"DID JESUS REALLY LIVE?"

“DID JESUS REALLY LIVE?”

            For centuries, scholars have debated whether Jesus of Nazareth really lived.  There are very few sources outside the Biblical and extra-Biblical books that even name Jesus.  Some claim that the followers who lifted up his life and name actually made him up.  We can imagine that process happening in the internet world, but it seems highly unlikely in the pre-literate world.  Also, it seems unlikely that those who gave their lives for his name would have done so for a human creation.  So, it seems clear that Jesus of Nazareth lived and fired and inspired people with a vision of what it means to live in the vision of the Beloved Community of God.   There is much debate over the historical nature of his life and the “historical” truth of the Gospel accounts of his life and ministry.   Yet, the power of his life and ministry seem evident.

            The bigger threat to the meaning of the life and ministry of Jesus has not been the secular scholars but rather the theological tradition of the church, which has largely denied the meaning of the life and ministry of Jesus.  We have tended to emphasize the Crucifixion and the Resurrection over the life and ministry of Jesus.  Indeed, we have tended to emphasize the Cross over everything.  I have always been intrigued that the central symbol that church buildings emphasize to the world is not an empty tomb or a bowl for feeding the hungry, but rather the Cross, the Roman symbol for the death penalty.  Part of that emphasis is that the Cross turns that symbol upside down;  part of it is that the suffering of God in the Cross creates a solidarity with all those who are marginalized and oppressed and executed by the inhuman worldly systems.  Part of it is that the Roman Emperor Constantine melded the sword and the Cross into the symbol of the church. 

            The biggest theological reason for emphasizing the Cross and Resurrection is that it enables us to minimize the importance of human life and human history.   The Cross and Resurrection become guarantors of life after death, and that guarantee becomes the meaning of our lives.  The importance of human life becomes negligible if the meaning of life is to get into heaven when we die.  It is what enabled people who held other people as slaves to believe that we were following God’s will.  It is what enabled Jeff Sessions and so many other white, evangelical Christians to design and approve of the policy that separated children from their families at the borders.  It is what enables us to waste so much food while 20,000+ children die every day of starvation and malnutrition.  If the life and ministry of Jesus are not particularly important, then neither is human life and human history – it is all just part of the grand parade to the Second Coming, when the REAL Jesus will show up, the one brandishing the sword to destroy the evildoers.

            Part of the source of this issue is Paul’s letters, in which he rarely ever refers to the life and ministry of Jesus.  A larger part of it, however, is the continuing difficulties of the human heart – we want to have divine blessing for our inhumane ways and institutions.  So, in this week when we shudder to remember that we dropped two bombs in Japan in 1945 that killed over 100,000 people in an instant and many thousands more in a short amount of time, let us remember this cheapening of human life and its consequences. 

            And, let us work on seeking to recover the life and ministry of Jesus.  His life and ministry fired people up and gave them a new vision of what it meant to be alive.  Some of them left their jobs and sought to live in this new vision.  Some of the others shared what they had with others in need.  Some refused to believe in redemptive violence.  All began to hear that the center of life was not Rome or even the Temple but rather the God who was calling them into new vision in the life and ministry of Jesus.  Jesus was no educated seminary preacher, and he was not a member of the Roman Senate or even a Roman citizen.  He was a worker, and he was at the margins of life, oppressed by the Roman empire.  His life and ministry were not designed to help people get along in life, but rather a way to find life in the midst of violence, domination, and death.  As our friend Dr. Brian Wren once put it in one of his songs that he wrote for Oakhurst, “Jesus came to live!”  Let us find that life also!