After presenting a webinar on “Reclaiming the Bible for Progressive Christians” for the Progressive Christian Network of Victoria recently, I was asked a few additional questions by email. Those questions and my responses to them may be of wider interest.
As you questioned why anyone should want a Bible for a child it can be assumed you are not recommending biblical content for children.
My question concerned why anyone would want to give a Bible to a child, which is not quite the same thing as ensuring that children have some familiarity with the key biblical stories and characters. We want them to have some basic biblical literacy, but the Bible is an adult book and represents rather complex hermeneutical challenges when used in a very different culture far removed by time and geography from its origins.
As a parallel, we can assume that people such as Jesus were familiar with the stories from the Hebrew Bible (not least because the names of his siblings are all drawn from the Torah, suggesting a family with some knowledge of and commitment to the story). Yet people such as Jesus and his family were most likely illiterate and—since they were not in the social elite—would not have had the resources to acquire and study a copy of the Torah.
This is a tough nut to crack, as Christian educators know very well. Simplified versions of key biblical texts are surely part of the spiritual repertoire of children within a family that practises its faith. But encouraging children to read the Bible itself, seems (to me) to be rather inappropriate. Of course we can also use art, drama and music to convey the essential <?> biblical content without expecting kids to read a Bible.
And who reads a book these days, in any case?
Surely the move to digital texts will impact how everyone engages with the Bible? (But that is a different topic.)
You were commendatory about the Lectionary because it removed selection of preaching focus from a worship leader in favour of the presented content of the lectionary. The question is: Why privilege 20 to 30 year old writings (with many assumptions peculiar in light of science and modern thought generally) above a well informed and qualified contemporary worship leader?
I am simply not as negative towards the lectionary, in any of its forms, as you seem to be.
We are not reading the lectionary, we are using the lectionary as a map to read selected portions of the Bible week by week in the gathered assembly of the faithful. I would not describe the RCL as “20 to 30 years old writings” (in fact it is more like 50 years old now), as everyone uses some filtering system. Not even the most fundamentalist preacher reads the whole of the Bible from Genesis through to Revelation week after week. Everyone makes selections. The RCL is reliable ecumenical example. For me, ecuemncial is always better than denominational, and denominational is always better than individual minister.
I am not so sure that we have that many “well-informed and qualified contemporary worship leaders” around these days. Your comments possibly reflect a UCA context, but Anglicans and Catholics tend to follow the order for the Eucharist with the CL/RCL readings. The art of leading people in worship, for me, is not creating new content but using traditional content creatively in the quest for spiritual wisdom. In the liturgical tradition of the Great Church, a lectionary is simply part of the liturgical landscape. I realise that is a different universe from what used to be called the Free Churches, let alone the wannabe megachurch startups.
Maybe your disinclination for any lectionary other than the pastor’s personal choice of texts, ultimately stems from a Methodist culture where neither Prayer Book nor Lectionary were highly valued? For me as an Anglican, I listen to the Church and I am happy to be guided in my menu of Bible readings by a lectionary. I prefer the RCL to the one-year cycle of BCP, but there has always been a system for reading the Bible. Even in the 1C, the synagogues seem to have had a lectionary of sorts as they read the Torah in 50+ portions and related those readings with a set of passages from the Prophets. Our oldest existing Bible, Codex Sinaiticus, is already marked up into portions for readings. That is a lectionary, in effect.
For me the spiritual hierarchy is: Church > Prayer Book > Lectionary.
I receive the lectionary as a gift from the church and as an invitation to listen to more of Scripture each week than I may otherwise have chosen to do.
Continuing that question: What parts of the ancient biblical writings are sufficiently relevant to living today to feature as basic to being Christian? As church leaders have to make decisions about what to offer for the education of adolescents and adults, what are the priority parts of the Bible you recommend for church study/exploration programs?
I think is an impossible question to answer.
All of Scripture is basic for Christianity, but various parts of Scripture are more relevant to different people and communities across time and in various contexts. What matters more to me is how we read the ancient texts, not which ancient text we should read. I suggest that we need to read them all, and engage with critical minds in every case. We are not looking for information, but for wisdom. That can be derived from a ghastly biblical passage just as much as from a beautiful passage.
If there is to be a canon within the canon, which is more or else what your question implies, then for me it is the Gospel, and the Synoptic Gospels in particular. Most weeks my preaching is centred on the Gospel passage, with the OT and Epistles being viewed through the lens of Jesus. Occasionally I will focus on a non-Gospel reading, but I usually bringing it into some relationship with the wisdom of Jesus that we know from the Gospels.
There are some biblical passages I would never read in worship and others that I can use only with an explicit disclaimer. Again, what is suitable for use in worship may be different from what is suitable for a Bible study group where we have more time to engage with the hermeneutical process, and that is different again from what we may do in a Biblical Studies class within the University.
I hope these comments are helpful. They are not so much “answers” to questions, as—with hindsight—they seem more like reflections on the difference between the culture of the historic liturgical tradition and the Free Church tradition.
Let me begin by acknowledging the Kuringgai people, the indigenous owners and custodians of the land where we are gathered this afternoon. If we were inclined to add up all the dates in the Bible, as Archbishop Ussher tried to do just over 300 years ago, we would come up with a story that reaches back around 6,000 years. The first people of this ancient land have a story that stretches back some 60,000 years. Their story dwarfs the biblical narrative and invites us to look at Scripture differently.
So we honour their elders past and present, as well as the emerging elders of the first nations of the land and especially of this place where we meet today.
I want to thank those responsible for this opportunity to explore with you some of the ways in which the Christian Scriptures can serve as a charter for the human spirit, rather than as manacles for humanity. What I hope will happen this afternoon, is that we shall have a conversation around those issues. In preparation for that conversation, my goal in the next 45 minutes or so is to provide some stimulus material to assist us in beginning that conversation and perhaps also to provide some parameters for it.
In considering what I was going to say here today, I was conscious of the need to choose a topic that is clearly relevant to the life and mission of churches, but also relevant for the public square: a topic that is relevant to the life and mission of the church, and which has some ecumenical dimensions to it, as well as being a topic which might be relevant to the wider community or have some significance for the voice of faith in the public square.
My role is not that of a politician nor indeed a senior figure in the life of the churches nor even a leading ecumenical contributor. My personal background is that I have spent most of my adult life as a religion scholar specialising in biblical studies. My particular interests are the historical origins of the Bible and especially historical Jesus research. These days I am a priest responsible for a cathedral in a small regional town on the north coast of New South Wales about 100 km away from where I was born, so life has been something of a circle.
What I hope we can do in our time together this afternoon is to explore the role of the Bible inside but also beyond those communities of spiritual practice which we call churches.
Core proposition
I can sum up my core ideas for this afternoon’s presentation as follows:
The immense cultural and spiritual significance of the scriptures lies precisely in their capacity to inspire us to move beyond earlier expressions of humanity and to reach new levels of awareness courage and compassion; in short, to be more fully human than ever before. I want to suggest that this is true at both the individual and the collective level. I would also want to suggest that this truth is not limited to the Christian Bible — in all its variations — but also applies to the sacred texts of all the great spiritual traditions. However, as a Christian scholar I will limit my comments to the role of the Christian Bible.
In reviewing some earlier work recently, I realised that this concept has been on my mind for some years.
The Bible was mostly written by ancient Jews, a few of whom were followers of Jesus although probably none of them had ever seen or heard Jesus during his lifetime.
Most of the Bible was prepared for oral presentation via live performance in community gatherings for worship and mutual support (and not for close study by literate and highly educated individuals).
The Bible has very little to do with history even though some historical elements are embedded in it.
Decisions on which texts to include in the Bible were mostly determined by political needs of Jewish communities after Alexander the Great and of emerging Catholic Christianity in the third and fourth centuries ce.
While the Bible has been used to validate prejudice and oppression of various kinds, it can also be used in ways that enhance humanity and encourage respect for the Earth.
The Bible is best read in the company of other people, so that we benefit from the wisdom of others as we seek to hear what the Spirit is saying to the church.
Those words were drafted on 9 May 2009, so almost exactly ten years ago. I was especially interested to read #5, and I look forward to exploring that key insight with you all this afternoon.
Relevance
Perhaps the first thing to be considered is the relevance of my chosen topic. It seems fairly clear that the topic is indeed relevant for the life and mission of the church, whether as separate faith communities or as an ecumenical movement. However, I think it is also highly relevant for the wider community in the place of religion in the public square.
A few examples may suffice to make the point:
The marriage equality debate in which we have been engaged for the past couple of years has seen substantial progress, but there remains considerable unfinished business. This is particularly so with regards to the reception of marriage equality within the life of the churches as well as equality for transgender persons in the wider society.
The pressure coming from conservative Christian groups for their ‘religious freedom’ to be protected is another of the reasons why this topic may be relevant for us this afternoon. The kinds of protections which seem to be desired nowadays are protections born of a looming awareness of the futility of traditional theological positions and their well-earned disrepute in the more general community.
One further and more recent example: Israel Folau.
The recent media storm around his online comments threatening the fires of hell for those whose beliefs or personal lifestyles do not conform with ultraconservative Christian perspectives is just the latest example of why this topic matters.
So, I suggest we explore whether the role of Scripture is to protect the past and regulate the present, or to inspire us in the present to create a more human future?
Process
If we are going to engage in this conversation, we going to have to set aside common pious and devotional concepts about the Bible and indeed about the nature of Christianity. I am sure you will be up for that challenge if you have chosen to participate in the program this weekend.
What I will be asking you to consider is the ‘real-world’ spiritual value of the Bible. In other words, what practical value does the Bible have for the way we live our everyday lives? We may be people of Christian faith, we may be people who identify as spiritual but not religious, we may be people of other faiths or people without faith, or we may simply be considering the value of the Bible for the secular Australian Commonwealth to which we all belong and in whose future well-being our own well-being is to be found. No matter where we are coming from in this conversation, the focus is much the same: what is the practical value of the ancient Christian Scriptures for the kind of society we aspire to be and become?
Using the Bible faithfully
The phrase ‘taking the Bible seriously but not literally’ has become quite well-known in progressive religious circles. That is certainly the exercise in which we will be engaged this afternoon, but I want to up the ante a little bit and raise the stakes for our conversation.
I am proposing that taking the Bible literally is not simply one valid theological option among several. On the contrary, I consider a literal view of the Bible to be a serious theological mistake. This mistake—common though it be in many Christian circles—has inevitable toxic consequences for people of faith, for the church, for the wider society; and indeed for our whole fragile biosphere. We may want to tease out some of these issues in the conversation which will follow shortly.
My goal then, is to speak plainly about matters of deep theological significance and to avoid mealy-mouthed theological terms that fudge things up to the point where nobody can take offence. While I am not seeking to offend, I will not be upset if you are. This is, after all, a festival of wild ideas, is it not?
We are giving ourselves permission to ask questions, to push boundaries, as we seek to gain a sense of the way forward from where we are now to where we need to be in the future. That is one reason why we meet in a public space rather than in church property. Our venue invites us to think outside traditional theological boundaries for the benefit of us all.
Exhibit A: slavery
These days no church would entertain a proposal to reintroduce slavery into our economy and our family structures. At least I hope that is the case. And yet slavery is good for business and it has strong biblical support.
Perhaps you can already guess where I am going with this?
During the US Civil War, the church was split over the slavery issue and indeed some of those divisions have not yet been healed.
The campaign to abolish slavery provides an example of the Bible inspiring a few activists and social advocates to develop new ideas that were controversial, radical, overturned millennia of unbroken tradition, and involved setting aside some parts of the Bible itself for the sake of a deeper truth. No wonder it was controversial.
Perhaps this sounds familiar?
Yet, when we consider the biblical basis for slavery it is actually quite extensive and in no sense a superficial element of the tradition:
We find slavery embedded in the social structures of countless narratives through both the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The institution of slavery includes the sexual exploitation of female slaves by their male owners.
The Hebrew slaves in Egypt were set free by their God, but slavery itself was not condemned. Remarkably, the desert constitution for the future Israelite society includes provisions for the institution of slavery, including both Hebrew slaves and Gentile slaves.
Slavery features in the parables of Jesus and is never condemned by him.
Indeed, slavery becomes a favourite term in the New Testament to describe the relationship of the believer or the disciple to Jesus. These days with our sensitivity around slavery, we tend to translate the Greek term doulosas ‘servant’, but its natural interpretation in context is simply ‘slave’.
When we look to the authentic letters of Paul, and particularly the brief letter to Philemon, we find a fascinating triangle between Paul, Philemon (a Christian slaveowner) and Onesimus (a runaway slave and convert to Christianity). At no stage is slavery called into question.
Looking further afield in the New Testament, including the Deutero-Pauline letters, we find a systemic acceptance of slavery and explicit guidelines within the household codes for relationships between masters and slaves.
We should also note that while the New Testament endorses slavery, it condemns slave traders; which is an interesting distinction to make.
If we were to summarise the biblical position on slavery it would be as follows: slavery is assumed, it is regulated by divine laws, it is widely practised and continues to be accepted even into the New Testament itself. Slavery provides a core metaphor for the personal faith and for major leadership roles within the church, and it is even embraced by Jesus as a metaphor for his own mission and purpose.
All of this is more than that can be said for several other cultural practices that acquire theological significance in the Bible and within later Christian tradition, including: marriage, divorce, and celibacy. In short, anything involving sex or gender. Little is said about those subjects relative to the broad acceptance of slavery.
Biblical literacy
We are all aware of the responsible service of alcohol provisions these days, but I want to suggest that we need a similar program for the responsible service of Scripture.
Indeed, there is such a program, it is called biblical literacy.
Biblical literacy has numerous elements, including at least the following:
It requires attention to how written text function as acts of communication between and among authors and readers. This is an unremarkable literacy skill in other areas of modern life, including media studies and genre analysis at school. Yet it seems oddly and sadly lacking in many Christian churches. Meaning is always negotiated between the author and reader, with all the power being in the hands of the reader who is the one constructing meaning out of the process. The author can seek to shape the form of those negotiations, but the reader is the one ultimately creating meaning from the communication process. As text the Bible is subject to those same dynamics. We determine what it means. It does not determine our meaning.
Typical literacy also requires us to pay attention to the nature and function of language as we create, share, adopt, implement and adapt human knowledge between individuals and across generations. This is essential as we seek to use the Bible authentically.
Biblical literacy further requires that we pay some attention to what may reasonably be known about the composition of those texts that we now value as sacred Scripture. They did not drop out of heaven and they were not dictated by the Holy Spirit. Despite years of teaching biblical studies in seminaries around Australia and elsewhere, I was still shocked the other day to see a Christian leader quote from Psalm 51 as part of his argument against abortion, with the claim that the Psalm represents the direct words of God. This is, of course, nonsense.
In addition to paying attention to how the text may have originally been composed, we also need to pay attention to the process of reception for certain texts which were accepted as sacred while other texts from the same period were excluded from those documents authorised to be read in church or consulted to settle theological disputes. In other words, both the formation of the canon and the history of the interpretation of the canonical texts have a part to play in genuine biblical literacy.
What we have learned about using these texts from the accumulated experience more than 2,500 years of continuous interpretation within communities of spiritual practice must also be brought into the discussion. We are not the first people to read these texts and people of goodwill have been wrestling with them for centuries, constructing life-giving ways of reading the text as a charter for human flourishing in different cultural and social contexts. We ignore that wisdom at our peril.
An essential element of biblical literacy — or perhaps simply religious literacy — is that we consider what impact our new insights into the physical and social realities of being human in our kind of universe have on our contemporary reception and interpretation of these ancient texts. Since we no longer think we live on a flat earth or in an earth-centric universe, we will necessarily construct a different vision of life as we read these texts.
Finally, there is our own lived experience. This informs us as we reflect on past and contemporary interpretations of these venerated ancient texts. When we speak of the inspiration of Scripture, the work of the Holy Spirit is surely as much in the life of the reader and the listening community as it is in the texts themselves. Such a view of inspiration would certainly be consistent with our understanding of how meaning is constructed when a text is being read.
Living with theological difference
Binary gender stereotyping is an issue of wider cultural interest as we are well aware. We saw it in the marriage equality debate and we see it persisting in the culture wars around gender diversity and sexual orientation. It is particularly a controversial topic within the churches at the present time, but there is nothing new about the churches living with profound controversy and conflict.
At other times and in other places different issues have also been very divisive and continue to be so in some cases including: questions of shared meals between Gentiles and Jews, demands for male circumcision for Gentile converts to Christianity, Christian opposition to military service, the use of the vernacular in the liturgy, non-traditional music in worship, icons and images of various kinds, and (as we have seen) slavery.
Biblical and wider theological grounds for same-sex marriage
As we prepare for our discussion after the conclusion of my presentation, I want to suggest a series of basic hermeneutical principles which are particularly relevant to the question of same-sex marriage.
The first is the limits of Biblicism.
By that term I mean an excessive expectation of the authority of Scripture within the life of the church and of individual believers. So, I suggest that we ask the question: What kind of authority does the Bible actually have? And just how is that authority exercised? Is the authority of the Bible prescriptive or descriptive?
When we speak of the truth of the Bible, is that literal truth or metaphorical truth? And what are the extra-biblical considerations that drive our use of the Bible to settle theological debates in the first place? Why are some biblical statements prescriptive but others able to be set aside as cultural requirements or even as ritual texts?
I note, for example, that a famous rugby player who is opposed to homosexuality has tattoos covering his arms despite the explicit ban on such practices in the same Bible that he cites in opposition to same-sex relationships. Surely culture both presupposes and reinforces doctrine, and to dismiss a passage as merely ‘ritual’ is already to have some prior theological assumptions about the place and the value of ritual.
The second set of issues relates to the marginal nature of questions about marriage and gender and sexuality within the Bible more generally and particularly within the Gospels. And in passing, let me say that I do not accept the argument apparently quite popular in this part of the country, that the gospels are descriptive while the letters of Paul are prescriptive. What a convenient distinction. Every part of the Bible is canonical, but we can be very creative in generating strategies to evade those portions which do not suit our cultural and theological perspectives.
When we do find issues relating to marriage or gender or sexuality occurring in the New Testament, they mostly occur as examples where Jesus or his followers are exercising freedom to modify ancient traditions typically found in what we call the Old Testament.
Jesus, for example, (1) opposes divorce even though it is very biblical, (2) he chooses not to marry or have children despite the biblical commands to marry and reproduce, and (3) he welcomes women with unconventional sexual histories into the company of his disciples.
Likewise, the authentic letters of Paul challenge gender stereotypes, encourage celibacy and discourage traditional marriage commitments by calling for sexual abstinence even between married couples. When we get to the Deutero-Pauline letters and the Pastoral Epistles we see that the Pauline school is adopting a more traditional view of marriage and other domestic relationships than either Paul or Jesus, as Christianity becomes more conservative in the early decades of the second century.
Significantly, such matters are peripheral issues and not central to the gospel except when transgressing traditional purity codes becomes a sign of the kingdom of God active among us. Interesting.
Thirdly, there is a whole set of issues relating to marriage in the Bible. As is well known, biblical views of marriage and intimate relationships are diverse and in many respects they contradict mainstream Christian views of family values.
The Bible describes and reinforces particular ancient cultural practices relating to food and to sex. These practices include male domination, female subjugation, levirate marriage, ethnic taboos, concubinage, rape, and the sexual exploitation of vulnerable persons. These cultural views are integral elements of a social system that also included capital punishment, slavery, and ethnic cleansing; but are no longer widely accepted by Christians.
Fourthly, creation theology. A theology which takes seriously the significance of creation, that is God’s activity as creator, also affirms that gender diversity is good and represents a wholesome feature of God’s creation. In such a theological framework gender diversity is not an abomination, deviant or sinful.
It is instructive to note that the original earthling—‘adamin Hebrew, correlating to the term ‘adamah (ground)—was a non-gendered human creature, neither male nor female, in Genesis 2. God was pleased with her workmanship and saw no need for gender difference within humanity, but created gender—according to one of the creation narratives—as a way of addressing loneliness.
As an aside, that story in Genesis 2 tends to suggest that the point of gender and sexual differentiation is companionship rather than reproduction; a point largely overlooked in traditional interpretations of sexuality and marriage.
Fifthly, a bias to the poor. In Scripture God especially cares about the poor.
While the poor typically do not have many assets, it is not their wealth but rather their lack of access to the common weal that constitutes their poverty. The poor and the marginalised are victims of the powerful and privileged classes in Western society and in biblical society.
If we pay attention to the biblical witness of God’s preference for the poor, we cannot ignore the reality that LGBTQI are among the poor and marginalised in our society and in our churches. Of course, they are not the only victims, but they are typically among the victims.
Sixthly, WWJD.
Actually, we know a fair bit about what Jesus would do. It is clear from the gospel records that Jesus deliberately violated sacred Jewish rules, including biblical laws, relating to purity and social intimacy at meals. In addition to his own practice as a deviant Jew who refused to marry and raise a family, there is a total absence of any reference to marriage issues in his teaching, other than his extremely strict views on divorce and remarriage; which many contemporary Christian communities choose to set aside.
In this context, I suggest we do well to recall the tradition of Jesus’ encounter with the Samaritan woman at the well. Her personal life had apparently been a series of relationship disasters, and yet the focus of her discussion with Jesus is not her moral imperfections but the theological differences between Jews and Samaritans. Jesus does not lecture her about her relationship status but invites her into the generosity of God expressed in his own ministry.
Finally, we have the sensus fidelium. The sensus fidelium evolves over time. It is effectively what the faithful have come to understand as the meaning of the faith for them in their situation at that time in history. It can be defined as what has been believed by everybody at all times and in all places, but that is to take a very rough grade of sandpaper and to remove the bumps and the wrinkles of historical reality from the theological systems of the church.
The mind of the faithful does indeed change. It evolves over time. And in our time the mind of the faithful is moving to a more generous and affirming attitude towards LGBTI persons and their intimate relationships. This is not just whistling in the dark. The remarkably high vote in favour of changes to marriage law in Australia during the postal ballot of 2017 demonstrates that most Christians — and specifically most members of those churches affiliated with the National Council of churches in Australia — are in favour of same-sex marriage.
Explicit opposition to the full inclusion of LGBTQI persons in the life of the church, including solemnising their marriages, is increasingly limited to fundamentalist and ultraconservative faith communities as part of the so-called culture wars in Western society. We know how those wars will end as do the Conservatives, which is why they are desperately seeking special laws to protect their right to discriminate.
Conclusion
When we use Scripture in ways that respect the nature of the documents, the history of their composition and reception, and the lived experience of people of faith over thousands of years, there seems no convincing reason to deploy Scripture as a tool of exclusion and oppression. Rather than serving as manacles on humanity, I propose that the Bible can indeed serve as a charter for human flourishing.
So, with all that as background information, now let’s have a discussion about the usefulness or otherwise of the Bible in our lives today.
A lecture presented in the Cathedral Church of St George the Martyr, Jerusalem on Advent Sunday, 29 November 2015 by the Very Revd. Canon Dr Gregory C. Jenks, Dean of St George’s College, Jerusalem.
Introduction
This is the first of four lectures to be offered at the Cathedral during Advent, and it has fallen to me to offer the inaugural address. In turn, the following presentations will be by Canon Lawrence Hilditch, Canon David Longe, and the Dean.
Last Sunday many churches in the Western Church—whether in communion with Rome, protesting their independence, or assuming to occupy the middle way—will have observed the feast of Christ the King. In at least some of those places, the festival will have been described as ‘The Reign of Christ’. In my view that is a better option than the more common ‘Christ the King’.
The very concept of monarchy—and especially absolute monarchy with no constitutional balances in place—is problematic in our world. It reflects a pre-modern world order, a world of empire, and a world where might truly is right.
We may not have moved very far away from such a world even today, as this region reminds us so emphatically. But we aspire to live in a world where individuals and their families matter, where the powers of sovereigns and corporations are limited by constitution and convention, and where the democratic ideal is preeminent.
In such a world—incomplete and flawed as it currently may be—there is simply no place for a king with absolute powers.
The incompleteness of our democratic systems and their incapacity to cope with urgent human crises—whether they be climate change, seemingly intractable conflicts in many parts of the world, or the refugees that flee either or both—points to the need for something better yet to arrive. That might almost make the current context an Advent moment, but it is unlikely that many of us will be yearning for a tyrant, however benevolent, to sort out the mess.
There is a more serious theological point in these introductory observations than the relevance of royal language in contemporary liturgies. How are we to speak of the mysteries of God when the language of faith that we have inherited from the past is so mortgaged to a worldview that no longer holds true for any of us? How are we to engage the contemporary world if we keep offering them tired metaphors at best, and oftentimes broken myths as well?
I hope then, that in some small ways, this presentation will assist us to engage with the critical missional task of singing the Lord’s song in a strange (postmodern) world.
I shall pursue that objective by proceeding in a more or less systematic way through four different set of issues, asking in each case what ‘Christ the King’ may have to say to us in each instance.
Jesus of Nazareth
The first set of issues that I would like to explore with you concerns Jesus, the Jewish prophet from Nazareth in the Galilee. What does it mean to describe him as ‘Christ the King’ in the first century and in the twenty-first century?
In first-century terms, to ascribe kingship (basileia in Greek) to Jesus was to create a rival to Caesar. Caesars had many rivals, and many of them had themselves been rivals to a former Caesar before attaining the imperium themselves. So they understood rivals, and they viewed them all with suspicion. When an inscription such as ‘Jesus of Nazareth, king of the Jews’ was placed above the head of a crucified man, it was not so much a royal title as a charge of treason.
Today ‘Christ the King’ may evoke the comforting words of The King of Love My Shepherd Is derived—gleaned even—from Psalm 23 and John 10, but in the first century such a claim was highly political and a direct challenge to the legitimacy and the potency of the ruling sovereign.
Had Tiberius ever heard of Jesus, he may well have asked as Stalin is said to have asked of the Pope many centuries later, “How many legions does he have?” The dialogue between Pilate and Jesus in John 18:28–19:22 is really exploring exactly these issues.
So many of the terms of religious devotion that we now apply to Jesus derive from ancient politics. This should not be a surprise, since the ancient world in which Christianity was born really only had two domains: the family, and politics. When speaking God’s word to the public sphere, it was necessary to use categories and terminology appropriate to politics, the life of the polis.
In particular, terms such as ‘Son of God’, ‘Lord’ (kyrios in Greek and dominus in Latin), and ‘Savior’ (Soter in Greek) were royal titles. Such titles were to be found in massive inscriptions above city gates and on the tiny coins in a peasant’s pocket.
When used of Jesus by his earliest followers, these were not innocent terms of devotion. They were political declarations, and the emperors understood them as such.
Today marks the beginning of the Year of Luke in our three-year lectionary cycle, so it is especially fitting to pay careful attention to the way Luke began his Gospel. Note, first of all, the careful comments that serve as a prologue to his two-volume work, known to us as The Gospel of Luke and The Acts of the Apostles (‘Luke-Acts’):
Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I too decided, after investigating everything carefully from the very first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed. (Luke 1:1–4 NRSV)
As Luke sets about the task of publishing his account of “the events that have been fulfilled among us”, he is very conscious that others have written on these topics before him. Those accounts—known to us as the Gospel according to Mark, the Gospel according to Matthew, and the Gospel according to John—were already in circulation by the time this opening paragraph of Luke-Acts was composed. Indeed, the Gospel according to Luke may itself be an enlarged edition of an even earlier Christian gospel known to scholars as the Q Gospel.
Be that as it may, our author knows he is not the first to attempt this task. But he considers his work to be the best available, and clearly wishes his audience not rely on the earlier examples of this genre. He will provide Theophilus—and us—with the definitive Jesus story. An ‘orderly account’. This is the version he would like us to “read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest”; as he doubtless would have said if given the opportunity to read Cranmer’s Book of Common Prayer.
With those considerations in mind, now let’s observe how he begins his Gospel.
Luke begins with the tale of two boys, one of whom will become the Savior of World.
The two boys are close relatives (cousins), and both have mothers with unusual fertility challenges.
The first is called John, and his parents are aged and childless. Clearly one of them is sterile, but this just heightens the miraculous element. A child born to elderly parents who were unable to conceive when young and healthy is surely a child of promise. Watch this lad. He will count for something when he grows up.
The second boy is called, Jesus. His mother had a very different problem. She was not yet married. But she is also assured by an angel sent by God that she will bear a son, and the sign of the promise to her being true is that her aged and childless cousin is also pregnant.
The story of these two boys is woven into a series of seven scenes:
Scene 1 – John’s miraculous conception (Luke 1:5–25)
Scene 2 – Jesus’ miraculous conception (Luke 1:26–38)
Scene 3 – Mary visits Elizabeth (Luke 1:39–56)
Scene 4 – John’s birth and naming (Luke 1:57–80)
Scene 5 – Jesus’ birth and naming (Luke 2:1–21)
Scene 6 – Presentation in Temple (Luke 2:22–40)
Scene 7 – 12-year old Jesus in Temple (Luke 2:41–52)
The sequence of these episodes and the climatic scene in the Temple are carefully arranged to make a theological point. Perhaps several. By telling the story in this way, Luke has asserted the supremacy of Jesus over John; despite Jesus having been a disciple of John. But that was not the main point.
Luke was writing for Christians living in the Roman Empire about 100 years after the death of Jesus. They also knew a story about two boys, one of whom who found the city of Rome. Here is the account of that founding myth as told by Plutarch, ca 75 CE:
Some again say that Roma, from whom this city was so called, was daughter of Italus and Leucaria; or, by another account, of Telaphus, Hercules’s son, and that she was married to Aeneas, or, according to others again, to Ascanius, Aeneas’s son. Some tell us that Romanus, the son of Ulysses and Circe, built it; some, Romus, the son of Emathion, Diomede having sent him from Troy; and others, Romus, king of the Latins, after driving out the Tyrrhenians, who had come from Thessaly into Lydia, and from thence into Italy. Those very authors, too, who, in accordance with the safest account, make Romulus give the name of the city, yet differ concerning his birth and family. For some say, he was son to Aeneas and Dexithea, daughter of Phorbas, and was, with his brother Remus, in their infancy, carried into Italy, and being on the river when the waters came down in a flood, all the vessels were cast away except only that where the young children were, which being gently landed on a level bank of the river, they were both unexpectedly saved, and from them the place was called Rome. Some say, Roma, daughter of the Trojan lady above mentioned, was married to Latinus, Telemachus’s son, and became mother to Romulus; others that Aemilia, daughter of Aeneas and Lavinia, had him by the god Mars; and others give you mere fables of his origin. For to Tarchetius, they say, king of Alba, who was a most wicked and cruel man, there appeared in his own house a strange vision, a male figure that rose out of a hearth, and stayed there for many days. There was an oracle of Tethys in Tuscany which Tarchetius consulted, and received an answer that a virgin should give herself to the apparition, and that a son should be born of her, highly renowned, eminent for valour, good fortune, and strength of body. Tarchetius told the prophecy to one of his own daughters, and commanded her to do this thing; which she avoiding as an indignity, sent her handmaid. Tarchetius, hearing this, in great anger imprisoned them both, purposing to put them to death, but being deterred from murder by the goddess Vesta in a dream, enjoined them for their punishment the working a web of cloth, in their chains as they were, which when they finished, they should be suffered to marry; but whatever they worked by day, Tarchetius commanded others to unravel in the night.
In the meantime, the waiting-woman was delivered of two boys, whom Tarchetius gave into the hands of one Teratius, with command to destroy them; he, however, carried and laid them by the river side, where a wolf came and continued to suckle them, while birds of various sorts brought little morsels of food, which they put into their mouths; till a cowherd, spying them, was first strangely surprised, but, venturing to draw nearer, took the children up in his arms. Thus they were saved, and when they grew up, set upon Tarchetius and overcame him. This one Promathion says, who compiled a history of Italy.
When Luke chose to begin his account of Jesus with a story about two boys, he knew what he was doing. Not for him the Matthean infancy story with its echoes of Moses and the Exodus. He is ‘ordering’ his account so that his intended audience will get the point, right from the opening scenes.
For Luke, Jesus was the boy destined to be king. This ‘Good News’ will reach all the way to Rome, as it does by the last chapter of Acts.
The kingship of God in the Old Testament
The idea of the ‘kingdom of God’ (basileia tou theou) is deeply rooted in the Hebrew texts of the Christian Old Testament. The phrase is perhaps better translated as ‘reign of God’ since it refers to be rule of God as sovereign over creation, rather than the object of God’s authority. Indeed, in the first-century context, ‘empire of God’ would be a better translation, since basileia was the term used for the Roman Empire in the Greek-speaking East.
Even in the OT, the idea of kingship was problematic. It derives from the world of the city, not the village, and certainly not the world of the pastoral nomads such as Israel imagined her ancestors to have been. The ‘wandering Arameans’ of Deuteronomy 26 had no king, since there was almost other social domain apart from the family. Within the family, the patriarch was the supreme authority. Conflict tended to be between patriarchs, and between aspiring patriarchs.
When kings first appear in the OT story they are the riles of cities in Canaan and—more particularly—the Pharaohs of Egypt. Such rulers are not agents of grace or foretastes of the messianic age. Yet in 1 Samuel 8 the people demand that they have a king to rule over them, because they wished to be like the other nations.
Such a request was a category error.
The covenant people are not to be like the other nations. The very essence of election, promise, and covenant is to be a special people, not a clone of the neighbors.
In time—despite the profound theological critique of kingship offered by 1 Samuel 8 & 12—kingship became the norm for both the northern kingdom and its more rustic southern cousin. Indeed, in the south the concept of kingship was embraced with even more vigor. The Davidic dynasty secured a theological mortgage on the throne, whereas at least in the north the Yahwistic tradition retained the divine prerogative to dismiss a king and choose a new dynasty.
Royal models for leadership within the covenant people remained unpopular in some 0f the circles from which we receive these sacred texts. The prophets were critical of the kings and their cadre of officials. Anti-royal sentiments are clearly preserved and promoted in some parts of Samuel and Kings. The Deuteronomist only wants a king who keeps a copy of the law beside his throne, and takes instruction from a Levitical priest. Ezekiel’s vision of the restored Israel has a prince, but no king.
Despite these reservations, or maybe because of them, the idea of divine kingship became both central to the worship life of the community and also nuanced in some interesting ways. The centrality of the kingship of God is expressed in the many Psalms that proclaim, YHWH melek (The LORD is king). The sovereignty of God over the nations and over creation is especially clear in prophetic texts such as Isaiah.
At the same time, we find that God’s kingship is described in more pastoral terms, even if the warrior God makes a re-appearance in the apocalyptic traditions that dominate the Jewish mindset in the late Second Temple period.
In Ezekiel 34 we find God portrayed as the good shepherd, in contrast to the unfaithful and self-serving clergy of the Temple:
The word of the LORD came to me: Mortal, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel: prophesy, and say to them—to the shepherds: Thus says the Lord GOD: Ah, you shepherds of Israel who have been feeding yourselves! Should not shepherds feed the sheep? You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fatlings; but you do not feed the sheep. You have not strengthened the weak, you have not healed the sick, you have not bound up the injured, you have not brought back the strayed, you have not sought the lost, but with force and harshness you have ruled them. So they were scattered, because there was no shepherd; and scattered, they became food for all the wild animals. My sheep were scattered, they wandered over all the mountains and on every high hill; my sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth, with no one to search or seek for them.
Therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: As I live, says the Lord GOD, because my sheep have become a prey, and my sheep have become food for all the wild animals, since there was no shepherd; and because my shepherds have not searched for my sheep, but the shepherds have fed themselves, and have not fed my sheep; therefore, you shepherds, hear the word of the LORD: Thus says the Lord GOD, I am against the shepherds; and I will demand my sheep at their hand, and put a stop to their feeding the sheep; no longer shall the shepherds feed themselves. I will rescue my sheep from their mouths, so that they may not be food for them.
For thus says the Lord GOD: I myself will search for my sheep, and will seek them out. As shepherds seek out their flocks when they are among their scattered sheep, so I will seek out my sheep. I will rescue them from all the places to which they have been scattered on a day of clouds and thick darkness. I will bring them out from the peoples and gather them from the countries, and will bring them into their own land; and I will feed them on the mountains of Israel, by the watercourses, and in all the inhabited parts of the land. I will feed them with good pasture, and the mountain heights of Israel shall be their pasture; there they shall lie down in good grazing land, and they shall feed on rich pasture on the mountains of Israel. I myself will be the shepherd of my sheep, and I will make them lie down, says the Lord GOD. I will seek the lost, and I will bring back the strayed, and I will bind up the injured, and I will strengthen the weak, but the fat and the strong I will destroy. I will feed them with justice.
As for you, my flock, thus says the Lord GOD: I shall judge between sheep and sheep, between rams and goats: Is it not enough for you to feed on the good pasture, but you must tread down with your feet the rest of your pasture? When you drink of clear water, must you foul the rest with your feet? And must my sheep eat what you have trodden with your feet, and drink what you have fouled with your feet?
Therefore, thus says the Lord GOD to them: I myself will judge between the fat sheep and the lean sheep. Because you pushed with flank and shoulder, and butted at all the weak animals with your horns until you scattered them far and wide, I will save my flock, and they shall no longer be ravaged; and I will judge between sheep and sheep.
I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them; I, the LORD, have spoken. (Ezek 34:1–24 NRSV)
For Christian readers of these ancient Jewish texts, this resonates with the depiction of Jesus as the Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep, in John 10:
I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep. I have other sheep that do not belong to this fold. I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. So there will be one flock, one shepherd. For this reason the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. No one takes it from me, but I lay it down of my own accord. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father. (John 10:11–18 NRSV)
When all the data for divine kingship in the OT is taken into account, we can see a nuancing of the concept from one of awesome power to one of divine care. The pastoral images of the Twenty-Third Psalm displace the warrior God of tribal religion.
The end result is an invitation to imagine power and leadership in very different terms than ‘kingship’ might suggest. If we imagine God to exercise divine power in ways that are primarily about bringing forth life and serving the vulnerable, then we may also discern an invitation to think differently—and act differently—when exercising power or leadership within the church, within the family, or within the wider society,
The View from Below
Having explored some of the issues relating to Jesus and God, it may be timely to think about the significant of this divine kingship language for our understanding of ourselves and our perspective(s) on reality.
I begin with the question of how we see Jesus. What kind of a ‘king’ do we imagine Jesus to be? If nothing else, the affirmation of ‘Christ the king’ invites us to understand the significance of Jesus in God’s cosmic purposes. But we need not trap Jesus or ourselves in a Byzantine imperial worldview.
‘Christ the king’ is also a statement about us, about humanity. It invites us to see that the Human One, the Son of Adam, can be the human face of God. While that may be especially true of Jesus, it is also true for each of us. We can be—and perhaps must be—the human face of God to our family, our neighbors, and even our enemies.
There is a parallel here to the role of Mary, Theotokos, Mother of God. Mary of Nazareth was uniquely the bearer of the Christ Child. But each of us has that calling as well. Similarly, we may see in Jesus the unique historical revelation of God, but each of us may find that we serve as icons of God for those around us.
The kingship that Christ embodies is compassionate and life-giving. It is our calling to embody that selfless love seen first in Jesus, as we make the words of 1 Corinthians 13 our personal charter:
Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. (1 Cor 13:4–8 NRSV)
In all of this, Christ the king is our model and our pioneer. No longer a source of fear, this ‘king’ encourages us to be all that God knows we can be.
Reflecting on the deeper significance of Christ the King can also invite us to see God differently. As Christ the King, Jesus is not a distant authority figure, but the God who is with us and among us; indeed, one of us: Emmanuel.
Another metaphor that I find attractive as I re-imagine the traditional concept of Christ the King, is the suggestion by Bishop John Taylor that we see God as the Go-Between God. This was the title of a book in which he explored the nature and activity of the Holy Spirit, but it comes to mind when I think about the kind of God revealed in Jesus, the one we celebrate now as Christ the King. In many ways, Jesus was the quintessential Spirit-person, and that shapes and reshapes my understanding of ‘Christ the King.
As Christ the King, Jesus has not peaked. He is not resting on his laurels and enjoying his cosmic retirement after a grueling term of service on the earth. The Spirit of Lord continues to be present and active in the life of the Church, and that is surely an important element of our affirmation that ‘Jesus is Lord’.
In the end, our reflection on Christ the King must also impact how we see ourselves. What does it mean to be a human being, if Jesus of Nazareth is somehow also the ultimate expression of God’s truth in the cosmos?
If the Human One can be proclaimed as Christ the King, then that is one big leap for human awareness. The Orthodox speak of divinization as the inner reality of salvation. That may be another way to approach this same mystery. God becomes a human, so that humans can become divine. Emmanuel is more radical and inclusive than perhaps we realized.
What does it mean for us to be alive and self-aware in this kind of world, where our God becomes one of us and one of us becomes ‘Christ the King’? What value do we place on human life, and always within the context of our own location within the web of creation?
Is being alive and ever engaged in a process of loving transformation into the character of Christ really what matters most to us? More than success? Than wealth? Than power? Than popularity?
Can we fashion lives, families, churches, and societies that practice that truth?
And how would this pan out in the harsh realities of Palestine and Israel now? Where is the kingship of Christ in the streets of the Old City this Advent?
In conclusion …
Finally, let me try to bring all this together with some brief reflections on the significance of ‘Christ the King’ for our world.
In the last week or so, there has been a controversy in the UK about some movie theatres banning the Lord’s Prayer as it was seen to be too ‘political’. This strikes me as an excellent example of how someone can be entirely correct and totally wrong all at the same time.
The movie chains may have misread the ever-shifting cultural dynamics, but I suspect they did not. Given the growing lack of religious literacy in Western societies, a majority of younger people probably have no real sense of the cultural significance of the Lord’s Prayer in British life. But then they probably do not ‘get’ Shakespeare either. And it may be that the Authorized Version of the Bible—which has already lost its correct name to the more American ‘King James Bible’—is now past of our cultural past, rather than having any current cultural significance beyond the ever diminishing circle of practicing Christians. Among the discarded remnants of yesteryear’s religion, we shall find the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments.
On the other hand, and for reasons they may never understand, the movie chains probably got this absolutely correct.
The Lord’s Prayer is a political document. So is the Magnificat that we just sang during Evensong. These are subversive texts. They undermine the cultural assumptions of our pleasure-oriented society. If people took these ancient religious texts seriously they might change the way they vote, and choose to spend their disposable income in different ways. That would be bad for business. But good for the world.
In a sense, no-one who is doing well from the present world order should allow us to teach people the Lord’s Prayer or chant the Magnificat in our cathedrals. If Christ really is the ‘king’, then things had better change around here.
Christians—like our Jewish and Muslim cousins—have a higher loyalty than any corporation or any nation. The Roman emperors were on the money when they sensed that the devotees of Jesus were an existential threat to the Empire; to all empire and every empire. Then and now.
We are advance agents of eternity. We embody the truth that the kingdom of God is drawing nigh, and in some sense is already here among us. We are not content to sell fire insurance for the afterlife, or ring-side seats to Armageddon. We want to change the world now. We want to mortgage the present to God’s future which we glimpse in the affirmation that Christ is king.
This is exactly what those familiar words in the Lord’s Prayer invite us to imagine:
… your kingdom come your will be done on earth as in heaven …
Over three successive mornings this week, it will be my privilege to lead the Anglican clergy from the Province of Queensland in a series of Bible studies during our clergy conference on the Gold Coast.
Rather than select texts with some perceived relevance to the conference theme (“Leading your church into growth”), the Bible studies will simply focus on the readings from Acts that are set in the lectionary cycle for those mornings:
Acts 16:11–24
Acts 16:25–40
Acts 17:1–14
When read within the context of this clergy conference, these lectionary texts invite us to reflect on the significance of Paul’s missionary activities in ancient Greece for us today. As a leader within the emerging Jesus movement in the first generation after Easter, Paul was instrumental in the Gospel finding fresh expressions in new contexts. As we explore these excerpts from Acts 16 and 17 we shall be open to hear what the Spirit might be saying to the church in our time and in our place.
The world behind the Acts of the Apostles (Tuesday morning)
In this first session we note the historical setting of Luke-Acts, and selected key issues shaping the outlook of both the author and his first readers. This will include a date for Acts well into the parting of the ways with Judaism, and a time by which Paul has been embraced as a major interpreter of Jesus. It is also a world of empire, and one aspect of Luke’s agenda seems to be to assist his readers in finding ways to live faithfully in a world system that mostly ignores Christians, but finds little reason to respect them when they come to the attention of the authorities.
2. The world within the Acts of the Apostles (Wednesday morning)
What kind of Paul does Luke offer us in the Acts of the Apostles? What kind of Christianity does he invite us to embrace? What kind of ministry does he promote? How does that resonate with or challenge our assumptions about church life, ministry, and mission? And in what ways does any of this connect with our context?
3. The world in which we read the Acts of the Apostles (Thursday morning)
What kind of a Bible do we desire to have? Do we have a book of answers, or a compendium of practical mission strategies? Or do we have something much less tailored to our natural desires, and yet perhaps far more relevant to the challenges we face as the people of Christ in the twenty-first century? How central is the Bible to our mission and character?
Notes for a presentation to a symposium on the ‘Divine Presence’ at the Worship Centre, Murdoch University, Perth on Thursday, 2 October 2014 with Harold Ellens, Gregory C. Jenks, Alex Jensen, and Suzanne Boorer
It is good to be back in Perth as a guest of the WA Progressive Network, and I am especially pleased to have been invited to participate in this conversation.
As we begin, allow me to bring greetings not only from my immediate academic community at St Francis College in Brisbane, but also from the Christian communities in Haifa and Nazareth where I have close connections. This is a difficult time for Christians in the Middle East, including Palestine and Israel, and I know they value our prayers and our solidarity.
Orientation
It is important to clarify at the start that I come to this conversation as a biblical scholar, and not as a theologian or mystic. My professional focus is on the texts, the communities that formed them, and the communities that now read them. I am not all that interested in the God question, nor in religious experience. I do not doubt the reality of either, it is just that I find other questions more pressing.
On the other hand, I am deeply interested in what it means to be human and how to live a life that is “holy and true”, by which I mean “authentic and with some spiritual depth”. As a Christian myself, Jesus plays a significant part in all this for me, so I hope I may have something to offer to our conversation about the ‘divine presence’ this evening.
My contribution is therefore shaped by and derives mostly from one sphere of intellectual inquiry, and within that already limited domain of biblical studies I will restrict myself to Jesus.
Further, even when considering Jesus and the encounter with the divine, I will avoid speaking about the experience(s) of the divine that Jesus may have had. In other words, I am not so much interested in the religious experience of Jesus as I am interested in the role of Jesus within our own (or at least my own) religious experience.
Jesus and the encounter with God
Recently I was invited to contribute a chapter to a book on the “God Encounter” being edited by Nigel Leaves. A number of us were asked to choose some topic or figure (prayer, Jesus, the Bible, etc) and write about how that connected with our encounter with God. Having just finished a book on Jesus I naturally thought of that option for my chapter, but imagined it would have been already taken by someone else — if not Nigel himself, who teaches the Christology class for us at SFC!
To my surprise and delight, no one else was bidding for Jesus. The topic was mine! That still strikes me as a bit strange, but I was very happy to undertake the assignment.
My chapter was eventually entitled, “Encountering God in Jesus of Nazareth”, and I will draw on some of the material in that essay as we start the conversation, although taking some things in a different direction as I never find any form of words a satisfactory statement about God or Jesus, including my own.
God was in Christ …
For millions of Christians the primary and quintessential way that Jesus impacts their experience of the divine presence is his presumed divinity as an incarnation of the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. To see (know) Jesus is to see/know God. John 14:9 comes to mind: “… to see me is to see the Father.”
This idea is implicit in one of my favourite descriptions of Jesus: “the human face of God”.
To express it more discursively perhaps, millions of people throughout the last 2,000 years including hundreds of millions of people alive on the planet right now, are devoted to Jesus as a divine figure. They worship him, they seek to serve him, they anticipate his direct involvement in the smallest details of their everyday lives, they experience their own lives as being in a relationship with Jesus, and they understand the future of the world — as well as their own destiny at and after death — to be in his hands.
This “Jesus” – if indeed it is Jesus with whom they are engaged – is not the historical figure of first century Palestine but a divine saviour fashioned in the religious experience and the theological imagination of the early Christian movement. Many NT scholars would refer to this figure as the “Christ of faith”, although Luke Timothy Johnson might prefer to argue that this is the “real Jesus”. Marcus Borg famously speaks of “Jesus before Easter” and “Jesus after Easter”, and I wish to take my lead from that distinction.
The human face of God …
What Jesus has become after Easter in the imagination and practice of Christianity is not the topic I want to raise in this forum. Rather, I would like to focus on the contribution of the historical Jesus to our experience of the divine.
Again, to express this in slightly different terms, what does it mean that the distinctively Christian understanding of God is centred on the figure of a Jewish man from Galilee? His human experience, his actions, his teachings, his fate lie at the very centre of the Christian understanding of God, and that God is present here among us as one of us. The Christian God is neither an abstract idea nor a remote spiritual power.
How does “Jesus before Easter” impact on our experience of the divine? In what realistic sense can we speak of that Jesus as the “human face of God”?
For me there is a cluster of themes that are highly significant in this regard:
The humanity of Jesus
The historical particularity of Jesus
The character of Jesus (compassion, integrity, vulnerability)
The wisdom and wit of Jesus
The community of practice
The humanity of Jesus
The phrase “son of Man” is one of the most evocative titles for Jesus. There are good reasons for thinking it reflects his own choice of self-description, and it is interesting to note that it means simply, “the human one”.
If we take this idea seriously, Jesus matters most deeply because of his humanity.
Jesus took his humanity seriously. He accepted that it defined him, and he did not seek divinity. Jesus lived within the constraints of creature-hood.
It seems to me that the church loves to talk abut God, but the world needs to hear us speak about being human. Reframing our God-talk in terms of Emmanuel discourse may be our most urgent mission for the sake of the world. We do not need to learn how to become gods, but we do need to learn how to live as humans.
If we take the humanity of Jesus more seriously, perhaps we can reclaim some ancient truths about the Christian experience of God-with-us.
The historical particularity of Jesus
Jesus was not a generic human, an abstract man (sic). Rather, he was (like each of us) a person of a particular time and place.
Taking the humanity of Jesus seriously means that we notice his ethnicity, his religion, his economic status, and his political situation. If such categories seem odd for a discussion of Jesus it may well be an indication of just how little significance we have attributed to the humanity of Jesus.
Are these only attributes of Jesus? Are they not also attributes of the Christian God? And if so, in what sense? And to what extent are they attributes of us? Have we become estranged from our place, from our people, from our village, from our planet? Do we consider ourselves indispensable?
The character of Jesus
It seems to me that we admire most about Jesus are his human qualities, not his supposedly divine attributes. Divine attributes seem to be like stainless steel: cold and hard, untarnished, dead.
On the other hand, the attributes of Jesus that we most appreciate would include:
compassion
integrity
vulnerability
Like Abraham, it is the faithfulness of Jesus to God’s call on him that saves others. At least, so Paul would have us think in Romans 3 and 4.
The Jesus we knew before Easter continues to be a significant prophetic figure with much to say to us today, and it is as a prophet that Jesus is honoured within Islam. The faithful humanity of Jesus is itself a prophetic act that cuts across the centuries and invites us to get ready for the coming reign of God. Jesus speaks for God, and he does not always need to use words. Often it is sufficient for us to note how Jesus treated people. We find ourselves in the presence of God. That presence has a missional dimension; it compels us to action to bring the future possibilities into present reality.
The wisdom and wit of Jesus
The teachings of Jesus continue to challenge and liberate, even if the church continues to evade them. These sayings are mostly secular. Very few of them speak directly about God or deal with religious topics, even if – ultimately – they concern the elusive kingdom of God.
The words of Jesus rarely focus on “sin” (except perhaps in the Gospel of John, but there is not much left of the voice of Jesus in that document). Rather than turning the spotlight of divine wrath on a sinful audience, these words are invitations to see, to reimagine, and to turn towards the future.
How does this reflect the nature of the divine presence as understood by Christians? Is God primarily concerned with “holiness” and “purity”, or with life and “becoming”?
The community of practice
From birth to death Jesus lived in the presence of others. There was no splendid isolation for this human face of the eternal God. That tells me something abut the social nature of the Christian god, and invites me to escape the caricatures of androids on steroids, existing in eternal divine isolation far from the messiness of the life they are presumed to have created.
In between that communal birthing and dying we have the public years that leave no mark on the creeds and confessions of Constantine’s church. The hallmark of those years was that Jesus gathered a community of people around him. Our God is a gregarious god. God’s preferred company is comprised of the broken and the misfits, the blind and the lame, the poor and the outcasts, vulnerable widows and haemorrhaging women, parents with sick children, collaborators, and women with reputations. Cast the first stone, our God says, if you have no sin! Come as you are. Come and eat at my table.
Come to the table
Let me finish with that image of the table of life. It is prepared by God and placed in our midst. The table is open for us to come and enjoy.
That table is the sign of the divine presence, yet we have argued over the ontological status of the bread and wine. And all the while we have overlooked the human faces of God gathered around the table.
This Christian God has a human face. This God is not just compassionate, but suffers and dies and rises again. This God knows what it is like be alone, cold, hungry, loved, mocked, and touched. This God sets a table and calls us to eat. This God overturns the crass transactions at the centre of our lives and challenges us to become houses of prayer for all nations. This God has become the Spirit poured out on all flesh, so that Paul could also say, “Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Cor 3:17).
(Note: The texts in blue are citations from Jesus Then and Jesus Now).
