Jesus Today …

THE JESUS THAT NEVER WAS

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today, yes and forever. Heb. 13:8

This is our text for the year as we examine our faith in terms of Jesus Today, a theme that is appropriate in a time when hardly anything besides money and things appears to be relevant. The text affirms that whatever Jesus was he is, whatever he did he does, and whatever he said he says. It serves as a summary of the book of Hebrews, a word fitly spoken to believers whose faith was in peril in that they were tempted to return to the false security of law. “Jesus Christ is the same,” the writer assures them, not simply the doctrine that Jesus taught, but the nature of Christ himself. He is the same powerful, gracious, and faithful Savior that he has always been, and he will continue to be forever. There is therefore no reason to “drift away” from him. (See Heb. 2:1)

Jesus today! What does he really mean to us in 1981? Does he have any relevance to our getting up and going to work on Monday morning, to a sink full of dirty dishes, to unpaid bills, to the regimen of everyday life? Does faith in him make any difference as to who is President, what is going on in Afghanistan, what to do about spiraling inflation? Is Jesus mainly a Sunday thing, something or somebody for emergencies, what we generally classify as religion? Or is he as real as life itself, as timely as today’s newspaper, and as relevant as the air we breathe and the water we drink?

Whatever he may have been yesterday, unless he is the same today our faith means little. However much those of yesterday trusted him, if we cannot trust him as much today, our faith still means little. This Scripture assures us that he is “the same,” that he is changeless and immutable. It was a good reason for the Hebrew believers to be steadfast. If he was not fickle, they should not be.

But, really now, what meaning does “the Story” have in our life in the 1980’s? John tells us that the Word that was God became flesh and dwelt (for awhile) among humanity. Mark introduces his version of the Story with a startling sentence: “The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.” Luke begins the Story with a baby born of a virgin, the “holy offspring” who is to be called the Son of God. Matthew’s record counts off 42 generations of sinful humanity, which includes prostitutes and murderers, and concludes with: “from the deportation to Babylon to the time of Christ fourteen generations.” Then he writes: the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows … When Paul came along a decade or so after the Story had been sealed, like a child untimely born, he could say, “I saw him saying to me” (Acts 22: 18). “I saw him saying” vibrates with reality.

History, history, history! In this context it is what God did yesterday. Generations pass in an unfolding drama, a peasant virgin gives birth to a baby, the eternal Logos becomes a human being, men see and hear and touch the Son of God, who tabernacles among them. The stage is set for mankind’s grossest sin, the murder of the Holy One. But the grave cannot hold him. So the Good News of all history is that man, through the one that Paul saw and heard, has victory over both sin and the grave. It was yesterday, history, but it is also today. It is just as real, just as meaningful, now as then.

A gifted actor presents a dramatic monologue these days on the life of Jesus, which consists simply of a reading of Mark. President and Mrs. Carter stated that they were moved by the presentation when they heard it in Washington. Mark was a wise choice, for it moves “straightway” through the Story, eager to show how Jesus was gloriously accepted by the Father while cruelly rejected by men. Mark did not bother with much of what Jesus taught. There is no Sermon on the Mount and few parables. His main concern was to show what Jesus was, and how he was recognized as the Son of God by men, angels, and even devils as well as the Father. Throughout Mark, there is “the Messianic secret.” While Jesus accepted his disciples’ acknowledgment that he was Messiah, he warned them not to reveal it. He rather used the humbler title of Son of Man.

It is a great Story that Mark tells. I would like to hear that gifted performer read those lines where Mark first introduces Jesus in history: “It came about in those days that Jesus came from Nazareth in Galilee, and was baptized by John in the Jordan. And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opening, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him; and a voice came out of the heavens: ‘Thou art My beloved Son, in Thee I am well-pleased.’ And straightway the Spirit impelled him to go out into the wilderness.”

These are what Alexander Campbell (and John Locke before him) pointed to as facts of the Bible. Facts make up the Story, and for that reason we can all agree on what the facts are and what they say. It is the deductions drawn from the facts that we disagree on. Let the deductions be treated as opinions, Campbell insisted, and let us unite upon the facts. It is a great heritage we have, both the facts of the gospel and the Campbell-Stone plea that the church can unite upon those facts.

As we probe our theme of Jesus Today, drawn from what Jesus was yesterday, it may not be amiss to observe first what Jesus never was. The church as well as the world has created all sorts of fabrications of Jesus. The myths of what Jesus was and is comprise no small assembly, and if the man of Galilee should respond to Will the real Jesus please stand up?, the church might be as surprised as the world at that one solitary figure that rises to his feet, if indeed he be in the assembly at all. Have we laid hold of the Bible and yet missed Jesus? Have we built magnificent edifices to accommodate him only to find him elsewhere? Are we busy about many things, even good things, and yet neglect what is most important? To be sure, nothing is as important as Jesus. But Jesus who?

Malachi Martin, a wily Jesuit priest who is a professor at the Pontifical Institute in Rome, has done extensive research on what has happened to Jesus in the machinations of man. In his studies at Oxford and Hebrew universities he concentrated on sources about Jesus in Jewish and Islamic sources. This has resulted in a book on Jesus Now, which traces the muddle of interpretations about Jesus. It is an amazing catalogue of confusion, to say the least, and one is left to wonder how the lowly Nazarene could be crucified over and over again by those who profess to honor him.

There is, for instance, Jesus Doctor. While the real Jesus taught with peace, dignity, and authority, and with healing and unifying effect, the doctors of religion became doctors of doctrine rather than curers of the heart, dispensers of words rather than ministers of the Word. The doctors have forgotten holiness while laying down tests for the true Christian and they assume episcopal dignity without pasturing the sheep. The Jesus Doctors preside over the creeds that exclude all but their own kind, and they speak words presumed to be infallible. The Jesuit scholar, who is as critical of the Roman church as any, charges the Jesus Doctors with trying to entomb Jesus in words and losing him in concepts.

Then there is Jesus Monk who enters a monastery where he chants, meditates, and prays until he dies full of years and full of merit. Not only is pleasure renounced but thought as well, for body and mind alike are turned over to superiors. He or she is only to obey. Mental joy and self-confidence are beaten out of many trusting young women by appealing to the authority of the chief Bride of Jesus Monk, Martin charges, but he sees Jesus Monk on the decline in recent years because so many are learning that the real Jesus wants the ministry of men and women in the Spirit.

The real Jesus is in the black man’s soul according to Jesus Black. The black Jesus may not save but he revolutionizes. He was not born of a virgin as much as of black life and black faith. They killed Jesus Black when they killed Martin Luther King and Malcolm X. Blackness provides a new gospel, not of the cross but of the clenched fist. Jesus Black is a racist, calling for blacks to rally to their blackness, just as Jesus Femina is a sexist urging women to assert their sexuality and thus be liberated from male domination. But Dr. Martin sees an amazing contradiction in Jesus Femina, for while her theology is sexist she asserts the equality of men and women. Jesus Femina calls for she-popes, she-bishops, she-confessors, and he-nuns and he-wives. But Martin finds the real Jesus to be a real man’ born of a real woman who in turn was married to a real man, Joseph, the most inscrutable character in history, who did not stand alone but with his wife and her son.

There is even Jesus Gay, for after all was there not a love affair between Jesus and the unmarried John “who lay on Jesus’ breast”? There is now the Gay Church of the Beloved Disciple, founded in 1970. Jesus Gay says, “Stop being a good queer. Be yourself.” Gays have nothing to fear from God, says Jesus Gay. Gays marry one another, blessed by Jesus Gay, and even tombs are reserved for homosexuals. Jesus Gay is kin to Jesus Christ Super Star, who is a kind of Broadway Joe, who sits atop a huge wooden phallus in center stage. While not as big as Mickey Mouse in Disneyland, he is as homey as Peanuts and as regular as Archie Bunker. You feel you have known the guy all your life. Y’Know? In the Jesus Freak clubhouse the stuffing has been knocked out of reverence. You see groovy Mary Magdalene telling Jesus what is good for him, and the jokes about the Rich Young Ruler and the crack about losing your life to save it, along with the eye-batting music, tells you what religion really is.

There is hardly an end to the Jesuses. There is Jesus Protestant, with all sorts of aberrations, such as Jesus Pentecostal, Jesus Jehovah’s Witnesses, Jesus Mormon, each with its own myth about the real Jesus. There is Jesus Jew, Jesus Muslim, and Jesus Caesar, each with its own slant. Then comes Jesus Goodfellow and Jesus One-of-the-Boys. Even Jesus Jesusite, who give us Jesus night clubs, Jesus love-ins, Jesus kissin’, Jesus rockin’. Give me a J, give me an E! If you are fed up with your elders, tired of shaving and bathing, this is for you. Get to a commune!

The Jesus that never was has long eclipsed the Jesus of yesterday and today, the Jesus of history, the Jesus of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Paul. If there is a Jesus Pentecost and a Jesus Mormon, we must take heed lest we create a Jesus Restoration or a Jesus Church of Christ, who can only take their places in that ignoble assembly of the Jesus that never was. We err as do others if we see Jesus as the head and founder of what we call The Church of Christ or as the cornerstone of a parochial interpretation of Scripture. If there is a Jesus Gay and a Jesus Black, there might also be Jesus Sectarian, who presides over our petty parties. We can even create a Jesus Doctrine or a Jesus Baptism or a Jesus Church.

If we do not really want him and his Spirt dwelling in us, he will get lost on his own. The real Jesus does not impose himself. We find him only by seeking him. The substitutes, such as the “right church” or some system of doctrine, are always attractive to the one who has not yet resolved to search for him as for a buried treasure.

Jesus Christ is the same, yesterday, today, and, yes, forever! The ball is in our court. -- the Editor