Jesus

For the last several years I have been doing an informal, but fairly in-depth study into the man they called Jesus of Nazareth. I have always been interested in his words. When I began answering a call to ministry, it started with attempting to gain the tools to read his words as they were recorded and preserved mostly in the Greek New Testament. The more I studied, the more I realized that people tended to find what they went looking for when studying Jesus. I can't fit anymore Jesus books on the huge shelves in my office! But each of them paints a slightly different picture: Religious Savior, Peasant Cynic, Great Teacher, Social Critic, Leader of a Movement, etc... Some versions are very traditional, others highly skeptical. But most of them seem to fall into the trap of developing some sort of schema or system that traps jesus inside. Mind you, I'm a Christian pastor so much of the time I'm pulling for the traditional Jesus when I read these writings. However, conservative scholars seem to have a tendency to define Jesus up-front just as much as wildly liberal scholars and skeptics.
It goes like this: we know the conservatives can't be right, so therefore Jesus wasn't God. He must instead fit right into our liberal world view. Bingo! It turns out Jesus was a liberal, too.
Or: we know the liberals can't be right, so therefore Jesus was not only God, he was the founder of the Christian religion as we know it today. Bingo! It turns out Jesus was a Religious Right Evangelical all along!
It would be funny if there weren't so much at stake.
I have had a few jewish friends over the years. Their perspective on the Bible has always fascinated me. For many, there seems to be a great love for the Scriptures and a constant wrestling with it "in community". Their interpretations must stand up to rigorous debate, often in each other's presence. The text is in charge and they are straining to hear it well, letting the chips fall where they may. Perhaps I am romanticising it a bit, but they seemed pretty honest in their pursuit. That worked on me for a number of years, but didn't really change my views or settle my burning questions. I just sort of left it back there on the burner, hoping something would come of it.
A couple of years back I rediscovered the writings of N.T. Wright, a british scholar and prolific writer. You name it, N.T. has 12 books and 26 articles on it! He's a real John Wesley in many ways.
His approach to Jesus is doing a good job of pulling these two worlds together for me. He insists that since Jesus was Jewish, we need to understand 2nd Temple (1st Century) Judaism as well as we possibly can. We should not dive into authoritative interpretation until we have allowed the nuances of that world to settle into our minds. You say, "surely that is what all scholars have been doing all along." I say, "Not necessarily so, and stop calling me Shirley."
It turns out a number of genres and key terms: The Kingdom of God, Apocalyptic literature, parables, have been highly stylized by well-meaning scholars of various stripes. Now it's difficult to say that one man's work overturns most of what came before him, but let's just say this one man's work has overturned a lot of things I thought I had nailed down 20 years ago. Let's just put it this way: the gospel as I have known it all of my life may be a greatly reduced version of what Jesus was pushing 2,000 years ago! That's difficult for me to type. I spent a lot of time in school discovering the great reductions of others and chiseling out a water-tight Jesus to preach to the world. Guess what? My Jesus sprang a few leaks in the last couple of years. But don't worry friends...it's all good. It just seems that there was too much Jesus to fit into my theology. It's not so much that what I've been preaching wasn't true. Try this: necessary, but not sufficient. It was a tough point to get past, but I have finally let go of trying to force things to fit. I have had to admit, it's time to blast open the walls of my gospel and let the real GOSPEL of Jesus shine as brightly as I can.
I love the children's story about a train bound for glory: The Polar Express. For the sake of a children's story that hints at a larger story, things have been greatly reduced. It's about a kid going to see Santa, but all through it you just keep seeing hints at something more, maybe it's about faith and God and Jesus. At the center is a TICKET PUNCHED that lets you get on board-go to heaven. This story is everything that is right and wrong with gospel most preachers preach today. In a nutshell, a truth greatly reduced. Walter Brueggemann has been a help to me as well, understanding Jesus' prophetic role and how much he placed himself in that great tradition, stretching all the way back to Moses.
Okay, its so late it's early now, so I've got to go. If anyone reads this, there is more to come. I hope someone might be interested in discussing this in more detail. I leave you with a big sigh of relief I am feeling these days. Jesus is so big, so cool, so challenging, so awesome that I don't have to try to contain him (I never knew I was). I can let him speak as clearly as possible through his Word. I can't avoid interpretation, but I don't have to carry the burden of making his words fit a predetermined package. All of his words that I am able to understand, can just be allowed to speak with a freshness and power. This quest has not taken me away from God or my core beliefs. However, it has transcended a few false ideas that were squeezed in-between my understandings of Jesus. I know I've danced around a lot and haven't said that much yet. But there is more to come...way more Jesus to come...and I'm blessed because of it. Thanks for reading, if anyone does!