I was thinking last night about Jesus. Who is he? Why did he come? What do I need to know about him? That may sound strange from someone who claims to have known him for the past thirty-six years but it is never-the-less an accurate reflection of my thoughts last night. The Jesus I know today is vastly different than the Jesus I was introduced to thirty some years ago. He is vastly different than the Sunday School pictures and stories I had before me fifty years ago. He is different than the Jesus I knew last year. Is that important? I don't know but it has gotten me to thinking.
Early on in church history a battle broke out concerning who Jesus really was. Docetism was a belief that redefined Jesus as a spiritual being only having the allusion of a physical body. Because the prevailing belief that physical matter was evil ergo Jesus could not have taken on physical matter, docetism created a Jesus that was totally spiritual. The Gnostics also had their way with defining Jesus. Again the crux of the matter was literally the evil nature of matter, and as such, the real god was separated from evil matter by layer upon layer of aeons or lesser gods. Jesus fit cozily into this framework as the aeon chosen to exist as the bridge between spirit and matter. He was a human who was descended upon by a god-force upon his baptism and abandoned just prior to the crucifixion. The end result was spiritual wisdom and secret knowledge that he taught while embodied by the divine. In both of these cases, the Apostle John's seeming target in his gospel and his epistles is the distorted Jesus that these impostors presented.
But I need not go back that far into history to see the effects of remaking Jesus into something that he was not. Abandoning the historical Jesus of scripture, Nazi Germany effectively reshaped Jesus into a Jew hating figure and transformed its churches into instruments that helped to frame the holocaust. Dietrich Bonhoeffer (The Cost of Discipleship - a must read for any serious Christian) was one of the lone dissenters of this movement and it cost him his life in martyrdom. The Jesus of South Africa was a white Jesus that justified treating people of dark skin as animals rather than human. Churches openly celebrated the disturbing practice of enslaving and dehumanizing a group of people based on skin color. Jesus was again distorted for popular reasons and for monetary, political, and social gain.
I believe that this is always the danger with Jesus. He is easy to recreate into an image or figure that serves the current social agenda of a nation, culture, or even a religious movement. It is not as if the religions outside of Christianity ignore Jesus; they simply recreate him into something that fits into whatever it is they need him to be to further their cause. To Islam he is a prophet held in some regard. In Hinduism, he is a great teacher. Even Mormons and Jehovah Witnesses have a place for Jesus. We just don't recognize that place as legitimate. Their Jesus is outside of the boundaries of acceptable orthodoxy. But all of this begs the question...what about our Jesus?
I mentioned several weeks ago that we picture Jesus as some white guy with long wavy hair and a beard in the course of a sermon. (The picture of Jesus hovering over wall Street is absolutely precious!) Someone afterwards came to me and sincerely asked me, if he is not that, what is he? I suggested he probably resembled the people we see on television representing the Mid-Eastern culture and probably had a big nose. They were unimpressed. While I don't think we need a clear picture of what he looked like, I do think it is important to have a clear picture of who Jesus was and who Jesus is. Or to frame it this way, we cannot assume that the Jesus we worship is the real Jesus just because we worship him. The 1940's Germans, 1980's South Africans, the modern Jehovah Witnesses all assume(d) that very thing. They were and are wrong!
If I am at all nosing around something important, then we must ask ourselves, is the current American Jesus of the 21st Century the real Jesus of scripture? Or have we recreated him into something that serves our social, political, economic, and spiritual agendas. Twenty years ago I was convinced Jesus was a Republican. Many today still are. The popular Jesus today is a personal savior who is the means to a better life. For many, he is the guarantee of "your best life now!" On the other side of the coin, for a few but growing number of people, Jesus is emerging as something altogether different. He is the Jesus of the Kingdom whose commands we cannot ignore.
I am trying to work through this very question. In doing so, my picture of Jesus has changed. For one thing, my Jesus was extreme in his deity and light on his humanity. He is now very human (his divinity is still in play but his actions, emotions, thoughts, and prayers are human rather than divine). Just this shift makes every gospel account come alive in an altogether new way. "how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power. He went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him" said Peter in presenting Christ to Cornelius and his household. How you see Jesus is everything in how you might see yourself in this. The divine Jesus would have been unique in doing this because he was God. The human Jesus was just like us, empowered by the Holy Spirit to do kingdom work. Why am I not following in his footsteps?
If I understand Jesus at all at this point, he is first of all Jewish. Secondly, he is a Jewish Messiah; the true Messiah amid many would Messiahs of that day. Thirdly he is a Jewish rabbi who unveiled his grasp of the Torah, the Temple, and the Kingdom through his teachings and actions. Fourthly, he is the true suffering servant who would die on the cross at the hands of Rome and be raised bodily from the grave. Fifth, he is the resurrected human King seated at the right hand of the Almighty who rules in his Kingdom and advocates on behalf of his people. Sixth, he is the one who will return to establish this kingdom on earth as it is in heaven that will endure forever. Who is Jesus...I want to know now more than ever.
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