MESSIAH, CHRIST, OR ... ?

Since we're still in the Easter Season, I wanted to take a short excursion into what became of Jesus after the Easter event. As mentioned in other posts, much of Christianity is the result of events that occurred after Jesus' death.  In this post I will take a closer look at what was made of Jesus shortly after his death and how this perspective has changed over time.

QUESTIONS

One can only imagine what Jesus' disciples went through after his death. It was undoubtedly a traumatic time in which their beloved leader and friend was brutally taken from them. In their loss it's conceivable they felt a stronger connection to each other, but in this new sense of connection questions emerged:  "Now what?  Do we go our separate ways? Do we stick together? If we stay together, what reason do we have for doing so?"  Answers to these questions emerged quickly as Jesus' life and death took on new meanings.

It is possible that in this highly charged atmosphere of intense trauma, loss, and guilt the thought of Jesus being dead becomes unthinkable.  Some of his disciples claimed seeing Jesus alive. As discussed in other posts, there is an ethereal component to these visions which to the modern mind argues for plausible explanations that wouldn't have crossed the minds of those who has such experiences at that time.  For those who experienced visions and those who heard of them, they were real and led them to conclude Jesus lives.  This conclusion becomes the premise upon which a community of Jesus followers is formed. 

But the questions don't stop there.  They know who Jesus, the man was, but what were they to make of him now, after his crucifixion and in the light of the claim that he has been resurrected?  Was he still a man?  What was he?  What is he?   Was he a prophet?  Was he the Messiah?  Is he the Messiah?  The resurrection story of Jesus being raised from the dead by God doesn't really answer those questions.  Not everyone who believes that Jesus is resurrected sees the resurrected Jesus and in short order he is no longer "physically" seen by anyone, as he is reported to have ascended to heaven. In spite of the all the gospels' attempt to assure us that he was physically resurrected there is virtually no verifiable proof that he was.

Since Jesus was no longer physically present, the only way "to see" the resurrected Jesus was and is to believe he is resurrected.  The intensity of this belief obviously attracted many followers and the community of believers in the resurrection grew quickly.  At this early stage in the development of Christianity, I don't think the question of Jesus being God crossed anyone's mind.  The first members of this community were Jews and they still possessed the Judaic mindset of an imageless God 

So, what was Jesus?

Jesus fit the job description of prophet.  I don't think anyone then or now would have a problem with that.  Jesus definitely championed the cause of the poor, the oppressed, and the human race in general.  As such, Jesus fit the tradition of the minor prophets; such as, Amos and Micah more than he fit the prophetic profile of Moses or Elijah which the gospel writers go out of their way to portray him as.  The problem with a pure designation of Jesus being a prophet is that the prophets of the Hebrew Scriptures were warning people to clean up their act or else face impending doom. 

At Jesus' time things could have become gloomier or doomier.  The whole land was already under Roman rule.   As such, I don't think the Jesus being merely a prophet appealed to his followers.  If Jesus was a prophet, then he becomes no more than one of many prophets killed by his own people.

Although what Jesus taught was nothing new than what had been taught throughout the generations of Judaism, he brought them to life in a way that was different.  He preached an interconnectedness with God and with each other, including enemies, that was in itself liberating and redeeming. His sense of closeness to God and with all human beings set him apart from other prophets and indicated he must be something more. 

Jesus talked about the Kingdom of God, not the Kingdom of Judah or the Kingdom of Israel.  The kingdom Jesus was referring to was not of this world. The Kingdom of God was transcendent.  If his followers didn't get that before his death, they were certainly getting it after his death and you will find Jesus telling Pilate just that in John 18:36.  This notion of the Kingdom of God becomes an important facet in salvation-based theology because if Jesus was trying to be a king of anything else, he failed.  I should note that when Jesus mentions the Kingdom of God, God is understood to be the king, not Jesus, but that was soon to change. 

THE MESSIAH

Of course there is a problem with Jesus being a messiah.  He didn't really fit that job description very well either.  After all, Jesus did not liberate Judah and Galilee from foreign domination, but I think within the Judaic mindset of Jesus' followers they didn't have a better descriptor available for who Jesus is.  Jesus was viewed as a messiah because the message he both gave and demonstrated was in itself liberating and offered redeeming qualities even in the midst of being dominated by a foreign power.  Jesus' teachings presented a new perspective of what God's Kingdom meant.

In the final analysis, a person like Jesus was either a rabbi , a prophet , or a messiah.  In short order they settle on Jesus being a messiah, and within a very short time he becomes THE MESSIAH who lives and reigns with God the Father. 

If Jesus is THE MESSIAH, he is also considered THE SON OF GOD.  Jesus talked about God as his Father and our Father (as in the Lord's Prayer). The fact that a messiah would be considered a son of God becomes in Jesus' case radicalized into his being THE ONLY BEGOTTEN SON OF GOD. 

Why radicalized?

Because in the Roman Empire, the emperor was considered the Son of God.  Claiming Jesus to be the only-begotten Son of God, theoretically knocks the emperor off his divine throne. You can see how this teaching contains a revolutionary undercurrent to it.  In fact, the early Christians took to devising symbols for this new movement.  Christian graffiti was just that graffiti.  Christian historians have suggested that early Christians used these symbols to identify who was a Christian and who wasn't.  For instance, it is well-known that the early Christians used the cryptic symbol of the fish to identify who was a member of this Kingdom of Christ, ICTHUS, Greek word whose letters stand for "Jesus Christ, Son of God, our Savior."  It also was the astrological symbol of Pices and considered by some the astrological time in which Jesus was born and whose birth brought about the dawn of the Picean age; the Age of Faith.  I doubt that the ICTHUS symbol would have fooled wary imperial officials as to its association with Christians.  Like gang graffiti of today, Christian graffiti was there to notify members of their presence in a given area, and perhaps taunt the powers that be. 

I don't believe the early Christians saw themselves as militant revolutionaries, but I think they understood the revolutionary undercurrent of their message which had an appeal to those who saw themselves as oppressed by Roman rule.  In fact, I believe this was an early form of passive resistance of which the Roman Imperium was wary of and led emperors and local officials to engage in brief periods of persecution.  In the fourth century, Constantine would exploit this undercurrent to his advantage in order to gain the imperial throne.

THE CHRIST

As Christianity became less connected to Judaism and increasingly Hellenized and influenced by Platonism, Jesus, THE MESSIAH becomes JESUS, THE CHRIST.  The terms "Christ" and "Messiah" mean pretty much the same thing, "anointed one."  In my opinion, however, the use of the term Christ has come to mean something more than Messiah does in Judaism.  THE CHRIST has become THE KING, part of the Trinitarian God-head.  In fact, in the Christian liturgical calendar, the last Sunday of the Church Year is called "Christ the King Sunday" to this day.

Another difference is that in Judaism there exists the possibility that there could be more than one messiah and that some already have appeared or modeled what the messiah should be like.  Moses, for instance, fits the bill of a messiah as does Joshua, Gideon, David, and the prophet Elijah - people who helped God redeem  and restore Israel from oblivion.   The Persian king, Cyrus, was also called a messiah because he returned the Jews of the Babylonian diaspora back to Judah and helped reconstruct the second Temple.   

The Messiah in Judaism would be considered a son of God, but not God. The Messiah in the Judaic tradition of Passover is that person who will be announced by Elijah.  Elijah has his own seat at every Seder table, but (as yet) hasn't shown up. I get a feeling that many, if not most, Jews don't expect him to.  If Elijah doesn't show, the messiah doesn't show up. 

The Elijah story has become a mythic insertion into the Passover story. There was no Elijah at the first Passover that took place in Egypt, which is what the Feast of Passover commemorates.   The Messiah in Judaism has, in my opinion, become an archetypal figure (of sorts) reflecting the perpetual hope and longing for peace that is so beautifully rendered in the Judaic observance of this tradition.

The archetypal sense of the Messiah is mimicked in Christianity's theology of the Second Coming of Christ, but the Second Coming doesn't exactly equivocate the messianic sense of the Passover narrative.  For example, as mentioned above, The Messiah, in Judaism, is unknown, and some rabbis have warned that should someone say he is the Messiah run away as fast as you can.  In fact Jesus says the same thing (using the Greek term Christ in most translations) in Matthew 24:23 and in Mark 13:21, reflecting this rabbinic wisdom.

In Christianity we know who THE CHRIST is:  Jesus is THE CHRIST.  Jesus, the man, however, is different than Jesus, the Christ.  This can be easily deduced by an unbiased reading the synoptic gospels.  Jesus, the man, is the historical Jesus, and Jesus, the Christ, is the mythic or cosmic Jesus that extends beyond the person of Jesus as a male human. 

OR...

There is another way to understand Jesus.  I do not see Jesus as a messiah or as THE CHRIST. These titles were assigned to him by others, including the direct quotes attributed to Jesus.  Jesus can be defined as a religious humanist. This perspective wouldn't have been conceived of at the time in which Jesus lived. This perspective is one that emerges from looking back at what Jesus taught and what Jesus did two millennia later.

As a religious humanist, Jesus is understood to be a unique human being who possessed a profound intuitive understanding of the divine in natural existence; the divinity in being that is neither supernatural nor supra-natural.  Nature itself is a divine state ("Consider the lilies of the fields", and "the birds of the air.," said Jesus).  Life, itself, is a divine occurrence and human beings are the highest form of this divine, natural life form on the planet Earth.  I don't know that Jesus would have or could have agreed with the way I'm talking about it today, but I don't believe he saw himself as a messiah or as an exception to normal human existence as he is frequently portrayed in Christian scripture.

Jesus possessed the ability for seeing people and situations the way they were.  Jesus was a product of his age and used the conventions and mindsets of his age to get his message across.  Some of what he said and did sounds foreign to us today, but his message is very relevant in any age.  Scholars will debate whether Jesus was educated or uneducated.  I think  such debates are irrelevant. 

Jesus obviously was brilliant, but I think his brilliance was the result of an intuition about life.  He was obviously knowledgeable about Hebrew Scriptures.  Whether he knew how to read or write is open for debate, but life itself is a great teacher and intuition is one of the great means of learning and knowing.

We can assume many things about Jesus, because none of us knows the real-time Jesus.  Even Paul didn't know the real Jesus.  Paul knew an experience of Jesus as the Christ, but he knew little of the real-time, pre-Christ Jesus.  In fact the Acts of the Apostles and some of Paul's own epistles reveal there was a conflict between him and the other apostles about that fact.

Like Paul, we don't know what it was like to be around Jesus before his death, and stories about him or about anyone rarely conveys a real sense of what another person was really like.  So at best, after two thousand years, we have a traditional understanding of Jesus based on the Christian scriptures that were written anywhere between twenty to eighty years after Jesus' death.  On top of that it is clear that many of them have been tampered with or editorialized to reflect a specific theological agenda about Jesus as the Christ. 

I, personally, find that the orthodox tradition we have today, known as Christianity, to be based on scant and spurious information.  On the other hand, what attracted Jesus' followers to the point that they could not let him go is what intrigues me about Christianity.  It is what fascinates me about the concept of God and religion as a whole.  As editorialized and doctored as the synoptic gospels are, I feel the writers and editors were sincere in trying to portray who the real-time Jesus was.  Although we can never really know that person, we can make some deductions based on what these gospels say. 

Until next time, stay faithful.