The Jesus Word        

April 13, 2003

Leslie Wright

 

 

In the Christian calendar today is Palm Sunday the beginning of Holy Week -- the last week of Jesus’ life – a week that included his confrontation with the money changers in the Temple, the Passover meal that Christians have come to call the Last Supper, his arrest and crucifixion, and finally his triumphant resurrection on Easter morning. 

 

Jesus lived a short number of years  -about 30 - and had a public ministry that last at most three years, probably much less.  Yet he is responsible for the development of the one of the world’s largest religions.  In its first 300 hundred years Christianity evolved in many directions.  As it grew and spread in the Greek and Roman worlds, differences over its doctrine and arguments over who should control the church arose. 

 

Eventually in 325 CE,  those who believed Jesus was divine, not  a flesh and blood man , won out at the Council of Nicea.  Ever after other views were condemned as heresy.   From that time,  a different Christianity developed where orthodoxy became more important than love;   superstition , more important than truth;   and where the man Jesus became lost in the fictional Christ who is worshipped, not listened to.

 

In 1819 the Unitarian minister William Channing put it this way,  “This corruption of Christianity is repugnant to common sense and to the general strain of Scripture, … disfiguring the simple truth of Jesus”

 

Given what has occurred in history in the name of Christ;  the supernaturalism and judgementalism found in the Bible and espoused by many Christians; and the obfuscation of Jesus’ message,  we all have probably asked ourselves at some time  “Is there any role for Jesus in my spiritual journey;   is Jesus  relevant to me?

 

To answer that, let’s try to find out who Jesus really was and what he stood for.   First we must assume there was an historical Jesus and that it is possible to find out something about him from the writings that exist.  Even though there have been arguments to the contrary, Let’s just assume this.

 

In an attempt to uncover the authentic Jesus,  a group of about 200 mainline New Testament scholars led by Robert Funk,  have participated in a research project called the Jesus Seminar.    These scholars -   Catholics, Episcopalians, Methodist, Lutherans, Jews and even a Unitarian -  have met twice a year since 1985.  Their initial goal was to determine what Jesus really said. They published their findings in “The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus.”   Their next goal was to describe what Jesus really did.   That analysis is published in  “The Acts of Jesus.”  The members of the Jesus Seminar have  been criticized by fundamentalists and conservative Christians for their “liberal and biased viewpoints.   They are defended  by other theologians, one of whom said “ The Jesus Seminar is a clarion call to enlightenment.  It is for those who prefer facts to fancies, history to histrionics, science to superstition.” 

 

Most of us know that the official New Testament  includes four books called the Gospels.  Gospels means Good News – the good news that Jesus came to earth and brought us all everlasting life.   The Good news is found in the New Testament books of  Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are the only books in the Bible that talk about the life of Jesus. Three of the four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, and Luke, are called the "Synoptic" gospels because they look at events in a similar manner. 

 

The gospel of  John is regarded as a much later creation.  It is very different from the synoptic gospels in that it presents Jesus as the known messiah from his birth and has Jesus speaking of himself as divine.  My biased  interpretation of scholarly opinions about John is that it was  propaganda for those whose opinions on Jesus’ divinity won at the Council of Nicea.  A fifth gospel is included in the book The Five Gospels – the gospel of Thomas.  It did not make the Council of Nicea cut to be included in the New Testament for a number of reasons that are subject for another time, but  on analysis  Thomas is very similar to Matthew and Luke. 

 

It is generally agreed that the gospel of Mark was the earliest gospel.  Mark compiled written and oral transmissions that were circulating among the followers of Jesus, some thirty years after Jesus’ death.  It is assumed that because there are  many things in Matthew and Luke that are also in Mark , they probably had Mark's gospel in front of them when they wrote their own gospels.  However, there are some things that Matthew and Luke both have exactly the same, that Mark doesn't have at all.  This leads biblical scholars to think that they each had another source in front of them that they copied from as well. 

 

The Jesus Seminar scholars laid out the three synoptic gospels (Mathew, Luke and Mark) side by side and make a list of every story or teaching of Jesus that both Matthew and Luke have, but that Mark doesn't have. This enabled them to re-create the document they think that Matthew and Luke copied from. They called this document "Q" for "source in German"     Q helps identify the earliest written memories about Jesus..   What isn't in Q is probably the later stuff that Matthew and Luke added in on their own. 

 

After study and discussion, the members of the seminar voted on biblical passages using colored beads  to show how strongly they felt about the historical accuracy of each passage. 

 

A Red    bead meant Jesus undoubtedly said this or something like it.

A Pink   bead meant Jesus probably said something like this.

A Gray  bead meant Jesus did not say this, but the ideas are close to his

A Black bead meant  Jesus did not say this.

Weighted averages of the votes were calculated and used in The Five Gospels to show the degree of authenticity  of all gospel passages. 

 

The first thing I did when I started reading The Five Gospels, was to thumb through it looking for all the red passages.   What did I find?  Well, not many red lines of type that is for sure.   They judged that “Eighty-two percent of the words ascribed to Jesus in the gospels were not actually spoken by him. –  only 18% fall into the red or pink categories (definitely or probably said by Jesus).   And this was about the same for deeds and acts of Jesus.

 

What are the sayings and events definitely not authentic according to the Jesus Seminar? Well, the story of Jesus’  birth, the story of his death and resurrection,  Jesus saying he was the Messiah or a divine being, Jesus foretelling the future, Jesus did not walk on water or feed the multitude or change water into wine, or raise Lazarus from the dead. And when he was executed as a public nuisance he did not claim to be the son of God.

 

If that is who Jesus is not, who is he?  What did he do and say?

 

Jesus appears to have been an itinerant sage—a wandering wise man.  Robert Funk in another book “Honest to Jesus”, described him as a "word wizard",  imaginative,  humorous at times, perhaps spell binding.     Jesus spoke in parables, telling stores not to entertain, but  intended to shock his listeners into new ways of thinking and relating to each other.   He must have been a compelling, even charismatic man because in a very short time he attracted followers of all kinds – rich, poor, men, women.  He  was soon seen as a threat to those in power.

 

The words of Jesus  that are considered authentic focus on two themes.  These seem to make up the heart of Jesus’ ministry.

 

 

First,  Every person matters.  Jesus went out of his way to associate with those who no one else wanted to be around - -  The poor , the oppressed, the disenfranchised.   He associated with every class of person in the Galilean and Judean society of which he was a part. The Gospel of Matthew tells how "many tax collectors and sinners came and sat down with Jesus."  He spoke with a centurion and a ruler, the blind and a man unable to speak, children and lepers, fishermen and adulterers, Pharisees and Samaritans, scribes and prostitutes.   He said “Let the children come up to me, don’t try to stop them.  After all, God’s domain is peopled with such as these.” Found in all 3 gospels, this a reversal of  the child’s traditional status.  More radical, he was friends and followers who were women, unconventional for that time.

 

In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus is said to have told the scribes and the Pharisees a parable. "What man of you, having a hundred sheep, if he lost one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness, and go after the one which is lost, until he finds it? And when he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders, rejoicing. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and his neighbors, saying to them, 'Rejoice.'"  He preaches the same idea when he tells the story of a woman losing a silver coin and seeking diligently until she finds it, even though she has nine more of them.   The inherent  worth and dignity of every person.  A well known black preacher, Howard Thurman, says that this is what made Jesus so appealing to African-Americans at the height of their oppression.  

 

A second  theme found throughout the gospels  is  the theme of “a loving community” . 

 

The words “Love your enemies” was rated very high for authenticity among the sayings that originated with Jesus.   Passages that admonish  to turn the other cheek in the face of aggression got a score of 92%, the highest.   In Mathew Jesus says “don’t react violently against the one who is evil:  when someone slaps you on the right cheek, turn the other as well.”  Luke has a passage very similar to this.     Although this may be an exaggeration, a form of speech used often by Jesus,  he  is clearly challenging people to forget the traditional Old Testament eye for an eye philosophy.  Are these values at the center of  modern Christianity?  I think I hear the cry for an eye for eye more often than I hear an expression of love or forgiveness for those who hurt us. 

 

One of the stories that most of the  Jesus Seminar fellows   thought was definitely told and retold  by Jesus was the story of the Good Samaritan – my personal favorite since childhood.   They regarded this parable as a “classic example of the provocative public speech of Jesus aimed at making a change in the way people lived their lives.”

 Mark and Luke have different versions of what led to the parable,  but in both the story describes a Samaritan helping a Jew.  Samaritans and Jews had despised each other for centuries. They did not help each other.  After Two Judeans, one a priest, left the man for dead on the roadside, a Samaritan came along and saved the man’s life.    This  story proposed a very radical idea for its  time.   Jesus encourages us all to love our neighbor, help others because it is the right thing to do.  He also makes us think about the fact that the person we may need help from is someone we think we despise.    In telling of the priest and Levite who passed by the victim, Jesus was not singling them out as uncaring people, but speaking against the codes, religious and political,  that set out rules that turned one person against another.

What about the Golden rule?    Luke contains the well known “Treat people the way you want them to treat you”.  Did Jesus really say this?  The Jesus Seminar thought this was improbable.  It does not conform to  other things he says and it is somewhat self-serving.   However immediately following this verse is  “If you love those who love you, what merit is there in that? After all, even sinners love those who love them.   ….But love your enemies and do good and lend expecting nothing in return.  Forgive and you’ll be forgiven.”        …….  These words, on the other hand,  were judged probable.  This sentiment gives us something much harder to live by  - the seminar felt that the authentic words of Jesus never promise extrinsic rewards for behavior. 

 

The good news is not that Christ gave man everlasting life by dying on the cross as the gospel of John says.  The good news, according to Jesus,  is that life can be lived differently – in a caring, just society.  The Good News  is not that only select persons are important and blessed by God.  The good news, according to Jesus, is  that every human being matters. 

 

This sounds like the  Unitarian principles to me.  I believe in the worth and dignity of every human being, just like Jesus.  I believe in loving my enemies, just like Jesus.  I believe in a community of justice and  love on earth, just like Jesus.  Let’s not be timid in speaking the name Jesus and reminding  the world of what Jesus really preached.  Let us liberate Jesus from the myths and orthodoxy  which has made him into a divine puppet and speak of him as a man  who calls us all to be more than we are.