THE REAL JESUS

Rev. Paul T. Stallsworth

 

     During divinity-student days in the 1970s, we were encouraged by a theology professor to read the New Testament’s gospels apart from the Church’s creeds.  That would give us, he claimed, a more accurate understanding of who Jesus really was.  More recently, there have been attempts to remove Jesus from the Bible, then from Christianity, to discover who he really was.

     Not surprisingly, more than a little mischief flowed from these adventures in interpreting Jesus.  In The Kingdom of God in America (1937), H. Richard Niebuhr summarized, in advance, much of the theological mischief that was to come: “a God without wrath brought men without sin into a kingdom without judgment through the ministrations of a Christ without a cross.”

     But along came Ash Wednesday 2004 and the release of Mel Gibson’s movie “The Passion of the Christ.”  In this film, Jesus most definitely has a cross a bear, a cross that will bear him to his horrible death.  This Jesus contrasts sharply with more recent versions.

     According to Kenneth L. Woodward, a contributing editor at Newsweek, “Mr. Gibson’s film leaves out most of the elements of the Jesus story that contemporary Christianity now emphasizes.  His Jesus does not demand a ‘born again’ experience, as most evangelists do, in order to gain salvation.  He does not heal the sick of exorcise demons, as Pentecostals emphasize.  He doesn’t promote social causes, as liberal denominations do.  He certainly doesn’t crusade against gender discrimination, as some feminists believe he did, nor does he teach that we all possess an inner divinity, as today’s nouveau Gnostics believe.  One cannot imagine this Jesus joining a New Age sunrise Easter service overlooking the Pacific.

     “Like Jeremiah, Jesus is a Jewish prophet rejected by the leaders of his own people, and abandoned by his handpicked disciples.  Besides taking an awful beating, he is cruelly tempted to despair by a Satan whom millions of church-going Christians no longer believe in, and dies in obedience to a heavenly Father who, by today’s standards, would stand convicted of child abuse.  In short, this Jesus carries a cross that not many Christians are ready to share.

     “It is easy, of course, to contrast third-millennium Christian mores with the story of Christ’s Passion.  Like other Americans, Christians want desperately to know that they are loved, in the words of the old Protestant hymn, ‘just as I am.’  But the love of God, as Dorothy Day liked to put it, ‘is a harsh and dangerous love’ that requires real transformation.  It is not the sort imagined by today’s spiritual seekers who are ‘into’ Asian religions.” (New York Times, 02/25/04)

     Stephen Prothero, the author of American Jesus: How the Son of God Became a National Icon, reinforces Woodward’s critique and points the way forward: “In one striking scene, the Virgin Mary and Mary Magdalene sop onto linens the blood left behind after Jesus’ scourging at the hands of sadistic Roman centurions.  Odd that these women care more about Jesus’ blood than Mr. Gibson seems to care about his character.  Plainly this is not the American way.  But for Mr. Gibson, one suspects, that is the point.  To be a Christian, he seems to be saying, is not to enter into a personal relationship with Jesus but to enter through the ordinances [especially the Sacrament of Holy Communion] of the Church into the mystery of the sacrifice of Christ’s body and blood.  It is not to love a lovely Jesus but to worship a battered Christ.” (Wall Street Journal, 02/27/04)

     “The Passion of the Christ,” Woodward and Prothero suggest, should jolt Christians into remembering that the real Jesus is not found in any of the allegedly relevant updates.  Instead, the real Jesus is discovered in, revealed to, and received from the Church.  More specifically, the real Jesus comes to us through the Church’s Scripture and creeds, Sacraments and faithful worship.

     This pastor watched Gibson’s movie on the Saturday evening before Lent I.  On the big screen, Jesus was vividly and brutally portrayed as the sacrifice for the sins of the world.  His broken body and shed blood, with several references to the Last Supper and Holy Communion, filled the screen, and the hearts and minds of the viewers.  The “harsh and dangerous love” of God was lifted up for all to see.

     After viewing the film, this pastor and many other pastors were reminded of the awesome privilege of offering the real Jesus to congregations the next morning.  The real Jesus, not a supposedly relevant substitute.

 

Rev. Stallsworth is the pastor of St. Peter’s United Methodist Church in Morehead City and Broad Creek United Methodist Church in Newport.

 

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