Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph and Mary was and remains a human being, just like his parents, just like his brothers and sisters, and just like us. In fact, Jesus' teachings demonstrates a humanity that is derived from his experience as a human and an observer of humanity during the time in which he lived.
If Christianity is to experience a Copernican revolution, it must be oriented to the fact that Jesus is purely and simply one of us, a human being, nothing more and nothing less. It is important to set aside the notion of Jesus as the Christ or as a messiah in order to see the man for who he truly is, a human.
It is important for us to embrace the fact that Jesus came into the world just like us, a baby brought about by a sexual relationship between his parents Joseph and Mary, and that he left this world just like we will and everyone else before us has, he died. Jesus is solely a human.
Saying this may strike one as an attempt to denigrate Jesus, to lower his importance, to dethrone him, as it were, from the right hand of God the Father.
On the contrary, my saying this is to protect his integrity as a human, as one of us; to guard his human-ness, his humanity against the religious excesses of making him into something he wasn't and isn't, as a means to underscore his unique understanding of the human condition and highlight the teachings he offered the people of his day and the people of every age on how to get through the chaos we create and continue to perpetuate.
It is essential to protect Jesus human' nature against the divination that came into being after his death which has largely dispensed with or relinquished his teachings, the very heart and soul of his gospel message. It is through the life of Jesus that we understand what it is to be human and the potential goodness embedded in being the human God created us and intends us to be.
Having already addressed Jesus' crucifixion, the story of his resurrection, and introducing the concept of original grace into the conversation in my last three posts, it is important to take a fresh look at Jesus' life and more importantly to review his life's work and ministry with fresh, unbiased eyes.
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Jesus' personal history is spotty at best. The only linear history we have of Jesus' life comes from the Synoptic Gospels of Mark, Luke, and Matthew. There are no other outside sources close to the time Jesus lived in Palestine that can be used to corroborate their stories or refute them, even though they disagree with each other over specific events and the descriptions of their occurrences.
What these three gospels agree on is that Jesus' ministry begins at his baptism by John the Baptizer in the Jordan River after which he experienced a vision in which he saw the Spirit of God descending "like" a dove and hearing the words, "You are my beloved, my son, in whom I am well-please." That experience is the agreed starting point of Jesus' story.
That Jesus may have been born in Bethlehem, that his family may have spent time in Egypt, and that he was taken to the Temple when he was twelve are possibilities. The stories surrounding such events, however, are speculative or have been given interpretive meanings. We must set such speculative interpretations aside because they immediately depict Jesus as someone other than a normal human being.
Given the polytheistic mindset of people living around the Mediterranean in the first century of the Common Era, the divine nature of Jesus was considered possible, if not plausible. One only has to study the various opinions and debates about Jesus' nature in the three centuries that followed his time on earth to understand the weird compromised conclusion of the Council of Nicea that Jesus was both "True Man" and "True God."
The purpose of this post is to set aside speculations and the compromising position Jesus was put in by various Church councils. Even in our modern and secular mindset, we know that a divine nature ascribed to Jesus would outweigh his human nature. Even should no one believe in this dualistic nature of ascribed to Jesus, they would understand that divinity is weightier than a human. We only have to look at the Gospel of John and the Epistles to establish that fact. In this and the posts that will follow, we will look at Jesus' story from the perspective of his being nothing more and nothing less than one of us, a human being.
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The question that is never satisfactorily answered in the Synoptic Gospels is why Jesus took it upon himself to seek baptism by John in the Jordan River. The answer these gospels default to is the usual one of his doing something in order to fulfill the prophetic scriptures of the Old Testament. If one gives that proposition serious consideration, it becomes clear that it is a very weak explanation for why Jesus did or didn't do anything. The gospel writers read back into Jesus' life experiences a prophetic identity that negates any human explanation why Jesus did what he did or didn't do at times. This is not to say that Jesus wasn't influenced by the prophets, but rather to say he didn't do things simply to "fulfill" a prophetic identity or purpose.
If we remove the explanations of Jesus fulfilling the scriptures, we are left to seek a human reason that would have prompted Jesus to go to the Jordan to be baptized by John. Then the obvious answer is he was doing what everyone else was doing by going to the Jordan to be baptized by John. Like everyone else trekking to the Jordan, he was seeking a life changing experience that would prepare him for the emergence of God's kingdom on earth that John was proclaiming. That Jesus was heeding John's call to repent reveals how Jesus viewed himself prior to doing so.
The reason why Jesus came to the Jordan River was because he saw himself as a sinner in need of repentance in order to prepare himself for this coming kingdom. This of course flies in the face of a theology premised on Jesus being sinless, as some of the epistles claim. Given the premise of why others were trekking to the Jordan, however, one can sufficiently conclude that Jesus was taking a journey to Jordan for the same reasons others were doing so.
Jesus didn't see himself as sinless or possessing some immunity from sinning or the effects of sin.
We followers of Jesus need to stop there and let that understanding of Jesus sink in. We don't need to speculate as to what kind of sins he might have committed that led him to the Jordan. We only need to know that he felt sinful and in need of repentance in order to do so. Why else would Jesus publicly seek and display repentance of his sinfulness to those who were also gathered at the Jordan to be baptized? Jesus was there as a contrite penitent, offering himself for service in God's kingdom for whatever role God would prepare him for in that emerging kingdom. What we can assume is that Jesus had no idea what this event would lead to.
While one can only speculate what was going through Jesus' mind when he entered the Jordan River to be baptized, we are told that upon emerging from that experience he saw his relationship with God in a totally new light. He has a vision that changed his perception of God; a vision that begins to change his perception of the world, a vision in which he hears God's call to be the child God intended him to be. He hears the voice of God calling him his beloved, his son, in whom God is very pleased with. In Mark's and Matthew's Gospels, it is clear that only Jesus hears this voice. Luke leaves it open as to whether others heard it.
Given what happens next, we know that this experience was disturbing and overwhelming for him; so much so, that it would drive him into the wilderness. Jesus had to flee the environment he was in, to be alone in order to ponder a question that would haunt him throughout his ministry, "Who am I?"
In my next post we will take a look into Jesus' journey into the wilderness and his struggle with that question.
Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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