When You Think You Know Jesus
A number of years ago I attended a Pastor’s Conference where the theme of the week was Jesus, more specifically, “Getting to Know Jesus.” You may think the subject matter for a group of pastors a bit odd. Why would pastors need a conference on getting to know Jesus? Unless you are a cynic, you probably think that pastors should already know Jesus, right?
That’s exactly what I thought when I heard about the conference. I finally decided to take part in the four day event because some pastor friends were going and they encouraged me to attend. But I confess, the entire week before the conference began I thought, “This is going to be a waste of my time. I already know about Jesus.”
I was wrong. The speaker of the week, a pastor from Mississippi, opened my eyes to the radical nature of the teachings of Jesus and how difficult it is for people then and now to embrace an unabridged Jesus. Of course, I knew that Jesus’ teaching offended people, most notably, the religious establishment, but I had assumed that the church was on board with living out the teachings of Jesus.
All too often we think of Jesus as a rather benign teacher, with little kids sitting on his lap and a sheep or two grazing in the background. True, Jesus was a gentle man, but, when warranted, he could express anger. When he saw people using the temple as a place to make business deals, he became furious and drove out the religious opportunists.
He often broke ranks with many of the religious traditions and long-cherished biblical interpretations of his day. He welcomed sinners to join his band of followers, and he forgave prostitutes, sometimes even before they repented of sins. He healed the sick on the Sabbath, a no-no in the Judaism of the first century. He surrounded himself with the lowly, the marginalized of his day, people on the fringes, beggars, and even lepers.
Jesus inflamed religious passions by praising people from pagan religions and announced that their faith surpassed even that of the most righteous Jew. He stressed that his followers were to love their enemies and turn the other cheek to their attackers. He rejected materialism and greed and told his disciples that if they wished to follow him, they must sell all their possessions and give the money to the poor. Jesus demanded that we must live selfless lives and not build up treasures for ourselves, if we desired to follow him.
Jesus even discouraged people from worshipping him, saying that God alone should be worshipped. By the end of his career, only a handful of disciples continued to follow him. When he was finally nailed to a cross, he was virtually alone, with the exception of his mother and one disciple—out of the twelve original disciples!
Of course, I had known all these things long before the Pastor’s Conference. But I had never really grappled with what they meant in today’s religious environment. Jesus was a scandalous figure during his short life on earth. He was viewed by many of his contemporaries as a heretic, or worse, a nut-job. At times, when he taught people the ways of God, the ones who listened tried to kill him.
My, how times have changed! Is it because our eyes have been opened, and we know who Jesus really is, and have embraced him as God’s presence on earth, and have radically reoriented our lives to his teachings?
Perhaps. After all, Jesus is praised effusively in churches all across the land, songs are written about him and sung in his honor every Sunday. Large churches are built for thousands of people to worship him and glorify his name. People speak tenderly of Jesus and whisper loving prayers to him.
And yet, how has all this Jesus devotion and adulation changed our culture or our individual lives? With so many Christian churches in our country, one would think that America would reflect the teachings of Jesus. But do we? Are we a people who practice his way of loving people, his way of living sacrificially, his way of putting others before ourselves, his way of welcoming the stranger and immigrant? Are we kind and forgiving to those who insult us or mistreat us? Do we love our enemies?
Maybe somewhere along the way we lost the Jesus of the New Testament, the Jesus who invites us to deny ourselves, to pick up our crosses and follow him. Would the Jesus of the New Testament attract huge crowds of people in modern day churches? Would the Jesus of the New Testament be as popular as some of the mega-church pastors who preach culturally pleasing messages of comfort and consolation but ignore the demands of discipleship?
I wonder sometimes if we haven’t invented a “new” Jesus, a Jesus who blesses our self-centered lifestyles, a Jesus who never rubs us the wrong way, a Jesus whose political convictions mirror our own. The truth of the matter is, many of us don’t really want a Jesus who radically alters our lives. We want a Jesus who gets us into heaven, but not one who gets heaven into us; we crave a Jesus who makes us feel good about ourselves and our lifestyles, but not a Jesus who challenges our indulgent materialisms.
Well, I squirmed all week long in my chair during that Pastor’s Conference as the Mississippi pastor invited us to take a closer look at Jesus. The speaker introduced me to a Jesus I found more terrifying than comforting! I had read the stories and teachings of Jesus so often, and had immersed myself in their theological meanings, but I had never grappled with how embracing these teachings would change my life, my routines, my schedule. My everything! I had been more like a spectator in the life of faith, knew how to play the game, so to speak, but I had seldom stepped onto the playing field or engaged in the day-to-day struggle to practice what Jesus taught, other than in the most superficial ways.
What happens when we decide to put our preconceptions about Jesus aside and actually walk in his footsteps? If we’re not scared silly, then we’re not familiar with the cross, and we certainly have little understanding of Jesus.
