Jesus Who? September 16, 17 &20, 2007
Jesus the Superstar – still famous after all these years
In western culture you’d be hard pressed to find someone as famous as Jesus of Nazareth – he has remained famous for the better part of 2000 years! I’m not so sure that Paris Hilton will have that sort of staying power!
The difficulty with fame is that everyone has an opinion about you. If you asked almost anybody on the street who Jesus is, they would most likely have an opinion. The folks at rejesus.com did just that & here are some of the responses:
On the street video
Other Famous People have opinions about Jesus as well:
Napoleon Bonaparte
“Alexander, Caesar, Charlemagne, and myself founded empires; but what foundation did we rest the creations of our genius? Upon force. Jesus Christ founded an empire upon love; and at this hour millions of men would die for Him.”
Woody Allen
"If Jesus came back and saw what was being done in his name, he wouldn’t be able to stop throwing up."
Mahatma Gandhi
"A man who was completely innocent, offered himself as a sacrifice for the good of others, including his enemies, and became the ransom of the world. It was a perfect act."
Martin Luther King Jr.
"Jesus Christ was an extremist for love, truth and goodness."
John Lennon
"We’re more popular than Jesus now."
Douglas Adams
"2,000 years ago one man got nailed to a tree for saying how great it would be if everyone was nice to each other for a change."
Kanye West
I ain’t here to argue about his facial features. Or here to convert atheists into believers. I’m just trying to say the way school need teachers the way Kathie Lee needed Regis that’s the way ya’ll need Jesus.
The difficulty of doing a course that examines the life of someone so famous is that, with all the opinions about him, he may be hard to find.
Co-opting Jesus
The woman at the Stein Valley Festival – If Jesus were alive, he’d be right here…
Sports figures
Norm Evans, former Miami Dolphins lineman, wrote in his book, On God’s Squad, “I guarantee you Christ would be the toughest guy who ever played this game. . . . If he were alive today I would picture a six-foot-six-inch 260-pound defensive tackle who would always make the big plays and would be hard to keep out of the backfield for offensive linemen like myself.”
Fritz Peterson, former New York Yankee, more easily fancies Jesus in a baseball uniform: “I firmly believe that if Jesus Christ was sliding into second base, he would knock the second baseman into left field to break up the double play. Christ might not throw a spitball, but he would play hard within the rules.”
George Bush - During the ’presidential campaign’ of 2000, a reporter asked George W. Bush II who was the philosopher who most influenced him. His answer of course was “Jesus Christ.” You may find it difficult to connect George W’s foreign policy or even his domestic economic policy with the teachings of Jesus, but for a presidential candidate, it was the right answer.
On the other side of the political spectrum, you have Mikhail Gorbachev who says "Jesus was the first socialist, the first to seek a better life for mankind."
Fidel Castro
I never saw a contradiction between the ideas that sustain me and the ideas of that symbol, of that extraordinary figure, Jesus Christ.
You might wonder about how cynically some politicians try to co-opt the symbol of Jesus for their own purposes, but I think that many of us want to see Jesus as a person who has the same values and interests as us, except he is so much better. He is the super Mike!
Jeff’s thoughts – judge by the people
So many people, so many opinions about one man
The reality is that we can’t create our own Jesus, we cannot decide who Jesus was any more than you could decide who I am. You might tell everyone that Mike Wilkins is a 6’7” Chinese professional basketball player. But the reality is that I’m a 5’10” Canadian of northern European decent, and no one would every pay me to play any sport!
In the same way, Jesus has a personality and a describable existence outside of anyone’s opinion of him! We are going to try to discover that person in this course. Although it is very difficult to set aside our own personal agendas of who we would like him to be, or even the cultural filter that we see things through, I’ll try to do that as I learn and present – I’m going to invite you to do the same as we learn together. Let’s do our best to find the real Jesus.
Our main text for discovering the life of Jesus will be the four Gospels found in the beginning of the New Testament.
Albert Einstein says this about the gospels, “As a child I received instruction both in the Bible and in the Talmud. I am a Jew, but I am enthralled by the luminous figure of the Nazarene.... No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”
You might have some questions about using the Gospels to learn about Jesus’ life. But they are the documents that are closest to Jesus, written by people that knew him as a teacher and friend. You might have questions about the reliability of the Gospels as documents, and you can raise those in the small group discussions, but a good place to start to deal with those questions is a booklet that I put together for this course called “Jesus and the Original Documents.”
Brief Sketch
In any newspaper report about a celebrity, the first thing that is described is the person’s appearance. The Gospels give us a sketch of Jesus life and ministry without ever giving us a physical sketch of the man. – We have almost no idea what he looked like
Any physical image that we have of Jesus is at least 500 years after his life. And these are most likely wrong. Recently some artists have drawn Jesus as a Black man, and many find these images a little shocking, but we should find them no less shocking than the blond-haired, blue-eyed Jesus that some of us grew up with in Sunday School. Put this face in a line up, and he would be the last one you would choose to be a 1st century middle-eastern Jewish carpenter!
There were 3 good arguments that JESUS WAS HISPANIC:
His first name was Jesus
He was an out of work carpenter
He had 12 drinking buddies
There were 3 equally good arguments that JESUS WAS BLACK:
He called everybody "brother"
He liked Gospel
He couldn’t get a fair trial
There were 3 equally good arguments that JESUS WAS JEWISH
He went into His Father’s business
He lived at home until he was 33
He was sure his Mother was a virgin, and his Mother was sure he was God
There were 3 equally good arguments that Jesus was a Californian:
1. He never cut His hair.
2. He walked around barefoot all the time.
3. He started a new religion.
But then there were 3 equally good arguments the Jesus was Irish:
1. He never got married.
2. He was always telling stories.
3. He loved green pastures.
There were 3 equally good arguments that JESUS WAS ITALIAN
1.He talked with his hands
2. He had wine with every meal
He used olive oil a lot
There were 3 equally good arguments that JESUS WAS A WOMAN
He had to feed a crowd at a moment’s notice when there was no food
He kept trying to get the message across to a bunch of men who just didn’t get it.
Even when he was dead, he had to get up because there was more work to do.
Seriously, the only thing that comes close to a physical description of Jesus is a prophesy from 500 years before his birth.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by others,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.
Isaiah 53:2-3
It seems that no mater how people portray Jesus; he is always tall and always good-looking. It doesn’t quite match the prophecy.
One artist tried to think about what a 30-year-old Jewish Carpenter would look like and he came up with this image of Jesus.
Needless to say, we do not know what he looked like. What we do know about his life from the Gospels is this:
He was born in Bethlehem in Judea (Palestine) in about 4 BC. We are told very little about his childhood and youth except that his family were poor, and became refugees in Egypt shortly after his birth. He grew up in a town called Nazareth in Galilee in the north of Palestine. Almost nothing is said about his childhood. We get one other story of a visit to the temple at age 12, and then nothing until he started his public ministry at about 28 AD.
He called people to repent and announced the kingdom or reign of God, using stories with a message, or parables, to do so. He traveled around Galilee announcing his message and acting it out by healing people with all sorts of diseases, and sharing friendship around the table with people from every socio-economic background many of whom were rejected by the religious people. He called a group of close disciples, among whom twelve were given special status. His activities, especially driving the money changers out of the Temple incurred the wrath of some of the leaders of Judaism. Partly as a result of this, he was handed over to the Romans and executed by crucifixion. His followers claimed, soon afterwards, that he had been raised from the dead. They carried on his work in a new way, and some of them were persecuted for doing so, both by Jews and Gentiles.
Anti-superstar
During the three years of his public ministry, Jesus didn’t play the role of superstar very well. He spent most of his ministry out in the countryside and small towns of Galilee – it would be like trying to get famous by hanging out in Arkansas! He may have gone to the big smoke of Jerusalem more often, but the Gospels could lead us to believe that he only went there to die.
Most often when he healed someone, he would tell them to tell no one (a rather difficult thing to do). Other times he would instruct healed people to simply give praise to God & not mention his name. If faith healers would take his lead, you’d never see them on TV. At one point, after feeding 5,000 people miraculously, the people decided he would make a good king & Jesus slipped away from them to avoid the glory. (John 6:15) He would often go off by himself to pray. At one point at the beginning of his ministry, when his fame was growing, he had gotten up early in the morning to go to a lonely place and pray. The disciples went looking for him when they woke up, and when they found him the said, “what are you doing here? Everyone is looking for you!” He didn’t say “Man, we’re bigger than Jesus!” and run off to his fans, he said, lets go to some other place then.”
Even when he was escaping the crowds, he was not like Trudeau running across Parliament hill, full of joy that the girls were chasing, but he was honestly trying to get away to pray, or to be with his twelve disciples alone to rest. At one point after a really rough week, the crowds were so thick, he and his disciples couldn’t even eat. They managed to make it down to the Lake and escaped in a boat. As they sailed to the other side to get some rest, the word traveled that that was where they were headed and when they got there, 5,000 people were waiting. Jesus didn’t get angry and punch a paparazzi, it says he had compassion on the people & sat down to teach them.
Despite his avoidance of the limelight, Jesus has retained his fame for 2,000 years!
We in the western world divide our calendar by his life – BC = “before Christ,” AD = Anno Domini: Latin: "In the year of (Our) Lord”
H.G. Wells, writes
"I am an historian, I am not a believer, but I must confess as a historian that this penniless preacher from Nazareth is irrevocably the very center of history. Jesus Christ is easily the most dominant figure in all history."
If nothing else, his prominence in history suggests that he is worth showing up at the pub to discuss on Mondays for the next 10 weeks or so. Many of believe that he is not just the center of history, but he is the center of our own story as well. You may find that studying his life will deeply impact your life.
Once when Jesus was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, "Who do the crowds say I am?
They replied, "Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of the prophets of long ago has come back to life."
"But what about you?" he asked. "Who do you say I am?"
Peter answered, "God’s Messiah." (Luke 9:18-20)
This is actually how we are going to structure the “Jesus Who?” course. We are going to use “what the crowds are saying” about Jesus as topics (teacher, Rabbi, Guru, Revolutionary, Friend, Liberator/warrior, Healer, Christ, Savior…) If there are topics you’d like to hit on, let me know & I’ll see if they fit.
then we will look at what the Gospels say,
and then I’ll ask you, “who do you say who Jesus is?”
Group Discussion
Introductions – name, personal details…
Why did you come, what are you hoping to get out of this
If you were interviewed on the street with the question, “Who is Jesus?” what would you answer?
What is the first thing that comes to mind if you were asked to name something Jesus said or did?
How do people try to co-opt Jesus to fit their own purposes?
Do you do this? Even just a little? How?
