The Jesus We’ve Never Known (I) from the Gospel We’ve Never Heard (II) Out of the Bible We’ve Never Read (III) in the Church We’ve Never Experienced (IV)

 

I

The Jesus We’ve Never Known 

(with apologies to Philip Yancey) 

Reading fiction requires what literary scholars call a “willing suspension of disbelief.” We must enter the world and characters the author has crafted “as if” it is the world we inhabit. Only then can we feel the impact of the story that unfolds and have our imaginations stirred by what we read. I need to ask you to hear my presentation with that same attitude. What I say is not fiction, to be sure. But it will seem like it to you, at least at first glance. Indeed, my lengthy title claims that those of us in North America have not really known Jesus, heard the gospel, read the Bible or experienced the church! If this seems to you as untrue or far-fetched I beg you to exercise “willing suspension of disbelief” and entertain the possibility that it may just be true and there just may be something you might want or need to see.

My theology is orthodox. I believe in the reliability and unique authority of Holy Scripture, confess the faith of the Apostles’ and Nicene Creeds, and trust Jesus Christ with my life. That’s the framework from which I speak. And I maintain, in ways I’m not going to enumerate here, the biblical and orthodox faith of the church, it’s confession of Jesus as Lord, and the practice of church have been profoundly skewed such that Jesus, the gospel, scripture, and the church have too often morphed into ugly parodies of themselves.

What if all this, or even a substantial part of it, is true? We all know something’s wrong in and with the church in our country, don’t we? This is my attempt to say what ails the American church and why it ails it.

Jesus

We have to start with Jesus, of course. He’s the center and meaning of all things Christian. To be wrong here is to be wrong everywhere. And, boy, have we gotten him wrong! It’s the difference between this man   

  and this man

And, of course, the difference is that the second figure is a projection of what an average Jewish male in Palestine in the time of Jesus probably looked like. The former is a typical western portrayal of Jesus as a white western male. We have no trouble identifying him as Jesus (the halo and robes help, of course). But none of us, I wager, would identify the second figure as Jesus. And that’s because we have never fully reckoned with the fact that Jesus is a Jew!

Jesus the Jew

Jesus was a Jew. He lived and died as a Jew. He was raised and ascended to heaven as a Jew. As a Jew he sits at God’s right hand now make intercession for us. And as a Jew he will return and reign over the new heaven and new earth forever.

Jesus the Jew said “Salvation is from the Jews” (Jn.4:22). And every time we forget that, the Jews suffer. The church’s horrible treatment of the Jews through the centuries is sadly abundant testimony to that. The Holocaust perpetrated by one of the great “Christian” countries of Europe was but the culmination of deliberate and studied efforts to cut the Christian faith free of it Jewish roots. And even today, right here, in fact, it is statistically certain that some here indulge anti-Jewish prejudice and have perhaps even acted in prejudicial ways toward Jews.

But our Savior was a Jew. He learned his faith from the pages of the Hebrew Bible (our Old Testament). Jesus drew his identity and sense of place in the world from these sacred texts. He

 

communed with his Father through them. It was this story that framed Jesus’ vision and gave him the direction and images by which he fashioned his unique sense of vocation and Messiahship.

God’s Dream: Creation

What did he hear as he read this story? He heard God’s creation dream first. Wooed by the beauty and breadth of God’s dream to have a world in which God would live with his creatures in peace, it took his breath away. With human beings, male and female together, serving as royal priests in this creation, which is to be God’s temple, and extending its boundaries to the ends of the earth, Jesus is thrilled. This is his vocation too, this dream of God.

God’s Dream Dashed

But then the story takes a nightmarish turn. Entranced by this divine dream, Jesus is crushed when God’s dream is dashed by human sin. Horror-stricken, Jesus listens to the story recount the first couple and their offspring’s trashing of the Creator’s vision. Now instead of humanity living in full dependence on God and in harmony and interdependence with themselves, each other, and the creation itself, God’s shalom is shredded and this fourfold harmony devolves into a foul cacophony, mocking the Creator. This “damned” litany lurches from fratricide to flood to dispersal to Babel. Throughout it all, however, runs a counter-measure, a note that alone offers hope for the creation. In these stories God responds

 

to humanity’s sin by mitigating the judgment he himself pronounces against them. This prefigures the Apostle Paul’s great claim in Romans 5:20: “where sin increased, grace abounded all the more.” This “grace abounding” emerges here as a central motif running through all of scripture!

Covenant with Abraham

Next God Calls a New Adam and Eve to reclaim and restore his broken: Abraham and Sarah.

 

The problem bequeathed to the human race by Adam and Eve’s defection from God becomes “focused” now, as it were, on this one family and the people to come from them. God’s resolution to the problem of sin and the fulfillment of his eternal purpose will be mediated to the rest of humanity by this family. This is one reason why Israel is so important and the Old Testament so vital to Christian faith!

As Jesus’ hears this promise to Abram and Sarai (later renamed Abraham and Sarah) he realizes he is hearing the very heart beat of God. Here is his Father’s agenda clearly laid out. God intends not simply to set right what has gone wrong but to restore and bring to glorious fulfilment his original dream as well. More than “merely” dealing with sin, God is still intent on realizing his dream of having a creation full of people who live under his gracious rule and embody his Shalom throughout the ages. And God will do that through Abraham and his people as they live and serve him in the promised land as a prototype of what all creation and every creature is designed for and bring God’s blessing to the whole world! This is what being “Israel,” God’s people is all about – a means for dealing with the problem of sin and a model for what God’s creation should look like! 

God’s three-fold promise to Abraham and Sarah to get a people, bless that people, and use that people to bless everyone else -encompasses and gives meaning to the ongoing life of Abraham’s people. As one of Abraham’s people, Jesus accepts this mission and mandate as his own.

God’s confirms his gracious choice of this family and people as his chosen people by making a covenant with Abraham. This covenant is subsequently reaffirmed to Isaac and Jacob.

God’s Deliverance: Moses

Freedom for God is the next act in the drama.  Through the vicissitudes of history and under the providence of God, Abraham’s family ends up in Egypt under the sponsorship of Joseph (Jacob’s exiled son turned chief administrator of Pharaoh’s kingdom). They weather a seven-year famine there. After Joseph’s death, however, a new Pharaoh grew anxious at the Israelites’ increasing numbers and began oppressing them with harsh labor. The people cry out to God and God gives them Moses.

Moses emerges as the Israelites’ leader and challenges Pharaoh to let his people go in the name of YHWH (the personal, covenant name of Israel’s God). After failed negotiations, a series of divine plagues do the trick and the people leave Egypt. Pharaoh changes his mind, however, chases them down, and soon the people are trapped – the sea behind them, Pharaoh’s troops in front of them. YHWH, however, delivers his people with a mighty act, opening the sea for his people to cross and then closing it back again on their Egyptian pursuers.

After journeying for some time in the desert, Moses and the people arrive at Mt. Sinai. There God formally ratifies his relationship with them, establishing a covenant through Moses at the heart of which lie the Ten Words (aka as “Commandments”).

The Ten Words

The Ten Words form the distinctive life of the people around worship (the words or commandments prohibiting idolatry (basic issue), graven images (sin of and against the eyes), false language toward God (sin of and against the tongue), and Sabbath (sin of and against the body). And from this worship of God flows the community life that pleases YHWH and reflects his character abroad (the remaining six Words). These Ten Words (and all the other laws given to Israel) are not requirements to merit salvation or gain entry into God’s people. God has already seen to that by calling Israel and redeeming the people from Egypt. Redemption has been accomplished; the relationship between YHWH and the people secured by his gracious love and mercy (formalized in the Abrahamic Covenant). The Ten Words guide the people in living out the proper response to such great salvation. As is sometimes said today, these commandments are not given for Israel to keep to “get in” to covenant with God, rather they are given to help them “stay in,” that is, function effectively and faithfully as God’s covenant people.

 

In Leviticus Jesus hears tell of an astonishing aspect of the life of God’s people. This is the “Jubilee” in Leviticus 25. The core of these laws requires three fundamental reorientations for Israel once every generation. Every fiftieth year (the year after the seventh sabbatical year, which itself happened every seven years) all debts were to be cancelled. There was not to be a permanent debtor class, or cyclical poverty, among God’s people. Every family received a fresh start each generation. Second, slaves were to be freed. All were to have the chance to produce and contribute as they were gifted and able to the common future of Israel as God’s people. And third, all land was to be returned to the family to which it had been given by God when Joshua and his generation first settled the land. As the basic form of capital in an agrarian economy, land was fundamental to any hope of long term economic viability.

Thus, every fiftieth year, Israel was to assure that each family had personal and financial liberty and economic capital enough to be productive members of the community. All this is, of course, rooted in the proper worship of YHWH.

Even though Israel never managed to practice this Jubilee (and we have only to look in our own hearts to know why) it remains “on the books” as God’s as yet unfulfilled dream for his people. And Jesus, once captivated by this monumental vision, could not help but cast his own vision as a reinterpretation of its imagery and substance for his Kingdom of God as a “Jubilee” movement.

Covenant with David

The next act takes us to human kingship. The people grow restive with the invisible kingship of YHWH over them and want a human king like all the other nations. YHWH relents and gives them one but takes all the fun out of being king (as it were). By that I mean that YHWH so defines what kingship in Israel should be that the king would effectively be merely “a brother among brothers,” do justice, especially for the poor and needy, and eschew the usual accoutrements and perks that accompany kingship (Dt.17:14ff).

The first king, Saul, proves a failure. His successor, David, however, succeeds despite significant failures and character flaws. He is the “man after (God’s) own heart” and becomes the icon of Israel’s ideal king. It is with David that YHWH concludes a covenant promising him a never-ending line of descendants on Israel’s throne.

This Davidic Covenant is essentially a reaffirmation or updating of the Abrahamic Covenant. It is the third of the four great covenants God makes with the children of Abraham (with Abraham, with Moses and the people at Mt. Sinai, with David, and the promise of the New Covenant in Jeremiah 31). Like the first of these covenants this one is also unilateral. Together they express God’s determination to have, keep, and use Abraham’s people as the vehicle for his blessing the rest of the world. The second, the Mosaic Covenant, assumes this divine determination and gifts the people with YHWH’s charter of freedom, the Ten Words.

The king as representative of the people is to be the chief exemplar in his royal role of the life God expects of the people as a whole. Even though human kingship had not been God’s design for Israel, God nonetheless reshapes their sinful insistence for a human monarch in the direction of his original intent. Of course, none of the human kings in either the United Monarchy of divided Kingdoms lived up to the royal profile we find in Psalm 72. This highlights in a poignant way Israel’s ultimate failure to be part of God’s solution to the problem of human sin. Rather, in failing their mandate to be the people through whom God blesses the world, they only compounded the problem. These persistent royal failures finally led to the idea that this “Psalm 72” king must be a future figure specially sent from God bearing unique gifts and blessings to set Israel and, indeed, the whole world right again. This is the figure of the “Messiah” (literally, “anointed one”; “Christ” in Greek). The coming of the Messiah would be an “eschatological” event. That is, it would be part of the “end times,” the decisive intervention of God to finally and fully set all things right. Neither the Messiah nor this divine intervention (often called “the Day of the Lord” in the Old Testament) were of human origin. They were God’s doing. Messianic hope was alive and restlessly vibrant during Jesus’ lifetime.

Messiah/Jesus

These hopes, though varied, generally held that the Messiah would lead a great and successful revolt against Israel’s oppressors (Rome in Jesus’ time), exercising God’s judgment on them. The Messiah would then assume leadership in Israel, reform it, and reestablish it as chief among nations. He would oversee the rebuilding of the temple so that God might return to his purified people and reside once more there, directing and guiding them into the new age of fulfillment and glory.

But what kind of Messiah? Jesus came to understand that the then current models of Messiahship in Israel were inadequate. Popular, though inadequate. That the devil tempts Jesus (Matthew 4:1-13) with three of these ways to be Messiah in his effort to derail him attests to both their inadequacy (since the devil favors them) as well as their popularity (they must have been well-known enough and plausible enough to have appealed to Jesus to some degree).

What were these three models of Messiahship Jesus judged inadequate?

-socio-economic provision (Bread)

-religious sensationalism (Temple)

-political dominance (Mountain)

Why did Jesus reject these models? I think we get our answer later in the gospel when James and John come to Jesus requesting the seats of honor and power on either side of him when his work is successfully concluded (Mark 10:35-45). That leads Jesus to the following critique: “‘You know that among the Gentiles those whom they recognize as their rulers lord it over them, and their great ones are tyrants over them.

“But it is not so among you; but whoever wishes to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wishes to be first among you must be slave of all. For the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and give his life a ransom for many.’”

 

Jesus’ disciples “know” how the power game is played in the world. They are aware that it entails a “lording it over” one’s underlings, “tyrannizing” them, one-upping others, and scrambling for a better position higher up on the ladder of success. Jesus, however, will have none of that. Instead he leaves them with their jaws lying on the ground when he enjoins on them an unthinkably new and seemingly impossible burden – equating greatness with servanthood, with slavery, even with giving up one’s life for others. And more than that, Jesus assumes this will have some kind of “redemptive” effect! Now we can see, I think, what Jesus found objectionable in the devil’s messianic offers. Each of them is built on the scaffolding of the world’s way of leadership and achievement. Each of them is ultimately based on the serpent’s inciting Adam and Eve to grab at his offer to be like God.

Jesus lives out the true meaning of this Jewish story by most often calling himself “Son of Man.” This comes from Dan.7 and there refers to a vindicated and victorious figure (a fluid symbol capable of signifying both an individual and the people of God together) receiving “glory and kingship” from the “Ancient of Days.” It carries less baggage than other more widely-used titles (like “Messiah”) and a certain ambiguity that leaves Jesus free to fill it with his own content and associations. The core of Jesus’ fresh and unexpected view of Messiah comes from the Servant Songs in Isaiah 40-55, particularly the final song in Isaiah 52:13-53:12. There we find the enigmatic figure of the “Suffering Servant” who dies at God’s hand bearing the sins of his people. His death brings healing and salvation to the people and YHWH raises the Servant up in vindication and glory. Jesus doubtless meditated and prayed at length over this image, drawing from it a way of explaining his peculiar and unprecedented sense of vocation – to bear suffering and dying as Messiah in order to save his people.

No one in Israel had or would contemplate such a figure. Suffering, death, and Messiah just simply did not go together. That was mixing apples and brussels sprouts, so to speak. Yet Jesus had come to accept just this kind of Messiahship as his calling from God. So he embraced this image of the Suffering Servant and used it along with “Son of Man” frequently to explain key aspects of who he was and what

 

he was doing to his listeners. Its unfamiliarity and unexpectedness gave Jesus ways to talk about the character of his Kingdom of God movement that maintained its public and political focus on the community but avoided the nationalistic and militaristic associations of the other messianic models. This is the read of his heritage and holy book that fueled Jesus’ imagination and steeled his courage for the vocation to which his Father had called him. As we read his story in the four gospels, each writer tells it in such a way that it answers the three questions arising from the great promise of Genesis 12:1-3. How does Jesus go about getting a great people for God? How does he bless that people? And how does he use and promise to use them to bless the world? Their answers give us the core content of the “gospel” which we are to proclaim to the world!

And it’s thoroughly Jewish, just as the Savior is thoroughly Jewish. And the Christian faith is the ultimate fulfilment of the Jewish faith Jesus grew up in. We can understand neither him nor his mission or message without the Jewish roots of it all.

Black Jesus

"But whether whites want to hear it or not, “Christ is black, baby, with all of the features which are so detestable to white society." James Cone, Black Theology and Black Power (1969), 68.

I would never presume to speak for black people about what Jesus might mean for them. But a fine black Christian Ethics professor at McCormick Theological Seminary, Reggie Williams has done so by exploring the concept of “blackness” and “whiteness” in relation to this Jewish Jesus in his book Bonhoeffer’s Black Jesus: Harlem Renaissance Theology and an Ethic of Resistance. This intriguing and persuasive study focuses on the figure of the esteemed German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the impact his exposure to what he called “the American racial problem” had on him in the time he spent in New York in 1930-31. Williams has further published a series of facebook posts focusing on diagnosing the presence of white Jesus in light of present struggles with a resurgent white supremacy and white nationalism.

Dr. J. Alfred Smith, senior pastor of Allen Temple Baptist Church in Oakland, CA has said, “African-American spirituality is a spirituality that was born and shaped in the heat of oppression and suffering. Blackness is a metaphor for suffering. To know blackness is to be connected to the suffering, hope and purpose of black people.”

Bonhoeffer’s exposure to that suffering of black people in Harlem came largely through his participation in the Abyssinian Baptist Church led by Adam Clayton Powell, Sr. His time in New York sensitized him to such suffering in the black community and to acute sensitivity to similar racism toward Jews in his homeland. In particular, his experiences disabused him of the White Christ of the reigning European worldview and churches in his time. “Bonhoeffer’s encounter with the black Jesus in Harlem allowed him to empathize with the suffering of marginalized people so deeply that, on his return to Germany, the devilish spirit of Hitler’s National Socialism was readily apparent.”

“The practice of joining in with African Americans in Harlem gave Bonhoeffer the ability to see more clearly the distinction between a damaging theology of glory, represented by a white Christ who refuses incarnation and empathy, and the healthier theology of the cross that reveals the presence of God hidden in suffering.”

This white Christ proved unable to diagnose the danger of Hitler. Indeed, German churches attached their star to the Nazi Reich and became complicit in its atrocities. Years later Bonhoeffer would write: “It remains an experience of incomparable value that we have for once learned to see the great events of world history from below, from the perspective of the outcasts, the suspects, the maltreated, the powerless, the oppressed and reviled, in short from the perspective of the suffering.” (Letters and Papers from Prison, Kindle Location 1639)

Bonhoeffer identifies the “gospel” of the White Christ and its churches in this reflection also from his time in New York:

“In New York, they preach about virtually everything; only one thing is not addressed, or is addressed so rarely that I have as yet been unable to hear it, namely, the gospel of Jesus Christ . . . So what stands in place of the Christian message? An ethical and social idealism borne by a faith in progress that — who knows how? — claims the right to call itself ‘Christian.’”

It was in the church in Harlem and the fellowship of its people Bonhoeffer heard and felt the gospel, the true gospel of black Jesus. And in the negro spirituals he heard the voice of God reaching out from the events of scripture through the black experience of oppression to embrace human beings today. Bonhoeffer writes,

“The most influential contribution made by the Negro to American Christianity lies in the ‘Negro Spirituals,’ in which the distress and delivery of the people of Israel (‘Go down, Moses . . .’), the misery and consolation of the human heart (‘Nobody knows the trouble I've seen’), and the love of the Redeemer and longing for the kingdom of heaven (‘Swing low, sweet chariot . . .’) find moving expression. Every white American knows, sings and loves these songs. It is barely understandable that great Negro singers can sing these songs before packed concert audiences of whites, to tumultuous applause, while at the same time these same men and women are still denied access to the white community through social discrimination.”

How indeed!

May it please God that Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s experience of black Jesus may somehow become ours as well!

White Jesus in America Today

Dr. Williams, as I said, has recently posted a series of reflections extending his insights from Bonhoeffer’s life to the hold white Jesus still has in many churches and parts of America (fb 8.14.17).

What does whiteness mean?

“It may be safe to say that the predominant expression of Christianity within the United States is devoted to a white Jesus. One does not need to be white to be a devotee. Whiteness is about more than skin color, it is . . . historically arranging human beings according to a hierarchy of human difference (worth) with men defined as white on the top (in many black churches, masculinity alone will count as prerequisite for placement on the top spot). White Jesus is the ideological/theological justification of that ideology, representing the top of the hierarchy, the perfect human--white, masculine, sovereign, risen with all power--and the Christianity he represents is ideological support for that biopolitical arrangement. He represents the values and ideals of white, Western civilization, and his divinity is the justification for its righteousness, the righteousness of white Western civilization, even the U.S. Constitution. He has so embedded within whiteness that to trouble it is necessarily to engage whiteness, and vice versa. Indeed, he is theological mobilization of whiteness/white supremacy. This brand of Christianity will talk about racial reconciliation and justice, using the tools of whiteness and white supremacy, with the effect of securing the work of racism, making peace with the hierarchy. They simply make nice with white supremacy. It's language of "diversity" and "multiculturalism" doesn't finally address the way it's very Christianity is shaped to identify white masculinity with divinity, in the worship of White Jesus.”                          

Again,

“White Jesus was born in Europe, not Bethlehem. There were slave boats named after him, he had chapels on top of slave dungeons where people worshipped him, and raped kidnapped, terrified African women. In the U.S. slave owners delivered sermons about him, demanding obedience to him from their slaves. He was their justification for kidnapping, genocide, slavery, rape, and a host of historical brutalities. White Jesus is the Jesus born out of white sovereign European imperial lust for blood and soil, and anywhere colonialism has lingered or left its mark, Christians still love him.”

Yet again,

“White Jesus emphasizes orthodoxy, omitting orthopraxis, and orthopathos (the condition of one's heart towards others, i.e. compassion). For him, Christian discipleship is bound up in pedagogy and right belief, with little or nothing to do with concrete social engagement with real human life.”

How can we tell if White Jesus is our Jesus?

“If the Christianity embraced at your church sees the goal of the gospel as saving souls from a fiery hell, and matters like social justice, anti-racism, etc... are distractions, your Jesus is white.”

“If the Christianity embraced at your church makes personal/individual sin the focus of Jesus' work and the goal of discipleship, and never talks about social and systemic evil, your Jesus is white.”

“If the Christianity embraced at your church makes a priority of "personal relationship with Jesus," and talks about racism as a problem for individuals, to be addressed within their hearts, your Jesus is white.”

 “If the historical oppression of minoritized people is "also sin," but not a primary focus of the mission of the church, your Jesus is white.”

“If as a Christian, you are able to see "beyond some of the flaws" of this current administration (Trump), your Jesus is white.”

Is white Jesus your Jesus?

Cross-eyed Jesus

 

Jews chafed under the heel of their Roman oppressors in the 1^st century a.d. Most of them despised the pagans ruling in the Holy land where God alone should be king. There were four main options for dealing with the Romans and preparing for God to return and liberate his people and take up his rightful rule. Each option had its own ideas about how Israel should go about being the family of Abraham through whom God had promised the bless the rest of the world. And as I describe them we need to remember that there was no separation between religion and politics for them like there is for us. The political was religious and vice versa. Here they are:

-Sadducees:  upper-crust, wealthy class who collaborated with or at least accommodated themselves to Roman rule and prospered from it. They did not want a revolution or any disturbances that might upset the nice little apple cart they had set up for themselves. 

-Pharisees: pious, sincere leaders who believed that a community tethered to obedience to God’s law was the best preparation for the Day of the Lord. Some were politically active but most eschewed politics and focused on the purity and holiness of the people living amid the pagan Romans. 

-Essenes: these folks believed the temple, its priests, and rituals and practices were thoroughly corrupt. They left the city and set up an alternative community in the desert dedicated to asceticism, voluntary poverty, and daily ritual washings awaiting God’s return to liberate and purify the nation. 

-Zealots: those whose “zeal” for God and God’s cause made them unable to abide the presence of the pagans in the land. They engaged in a guerilla campaign of violence to rid the land of them.

When Jesus embarked on his ministry in the late 20’s a.d. he was competing with these groups for the hearts and minds of the Jewish people. His “Kingdom of God” movement was also both political and religious at the same time. Revolt against Rome was coming. It was almost inevitable. Jesus was offering a new and different way to be Abraham’s kind of Israel and also survive the coming cataclysm when faced with the overwhelming power of the Romans.

Jesus intends to build God’s kingdom movement by rebuilding Israel as Abraham’s people. That’s the call he issues in the gospels. That’s who he was sent to reach. “Go nowhere among the Gentiles, and enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel.  As you go, proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near’” (Mt.10:5-7), he tells his disciples. It’s only at the end of Matthew, after his regathered as many Jews as will follow him, after his death and resurrection, that he tells them to go to “all nations” (28:19).

Get the pattern? Think Gen.12:1-3: God gets a people through Abraham and Sarah, blesses them, and uses them to bless all other peoples. Same here, and in their own different ways, all four gospels. It’s especially clear in Luke. He writes a whole gospel of how Jesus regathers Israel (part 1 of the Gen.12 promise), blesses it by dying and rising for it (part 2), and then a whole second book, Acts, to chronicle the blessing of the world by Jesus’ people (part 3 of the Gen.12 promise). See it?

That’s the context we have to read Jesus’ teaching and instruction in. He’s recruiting Jews to reconstitute the true Abrahamic people God intends to use to bless the world. He never intended to do it all himself. Don’t get me wrong! He did the part that only he could do – dying and being raised for forgiveness and new life. And thank God for that! But that was never the real or only goal of God in sending him to us. As we have seen, God’s plan is to have a world, an earth, of humans with whom he can dwell in peace. Our rebellion complicated Jesus’ work. Sin had to be dealt with. God had to reclaim us from the hell we rushed headlong into. But he did that to restore us to the identity and vocation he created us for so we might play our proper roles in his work to achieve his ultimate purpose. And for his people, the children of Abraham through faith (Gal.3:6ff.), that role is declare and to demonstrate the design God intends for human life to world. In other words, acting as the royal priests we were to be and extending the boundaries of God’s creational temple everywhere we go.

That design for life, as Jesus lived and taught it, is centered on the cross. In fact, Jesus is so cross-eyed he can’t see anything any other way. And he calls us to follow him and see and respond to our world in the same cross-eyed way.

What does being cross-eyed like Jesus mean? He’s told us, you know. But we can’t quite bring ourselves to take him seriously. We want to. Really, we do. But seeing and living cross-eyed like Jesus throws everything else out of focus. I mean, the way we usually see and respond to things in our life.

Matthew gathered Jesus’ teaching about life in God’s kingdom in chs.5-7 of his gospel. We know it as the Sermon on the Mount (SoM). And our inability to really wrap our minds and hearts abound the centerpiece of Jesus’ teaching is made clear in the various approaches people have taken to understand it. These approaches show how hard is has been to take on Jesus’ cross-eyed vision and practice of life and fit into non-cross-eyed ways of thinking and living.

Remember Jesus’ temptations we talked about earlier? Bread, Temple, and Mountain? That’s the way we think as determined to live our lives by ourselves, for ourselves, and by through our own wisdom and power. Provide for ourselves, be our own deity, and make our way through whatever power we possess. That’s what we do, isn’t it? That’s how we’re taught to live.

By prefacing the SoM with the story of Jesus’ temptations Matthew creates a point-counter-point relation between the two. Jesus’ SoM answers and critiques our usual way of life. And if we try to grasp the SoM within the categories of the temptation’s framework (Bread, Temple, Mountain) we can see why it won’t work. And that’s what I think many interpreters of the Sermon wittingly or unwittingly try and do.

Most assume that whatever the SoM is, it is not intended as a practical guide for living here and now. Whether they see it as meant for the thousand-year reign of Christ at the end, for the interim period between Jesus’ resurrection and his expected return by the end of that generation, or an “impossible ideal” we can never reach and it makes us turn to grace, or as ethical precepts the individual is to try and practice, precious few take it at face value. In fact, Jewish scholar Pinchas Lapide summarizes the situation well: “In fact, the history of the impact of the Sermon on the Mount can largely be described in terms of an attempt to domesticate everything in it that is shocking, demanding, and uncompromising, and render it harmless.” (cited in Scot McKnight, Sermon on the Mount (The Story of God Bible Commentary), Kindle Edition:200-202).

I am going to take Jesus at face value here and assume he means this teaching as the way of life people who follow his kingdom movement are to live. Let’s notice first, the SoM’s overall structure.

The Beatitudes (5:3-12): Kingdom Passions

Salt and Light (5:13-20): Kingdom Priorities

Antitheses, etc. (5:21-7:6): Kingdom Practices

Conclusion (7:7-28)

Our following Jesus is a three-strand cord of passions, priorities, and practices. What drives and moves us to action (passions), our deepest convictions about what makes for meaning in life (priorities), and our deeds (practices). When these strands work in harmony and reinforce each other our lives have coherence and integrity. When, however, as if too often the case, these three are conflicted, working at cross purposes with each other, we find ourselves crying out with Paul in Rom.7:15-19:

“I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. Now if I do what I do not want, I agree that the law is good. But in fact it is no longer I that do it, but sin that dwells within me. For I know that nothing good dwells within me, that is, in my flesh. I can will what is right, but I cannot do it. For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I do.”

Beatitudes (5:3-12)

Jesus works to pull all three aspects of our lives into a working harmony in his Sermon. The Beatitudes address our passions – what moves and jump starts us in Jesus’ direction. Here Jesus describes people have already begun a Kingdom journey and are being made into those God needs for his subversive counter-revolutionary movement. These characteristics are not “entrance requirements” into the Kingdom but rather blessing of the life of the age to come God bestows on his people in the present.

Karl Barth wonderfully paraphrases “blessed” as “You Lucky Bums.” And they are so because they are already participating in the work God is doing to reclaim and restore his creation. Doesn’t sound too “Lucky” to you, this spiritual poverty? Or the mourning, meekness, obsession with justice, mercifulness, single-mindedness, peacemaking, and (worst of all!) persecution? Well, they don’t to most readers today either.

But Jesus is all about what drives and motivates his followers here. Their passions. Those already participating in the Kingdom of God have it, experience it as a present reality (5:3,11). And as they struggle along in faithfulness to Jesus they are assured that what they presently experience will be fulfilled in the End. Fredrick Buechner gives an illuminating explanation:

“IF WE DIDN’T ALREADY KNOW but were asked to guess the kind of people Jesus would pick out for special commendation, we might be tempted to guess one sort or another of spiritual hero—men and women of impeccable credentials morally, spiritually, humanly, and every which way. If so, we would be wrong. Maybe those aren’t the ones he picked out because he felt they didn’t need the shot in the arm his commendation would give them. Maybe they’re not the ones he picked out because he didn’t happen to know any. Be that as it may, it’s worth noting the ones he did pick out.
Not the spiritual giants, but the “poor in spirit;” as he called them, the ones who, spiritually speaking, have absolutely nothing to give and absolutely everything to receive, like the Prodigal telling his father “I am not worthy to be called thy son,” only to discover for the first time all he had in having a father.
Not the champions of faith who can rejoice even in the midst of suffering, but the ones who mourn over their own suffering because they know that for the most part they’ve brought it down on themselves, and over the suffering of others because that’s just the way it makes them feel to be in the same room with them.
Not the strong ones, but the meek ones in the sense of the gentle ones, that is, the ones not like Caspar Milquetoast but like Charlie Chaplin, the little tramp who lets the world walk over him and yet, dapper and undaunted to the end, somehow makes the world more human in the process.
Not the ones who are righteous, but the ones who hope they will be someday and in the meantime are well aware that the distance they still have to go is even greater than the distance they’ve already come.
Not the winners of great victories over evil in the world, but the ones who, seeing it also in themselves every time they comb their hair in front of the bathroom mirror, are merciful when they find it in others and maybe that way win the greater victory.
Not the totally pure, but the “pure in heart;” to use Jesus’ phrase, the ones who may be as shopworn and clay-footed as the next one, but have somehow kept some inner freshness and innocence intact.
Not the ones who have necessarily found peace in its fullness, but the ones who, just for that reason, try to bring it about wherever and however they can-peace with their neighbors and God, peace with themselves.
Jesus saved for last the ones who side with heaven even when any fool can see it’s the losing side and all you get for your pains is pain. Looking into the faces of his listeners, he speaks to them directly for the first time. “Blessed are you;” he says.
You can see them looking back at him. They’re not what you’d call a high-class crowd-peasants and fisherfolk for the most part, on the shabby side, not all that bright. It doesn’t look as if there’s a hero among them. They have their jaws set. Their brows are furrowed with concentration.                                                                                                  They are blessed when they are worked over and cursed out on his account he tells them. It is not his hard times to come but theirs he is concerned with, speaking out of his own meekness and mercy, the purity of his own heart.”

(http://praxiscommunities.org/archives/the-image-and-the-word-bible-study-the-beatitudes)

Such are the passions that drive us to act for Jesus’ sake. They make a cross-eyed Jesus follower.

Salt and Light (5:13-16)

Priorities are a big part of identity for all of us. On one episode of the show “Midnight Caller” in the 90’s the lead character was a radio talk show host who spent the last evening of a convict’s life with him in prison before he was put death. All appeals and last gasp lawyering failed. The radio host is palpably distressed, sweating profusely, as midnight drew near. The convict, however, remained remarkably even-keeled. As he was escorted from the cell to the death chamber, the radio host blurted out, “How can you do this? How can you walk so calmly to your death.” Turning, the convict said, “You gotta know who are, Jack. You gotta know who you are.” So also, Christians must know who they are to hew faithfully to their course.

Jesus uses two images here, salt and light, to hammer home identity to his hearers. The first image, salt, is usually interpreted according to its well-known preservative qualities as a sign that Jesus’ followers are to be a preservative presence in the world.  And that may well be right. But I’m intrigued by three Old Testament references to a “covenant of salt” or “salt of the covenant” with reference to Israel (2 Chron.13:5; Num.18:19; Lev.2:13). God has placed Israel in the world as his covenant people, the bearer of his presence and the hope of the world. I admit I’m partial to this explanation in light of the stress on identity.

Light is a common image for Israel, particularly in Isaiah (Isa.2:2–5; 42:6; 49:6). God gives them as a light to the world to bring salvation and justice across the globe.

Salt is given to be salty; light is given to shine. Jesus here sets the priority of his people in clear and unmistakable terms.

And in doing this his people will fulfill the law by practicing a righteousness greater than that of the scribes and Pharisees (5:17-20). Cross-eyed living, Jesus would call it.

Antitheses, etc. (5:21-7:6)

This section of the SoM is made up of fourteen triads. Glenn Stassen has detailed this and helped us see this teaching as practical, pastoral counsel (see his Living the Sermon on the Mount). A main obstacle to seeing the Sermon as practical direction is reading each item as having two-parts rather than three parts. Take anger (5:21-26). Usually we read the traditional saying (v.21) and Jesus’ rejoinder (vv.22-26). Thus, we believe we must to refrain from anger, insults, and reconcile with those with whom we are at odds. Stassen points out though that the command (imperative), Jesus’ direction, begins only with v.24: “leave,” “go,” “be reconciled,” “offer,” “come to terms.” That means we have three parts to the saying, not two. What role does the second, middle part, play (5:22-23)?

Stassen describes it as a “vicious cycle,” ways of trying to keep the commandments that enmesh one even further in dysfunctional and destructive dynamics that move one even further away from keeping God’s intent for us. Jesus’ point, then, is NOT trying to avoid anger (who can do that?) and consequent forms of disrespect and dehumanization, but rather to reconcile, quickly, with your adversary.

As a short cut, for our purposes, we can follow Stassen’s analysis and “cut out the middleperson” (so to speak), those “vicious cycles” Stassen identifies, to see what Jesus asks of us. We’ll eliminate the middle descriptive section and go from Jesus’ citing the traditional view and what he commands us to do in response.

Traditional Rule	Jesus’ Prescription
1. No Murder	Be reconciled
2.No Adultery	Remove cause of temptation
3.Get Certificate of Divorce	Be reconciled (1 Cor.7:11)[1]
4.No False Swearing	Let your yes be yes, no be no
5.Eye for Eye	Turn other cheek, go second mile, give to beggar
6.Love Neighbor, Hate Enemy	Love enemies, pray for persecutors, love as God does
7. When You Give Alms	Give in secret
8. When You Pray	Pray in secret
9. When You Pray	Lord’s Prayer
10. When You Fast	Dress joyously
11. No Treasures on Earth	Treasures in Heaven
12. No Serving Two Masters	Seek first God’s Kingdom
13. Judge Not	Take log out own eye
14. Don’t give holy things to pigs	Give trust and prayer to God in Heaven

 

As inadequate as this survey of Stassen’s work is, a couple of comments on it will have to suffice. First, notice these are all actions, practical steps, Jesus commands. Nothing about feelings, intentions, attitudes, etc. Just things to do. These actions are the profile of the subversive counter-revolutionaries (see presentation IV on the church) Jesus seeks. And, remembering the Beatitudes, it is by grace that we perform them. And that means Jesus is not calling us to do something we cannot do. Ever divine command is a promise of fulfillment turned inside-out.

Second, Jesus addresses our passions, priorities, and practices with his counsel. Passions (6-10), Priorities (9,11,12,14), and Practices (1-5, 13). Thus, he is inviting us to wholeness as well as holiness.

And that, friends, is cross-eyed Jesus at his very best (or worst, depending on how you look at it). And there is no other.

HE’S THE JESUS WE’VE NEVER KNOWN!

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