New Book in Progress - Excerpt #2

And He Walks with Me: Jesus 2.1 – Interactive Edition
New Thoughts about Jesus & the Christ for the 21st Century

by Thomas W. Shepherd

[#2 - Continuing the excerpts...]

CONFESSING THE OBVIOUS

Shall we begin by confessing the obvious? Jesus was a human male, a fully credentialed member of the species homo sapiens. He was not born of the union between deity and virgin mother, because that’s not how the natural order, which drives the biology of human beings, operates. Stories of supernatural origin were common in antiquity and survive in popular culture today. From Achilles and Alexander to Spiderman’s accidental inheritance of superhuman powers from the bite of a mutant spider and Superman’s extraterrestrial birth among the semi-divine Kryptonians, people like their heroes extra-ordinary, licensed by the storyline to act extraordinary. Moved by life’s tragedies yet never daunted; stirred, but not shaken.

Even so, only Matthew and Luke know anything of the virgin birth (parthenogenesis in koine Greek), and a fresh reading of their nativity tales clearly show the paraphernalia of mythology. Mark and John fail to mention the birth of Jesus at all, nor does the earliest New Testament writer, Paul, who certainly would have invoked parthenogenesis among his Greek congregations if he had any inkling the story were true.

Apparently, young Jesus of Nazareth lived a rather ordinary life as a member of his community. Despite valiant attempts to create a backstory for the humble carpenter, there is no evidence Jesus ever studied with the Essenes, Egyptians, Druids, or Hindu sages. Right the contrary, he sounds very much like a first century rabbi, schooled in the prophetic tradition of Israel. He apparently lived at home in Nazareth where he learned and grew, and when he reached early middle age (thirty-something), he began to teach others his insights on the nature of God and the meaning of life. He healed some people—more accurately, the gospels seem to suggest he summoned healing from them, often remarking it was their faith which made them whole. He conveyed his major teaching through storytelling, which had a strongly ethical and universalist flavor. When addressing the religious leaders of his day, he employed the imagery of Jewish apocalyptic prophets to warn of dire consequences which result from a life without faith and compassion. Although he repeatedly counseled against violent responses to life’s problems, Jesus was a spiritual revolutionary. He was afraid of neither the Judean religious establishment nor the might of Imperial Rome.

Not surprisingly, he did not live long enough to retire.

Jesus visited the Jewish Temple during Passover week and criticized the economic and religious leadership in Jerusalem. The resulting tumult threatened public order. Roman authorities frankly could not have cared less what nonsense the Jews believed, but it had better not lead to trouble in the streets. Jesus’ activities disrupted the Roman peace—one can almost hear Pilate’s military advisers reporting, “This lunatic attacked the money changers and merchants in the Court of the Gentiles, by Jove!”--so the political leadership abruptly executed him as an insurrectionist. Jews get blamed for it, because the Christian community at the end of the first century was primarily non-Jewish and wanted to distinguish itself from the parent religion. By the time the New Testament was written, Rome had fought a major war to put down a Jewish revolt, destroyed the Temple, and had begun expelling Jews from the Imperial capital.

Certain enigmatic passages in the New Testament—where Jesus is said to have been persecuted by “the Jews” and a Jewish crowd shouts for Pilate to execute a Jewish holy man and to free a criminal--makes sense only in this above context, especially considering that both Jesus and all his followers seem to have been lifelong, faithful Jews. By the time the gospels were written, Christians were not just willing to give excuses for the Romans, many Christians were the Romans. Already in the first generation it had begun. Paul was a citizen of Rome who taught the Gentile world that they did not need to become full Jews to receive God’s Messiah—Greek word, Christos.

Nonetheless, it was the Romans who crucified him, not the Jews. After his execution, a significant number of people believed Jesus was still available to them in prayer, visions, and inner communion. They carried his faith to all parts of the Roman world and eventually around the globe. Those who came after, however, often placed more emphasis on the messenger than the message he brought.

Human Component
If Jesus was fully human, which is a fair assumption considering he was born and died a man, and if there is any credibility to the legends about his great gifts of wisdom and healing power, one might deduce that all people have the potential to achieve similar insights, work similar wonders. If only a few individuals achieved this high level of consciousness (i.e., holiness) so far, some mystics have observed it may be due to inherited, limited ways of thinking rather than inherent limitations. It is however much easier to think of Jesus as extraordinarily abnormal—even uniquely divine—because his special qualities would then provide an alibi for human limitations and justify human apathy in the face of a world filled with spiritual challenges.

In an extraordinary book which set bestseller records in the young adulthood of the baby-boom generation, Richard Bach narrates a revelatory discussion between a flock of feathered disciples and the resurrected Jonathan Livingston Seagull:

“The only true law is that which leads to freedom,” Jonathan said. “There is no other.”

“How do you expect us to fly as you fly?” came another voice (from the flock).

“Look at Fletcher! Lowell! Charles-Roland! Judy Lee! Are they also special and gifted and divine? The only difference, the very only one, is that they have begun to understand what they really are and have begun to practice it.”[1]

Love your enemies? Impossible! We’re not Jesus.

Just as the flock dismissed any hope of becoming equal to the Son of the Great Gull, Jonathan Livingston Seagull, humans can linger safely in a comfort zone of mediocrity if convinced that higher achievement is unattainable. The higher people place Jesus, the less responsibility humanity owns for failure to reach the level of spiritual development he called everyone to achieve. Playing to the spiritual paralysis of a feckless era, Christian fundamentalists tell the populace to trust Jesus and he’ll take care of everything. Except that capitulation hasn’t worked, because today more than ever people are realizing that life is a do-it-yourself job. Humanity has progressed only by learning to trust its gifts and to work with others for lasting solutions. This is the hard spiritual and intellectual homework required to change lives for the better, and people have often fled from responsibility for their own growth by looking to Jesus as an external savior who alone can make things right.

For two thousand years people have avoided accountability by awarding the most extraordinary attributes and showering prodigious affection on this simple Jewish teacher from Galilee. Daily, he is the object of an almost boundless adoration. Jesus is loved, emotionally and intellectually, in a manner which non-subscribers to the Christian religion must find rather peculiar. No other prophet or teacher has evoked this kind of personal rapture on the part of his devotees. The Muslim worships the God of Muhammad, not the Prophet himself, which would be scandalous to Islamic theology. Buddhists are more drawn to the teachings of the compassionate Buddha than to a personal relationship with Gautama Siddhartha. Christians, on the other hand, are a tribe of believers divided by doctrine yet united by devotion to Jesus Christ. As a member of an Eastern religion once remarked to me, not unkindly, “All you Christians agree about following Jesus. What you can’t seem to agree about is where he’s going.”

This persistent, personal attachment to Jesus is no less than astonishing, considering how distant the man of Nazareth stands from even those who came immediately after him. And it began with the first generation. Jesus spoke incessantly about God; Paul wrote incessantly about Jesus. No one can doubt the primitive church loved Jesus with a passion which required them to keep the faith even if it meant losing their lives. This is even more incredible when we realize that only a tiny handful of people ever heard Jesus speak in the flesh. They did not know the man of Nazareth, but they felt a deep relationship to a spiritual being whom they knew as their resurrected Lord. As the old hymn affirms:

You ask me how I know he lives?
He lives within my heart.[2]


Jesus of Nazareth
The historic Jesus was an ordinary man who led a brief, ordinary life, yet changed the world. Despite the widespread penchant for the traditional Christ of faith, it is abundantly clear the original Jesus of Nazareth is not the creature whom Christians have adored. That man is long gone, another obscure life celebrated in absentia with legend, myth and editorial invention. Rabbi Yeshua Ben Josef quickly evolved into Jesus Christ, a theological conglomeration of concepts and ideas gathered around the distant, fragmented memories of an historic person. In the Christian Scriptures we have documents written by his followers of the second generation which provide a glimpse into his life and teachings, but not without heavy editorial input and fill-in-the-blanks fictionalization of the story.

As time passed, Jesus of Nazareth became more god than man, the fate of martyred leaders from Caesar to Kennedy, especially figures in religious history. The Jesus of scripture is a first century literary character based on the memories of the primitive church, but the New Testament is no more a true representation of the martyred Rabbi Yeshua than a novel set in ancient Rome about the murder of Caesar would conjure the authentic Gaius Julius.

Although the process of ongoing interpretation is seldom acknowledged, the Jesus available today is still a work in progress. Readers interact with many biblical images of the Nazarene—approaching the procession of Jesuses from the far-flung pathways of the individual histories of each reader, enriched and tainted by subsequent theologies and ethnicities and politics. Through this interactive program, people co-create the best Jesus who suits their needs in every age. No other is resource is available. The living Jesus who walked the shores of Galilee has gone to the many mansions, either absorbed by the unfeeling Cosmos or ascended above this level to some higher degree of union with God. We are left with scents of a presence, whispering of love and power, preserved in stories and saying and myths. The true Nazarene is gone; all we have is the biblical Jesus and the “Christ of Faith”.

The biblical Jesus exists only in this marketplace/workshop of thought and faith as a dynamic, evolving concept of what it means to be human and divine. On him humanity projects its highest hopes and deepest values, which makes Jesus the Christ of faith far more important than the historical Jesus of Nazareth ever was. He is a portrait of the highest and best, the canvas on which each generation paints their masterpiece of human potential and divine love. Yet, this creative process energizes the ethereal Christ of Faith as he downloads into the contemporary world, like the risen Lord stepping down from a portrait, and when he emerges in contemporary life he comes with power to quicken men and women to follow him in newness of life.

Jesus Christ has been called, among many titles, the Way-Shower. As the distillation of the wisdom and spiritual confidence which has been interactively poured into and drawn from the Christ-concept over the centuries, the Jesus Christ of Faith has convinced people that the biblical Jesus knows where everyone is going, because he’s been there already. And because this truth is interactive, people invariably draw on their resources to find an appropriate model for the day in which they live.

Even given these limitations, the historical figure standing behind the biblical Jesus still reaches through the maze of stained glass windows and hands every generation a set of notes to consider as humans ponder life and faith in their culturally conditioned ways. The Sometimes, this primordial Jesus issues a challenge which rings through the ages. For example, his command to grow spiritually—ready or not—uttered in words which strike the ear like a hammer of futility: “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”[3]

What kind of practical Christianity could be built on that absurd injunction? Yet, there it is, undaunted by two thousand years on the shelves of church libraries. Perfect? How does one understand that injunction without becoming cynical, frustrated or angry? Is there a parallel verse to modify that one, maybe in Aramaic? How realistic was this Galilean prophet, anyway? In fact, could not the whole life of Jesus be summarized as an idealistic fantasy which failed ruinously?

“Commonwealth of Holy Typicality”
Looking at the historical events on their face value, Jesus represents a life that ended in weakness and humiliation. Paradoxically, one could argue this ignominious defeat constituted his greatest triumph. Nothing could make him abandon kindness and steadfast love, not even an unjust death sentence. He marked the path so well that no matter which fork in life people take, Jesus travels along. “Be perfect…” he says with no hint of hyperbole.

Following so many contradictory demands is a clearly impossible task. Nevertheless, there have always been culturally Christian people who hear his call and attempt to walk the supererogatory path he charted. For his followers, Jesus stills the storms of fear and emptiness, healing minds and hearts with love, and spreading peace that passes all understanding. When the Apostle Paul told the church at Corinth, “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself…”[4] it probably never occurred to Paul that the only way Jesus could have achieved that lofty goal was by inspiring individuals to a new vision of their potential.

Note it is God, not Jesus, who is the protagonist in Paul’s vision. God comes to Earth in “Christ”, who in Paul’s mythos is the exalted form of Jesus, the man of Nazareth, nevertheless one of us in all aspects of humanity. By his life, teachings, death and resurrection-experience Christ Jesus (Paul’s preferred term) demonstrates his divine-human nature and reconciles the world of human consciousness with its destiny in the commonwealth of holy typicality, where God-consciousness engulfs men and women as if they were fish in the divine ocean.

With its broad vision of cultural and historical evolution, post-modern Christianity now has the opportunity to see the Lordship of Jesus Christ flowing from the same Source which nourished Buddha, Lao Tzu, Moses, Confucius, Mahavira, Muhammad, Baha’u’llah, and countless lesser-known men and women, i.e., the “Christ” or divine spirit within all sentient beings. One might reasonably contend that all creatures in the Cosmos live, move and have their being through this animating God-within. More importantly, through this indwelling divinity humans know the power of love. Women and men are love-capable beings because they are children of God, made in the imago Dei, which is love itself.

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[1] Richard Bach, Jonathan Livingston Seagull: A Story (NY: Scribner, 1970), 83. Parenthesis added.

[2] Alfred H. Ackley, (music and lyrics), Hymn: “He Lives!” available online at http://www.tagnet.org/digitalhymnal/en/dh251.html
[3] Matthew 5:48.
[4] Second Corinthians 5:19.