The Synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke offer us the clearest picture of what Jesus actually may have said and taught. If one would take each of the Gospels separately and take out what they record Jesus as actually saying, one would find that he said very little, given the religion that resulted from his time on earth. The largest collection of Jesus' sayings or teachings, of course, is found in his Sermon on the Mount in Matthew and his Sermon on the Plain in Luke. Apart from them, there are Jesus' parables, his teaching stories, which vary in each of the Synoptic Gospels. Then there are his casual conversations with his disciples, the scribes, the Pharisees, and the people he met.
There was no stenographer taking notes as Jesus spoke, no scribe sitting nearby scribbling every word down on papyrus as Jesus taught or during every conversation he had. What we have in the Synoptic Gospels is, at best, a collection of what people recalled Jesus saying and teaching, which were sifted through by those who wrote the Synoptic Gospels to form the linear story of Jesus ministry from birth to resurrection. When one adds the Gospel of John to the Synoptic Gospels, a dramatic shift results from the teachings of Jesus to teachings about Jesus. The result of this shift has placed the teachings of Jesus found in the Synoptic Gospels on the back burner by having Jesus answer his "Who-am-I" question with a multitude of "I am" answers in the Gospel of John.
The Gospel of John and the letters of Paul are what have defined Christianity and the Christian understanding of who Jesus is throughout the centuries of Church history, frequently at the expense of what Jesus taught. Volumes have been written about Jesus and what being the Son of God means, and while there are a multitude of sermons and books written on what Jesus taught in the Synoptic Gospels, rarely are these sermons and books written outside of the theological context of Jesus' birth, death, and resurrection.
The question that crosses one's mind is what was it like to hear these teachings of Jesus without the theological meanings assigned to his birth, death, and resurrection. What would his audience and disciples have heard and what did they make of his teachings at the time he gave them?
Jesus picks up the prophetic proclamation of John the Baptizer regarding the coming of the Kingdom of God. When Jesus says the Kingdom of God is at hand, he was talking about something that already is present, whereas John was talking about preparing for the coming of the Kingdom of God. In fact, it is the presence (in the present tense) of the Kingdom of God that forms the basis of Jesus teachings. The challenge for Jesus was how to open people to what, for Jesus, was its pervasive presence when everything about their life experiences said otherwise.
As Jesus began to consciously live into becoming the son God called him to be, the purpose of God calling him to be his son in whom he was already pleased began to take shape. Knowing himself to be God's son was not just a personal revelation for Jesus. To be God's son was to be God's child and if Jesus was a child of God, was not everyone a child of God also? Weren't the scriptures he knew premised on the idea that every person on the earth is the offspring of God's intimate involvement in shaping and breathing to life our common first parents, Adam and Eve?
Jesus found his ministry and his role in life as a son of God compelling him to exemplify the presence of God's Kingdom to his Jewish brethren, to help them understand that they too are children of a loving Father, God; that the kingdom of God was more akin to being the family of God here on earth and this kingdom, this family, is present if we only open our eyes to it and live into becoming the children God intended us to be. Jesus mission becomes a ministry of reclamation and redeeming this lost notion of everyone's worth in the eyes of God. "Consider the birds of the air. Consider the lilies," Jesus says in Matthew 6. If God cares for them, how much more does God care for you? Jesus takes on an apocalyptic role as the Son of Man not to reveal the end time, but to pull back the curtain on the present time and the reality of our worth as the children of God. This is the essential message of the Kingdom of God.
Immediately before the story of Jesus' transfiguration, Jesus tells his disciples, "Some are standing here will not taste death before they see that the kingdom of God." [See Mark 9:1 and Luke 9:27]. Sometimes understood as Jesus talking about the Second Coming, Jesus is simply indicating that the Kingdom of God is present and that those who seek it will find it in doing the will of God. This is Jesus' understanding of the Kingdom, an understanding that was not shared by his disciples or those who followed him. Most continued to follow Jesus because they thought he might be the Messiah they were looking for, which as I have mention in my previous post was a disturbing thought for Jesus because it became clear they did not understand him and his ministry.
Jesus' method of delivering this message of the Kingdom was to demonstrate it. Jesus touched lepers and those considered unclean, which would have rendered him unclean in the sight of the religious leaders of his day. The loving and caring touch of a human hand is a potent source of healing. Faith combined with love is, in itself, one of the best medicines to heal the spirit, mind, and body. Jesus was a healer, but as the gospels point out, he couldn't heal everyone. He found it especially hard to heal those from his hometown of Nazareth; those who were skeptical of his preaching and had little faith in someone they thought they knew but no longer recognized.
Jesus ate with everybody, the rich, the poor, the religious, and people of ill repute, and his reasoning was simple. Jesus demonstrated to his audience that value of every human being from the smallest child to the foreigner regardless of their gender and position in society. All of them were his siblings. All were parented by the same loving God Jesus saw as his Father and the Father of all.
The Kingdom of God is nothing more and nothing less than the whole creation that sprang from God's desire to be, and this desire to be is experienced in that Love which will not let us go. Every parable that Jesus gave is rooted in Jesus' concept of the Kingdom of God which Jesus used to reveal the presence of the Kingdom as the basis and foundation of life. Jesus is depicted in the Synoptic Gospels as being surprised by the commonality of faith among people who did not share his religious upbringing; that faith in a loving power beyond ourselves is the spiritual thread that binds us to one another, a faith the crosses political and religious boundaries, a faith found in a Samaritan leper, a Roman centurion, and a Syro-Phoenecian woman.
The essential teaching of Jesus is that the Kingdom of God is present, that we and every part of creation is it; that in particular, every human is loved child of God and like Jesus we are called to live into being the children of God that God intends us to be.
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Until next time, stay faithful.
Norm
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