actually be treated as secondary and not primary. It would be said that the mystical and personal relationship that one has with Christ is actually of a higher degree of importance than anything I'm about to show you up on the screen. So I just wanted to throw things in that context. So we are going to jump right in. There are, what I'm about to present is hardly an exhaustive list, but I would say that these are really the high points of how Christianity and of course I speak from a tradition that is sort of a hybrid between Western Catholicism and Western Protestantism. There are many other forms of Christianity that would agree to lesser or greater degree with everything I'm about to tell you. But these are the points that I think most of the global Christian church would hold in common. So you'll notice on this first slide that every one of the scriptures I quote is actually from the Hebrew Bible. It was decided in Christianity's earliest days that the entirety of the Hebrew scripture, so that being the Torah, the books of the law, and the Haftarah, the writings and the prophetic literature would all be included in the canon of sacred scripture. So it has been translated and redacted many, many times over the centuries, but it is all still there. And these are the scriptures that are shared in common between Christianity and Judaism. All three of these verses come from the prophetic literature. The major prophet Isaiah by far is the one that Christians believe quoted the most prophecies that apply to the coming of Christ, but there's also a very key verse in the book of Micah, who is one of the shorter or the minor prophets. So we see in Isaiah 7, therefore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son and shall name him Emmanuel. Christians have, of course, interpreted that to be a prophecy about the Virgin Mary being this young woman. And then from Isaiah 9, we have, for a child has been born to us, a son given to us. Authority rests upon his shoulders and he is named Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. These are various names or titles that throughout the course of Christianity have been applied to Jesus. And then finally coming from the prophet Micah, but you or Bethlehem of Ephrata, who are one of the little plans of Judah, from you shall come forth from me one who is to rule in Israel, whose origin is from old, from ancient days. And so the connection to Bethlehem historically being the birthplace of Jesus is thought to be a fulfillment of this prophecy. All of these prophecies are ones that would be called messianic prophecies. So these are promises of a person whom God has appointed, whom God will send to Israel to be the Redeemer, the one who frees, the one who leads. So Christians have understood Jesus to be the fulfillment of these messianic prophecies. There's more, more continuity with the Hebrew scriptures. Christians have also understood Jesus to be the successor to Moses toward the end of the five books of the Torah as we're beginning to get to sort of Moses farewell acts and farewell discourse before he sees the promised land from the mountain peak that he will never be allowed to enter. We have these verses from Deuteronomy 18. The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own people. You shall heed such a prophet. This is what you requested of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, if I hear the voice of the Lord my God anymore or ever again see this great fire, I will die. Then the Lord replied to me, they are right in what they have said. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their own people. I will put my words in the mouth of the prophet who shall speak to them everything that I command. So this is a promise by the one who is considered the foremost among the early prophets of Israel that another one will rise in his place at some point in history. Christians have always understood Jesus to be that second prophet of whom Moses spoke here. There is yet more. So from Moses we have the line of the prophets and from David we have the line of the Israelite royalty. There are several things that could be said from the writings about David. I chose, I hope you'll bear with me as I read some longer verses of scripture here, but I chose actually the opening verses of the first book of the New Testament, the Gospel of St. Matthew. And this is in large part a genealogy, but it also makes a case for Jesus being the heir to the line of King David, not the first of the kings of Israel, that was Saul, but the first who was really considered to be God's appointed monarch and from whose line all the future kings would come. So we have an account of the genealogy of Jesus, the Messiah, the son of David, the son of Abraham. So all the generations from Abraham to David are 14 generations and from David to the deportation to Babylon, 14 generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Messiah, 14 generations. Now the birth of Jesus, the Messiah took place in this way. When his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they lived together, she was found to be with child from the Holy Spirit. Her husband Joseph, being a righteous man and unwilling to expose her to public disgrace, planned to dismiss her quietly. But just when he had resolved to do this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream and said, Joseph's son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife, for the child conceived in hers from the Holy Spirit. She will bear a son and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins. All this took place to fulfill what had been spoken by the Lord through the prophet. Look, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son and they shall name him Emmanuel, which means God is with us. So there again we have that quotation of the prophecy from Isaiah. The fascinating part about this is, of course, if we believe that the child in Mary was from the Holy Spirit, Joseph would have been his human guardian and it would have been through Joseph that he was part of David's lineage. We don't have any reason to believe that Mary was descended from the house of David. Christian theologians have often been a little bit mind boggled by how much the opening verses of Matthew center on the figure of Joseph, whereas the opening verses of Luke center on the figure of Mary. This is why, of course, the early church chose to keep all of the gospels so that we have those different witnesses. Yet another piece of this puzzle. This might seem like some rather obscure verses, but there is one book in the New Testament, the letter to the Hebrews that makes a great deal out of this understanding of who Christ is, a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. I'm actually going to begin by reading the middle verse there, and it comes from the Psalms, number 110. The Lord has sworn and will not change his mind. You are a priest forever, according to the order of Melchizedek. Now in the Psalms, this seems to come out of nowhere. This is actually the only other mention of this strange figure, Melchizedek, in the Hebrew scriptures, aside from this verse in Genesis. So this is when Abraham is returning from battle, and he is passing by the ancient progenitor to the modern day city of Jerusalem. And King Melchizedek of Salem brought out bread and wine. He was priest of God Most High. He blessed him and said, blessed be Abram by God Most High, maker of heaven and earth, and blessed be God Most High, who has delivered your enemies into your hand. And Abram gave him one tenth of everything. It's that last verse that gives Melchizedek his significance, because the author of Hebrews points out there's only one way that Abram would have been the one to give Melchizedek one tenth of everything rather than the other way around. And that is, if Melchizedek was a great priest and considered to be a priest of the Most High God. So finally, here we have one of the passages from Hebrews. There are more than this. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And having been made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation for all who obey him. Having been designated by God a high priest according to the order of Melchizedek. Now, you might be wondering why is this particularly important? Well, there was one tribe in Israel that was designated in the scriptures to be the priests of the nation. Anybody know which tribe that was? It starts with an L. Levi, yes. Jesus, however, was descended from the tribe of Judah. And so in order to create this understanding of Jesus as the great high priest, the New Testament authors had to make a case that he actually was descended from an older and even more significant lineage of priests that predated the Levites. And this is where Melchizedek would come in. So another important matter. So far, everything that I have said has been rooted in Jewish scripture, Jewish thought, Jewish theology. But Christianity is actually somewhat of a hybrid religion. There is a major strand of Greco-Roman philosophy that also intertwined with all of that in the formulation of the New Testament and of Christian theology from its early days until now. Of the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, one in particular stands out as being significantly more Greek in its tone and in its philosophy and in its thought. And that is John, the final one. It also gives a very different narrative biographically speaking of the life of Jesus. So I'm going to read first from Proverbs, because this sort of gives the Jewish roots of this notion of the wisdom or the word or the logos in Greek of God. And then I'm going to read a short passage from the prologue to John. So this is from Proverbs. The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts long ago. Ages ago, I was set up at the first before the beginning of the earth. When there were no depths, I was brought forth, and where there were no springs abounding with water. Before the mountains had been shaped before the hills, I was brought forth. When he had not yet made earth and fields or the world's first bits of soil. When he established the heavens, I was there. When he drew a circle on the face of the deep. When he made firm the skies above. When he established the fountains of the deep. When he assigned to the sea its limit. So the waters might not transgress his command. When he marked out the foundations of the earth, then I was beside him like a master worker. And I was daily his delight rejoicing before him always. Rejoicing in his inhabited world and delighting in the human race. Now these are the words of King Solomon and the eye of whom he is speaking. The subject of this is the wisdom of God. So now moving forward into John's Gospel, the entire prologue is beautiful, but 114 is really the pivotal verse. And the word became flesh and lived among us. And we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father's only son, full of grace and truth. So this word Lagos that we translate to word in English is a direct reference back to this wisdom of whom Solomon was writing in Proverbs and in other places in the wisdom literature. So moving on more into really exclusively New Testament theology. Jesus is understood as being the atoning sacrifice for humanity's sin. This is something that we see more in the writings of Paul and the others who exchanged epistles throughout the ancient Near East in the first centuries of Christianity, many of which ended up being in the canon of Scripture. So I'm going to read a few different verses that refer to this coming from Hebrews chapter 10 and it is by God's will that we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all. And then from the opening verses of Paul's letters to the Galatians, grace to you in peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, who gave himself for our sins to set us free from the present evil age, according to the will of God our God and Father, to whom be the glory forever and ever. Amen. And then from the third chapter of Paul's letter to the Romans, since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, they are now justified by his grace as a gift through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God put forward as a sacrifice of atonement by his blood effective through faith. So this of course, the atoning sacrifice on the cross is a huge theme in the New Testament and in New Testament theology. Of course, the story did not end with the crucifixion of Jesus. It continued with a resurrection. So Christians understand Jesus to be the pioneer of resurrection and of everlasting life. All of the Gospels have a resurrection account. The one I find most fascinating because it ends on such a cliffhanger note is the shortest Gospel of that being Mark. And so these are some of the final verses in the Gospel of Mark. As the women entered the tomb, they saw a young man dressed in a white robe sitting on the right side. And they were alarmed. But he said to them, do not be alarmed. You were looking for Jesus of Nazareth who was crucified. He has been raised. He is not here. Look, there is the place they laid him. But go, tell his disciples and Peter that he is going ahead of you to Galilee. There you will see him just as he told you. And for those of you who know the Gospel, there's only one remaining verse and that's that the women fled and said nothing to anybody because they were afraid. It's a fascinating ending. Hebrews 12 gives us a little bit more of a theological interpretation of this resurrection. So therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and the sin that clings so closely. And let us run with perseverance the race that is set before us looking to Jesus, the pioneer and perfecter of our faith, who for the sake of the joy that was set before him endured the cross, disregarding its shame, and has taken his seat at the right hand of the throne of God. So this is Jesus, the pioneer after his resurrection. Jesus is also seen as the head of the church. And this I somewhat deliberately put up the picture of a crown there because as early as the Emperor Constantine and then moving on through the days of the Holy Roman Empire, and then Imperial England and several other European powers. This is a notion that has been largely co-opted by human kings and queens. So in some ways I'm poking a little bit of fun at that with my image of the crown. But the church, when we are more rightly oriented, recognizes that actually none of us can rightly claim the title of king or queen because we've already got a king and that would be Christ. So Colossians 1 gives us this image. He is the head of the body, the church. He is the beginning, first born from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything. And in the opening chapter of the letter to the Ephesians, and God has put all things under his feet and has made him the head over all things for the church, which is his body, the fullness of him who fills all and all. In addition to the head of the church, Jesus is the peacemaker, the reconciler, the bridge builder between the estranged tribes of humanity. We see this actually in the same two letters. So once again from the opening chapters of Colossians 4, in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell. And through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross. And in the letter to the Ephesians, for he is our peace. In his flesh he has made both groups into one and has broken down the dividing wall. That is the hostility between us. He has abolished the law with its commandments and ordinances, so that he might create in himself one new humanity in place of the two, thus making peace, and might reconcile both groups to God in one body through the cross, thus putting to death that hostility through it. This of course historically refers to the division between Jew and Gentile, but over the centuries the theologians have thought to broaden it to apply to any warring or factious moment among human tribes. Something else, in spite of being so deeply rooted in the prophecies of the Hebrew scriptures, Jesus has been thought of in Christian tradition as very much the unexpected Messiah. And there are several New Testament passages that speak to this. One comes out of the book of Acts. And the book of Acts is the sequel, so to speak, to the Gospel of Luke. It picks up the story where Luke left off and then begins to tell the story of the early church and how it behaved in the days immediately following the resurrection. So when they had come together they asked him, Lord, is this the time when you will restore the kingdom to Israel? He replied, it is not for you to know the times or periods that the Father has set by his own authority, but you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. And you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. Well these words would have been utterly shocking to those who were expecting a Messiah who would, in the earthly sense of this phrase, restore the kingdom to Israel. Jesus simply said, yes, he was declaring I am the Messiah, but not that Messiah. So something quite unexpected. Going back to some of the middle verses in Matthew's Gospel, this unexpected Messiah comes out in some of the dialogue and tension between Jesus and John the Baptist. We have this passage, when John heard in prison what the Messiah was doing. He sent word by his disciples and said to him, are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? Jesus answered them, 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. And blessed is anyone who takes no offense at me. So once again, he is not directly answering the question with a yes. He is rather saying, here is what I am doing. Here is a description of my character. Come to your own conclusion. Is this what the Messiah is? Once again, something quite unexpected. So the final thing I want to say, and I think it's very important in this interfaith audience to say a brief word about some stereotypes about Christian belief and to make sure it's clear that this is actually not the case. So Christian understanding of the person of Christ and of God as Trinity is confusing to put it mildly. It's confusing to people who've spent their entire life in the church, let alone trying to explain it from the ground up. But in this understanding of the dual nature of Christ, Christ is fully God, fully human, Christ is not a partner to God or another God or a second God in some sense. It's a little bit difficult sometimes to look at Christian theology and realize that this is the case. It is absolutely a tricky spot, but Christianity, just like Judaism and Islam, is a strictly monotheistic religion. So even though we speak of God as Trinity, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, they are not seen remotely as separate beings, but as one undivided whole, expressed in these three persons or these three ways. The early Christian theologians, especially several named Gregory, put a great deal of effort into expressing how God is one, even though sometimes we do have these confusing notions of God as Trinity and especially the person of Christ having this dual nature of being fully God and fully human. The final thing I want to say is actually to give you what is known as the collect prayer that we read in church this morning, we have one for every Sunday of the year. And the verbal formulation of this prayer, I think expresses everything I had on this slide best. So it said gracious Lord, who caused all holy scriptures to be written for our learning, grant us so to read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them, that we may ever hold fast to the blessed hope of everlasting life. Through Jesus Christ our Lord, to whom with you and the Holy Spirit be honoring glory, one God forever and ever. Now this is, it's that last line, which is in almost all of our collect prayers where it gets rather confusing because Christians are praying through Jesus to the Father in the power of the Holy Spirit, understanding them to be one undivided whole one God. So that was a lot. Thank you so much.