The Subversive Religion of Jesus – December 13th, 2009
Now I grew up Catholic, but, looking back now, I can’t say that I got a very accurate portrayal of Jesus. For example, I still have a framed image of Jesus given to me by the Nun who shepherded me through the year-long process of First Confession. I was around 8 years old. A bearded Jesus looks tranquilly at me through blue eyes, his straight, long blonde beautifully combed and shiny. So that’s the first clue about accuracy; there’s very little evidence that Mary and Joseph were Scandinavians. But for me the tranquil expression is the greater error. Where in the four gospels is Jesus ever tranquil? Not often; Jesus in the four Christian gospels is far too emotional, far too full of passionate conviction, to be capable of much tranquility. What religious leader would enter one of the big, rich mega-churches, say, like the one on Mineral Point Rd. on the West side of Madison, and whip the persons holding the collection plates, crying out, “make not my father’s house a den of thieves” (Mt – xvi). What religious leader would, while sitting at a banquet with her wealthy benefactors, allow a prostitute to interrupt the meal and then bless her(see last years talk)? What religious leader today would wander homeless through American cities and towns, condemning the rich amid large crowds of the poor and the homeless? Jesus was consumed by a religious passion I find in no other tradition. What was this unique religious passion?
Jesus often spoke in parables, and one clue is to notice not just what the parables say, but how his followers respond to them. Many of the parables are pretty easy to understand on the face of it, yet the four gospels often report that the hearers of these parables just didn’t get it. For example, in the parable of the sower, in Luke, Jesus compares the different ways people respond to the Word of God with the different places wheat grains fall when sown by hand. It is a clear image; how could the apostles not get it? So sometimes I wonder if the real message of the parable of the sower is not that some will be saved and some will be lost, but rather that not everyone hears the the Word of God the first time around. Sometimes, people can’t hear it; we bring impediments.
What are the impediments? That’s what the parable of the talents, our story for all ages, really wants to reveal, I think. Again, on the face of it, the message seems to be that you are expected to use the most of your talents. Your life is gift, it does not belong to you; so, you have a responsibility. To fail to exercise that responsibility, as did one of the three servants, means to be cast into the outer darkness. It seems to mean that if you are failing to live your life as a gift, then God will damn you in some way, exclude you from love, meaning, joy. But again, Jesus preached and practiced unconditional love, and he spoke of a God that loved unconditionally. I doubt this parable has anything really to do with notions of damnation.
What distinguishes the last, unprofitable servant, from the first two? The first two servants sound confident and excited to me. When given the opportunity to care for the money, the first two servants go away at once and invest. But the last servant, he feels different. He’s not confident, he’s not excited. When given the money, he doesn’t feel opportunity, freedom; he doesn’t feel the joy of getting a chance at something, right? He feels afraid. And in his fear, he doesn’t pull his abilities together to build something better. Instead – listen to the image here, it is so clear – he “buries the money.” He doesn’t just bury the money, does he? He buries himself. If there is any outer darkness, it is not God who has cast the unprofitable servant into it, but the servant himself who has cast himself.
Fear is the impediment to hearing Jesus’ message. The poor servant who buried money and his spirit fears rejection, fears the loss of the love of his master. The four gospels report other human fears: fear of the death of loved ones, fear of disease and physical crippling, fear of the loss of self-esteem. What we fear is loss generally, I feel; loss of love, loss of life, loss of freedom.
So now I want to read this passage from Matthew.
READ Mt. 9: 18-27.
These kind of healing stories can really offend us sometimes. My father-in-law is dying of leukemia right now, and Jesus will not heal him. Believing in the divinity of Jesus will not heal him, either. But we have to remember when we read these stories, they were written by people who already believed in the divinity of Jesus. The four gospels are not arguments in proof of the divinity of Jesus, but are meant as reports of what Jesus the Messiah, the Son of God, did and said. So of course the Son of God performed miracles. So the point of these stories of miraculous healing is not to demonstrate the power of God, or to communicate God’s demand that we believe in a particular theology. The point, I think, is trust.
Jesus always says “your faith has healed you.” But he doesn’t mean ‘faith that I am the Son of God.’ The father of the dying daughter doesn’t refer to Jesus as the Son of God; he just believes that Jesus can save his daughter. The bleeding women, too, she doesn’t profess orthodox Christian Christology and then touch Jesus’ garment. No, she just trusts, fully, utterly trusts. Look at the scene with the distraught father; his neighbors laugh at the man he has brought to save his daughter. There is tremendous vulnerability here; imagine if Jesus had failed? But Jesus, of course, doesn’t fail, and that’s part of the point. We all have fears, we all have vulnerabilities; but if can find something to trust, even in our fear, then we open ourselves to transformative possibilities. Our fear gives us a choice; we can close ourselves up like a fan, protect ourselves, accept the world as it is. Or, we can find something to trust, and so open ourselves to the possibilities this something offers us. The woman, the man, had the opportunity to trust Jesus and they took it. What opportunities to we have? What in our lives can we trust wholeheartedly?
It seems to me that unconditional love isn’t so much the message itself as the means by which we humans can let go our fears and hear the message. I think the message of Jesus, the core of his religious passion, lies in our second reading, the story in Luke of the abundant catch. The message is this; if we can find a way to trust, if we can find some source of unconditional love in our lives, then our lives are no longer about fear and survival, but about joy and abundance.
Listen to what Jesus says to Simon, “put out into the deep water and let down your nets for a catch.” Why should we ever put down our nets into the deep water? And all the evidence favors Simon; as he says, “we toiled all night and took nothing.” Life so often really is like that; the evidence reveals much failure, much suffering, much to fear. But the message of Jesus is that joy and abundance are possible, but only if we can find something to trust in spite of the evidence, in spite of fearful things, in spite of “toiling all night and taking nothing.” The message of Jesus frankly, for me, is the meaning of religion pure and simple: religion is whatever gives us the courage to feel abundance in life, joy in life, in spite of all the very real and fearful things.
This is very subversive understanding of religion. The usual experience we have with religion is, the religious tradition tells us the meaning of life, and we are supposed to say, passively, okay. Often the answer is God in some fashion; God will give us courage.
Now I have no doubt that Jesus believed in God in the usual Jewish fashion. But Jesus, with his emphasis on abundance and love, introduced a note of freedom in religion which is quite subversive of theism. The religious passion of Jesus I feel transcends theology, and shows that the question of God is not so much a religious question per se, but a personal one. In Matthew 13, Jesus says
READ Mt. 13:44-46
But what is the treasure, what is the one pearl? As a Jew, Jesus felt God the Father to be that treasure, that pearl. But what is it for each of us? What do we trust wholeheartedly? What brings unconditional love into our lives. As Jesus seems so often to say, the point of religion isn’t what the treasure is, what the pearl is, but that we have a treasure, that we have a pearl, that there be some source of unconditional love in our lives, something giving us courage, something giving us hope.
