The Historical Jesus and a Love-Fueled Revolution

Reading Marcus Borg’s The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith was one of those moments which would change my entire life.  I read it as part of a Christology course I took in undergrad, when I was a social studies education major and dual majoring in religious studies.  Before that book – before that class – I had never really explored Jesus through a historical lens.  Or rather, I hadn’t realized that I wasn’t.  Had Barnes & Noble existed in the first century, “gospels” would have been their own section.  They were never written to be biographies or histories but rather proclamations of faith from a specific group of people.  They blended fact and metaphor to tell (as Dr. Borg would frame it again and again in his texts) the more than literal truth.  Who Jesus was to them, who they realized he was in the wake of the resurrection, was far more than the biographical beats of his earthly life.  As a history major as well as a religious studies major, I was captivated.  Now that I had the question I wanted the answer.  Just who was Jesus of Nazareth, historically?

I began to read as many books by Historical Jesus and Christological scholars as I could.  Theologians like Marcus J. Borg, John Dominic Crossa, N.T. Wright, Elizabeth A. Johnson, Robert W. Funk, John P. Meyer, Daniel A. Helminiak, and John F. Kavanaugh began to fill my shelves.  For me, the Historical Jesus was of the utmost importance if I was to take living my Christian faith seriously.  If Jesus of Nazareth lived his life in such a way as his followers came to call him the Christ (which means “the anointed one”) then I should be striving to live my life in a way that makes me worthy of the name Christian.  To do that, I needed to know as much as I could about how Jesus actually lived.

I found a prophet and revolutionary, intent on tearing down the unjust structures of empire to build the Kingdom of God in its place.  I learned the Kingdom wasn’t heaven but this world transformed.  Jesus wasn’t concerned with how often you attended worship services but enacting justice in our world.  He wasn’t preaching about sex and sexuality but a radically egalitarian table (to borrow Crossan’s phrase) where all were welcome.  Jesus dedicated his ministry and message to bringing the Kingdom of God, a prophetic revolution that ultimately cost him his life.

Imagine though what it would be like if we, as Christians, would remember Jesus wasn’t preaching about heaven but about giving rule of this world over to God.  As N.T. Wright frames it, “When [Jesus’ first-century listeners] longed for the Kingdom of God, they weren’t thinking about how to secure themselves a place in heaven after they died.  The phrase ‘kingdom of Heaven,’ which we find frequently in Matthew’s Gospel where the others have ‘kingdom of God,’ does not refer to a place called ‘heaven,’ where God’s people will go after death.  It refers to the rule of heaven, that is, of God being brought to bear in the present world.  Thy Kingdom come, said Jesus, thy will be done, on earth as in heaven.  Jesus’ contemporaries knew that the creator God intended to bring justice and peace to his world here and now.”[1]

Can you imagine what it would be like if all Christians were less concerned with getting to heaven (or yelling about all those they know are going to hell) and were instead working with God to bringing justice and peace to our world here and now?

The thing is, that’s what Jesus preached.  That’s what Jesus worked to enact.  The more I learned about this, the more I realized the heart of my own Christian faith, if I wanted to authentically follow Jesus, needed to be radically-inclusive love and justice-oriented actions over believing or adhering to doctrinal statements.

Or rather, it meant “belief” in a very different way.  As Borg taught me in Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time, “Believe did not originally mean believing a set of doctrines and teachings; in both Greek and Latin its roots mean, ‘to give one’s heart to.’  The heart is the self at the deepest level.  Believing therefore does not consist of giving one’s mental assent to something but involves a much deeper level of one’s self.”[2] 

No single book was more important for my own faith journey than Marcus Borg’s Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time.  The historical sketch he gives of Jesus early on would change my life.  While I do falter from time to time (as I am only human), the Historical Jesus I met was a man I was all too willing to give my heart, my self at the deepest level, too.  As Borg frames him:

Jesus’ verbal gifts were remarkable.  His language was most often metaphorical, poetic, and imaginative, filled with memorable short sayings and compelling short stories.  He was clearly exceptionally intelligent.  Not only were his insights pointed and illuminating, but he was very clever in debate, often turning a question back on his interrogators so that they could not respond without discrediting themselves.  In contemporary terms, he was gifted as both a right-brain and left-brain thinker.

 

He used dramatic public actions.  He ate meals with untouchables, which not only generated criticism but also symbolized his alternative vision of human community.  He entered Jerusalem at the head of a procession on a donkey – a virtual parody of prevailing ideas of kingship.  Like the classical prophets of ancient Israel, he performed symbolic actions: on one occasion he provocatively staged a demonstration in the temple, overturning the tables of the money changers and driving out the sellers of sacrificial animals. 

 

There was a radical social and political edge to his activity.  He challenged the social order of his day and indited the elites who dominated it.  He had a clever tongue, which could playfully or sarcastically indict the powerful and proper.  He must have been remarkably courageous, willing to continue what he was doing even when it was clear that it was putting him in lethal danger.  The fate of his mentor John the Baptist must have been a vivid reminder to him of what happened to unauthorized leaders who attracted a significant following in the tense political atmosphere of first-century Palestine.

 

He was a remarkable healer: more healing stories are told about him than are told about anybody else in the Jewish tradition.  He attracted a following, including people who left their previous lives behind, and any sketch of Jesus with a claim to historical credibility must account for this fact.  There must have been something quite compelling about him.  He also attracted enemies, especially among the rich and powerful.

 

And finally, he was young, his life was short, and his public activity was brief.  He lived only into his early thirties, and his public activity lasted perhaps as little as a year (according to the synoptic gospels) or as much as three or four years (according to John).  The founders of the world’s other major religious traditions lived long lives and were active for decades.  It is exceptional that so much came forth from such a brief life.  No wonder his followers are said to have exclaimed, “What manner of man is this?”[3]

Who wouldn’t want to follow this man?  Who wouldn’t want to be part of his Kingdom of God revolution?  Meeting the Historical Jesus invigorated my faith like nothing ever had before.  I grant what we can know with absolute certainty of the Historical Jesus is slim.  Theologians will often joke that what we know for sure about the Historical Jesus can fit on the back of a postcard.  And we always run the risk of totemism – making God over in our own image – in our scholarship.  But just because we must be cautious and a “full” answer will always be elusive, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t seek the Historical Jesus.  If anything, it’s all the more reason to study him, as we’ve been making Jesus over in our own images (consciously and unconsciously) for 2000 years.

And even if I can never know the full picture of Jesus of Nazareth, this first-century prophet of the Kingdom of God who’s revolution led Rome to execute him a year into his ministry, the attempt is what’s important.  It helps keep me honest, it holds me to trying to live up to the name Christian just as Jesus lived in such a way that he was recognized as the Christ.

[1] N.T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus (London: SPCK, 2000), 20.

[2] Marcus Borg, Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006), 137.

[3] Ibid., 30-31.