Jesus month ends
May is over. Some of my work on the Jesus book is up on my web site (here). There are plenty of other topics to cover, but I think I have a good mix of the basic topics (such as the gospels) plus some more unusual ones (such as the little drummer boy). As part of the effort, I wrote an overview, which is short enough to share here.
About AD 30, Palestine had already long been fired by religious fervor, when along came Jesus, a Jewish charismatic prophet. Before starting his own ministry, Jesus was baptized in the Jordan by John the Baptist, an apocalyptic preacher who led a one of many religious restoration movements from that era. Jesus came from the nowhere village of Nazareth and preached in the rural backwater of Galilee. With his closest disciples, he traveled the countryside as an itinerant holy man. On his own spiritual authority, he preached about a life of love, forgiveness, compassion, and all that feel-good stuff that he’s famous for. He cast out demons, whatever that means exactly. He did people good as a healer, within the scope of their expectations. Demons and miracles are fairy tales, but that doesn’t prevent faith healing from working when the practitioner and the patient believe in it. Experts disagree on whether Jesus carried on the fire-and-brimstone tradition that was so popular with the others around him, and I’m in the mainstream minority in thinking probably not. In any case, his vision of God’s coming kingdom was exceptional. He portrayed it as mysteriously present, as something that involved the active collaboration of individual human beings. One could enter it by faith. His preaching turned things on their head, exalting the lowly and defying social expectations in his honor-based society. He took the loving charity that Jews were to practice for each other, intensified it, and applied it to all. He based his preaching on God’s covenant with his people and called on his listeners to live this covenant out in a new way. For disciples, he accepted only those who had given up their worldly lives to join him. Naturally enough, some people hated him. They accused him of sorcery and drunkenness. They berated him for fraternizing with sinners and women. But his ministry was popular, word of him spread, disciples gathered around him, and wealthy patrons (including women) bankrolled him. When Jesus took his ministry to Jerusalem for a Passover pilgrimage, he caused trouble at the Jews’ sacred Temple. He wound up suffering the same fate as John: being executed as a potential demagogue and trouble-maker. After his crucifixion, his enthusiastic followers wouldn’t let it end there. Some of them experienced Jesus resurrected, and others invented visitations of their own to get in on the action. Pretty soon, the murdered rabbi had become the resurrected Messiah. Jesus’ legacy was a devoted Jewish sect that hailed him as the Son of God. Within a few years, the apostle Paul entered the scene. He had a special Jesus vision of his own, and he preached the resurrected lord to the gentiles. In a move that made Christianity possible, Paul defined Jewish law as no longer binding. When the Temple fell in AD 70, Christianity effectively became an independent religion, ready or not. It’s fun to laugh at the crazy things some people have said about Jesus over the years; but, either because of or in spite of those things, Jesus’ original vision of open-handed care has helped propel Western civilization forward. While Jesus didn’t invent the humanistic ideal of social justice, he sure has done a lot for it in the long run. Our culture of greater equality and universal humanity goes back to him more than to any one other person.
Given the amount of misinformation that’s been applied to Jesus’ biography almost as soon as he had died, it’s important to know not only who Jesus was but also who he wasn’t. He wasn’t born in Bethlehem, didn’t escape to Egypt, no star or three kings, etc. He didn’t claim to be born of a virgin or to be God. He didn’t even claim to be the only begotten Son of God, an incarnation of the divine Word of God (Logos), the apocalyptic Son of Man, the suffering servant, Immanuel, the Alpha and Omega, an angel, or the Anointed/Messiah/Christ. He didn’t found a new religion, nor did he spell out a new doctrine or found a new scripture. He didn’t oppose Jewish Law, and he didn’t usher in a new covenant. His enemies didn’t comprise a hypocritical, legalistic, and judgmental religious power structure. He didn’t teach Hindu philosophy or that we are spirit-beings whose true home is Heaven. He didn’t call Jews the sons of Satan, and he didn’t hide his message from them to let them be destroyed. He didn’t invent the parable or blow away the other parable tellers of the era. He didn’t champion freedom from the Jewish law, and the Jewish leaders didn’t have him killed for blasphemy. He didn’t perform amazing miracles that confirmed his identity as an eternal spirit made man. He healed people the way holy men sometimes do, but he didn’t walk on water. His legacy lives on to this day, but he didn’t come back from the dead.