Throwing hand grenades at Jesus

I’ve said before that I’m the most un-Jesus-y Christian I know. I don’t pray to him, he doesn’t make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside, and in my own life, I’ve found his powers of salvation to be less than efficacious. I can neither confirm nor deny the literal truth of the historic creeds, and during the past few years of my spiritual practice, Jesus has been a bit of a side issue for me.

I don’t know if I love Jesus the way that I’m supposed to or at all, but then, if Jesus really is Divine, it seems silly to think that my emotional reaction to Him would matter all that much in the grand scheme of things. I’ve never managed to find myself in the traditional “sinner meets Jesus hallelujah!” narrative, and much as I like the idea of Jesus as a peace and love Jewish Gandhi who would be against the death penalty and for universal health care, he seems a bit more contradictory than that if I stray too far from the Sermon on the Mount. So I find it hard to know what to do with Jesus, despite spending the first 32 years of my life in churches that had very definite ideas on the subject.

I don’t know the original Greek or systematic theology, but given the multitudinous passel of highly credentialed theologians past and present promoting umpty-dozen versions of Jesus with accompanying sacraments and systems, I can’t see why I should believe the Very Reverend Bishop of St. Paul the Very Proper over Brother Billy at the Church of Amen Holy Rollers – or vice versa. Seen from a distance, it looks like a centuries-long campaign for President, except we never get to see the candidate – only his campaign managers. Maybe they’re all right or all wrong or a little bit of both, but from where I’m standing, it looks like our personal preferences, history and socioeconomic location have as much to do with how we see Jesus as anything else.

So I am not entirely convinced that anybody else knows who he was or what he was up to anymore than I do. (You may feel very certain that you have a firm grasp of his agenda, but I reserve the right to disbelieve you.) I don’t read the Bible that often these days, but the other day, I spontaneously decided to open the Gospels. I read a big chunk of scripture, and my gut reaction was, “How in the world did anyone construct a coherent religion based on the words and life of this guy?” One minute he’s healing a blind guy and tweaking the religious establishment by having lunch with a tax collector, who responds by giving half of his possessions to the poor. Jesus says He came to “seek out and save those who are lost. “ Yay for Jesus, champion of the poor and marginalized and the decidedly not respectable, right?

But then in the very next passage, he tells a parable about a rich man giving his slaves some money to manage, the punch line of which is, “I tell you, to all those who have more will be given, but from those who have nothing, even what they have will be taken away. But as for those enemies of mine who did not want me to be king over them – bring them here and slaughter them in my presence.” In church, this is one of those parables where the preacher pulls out a bunch of Greek words to explain why the story really means something very different from what it seems to mean. We all pretend that we buy it because we don’t have the faintest idea what Jesus is talking about and have no alternative explanation, but it really does seem like he’s contradicting the spirit of what he just said. (The exception to this is your hard-core fundy churches, where the preachers like it when Jesus goes all turn or burn on folks.) In addition, in my NRSV version, Jesus uses the term “evildoers” a fair amount, and I find it disconcerting when the Son of God begins to sound like President Bush.

This brings me to the whole talking in parables thing, which he apparently did so people wouldn’t understand him. If the reaction of the disciples is any indication, they didn’t. This seems counter-productive, as I don’t see the point of talking to large groups of people for the sole purpose of confusing them. Maybe it’s a Zen koan thing and we’re supposed to find enlightenment through paradox or maybe Matthew, Mark, Luke and John threw a few curve balls into holy writ for reasons of their own, but in the pages of the Bible, Jesus is a frustrating and elusive sort of guy. Maybe all this theological internecine warfare is Jesus’ own damn fault. Is it the Prodigal Son and the one lost sheep and turn the other cheek or is it turn or burn and evildoers? Make up your mind, buddy.

Some people give up chocolate for Lent. I think I feel like throwing hand grenades at Jesus and then seeing what’s left. Maybe the idea isn’t to make all of it hang together, but to bust it all apart and see what happens with the pieces. Also, my blog has been boring as hell for a while now, and maybe I need to just embrace the fact that - heretic that I am - going toe to toe with the Bible and kicking it in the shins makes me write some of my best stuff. And God knows the world doesn't need another blog post about the Presidential primaries...

Comments

[La La]

Wow. You make my head spin. In a good way, I guess. In my own "Christian" journey, I feel like Jesus is all I have left. Everything else that I thought I knew or believed has gone to hell in a hand basket.

Your comparison of Jesus' words to those of George Bush's sent me reeling a bit. I can't stand stand Bush because I think Bush is one of the evil doers!

Jesus, well, I have tons of questions, too, but talking to Him each day gives me some peace, even when nothing else does.

Love to you. You are brilliant, and I love reading your writing. Not bored here.

[Christy]

Hey La La -

Well, I hope I don't make your head spin in a BAD way. I know a lot of Christians whose faith is very much centered on Jesus, and I think I used to feel bad that I didn't seem to have the same kind of relationship with Jesus that they did. I think I've made my peace with the fact that, for whatever reason, Jesus is not the organizing principle of my faith - which makes it easier for me to throw hand grenades. Maybe when I'm done I'll have a clearer idea of where I stand with Jesus - or where he stands with me. Or maybe not - I'll have to see what happens.

[Sarah Dylan Breuer]

Part of the problem, I think, is that a lot of us have been conditioned to read all of Jesus' parables as allegories in which one character is God or Jesus. You might find this take on the parable helpful.

Why believe one person's take on a passage of scripture rather than another? I'd do that only if one take is well-argued from the text. It's true that we don't know nearly as much about Jesus as we'd like, but I think even the most skeptical historian (if s/he's even remotely responsible to the evidence) would have to admit some things about Jesus -- e.g., that he died on a Roman cross and was said to have gone to his death speaking words of forgiveness rather than retaliating. Christians wouldn't make that stuff up -- if they could have gotten away with it, the temptation they faced would have been to say that their founder was a respectable guy, pillar of the community, who triumphantly led manly men in battle, had a family and raised sons who are also successful and leaders in the community, and lived a long, happy life.

So one test I think we can use to weigh interpretations of what Jesus said and did is whether these interpretations cohere with some things -- the few things, maybe -- that we KNOW. For example, some people interpret biblical passages to say that Jesus really wants to inflict violent payback those who position themselves as his enemies, and that he's coming to do just that soon. But really, how can that be said to cohere at all with what Jesus did among us up to his death, let alone what he's been doing among us since?

In other words, interpreting the bible is hard work. We take these difficult texts and listen to what scholars and non-scholars among us have to say, we look at context (both in terms of the document in which the passage appears and what we know of the social, historical, and cultural circumstances in which the text was produced and transmitted), we make a case, and we see whose case has the most and strongest evidence to support it.

If in that process we find Jesus to be disconcerting, I'd say we're probably on pretty solid ground. If Jesus didn't have anything to say that would challenge society in the unjust ways we've ordered it, the powers of Rome and their collaborators could have just laughed him off rather than crucifying him.

That's my take, anyway. In other words, I think you're right to take Authoritative Pronouncements from Authorities with a sizeable measure of salt, and to be deeply suspicious of any portrait of Jesus that has him say and do nothing objectionable to Nice Respectable Folk (whether of "our sort" -- whatever that sort is -- or "their sort").

Blessings,

Dylan

[dave paisley]

Wow. You totally rock, Christy. Fabulous post.

And let's face it, if God and Jesus can't take it, who can?

[La La]

Thanks, Christy, for you response. You make me THINK. I love that about you, and I'm with Dave on this one,

"And let's face it, if God and Jesus can't take it, who can?"

So, throw away!

[wordworker]

Four notes:
1) Our "enlightened" Western worldview leaves us extremely uncomfortable with mystery, never more so than with the enigma of the person of Jesus, which is consistent with the biblical presentation of God- always shrouded in mystery, inscrutable, known only in hiddenness.
2) Surely, over a span of three years teaching, Jesus said far more than what we have today. The gospel writers give us only sketches of his teachings, edited to serve the perceived needs of the specific gathered community for which they wrote. Not knowing all those circumstances, we are rightly often confused.
3) Parables are a clever method of teaching meant not to offer a solution or answer, but rather to ensnare the hearer/reader and envelope her/him in a conundrum that sticks in the mind to be turned again and again until a truth emerges- much like a koan.
4) Mark's gospel offers a snapshot of Jesus' disciples- an unruly, dense, quarrelsome, frightened, and ultimately disloyal lot they were. Come to think of it, I could fit right in a church like that!