Jesus
Jesus belongs to the whole world, as much to the Muslims of northern Africa as to the Baptists of south Mississippi. He is not the property of any church or regional culture. Yet we claim him as our Spiritual Leader at EpicenterDC.
"It began in Galilee after John preached a total life-change. Then Jesus arrived from Nazareth, anointed by God with the Holy Spirit, ready for action. He went through the country helping people and healing everyone who was beaten down by the Devil. He was able to do all this because God was with him."
Jesus of Nazareth was a Jewish peasant in northern Palestine who lived in the early years of the first century. His friends and kinfolk were scattered across the Galilean hills. He worked as a carpenter, but could often be found hanging out with his fisherman friends a few miles east of his village, along the shore of Lake Tiberius. Around his 30th year, Jesus ceased working in his carpenter shop and started working full-time as an itinerant story-telling Jewish rabbi, crisscrossing his homeland with a motley band of disciples. Rumors of miracles swirled around him; and with the miracles, crowds of desperate people came, looking for hope and for healing. Jesus was executed by the Romans in the early first century - and yet within days of his death, a whole series of persons and groups experienced him alive again. Had it not been for this bizarre event that we call Jesus' Resurrection, his movement surely would have crumbled after the crushing defeat of his execution. Yet as Jesus' followers discovered him alive beyond death, they each discovered new courage and tenacity sufficient to energize a world-changing movement.
Once the generation of friends and followers of Jesus began to die, people sensed a need for writing down the varied memorable actions and parables of Jesus. The four most widely-accepted written summaries of his life and work became the four Gospels of the Christian Scriptures (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John). Yet there were other written accounts of Jesus' life in the late first and early second centuries, widely circulated but not accepted into the Bible. Some of these accounts were a bit over the top in terms of supernatural details. The Muslim Qur'an mentions Jesus 93 times, recognizing him as one of the great spiritual teachers of all time.
Across the centuries, there have come to be many different ways of looking at Jesus. Different groups focus on different aspects of Jesus. Brian McLaren, in his book A Generous Orthodoxy, includes a very helpful chapter entitled "The Seven Jesuses I Have Known." McLaren's list includes the Conservative Protestant Jesus, the Pentecostal/Charismatic Jesus, the Roman Catholic Jesus, the Eastern Orthodox Jesus, the Liberal Protestant Jesus, the Anabaptist Jesus and the Jesus of the Oppressed. We are up to seven Jesuses and we have not yet even stepped outside the family of Christians! We could add the Muslim Jesus, the Jewish Jesus and more. Each Jesus is simply a unique angle on the same person.
The major theme in Jesus' teaching (and actions) was "the Kingdom of God," the idea that we are invited as both individuals and as a new community, to live out values at odds with how most people and most societies live. Jesus freely used the term kingdom, a word troubling to some folks today due to the political and violent connotations of worldly emperors and lands ruled by autocratic dictators. But Jesus and his movement turned this word (and several others) upside down! Jesus' kingdom is almost an anti-kingdom, a reign of God not imposed violently from above, but offered gently. It is a spiritual place where the law of love epitomizes something utterly opposite of what empire meant in the days of Caesars, and opposite of what it means in today's geo-political chess game of super-powers.
Jesus' message was an invitation to any who would listen: an invitation to radical personal transformation and radical world transformation. This message ultimately, got him killed by the rulers of this world. He wasn't running for political office, but his social teachings and values were undeniably subversive! Los Angeles pastor Erwin McManus calls Jesus a barbarian: a sharp contrast and a threat both to the civilized religion of first century Judaism and to the larger civilization that was the Roman Empire. One might think of Jesus as the captain of God's spiritual insurgency (again it's an upside-down idea of insurgency, committed to non-violence and love at its core), marching forward with full confidence that nothing in this world (or beyond it) could hold back God's triumphant advance.
When we consider the whole breadth of Jesus' teaching and his many encounters with people, we see a most extraordinary human being. We see one who reveals the very essence of God's character and intent in the world. In the Jesus story, we see God at every turn. We see…
- Compassion for suffering people, regardless of the cause of the suffering.
- Solidarity with poor and socially marginalized people, including a willingness to confront the rich and the powerful about their moral obligations towards persons who are less privileged.
- Mercy to forgive those whose lives had gone off-track morally and spiritually, even to forgive those who attacked him personally.
- Treating all people as precious treasures, regardless of their race, religion or gender.
- Anger at hypocrites and others who saw themselves as better than others, while they were blind to their own short-comings.
- Fortitude to stand up to inward struggles, to the religious establishment, and even to the Roman Empire, to stand up for what was right, never compromising, never backing down an inch.
- Teaching that was based upon two universal principles: the need to love God with our whole hearts and to love our neighbors as much as we love ourselves (Matthew 22:37-40).
- Disregard of various taboos or traditions of his religious heritage when he saw that they were in conflict with larger, universal truths.
- The sense of urgency that we need to respond to God's love and invitation immediately, lest we lose the opportunity of a lifetime.
Insofar as your heart beats in sync with the points just listed, you may discover Jesus to be a far more attractive figure than the pale sectarian guy with the blue eyes and the brown beard playing in the church near you, beneath the shadow of the American flag. This was no wimpy dude.
With his life, death and resurrection, Jesus broke the spell of prideful fear that conditions the way we human beings look at life. In the gospel of John, the most artistic of the four gospels, the preacher-author puts these words in Jesus' mouth: "I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life: no one comes unto the Father but by me." It is impossible to determine if Jesus historically said this, but the words remain profoundly true either way. The way to God is perfectly illustrated in Jesus: in short, the way of compassion, mercy, radical trust, and love for God and others.
Epicenter Church is a new Christian Faith community focused on serving the people who live in the urban expanse of greater Washington DC.