Probably most of us tend not to think of Jesus as a media celebrity; but the fact is Jesus has been getting more coverage in our media in the last few years than I can remember at any other point in my lifetime. In a time of spiritual searching such as ours, people seem eager to learn more about religious personalities. And so there has been a rash of Jesus movies and television specials and books lately-some of them very popularized and others more scholarly. So it was not surprising that, about three weeks, ago television commentator Peter Jennings joined this parade with a television special on the theme, "Who is Jesus?" Perhaps you saw it. Jennings' focus here was on what we can know about the historical facts of Jesus' life beyond what the New Testament tells us; and, of course, the answer to that is, very little really. That kind of historical data is almost non-existent. But as I watched it I had the sense Jennings was asking the wrong question. Jesus' relevance has to do not with the historical facts of his life, but rather with what he has come to mean to people in the last 2000 years. Jesus matters because of the difference he has made in the lives of individuals and whole societies. Ostensibly, that's the reason for the church's existence; and, hopefully, it has something to do with why you and I are a part of it.

As an early Christian writer (who may have been Paul) made his witness to the church at Ephesus, he began with an exalted hymn of praise to Jesus which you heard read a few moments ago. Now, I can sympathize if you found it hard to follow and stay with this reading. The language is ethereal and abstract, and the line of thought is not easy to track. But in his florid and poetic way the writer is attempting to make a statement as to who Jesus is to us. Jesus is the one through whom God has worked to bring us into a redemptive relationship with God's own self. Through Jesus we come to know our destiny as God's beloved children; and in Jesus we begin to learn the "mystery of God's will" in which all things in heaven and on earth are gathered up. Now that last phrase is in the clouds, but I think it's particularly important. My simple translation of it is that Jesus is God's lens on life-a lens through which God wills us to find a focus so that we see life as clearly and fully as possible. Why are we Christians? One key reason, says the Ephesians writer, is that in Jesus we find the lens that enables us to see life most clearly and so live it most fully.

Last weekend the time came for me to buy a new camera. My old one had taken reasonably good pictures, but unfortunately it developed the bad habit of skipping several frames when it advanced the film, and I was told it was not worth repairing. Now, I don't need a camera that makes every photo a work of art-but I do want one I can rely on to have a clear focus on what I'm photographing, and one that will record as true an image as possible. And yes, I don't want any blanks among my prints! Now today even relatively inexpensive cameras have a number of bells and whistles to adjust for diverse light conditions and things like the red-eye effect. Some of these are new to me, and I've been having fun trying them out. My wife, Jean, has complained in the past that she always has red eyes in my flash pictures of her. Well, lo and behold, when I push the right button on my new camera, she no longer has red eyes! But in the process of researching and buying my new camera, I've been reminded that the most important thing is not the bells and whistles but rather the quality of the lens. You've got to have a decent one in order to come out with pictures that are true.

Our Bible tells us that humanity also needs a reliable lens in order to see who God is and how God has created life to be lived. Our Hebrew scriptures show the human struggle, over a number of centuries, to make sense of God and what keeping faith with God meant in everyday life. And over the centuries, the vision sharpened some, but still it was blurred. Humanity needed a better lens. And so in the fullness of God's time Jesus was born into our world to be that lens -- the way, the truth, the life, the light of the world, the one in whose life we see light. As God's lens it was not Jesus' mission to make every detail of life perfectly clear -- much as we might wish to be spared that responsibility. But in Jesus we find a focus on the whole of life that helps us see where life is meant to go; and in him we discern parameters to keep us on track in pursuing the big picture. I like the way the writer Howard Thurman once put it: "When we look into Jesus' face, we see etched the glory of our own possibilities, and our hearts whisper, 'Thank you and thank God. '"

Now, I trust that so far I haven't said anything radically new or different. We all know how important Jesus is in God's scheme of things, don't we? This is basic Sunday school stuff. And yet it may be that at one level we really haven't taken it in fully. For if we believe that Jesus really is God's lens, implications follow both for our personal lives and for the life of our church. In our own lives, how intentional are we in trying to use our Christian lens on an everyday basis? And for us as a church, is helping one another grow in the mind of Christ one of the most important things we do?

We live in a time when knowledge of ourselves and our world is exploding exponentially. Within the past month scientists announced that the human genome project -- the mapping of all the genes in the human body -- is now virtually complete. With this knowledge it will become possible to replicate body parts and change out organs that are defective. All kinds of new drugs will be possible to cope with disease. Amazing things will be possible through genetic engineering, including perhaps custom-designing our own children. We may all have the choice of living to 150 or more with a good quality of life. The question behind all these possibilities is, what should we do? So we have ahead of us a magnitude of decision-making we've never known before. We will be able to play God in ways we never dreamed of. Yet as people of faith we still understand life to be part of God's good creation; and if God designed it, then it follows that living in sync with God's design will still be the most promising way to go. So if Jesus is God's lens, how will that inform the kind of decisions we will be called to make in the biotech age that lies ahead? It seems more than clear to me that an elementary-age Sunday school understanding of Jesus is not going to cut it. We're going to need as mature a grasp of the mind of Christ as we can have, as the foundation for wrestling with tomorrow's sophisticated issues-and for that matter, many issues that face us today. And I think that means we're going to need to take our Christian education and formation as adults more seriously than we ever have before. We're going to need to make our Jesus homework a priority.

Most of you know something about the joys of pop quizzes. In my student days they were the bane of my existence. Too often they showed I had not mastered my homework -- and sometimes that I hadn't even cracked a book. But they were useful reminders of my need for catching up. If we have ears to hear, I see the ever-more demanding issues and challenges of our time as God's pop quizzes asking us, "Are you prepared to respond to these issues as one who takes Jesus seriously? Is the mind of Christ growing in you as secular knowledge explodes all around you? "

Now, of course, it's true we don't have to do our homework. We can continue to muddle through with a vague sense of who Jesus is and what he shows us about life in God's world; and we may still enjoy our lives, and God will love us just the same. But we will not be the followers and tools of Jesus we are called to be; and probably we will miss out on a measure of the richness and purpose and meaning that life is meant to have. As Jesus told us, "I came that you might have life and have it abundantly." And it is through his lens that we find that abundance.

And what does it mean for us as a church to believe that Jesus is God's lens? Whatever else we do, it seems to me that nothing is more important than our efforts to discern God's leading for our gathered life and to help one another grow the mind of Christ for ourselves. A church is many things: programs and potlucks, service projects and fund-raising activities, musical events and fellowship groups and committee meetings. But the core of everything we do is building our relationship with God and growing in the awareness of what that means for our lives. Nothing matters more than that. And all our busyness as a church will be of no real consequence if we're not taking that agenda seriously. In an age of mega-churches, a lot of attention is being paid to building "successful" churches-and you know how "successful" is generally defined as drawing large numbers of people. I don't have a problem with large numbers; but I don't think that is God's criterion of success. I think God's criterion is whether a church is shaping its people to be authentic Christian disciples who help one another live out Christ's own life in our day. To be the church of Jesus Christ is to be excited about the good news of Jesus that opens the door to life in all its fullness.

One of the current books about Jesus written in the past decade has the intriguing title, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time. The author is Marcus Borg. The point of the title is that Jesus has become so familiar for many of us that he no longer has any real impact on our lives, and we urgently need to meet him again, as though for the first time. We need a fresh look at life through his eyes. For God's wonderful legacy to us is life in all its fullness-and Jesus is the lens through which we find our way to it.