JESUS: THE WRITING DOWN OF A LIFE
John 1:35-46

The Apostle Paul called it “my gospel” - - his rendering of the Gospel of God in Christ (Romans 2:16; 16:25). Novelist Reynolds Price has taught a course at Duke where they study the four New Testament Gospels, especially Mark and John, and read some of the apocryphal Gospels floating around in the early Christian period. Then each student writes his/her own gospel.1 Sounds like fun.

What would your gospel look like? I’ll show you my gospel if you show me yours.
Today I’ll offer a sketch of one. It began a few weeks ago when I was invited by Temple Beth-El to present a “biography of Jesus.”

It’s a little risky talking about Jesus to a community which has suffered such harm over the years at the hands of followers of Jesus - - not as risky as being asked to draw a picture of the Prophet Mohammed. But I said yes. If we do not risk telling our most important stories to one another, reconciliation among religions - - no small need today - - cannot happen.

I describe biography as “the writing down of a life. “The writing down of a life includes whatever historical data we can scrounge from the period two thousand years ago. It includes also what I’d call historical memories, which reach farther than the data can to capture the essence and meaning of this man. A gospel is more portraiture than photograph. These historical memories of Jesus came from eyewitnesses and those who knew eyewitnesses, passed along in oral and written tradition for seventy years after Jesus’ death.

How close can we get to the historical Jesus? We always assume we can know more than we do. L. P. Hartley writes in his novel, The Go-Between:

The past is a foreign country.
They do things differently there.

New Testament scholarship is now in its third “Quest for the Historical Jesus.” It is important to get as close as we can, but we can get back only so far. And for two thousand years what we do know of him has been enough to transform lives and history.

My writing down of his life also includes my own personal response to Jesus Christ, who he is to me, the shape I give the story of his life as a result of his life and teachings sifting through my own mind, heart and life.2 All biography is part autobiography. It is inevitably “my gospel.”

In our text for today, people are meeting Jesus for the first time. In it we get credible historical detail, and we get people’s personal response to him in the form of names and titles they gave him.

He comes to John for baptism and John says, “Behold the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world.” Two of John’s disciples call Jesus “Rabbi” or Teacher, and ask him, “Where do you dwell?” - - a many-layered question. Jesus answers inviting, elusively, “Come and see.”
Jesus calls some disciples of his own with the words “Follow me.” They name him “Messiah,” or “Anointed One,” and “the one of whom Moses...and also the prophets wrote.” He is identified as “Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.” Nathanael, hearing this says, “Can anything good come out of New Jersey – I mean – Nazareth?” Philip reiterates the delicious invitation, “Come and see.”
So here is my sketch of Jesus’ life, the rough outline of “my gospel.” All these words can do is to point to him. Come and see for yourself.
 

I

Jesus or Yeshua lived from about 4 BCE to 33 CE. “Yeshua” means “God saves.” He was born to a Jewish maiden named Miriam or Mary and to her husband, Joseph, who tradition says was considerably older. God was in the birth as God was in his life. He had brothers and sisters - - which means he learned how to quarrel!

He was raised in Nazareth in the northern region of Galilee, a good two days, journey by foot from Jerusalem. The size of offering Mary and Joseph offered in the temple at his dedication - - two turtledoves, a special provision for the poor - - indicate they were people of modest means.

Tradition says Joseph was a carpenter and that Jesus learned his earthly father’s trade. New archeological excavation has uncovered, four miles from Nazareth, a large thriving Roman/Hellenistic city named Sepphoris. Jesus, therefore, may well have been exposed to a quite sophisticated culture of arts and learning, as well as given a close look on how the Roman Empire did things. His family may have been poor - - John Dominic Crossan calls him a “Galilean peasant” – but he was far from a country bumpkin.

Luke’s Gospel gives us the only glimpse of Jesus as a boy: A precocious twelve-year-old astounding the teachers in the temple and displaying an early awareness of a special calling and relationship to God. “Do you not know, I must be about my Father’s business?” he said to his frantic and exasperated parents, who thought they had lost him.

All four Gospels agree that Jesus’ ministry began with his baptism around the age of thirty. He was baptized by John, a wilderness prophet who baptized for the forgiveness of sins in preparation for the coming reign of God. John seems much influenced by the Qumran, or Essene, community who collected and preserved for us the Dead Sea Scrolls.

At Jesus’ baptism the Spirit of God descended upon him and he heard God’s voice saying, “You are my Son, the Beloved, in whom I am well pleased.” Then the Spirit drove Jesus into the wilderness for a time of testing as to what it meant for him to be the son of God. He passed the test and set forth on his ministry. The tests would be there every following day.

The message he preached is summarized in Mark, four arresting phrases:

The time is ripe,
the kingdom of God is at hand;
repent, turn,
and believe in the good news.
Mark 1:15(adopted NRSV)

The good news was, as he himself said, “good news to the poor, release to captives, sight to the blind, and liberty to the oppressed.” Luke 4:18-19

The Spirit that anointed him empowered his life as a prophet, healer, mystic, teacher and founder of a movement-community.

II

“Prophet,” in the Hebrew nabi, means one who is called. The Hebrew prophet was given a vision of God and what God wanted and sought to apply that vision to the realm of “plain history, real politics and human instrumentality.”3 There was time for the Hebrew people to turn back to God, implement God’s vision and be saved. Jesus was a nabi, a prophet.

Was he an “apocalyptic prophet”? Scholars debate it. In the dark period of history between the Babylonian exile and the time of Jesus prophecy turned apocalyptic. These apocalyptic prophets were given a vision from God too, but this vision could not be implemented in “plain history, real politics and human instrumentality.” It was too late for that. Only God in a radical in-breaking of his kingdom could save them. Was Jesus an apocalyptic prophet? Well, it was clear he did not think any of the present political or religious arrangements could save. He did not join any of the groups available to him: Sadducees sidling up to Rome, Pharisees preaching holiness, Essenees out in the desert, or Zealots plotting revolt against Rome.

Only God’s kingdom could save us. But his teaching of the kingdom cannot be easily pinned down. It had political ramifications, but it was not a political kingdom. It had social implications, but it was more than a social program. It was something so huge it would overtake the world, as inescapable as a great flood. But it was also something that dwelt within us as a seed growing secretly. “The kingdom of God is within you,” he said, entos you, meaning near, as near as your own breath, nearer. He preached the kingdom not as some distant hope but as a compelling, urgent, gracious possibility. And this kingdom was meant for Earth: “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as in heaven,” he taught us to pray every day. The early church said we should pray it three times a day.

III

Jesus was also a healer. Full of God’s Spirit, he healed disease, cast out evil spirits and forgave sins. When people touched him or he them, they felt whole. Something wrong inside was made right.

Jesus was also a mystic. A mystic is someone who experiences a union with God that is deeper than words. Silence gets closer to describing it.

The core of his spirituality was what we could call his “Abba-experience” - - like at his baptism when he knew he was the beloved of God and that God delighted in him.

Jesus had an intimate, trusting, joyful, obedient relationship to God, whom he called Abba, the Aramaic word children used for Daddy or Poppa. It was exceedingly rare for Abba to be used in reference to God, but in every prayer Jesus prayed in the Gospels – all nine of them, except the one in which he quoted Psalm 22 – Jesus began the prayer Abba.

Jesus wanted us to have that same intimate and trusting relationship with God. “Our Abba,” he taught us to pray. In John’s Gospel he prayed for us that we may be one with God just as he was one with God. “The Father and I are one,” he said, and he prayed that it might be so for us as well (John 10:30; 17:20-21)?

Jesus was also a master teacher, a rabbi. He taught the Torah of God and helped us interpret it for our lives. In his genius he fused Law and Love. This is the whole Torah, he said: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, soul and strength, and love your neighbor as yourself.” It sounds nice, sweet, easy - - until you see how he defined “neighbor.” Your neighbor is anyone who has need of you. Sometimes your neighbor is your enemy.

His favorite way of teaching was in parables. These stories drew us in, then forced us to make a choice: Enter the kingdom or go back to business as usual. Two of his most famous parables display his spiritual genius. Go home and read them slowly, as if for the first time; they are cameos of the gospel. Luke 10:29-37: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho” - - we mess it up by calling it “The Good Samaritan” because that blows the punch line. And Luke 15:11-32: “A certain man had two sons.” Again we mess it up by calling it “The Prodigal Son.” There were two lost boys in that story: The one lost in the far country and the one lost in the father’s house.
At times Jesus’ teaching seems impossibly hard: “Love your enemy: Sell all you have and give to the poor. Forgive and you will be forgiven.” (If that’s the condition will we ever be forgiven?) But Jesus also said these words:

Come to me you, who are weary and heavy-
laden and I will give you rest.
Take my yoke upon you and
learn of me [learn me];
for I’m gentle and lowly in heart,
and you will find rest for your
souls. For my yoke is easy,
and my burden is light.
Matthew 11:28-30

Sometimes it feels to me the opposite of easy and light. Could it be, I ask myself, the more we follow, the more we learn of him, the easier the yoke becomes, the lighter the burden? Could it be the longer we follow, the more we let him carry what we carry?

Jesus was also the founder of a movement - community. I do not think he meant to found a new religion, though God may have decided later to move us that way. We plan; things happen; God plans-it-over.4 Jesus did have in mind the founding of a new community, those dedicated to living the way of the kingdom of God, a movement of justice, joy, mercy and peace, a nonviolent movement meant to change the world.

This community was outrageously inclusive: Women as well as men, young, old, righteous and sinners, prostitutes, tax-collectors, rich and poor, Jews and non-Jews, traditional and radical. We are still trying to figure it out, to emulate it.

IV

It appears that Jesus’ early Galilean ministry had much success. His teaching and mighty works of healing created quite a following. (Though he distrusted those who followed for miracles alone e.g. John 2:23-25). But the tide began to turn. Opposition began to build, especially among the religious and political powers-that-be. At some point he realized that if he kept to his present course he would be killed. The integrity of his life and mission and his unswerving obedience to what he sensed God wanted from him would not let him turn back. He also began to believe that God might use his faithful death to bring about the redemption of the world. The prophet from the Exile had written of God’s servant: “By his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5).

He “turned his face toward Jerusalem,” and took his message into the heart of the opposition. He entered Jerusalem on a donkey to the cheers of the crowds. He went to the temple and overturned the tables. It was Passover. Political and religious passions were at fever pitch. The end was now inescapable.

Jesus had a last meal with his disciples, a Passover meal, and as he blessed the bread and wine he said these were emblems of his own life and death.

He was betrayed by one of his own, arrested, put on trial and sentenced to death. The charge: “King of the Jews,” the leader of an insurrection. No charge could be more false or more true. A king, yes, but not like other kings. Leader of a revolution? Yes, but unlike any we’ve seen, one deeper and more pervasive than we yet know.

Pliny, the Younger, Roman historian, wrote of the death of Jesus:

Christus, from whom the name
[of the Christian sect] had its origin,
suffered the extreme penalty
during the reign of Tiberius
at the hands of the procurator,
Pontius Pilate.
 

He was nailed to a cross outside Jerusalem, suffered the most excruciating, humiliating and painful of deaths, died and was buried in a borrowed tomb. Someone heard him say on the cross: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
 

V

That is the end of all the story secular history can tell. But the Gospels do not end there - - nor does “my gospel.” They describe a series of appearings of Jesus risen from death to his disciples, starting on the third day, what we call Easter Sunday, first to Mary Magdalene and then to Peter, then to the other disciples, then to others.

These appearances are of a mysterious, uncanny character. They are elusive, different from one person to the next. One New Testament scholar calls them “historical but not provable.” Had they not happened as historical experiences, Christianity would never have begun. But they are not the kind of phenomena that are provable, measurable, repeatable.

But rarely are the most important experiences that change our lives provable, measurable, repeatable.

At the end of a series of appearings over forty days, Jesus said to his disciples, “I am with you always, even to the end of the world.” The church has lived for two thousand years by that promise and that sometime experience: Gone in body, present in Spirit.

Who is Jesus? That question finally becomes, Who is Jesus to me?

And the answer comes, if it comes, only as we take up our mats, take up our crosses, take up our lives, and walk after him, with him.

It is what Albert Schweitzer concluded at the end of his monumental The Quest of the Historical Jesus: Only as we follow him do we “learn in our own experience who he is.”5 And Schweitzer followed him to Africa to set up his medical clinic in Lambarene.

Who is he? Come and see. I love how Walt Whitman ends his poem “Song of Myself.” You will miss who I am and what I mean, he writes then these words:

Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged,
Missing me one place search another,
I stop somewhere waiting for you.6

“I stop somewhere,” Jesus says, “waiting for you.” Praise him.


1 Reynolds Price, Three Gospels (New York: Scribners, 1996).
2 Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Christ the Center (New York: Kasper and Row, A60) The supreme religious question is “who”: Who is Jesus Christ to me?
3 These are the phrases of Paul D. Hanson in his work, The Dawn of Apolcalyptic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1975), pp. 11-12.
4See Everett Fox’s translation of Genesis 50:20: “You planned ill against me [but] God planned-it-over for good.” The Five Books of Moses (New York: Schocken Books, 1995).
5(London: A & C Black, 1922), p. 401.
6Whitman, “A Song of Myself,” The American Tradition in Literature, Third Edition (New York: W. W. Norton, 1967), p. 84.