JESUS' BIRTH - THE MEANING OF THE MYTHOS

 

[Blogger's Note: After finishing my last post, my son-in-law let me borrow a book he had recently purchased called, "The Immortality Key" by Brian C. Muraresku.  It is a scholarly book that begins exploring the Eleusinian Mysterys but which leads to an exploration of the Pagan Continuity Hypotheses  in relationship to  "paleo-christianity" (before 313 AD) and the early practice of the eucharist in the home-churches and catacombs of the Greek speaking Mediterranean.  It's a fascinating book I highly recommend for those interested in early church history, which we know so little about prior to the 4th century;  as much of what we do know has been sifted and filtered through the imperial church of the late fourth century.  I will likely make some references to this book as it offers some insight to the mythic understanding of Jesus. - Norm]

In my previous post, I examined the myths of Jesus' birth.   As mentioned in that post there are two distinct myths; one offered in the Gospel of Matthew from Joseph's perspective as Jesus' nominal father and the one offered in the Gospel of Luke from Mary's perspective.  That neither of these stories are based on fact, other than the fact that Jesus was born, leave us no choice but to consider them myths, which raises the question why there was a need to provide mythic tales surrounding Jesus' birth. 

The simplest answer is that whereas all the Gospels in the New Testament were written for the Greek speaking world of the Mediterranean and Jesus was just a man from Galilee who presented a different take on the law and prophets of ancient Israel and Judah, his teachings wouldn't have gone very far.  Jesus didn't actually teach anything that was new to Judaism.  What was new was his interpretation and application of the scriptures he knew.   What caught the attention of people living in the Roman Empire at the time was the stories about Jesus, which were used to declare him as the Son of God.  In Judaism,  the term "Son of God" could be applied to kings, prophets, and the awaited for messiah.  Beyond Judah that term meant divinity; in that, the Son of God is God.   

Matthew and Luke faced a mixed audience of both Jews and Greeks.  As noted in my previous post, Matthew was focused on proving Jesus' divinity by referencing Old Testament prophesies.  While the Gospel of Luke makes slight use of prophecy regarding Mary, it appeals to a broader, cosmopolitan  Greek-speaking audience within the Roman Empire where gods were known to impregnate women  who bore offspring considered to be Demi-gods.  

Brian Muraseku draws an interesting connection between the Greek god Dionysus and Jesus regarding their birth stories.  I will speak more of this when it comes to mythic Jesus in the Gospel of John, but for now (to whet one's interest) Jesus and Dionysus are both connected to Galilee, Jesus hailed from Nazareth and Dionysus hailed from Scythopolis or Nysa, hence the name Dionysus or the god from Nysa part of the Decaoplis area and close to Nazareth. [Muraresku, Brian, The Immortality Key, St. Martin Press Group, 120 Broadway, New York, New York, pg. 200]

The point here being that such connection in the first century would resonate to a much large audience.  Within the ancient world, the idea that Jesus is God had precedents for such an understanding  

But what about today? 

How are we to understand the stories of Jesus' birth in the twenty-first century if the initial intent was to present Jesus not only as a Son of God, but also God incarnate?  

* * *

I am an advocate for keeping Jesus fully human and the concept of God as something beyond our comprehension to fully know.  I do not see a need to divinize Jesus any more than we are divinized when God breathed God's self into our first mythical parent, Adam to life.  Here I am going to rely on my primary thesis regarding Jesus:  What is true about  Jesus is true about us; likewise, what is true about us is true about Jesus.  

That premise rests on the one fact that is demonstrable - Jesus was a human just like us:

                                                                    Jesus was born.  

                                                                    Jesus lived.  

                                                                    Jesus died.  

In liturgical terms, we can identify this statement as the mystery of life that applies to all of us.  

I'm not a huge fan of using the term mystical, but for the purpose of this series on the Mythic Jesus, it is a term I cannot avoid because myth moves us from the concretized factual towards the perennial truths that myths often present in a mystic sense.  Given the facts, many of the stories about Jesus formulate mysteries based on myths which have been distilled into what is called the mystery of faith within liturgical settings:   

                                                                    Christ has died.  

                                                                    Christ is risen.  

                                                                    Christ will come again.  

It is the mythic that forms a demarcation between the factual and the mystical.  

* * *

If Jesus is purely human and nothing more, what truth(s) does Jesus' mythic/mystical birth stories present?     

I think there may be several.  The myth of Jesus' birth offers the idea that  every person born into this world is ultimately God's child and that this unfathomable creative and animating force is our true lineage.  Such a lineage is not based on a bloodline but rather a breath-line.  We share breath with every living thing that has been born on this earth since the dawn of  life on this planet.  

Mary's question, "How this can be?"  is the ultimate ontological question.  Gabriel's answer that the spirit of God would hover over her recalls Genesis 1 when the spirit of God hovered over the waters before God said, "Let there be light."  This creates a mystical connection between Jesus and God's first son Adam.  Jesus' birth represents a reset of the original creation story with a twist.  

Instead of Eve coming from Adam's side (rib), this new Adam (Jesus) comes from a new Eve's (Mary's) womb.  In essence, Jesus' birth is a mystic rebirth of who we are.  The Christmas story, especially as recorded in the Gospel of Luke, is essentially our birth story.  We enter the world naked and in need of care from the moment we take our first breath, the breath that every living thing shares with us on this earth.  To this day we continue to recycle the the first breath that Jesus took, that Adam took, and that every creature took since the beginning of life on this planet.  We are more connected by air than by blood, and we are more connected by being alive and experiencing life together more than anything else.

If God is a verb, the creative force that energizes all the power within the universe and animated life on this planet, then within this minimalist story of a baby boy born in a stable we are brought down to earth in order to be grounded in mystery that is life.  The idea that God came down and became incarnate is to recognize our common source and our common essence, the very ground we walk on. We are all incarnations of the creative and energizing force we call God.  In this sense, the birth story of Jesus in Luke resonates with the Gospel of John, more than it does with the Gospel of Matthew.  

Mary is the main character in this birth story.  Her visit from Gabriel starts her on a mystical journey with the child she bears.  She doesn't question the mechanics of the situation, she accepts the position God has placed her in.  What does it all mean?  How can it be? Are question that open the gate into her mystical journey where her pondering nature is the mode of transportation.  That which she has given life to becomes her life.

In Luke's version there are "shepherds abiding their fields by night, keeping watch over their sheep" to whom a host of angels appear to give them the good news of Jesus' birth.  Shepherds keeping watch over their sheep during the night present strong metaphorical connotations.  It is to those who watch over the vulnerable who get invited to see for themselves a new creation's humble beginning.  

Being awake to the dangers that lurk and prey on the helpless and unaware is a prophetic calling.  In the twenty-first century the shepherds of this era are the "WOKE," the people who are on the lookout for those who agitate and separate people into warring factions so that they are easy prey for the power-hungry.   They are the peacemakers that Jesus talks about, who are specifically called the children of God.  [Matthew 5:9] 

* * *

The Gospel of Matthew offers another perspective of Jesus' birth; that of a parent or a caretaker.  The "in-name-only" father of Jesus, Joseph, is the main character in Jesus' birth story in the Gospel of Matthew.  In order to protect Mary and Jesus, Joseph must give up his personal pride, his ego.  Joseph is dreamer (a mystic if you will).  He processes his dilemma of being married to Mary when he finds out she is pregnant with someone else's child.  His first impulse is to put Mary away privately.  He cares about Mary because he loves her, but he is faced with a nagging question, "Does she really love me?"  As far as the child goes, why should he care about it? It's not his.  He's in an awkward position and something deeper is nagging him not to  make a quick decision, so Joseph sleeps on it.

In his dreams an angel comes to him and fills Jospeh in on the details of Mary's pregnancy.  He immediately understands  and accepts that the child she bears is God's child.  Joseph awakens with a fresh outlook on both his wife and this child of God who he is entrusted to his care for as his own.  Joseph is not exactly an adoptive father.  He like Mary and Jesus are being used as archetypes, the Holy Family.  There is an otherness to their relationship with each; in that, they serve as exemplars of how we are to relate to each other and treat each other. 

Joseph is the adult in the room; both by age and by role.  He must overcome his inclination for self-preservation and become the preservationist of the other regardless of how the other appears to him.  He not only is given insight into their importance to God, but he sees their importance to whole family of God, the whole of humanity.  

The Gospel of Matthew also has visitors coming from a long distance to see Jesus.  The priestly Magi from ancient Persia, like the shepherds in the Gospel of Luke are watchers.  Unlike the shepherds, however, the Magi are seeking fulfillment of a Hebrew prophecy that said a king would be born in Bethlehem.  [Micah 5:2,4].  They offer the toddler Jesus metaphorical gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh, which are traditionally understood as standing for his being a king, a priest, and a prophet.  Some see myrrh as symbols of the oil used to prepare his body for burial.  

The Magi were not Judaic priests, they were Zoroastrian priest of one of the oldest monotheistic religions.  How they came into contact with the prophet Micah can be explained by Jews sent into exile by the Babylonians who later came under the rule of the Persians. Their meaning in the twenty-first century is that their presence represents the perennial wisdom that exists throughout the world, a wisdom that will find a path to truth for those who are seeking it. 

The world of our making is never safe, and it wasn't safe for the infant/toddler Jesus.  Herod is a symbol of the paranoia that always accompanies those who seek power.  Any threat to power inches everyone in the way closer to death.  

The journey into Egypt is a reverse of the Israelites escape from Egypt.  Egypt in Jesus' day was a safer refuge for Jews than Jerusalem, a  city in the throes of constant power struggles between religious leaders, potentates like King Herod and the Roman governors.  

In the twenty-first century we must see Jesus as a refugee like the hundreds of thousands of refugees today on the move throughout the world.  Every human has ancestors that were refugees at some point.  Every person of European and Asian decent living in the U.S. is refugee of some kind.  Those who follow Jesus cannot turn a blind eye to those seeking refuge. 

The meaning of the mythos of Jesus' birth has many layers.  I have touched on only what had seeped into my mind at this time.  The reader may think of others, but from my perspective what I have written here will suffice for the present.

The next post in this series will be address the mythos attached to Jesus' baptism in the Jordan.

Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

  

 

  

THE MYTHIC JESUS - JESUS' BIRTH - THE MYTHOS

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.  Through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven:  by the power of the Holy Spirit  he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,  and was made man.   

From the second article of the Nicene Creed

* * *

It is probable that what we consider myths today were considered fact in ancient times by a vast majority of people.  Virgin births or a woman being impregnated by a god was always considered an exception to rule of human conception, but not unheard of.  The resulting offspring was considered semi-divine and could ultimately ascend to the status of full divinity, once his or her mortal coil was shrugged off and with the approval of the other gods and goddesses. 

In Jesus' case, the New Testament gives us two versions of Jesus' birth, one from the perspective of his mother, Mary's, found in Luke's Gospel and one from his nominal father, Joseph's point of view, found in Matthew's Gospel.  There are some interesting nuances to both stories that insist Jesus, by virtue of Joseph being Mary's husband, is a direct descendent of King David; an important factor in his being the Messiah and having claim to the Davidic throne.  As such, both Gospels offer the reader two genealogies of Jesus that make a point of Jesus' claim of being a direct descendent of David through Joseph's lineage, while making the point that Joseph is not Jesus' biological father but rather his nominal father by virtue of having married Jesus' biological mother.  (See Matthew 1 and Luke 3).

Jewish myths are often cast from within a genealogical perspective to offer authenticity, in the sense that the myth involves a real person chosen by God for a divine purpose.  In Jesus' case this becomes a bit murky; in that, Jospeh is disclaimed as having any sexual relationship with Mary prior to conception and birth of Jesus.  This is where the mythic imagination is needed.  

Why Jesus' birth was cast as a myth in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke is a bit of a mystery.

Couldn't Jesus have been declared God's Son as the biological offspring of Joseph? 

Couldn't we have accepted Jesus as the Messiah and God's Son without the insistence that Mary had no previous sexual encounter with a male that resulted in her becoming pregnant with Jesus?   

Both the Gospels of Mark and John make no mention of Jesus's "virgin" birth, leaving room for Joseph to be Jesus' biological father.  As noted in past posts, Paul's epistles make no mention of Jesus' birth other than saying he was born a Jew by virtue of being "born of woman, born under the law." (Galatians 4:4).

Why bother with creating a mythic story surrounding Jesus' birth?  

One probable reason is to provide continuity between prophecy and the person of Jesus.  That Jesus was born of a virgin is based on Isaiah 7:14, "A virgin shall conceive and bear a son..."  That Jesus was born in Bethlehem is based on Micah 5:2, "But you Bethlehem... out you will a ruler come..."   That Joseph had to escape to Egypt with Mary and Jesus due to Herod's plot to kill Jesus is based on Hosea 11:1 ..."out of Egypt I have called my son."       

Let's consider the "virgin" birth of Jesus.  Most biblical scholars today tell us that the Hebrew word for virgin in Isaiah did not imply a female who never had sexual intercourse, but rather was in reference to a young girl.  What is overlooked in that reference is no mention that God would be directly involved in the child's conception, only that a young girl will conceive and bear a son and will call his name Immanuel.   

Why did both Matthew and Luke decide to cast Jesus' birth as the result of a divinely wrought pregnancy? 

To answer that question, we need to consider the times in which the authors of these two Gospels lived and the audiences they were writing for.  Miraculous births would catch peoples' attention.  Nothing would point to the divine nature of someone than that person being declared the offspring of God; especially, in the cosmopolitan world of the polytheistic Roman Empire where such accounts would have drawn the attention of both gentiles and Hellenized Jews who would have been aware of such stories within other religions at the time.  There would have been an openness to the possibility that such a miracle could occur within a Jewish context as the prophecy of Isaiah was interpreted by both Matthew and Luke to lend credibility to such speculation.  

That angels appear to both Jospeh and Mary in these gospels lends mythic continuity between these stories. The presence of Gabriel adds to the mythology, as Gabriel is first cited as a mythic figure the mythical Hebrew stories of Daniel and Enoch.  The archangel Gabriel originated in the Zoroastrian religion of ancient Persia.  Gabriel serves as God's messenger to humankind.  Interestingly, Gabriel is not mentioned in prophecies that were promulgated prior to the Babylonian captivity, appearing in Jewish scripture after the Jewish exiles were subject to Persian rule following the fall of Babylon.  The presence of Gabriel lends also lends apocalyptic and eschatological significance to the story of Jesus' virgin birth. 

Was Jesus' conception asexual?

Anything sexual in Judaism is associated with uncleanliness and impurity that required special practices to ensure cleanliness.  To ensure that Jesus was completely sinless or spotless required that conception was as pure as could be.  God does not have sexual intercourse with Mary.  Instead, the Holy Spirit hovers over her, much like the Spirit of God hovered over creation and in this sense Jesus becomes a new creation forming in Mary's womb.  This is unlike the sexual trysts between mortal humans and Greek and Roman gods. Theologically, Mary was also considered pure and spotless herself as a virgin (and in Roman Catholic doctrine was herself immaculately conceived;  being free from original sin). That also begs the question, if God could cause Mary to be sinless, why not Jesus?   It also suggests that Jesus' conception occurred before Mary experienced menstruation which would indicate that she was very young indeed when she conceived. 

In Luke's account, Mary is portrayed as frightened by Gabriel's visitation and the thought of becoming pregnant and questioning how such an occurrence would take place since she had not "known" a man.  Gabriel assures her of a sexless union that will result in her having a son who she is to name Jesus.

What about Joseph?  

Meanwhile, in the Gospel of Matthew, we have Joseph's reaction to the news that Mary is pregnant with a child whose conception he was not involved with, although he was betrothed to her.  That he was betrothed to Mary brings a bit of drama to the whole story of Jesus' conception.  Apparently, it isn't till after he married Mary, that he found out that she was pregnant with a child that wasn't his.  That they did not engage in premarital sex places Joseph in a quandary. Knowing that he is not the father of this child led him to conclude he must find a way to quietly get Mary out of his life through a divorce.  He did not have to accuse her of adultery to divorce her.  In fact, under Jewish law he did not have to give a reason for a divorce other than he no longer wanted to be married to her.    

Enter an angel (Gabriel?) who informs Jospeh in a dream that the child is bearing was conceived by the Holy Spirit.  This is all the proof that Joseph needs to keep Mary as his wife. Given the patriarchal nature and religious rigidity of Judaism and the culture in which Joseph lived, the notion of getting a divorce without making a legal case for it or out of it could be understood as face-saving on Joseph's part, but reacting to a strong dream without question, though possible, is not very probable and lends credibility to the mythic nature of this story.  

In reality, it is more likely that Joseph and Mary were simply in love and married, as there is certain evidence for this on a genetic basis.  To be a direct descendant of King David by bloodline would have meant that Jesus was Joseph's biological son.  Even in the first century direct descendent meant someone could trace a biological link to someone in the past.  We can play with that by saying God was able to give Jesus' Joseph's genes without the need for sexual intercourse because all thing are possible with God.  

Yes, but why would God bother when God just as easily could have made Joseph's son God's Son simply by declaring him as such as in Jesus' baptism?  That was sufficient for the author of the Gospel of Mark.   After all, Jesus once stated that he could make children of Abraham from stones (Matthew 3:9).  The issue that requires a mythic interpretation of Jesus' divinely initiated conception is purity, i.e. sexual purity; as in, an asexual conception in order for Jesus to be the sinless, spotless Lamb of God described in the Gospel of John.  

Where was Jesus born?

Both the Gospel of Matthew and the Gospel of Luke state that Jesus was born in Bethlehem.  Unlike the Gospel of Luke, however, the Gospel of Matthew places Joseph's actual home in Bethlehem and it is there he had taken Mary after he married her and there, in their home, that Jesus was born.  To be clear, in Matthew there is no mention of Caesar Augustus, a census requiring a trip from Nazareth to Bethlehem, an inn with no rooms available, a stable in which Jesus was born or a manger in which he was laid.  

What about angels appearing to shepherds in their fields, guarding their flocks during the night?

This is where the mythic imagination of the author of Luke's gospel is evident.  Obviously, apart from Luke's account there does not exist any corroborating story to confirm what Luke's gospel is saying.  The heavens opening up and an angel announcing that Jesus is born and a large number of angels begin singing, "Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth, goodwill toward men" serves a mythic purpose, giving meaning to birth of Jesus as something to take note of; that there is more to this birth of baby boy than meets the eye.  Beyond that there is more to Jesus than meets the eye.  The angels don't wake up the sleeping residents of Bethlehem, rather they make their announcement to vigilant shepherds keeping watch over their flocks and it is their vigilance that should catch our attention and their willingness to believe the message of the angels and leave their flock momentarily to see this miraculous baby.  

Who are the wise men that follow the star to Bethlehem?

In Matthew's gospel there is no mention of angels making a grand appearance to shepherds at night. An angel approaches Jospeh in his dreams, but who come to see this miraculous baby is what the King James Version of the Bible identify as wise men.  Matthew doesn't give an exact number of how many.  That we have settled on three is due to the gifts they brought; gold, frankincense, and myrrh.    In the original Greek texts, these wise men were referred to as μάγος (magos) or magi.  They were not kings, but rather part of a priestly caste associated with (you guessed it) Zoroastrianism.  They were also considered astrologers whose supposed study of the stars led them to identify a movement in the stars that signified the birth of a king and a particular star that ultimately would lead them to Bethlehem. There is no need to say whether this star was an asteroid or some like phenomenon.  This is a mythic rendering of Jesus' birth.  

The author of Matthew was more concerned with casting Jesus' birth as a fulfillment of Judaism's prophetic scriptures than the author of Luke's gospel.  Although there is no specific prophecy regarding magi coming, there is a prophesy in Isaiah 60:1-6 of Kings bearing gold and frankincense.  The Psalms also mention "kings and nations bowing down before him"   with "him" referring to a messiah.  

If Jesus' was born in Joseph's home at Bethlehem, how did he end up living in Nazareth of Galilee? 

How Jesus ends up being in Nazareth is because King Herod learns of these magi coming into his realm in search of king.  According to Matthew, Herod was wary of anyone who might challenge his throne.  Accordingly, once he found out about a baby boy being born in Bethlehem who was to be king, he reported orders that all children between newly born and two years of age be killed.  There is no proof that such a thing actually occurred, although historians would not have put it past Herod to do such a horrible thing.   Once again what lends it be a mythic element is the likelihood that Matthew was using such a story to connect it to a prophecy in Jeremiah (31:15) "Rachel weeping for her children...". 

According to Matthew, Joseph is told in a dream to take both Mary and Jesus and flee into Egypt.  The journey to Egypt is also attached to prophecy fulfillment, "Out of Egypt I have called my son." (Hosea 11:1).  Of course, none of these interpretations can be specifically linked to the birth of Jesus.  God calling his son out of Egypt most likely would have been interpreted and is interpreted in Judaism as Israel.  That Jesus spent some of his early childhood in Egypt is possible, as there was a large community of Jews living in Alexandria and if there was political turmoil in Judah at the time of Jesus' birth, Joseph may have taken his family beyond the reach of Herod for a period of time.  Was there a reason for Joseph needing to leave Judah other than being told in a dream to do so?  If Jospeh was a known direct descendant of King David and Herod had gotten wind of it, it is possible that Herod would be searching for anyone who might make a claim on his throne and have the ability to raise an army against him.  All of this is speculation and while the possibility exists that there may have been legitimate reasons for Joseph heading off to Egypt and then resettling in Nazareth of Galilee strikes me as a more mythic reason for doing so as result of Jesus' birth.   

Matthew gives a reason for Jospeh heading towards Nazareth as a new home and for setting up shop as a carpenter is again associated with a prophecy, "He will be called a Nazarene." (Matthew 2:23).  The problem with this prophecy is that there is no Old Testament scripture where it is found.  There is a number of speculative possibilities regarding the fact there is no known source to this prophecy.  My own thought on this is that this may be mythic overkill; in that, the author of Matthew was trying to make everything concerning Jesus' life associated with prophecy and needed a story-line to get him from Bethlehem to Nazareth.  These dramatic events are totally absent in the Gospel of Luke. 

Who are Simeon and Anna in the Gospel of Luke?

In Luke's Gospel one is given to believe that everything started in Nazareth and had Joseph and Mary travel to Bethlehem because that Joseph's ancestral home to be taxed and then returned to Nazareth.  In Luke, things normalize after Jesus' birth.  Jesus is circumcised and named Jesus after the eighth day and he is taken to the Temple to be presented by Joseph and Mary as their firstborn male child.  We are given to believe that by this time they found a home or place to stay in Bethlehem after Jesus was born, as they were in closer proximity to Jerusalem.   

The author of Luke does not rely on fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy once Jesus is born.  Instead Luke introduces us to two living prophets at the time, Simeon and Anna.   Simeon is not specifically depicted as a prophet.  Rather, he is depicted as a devout man upon whom the Holy Spirit rested, and likely was a priest.   He is attributed as being the author of the famous liturgical hymn, the "Nunc Dimittis."   Anna is depicted as a prophetess who lived in the Temple.   When Joseph and Mary presented Jesus in the Temple, they took him to Simeon, who was probably a priest.  Simeon takes Jesus into his arms and is the first to praise God for what he waited his entire life for, the Messiah.  Then Anna approaches at the same moment and prophesied the same.  

There are no other records regarding Simeon and Anna.  What we know of them is what the Gospel of Luke tells us about them.  That they are real people is likely and Luke's reference to them give legitimacy to his story.   Luke had no idea what Simeon or Anna actually said.  Luke literally uses poetic license to create "Simeon's Song," the "Nunc Dimmitis,"  just as he did in creating "Mary's Song," the "Magnificat," and the "Song of Zechariah," the "Benedictus."

What about Zechariah and his wife Elizabeth?

Part of the mythic story of Jesus' birth in the Gospel of Luke involves a distant cousin of Jesus, John the Baptizer, which played a role in the mythic birth of Jesus.  A mythic element attached to that birth is that the original Zoroastrian angel, Gabriel, appears to Zechariah and tells him that his wife, Elizabeth, who was of an age when conception was unlike, would conceive a bear a son, who he is to name, John.  As the story goes, because of his disbelief regarding Elizabeth's ability to have child  Zechariah was unable to speak until John was born.   At the time of naming the infant, Zechariah motions to those gathered who thought the child would be named Zechariah that he disapproved and motions for something to write on, Zechariah did as Gabriel told him to do and named the baby John, after which, he was immediately able to speak.   

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THE MYTHOS

The Gospel of Luke gives us a family connection between John the Baptizer and Jesus that none of the other Gospels do.   Christians rarely consider the glaring fact that within the three Synoptic Gospels there are significant differences with regard to how the beginning of Jesus' story starts.  In the Gospel of Matthew we are offered a perspective that focuses on Joseph's role the protector,  the Holy Family mythos.  On the other hand, the Gospel of Luke offers a perspective that focuses on the Mary's role as the mother of Jesus, the Mother of God mythos, and differs greatly as to other characters involved in the mythos of Jesus' birth.  The Gospel of Mark offers no mythos regarding Jesus' birth.  

In the Christian mind, the birth of Jesus is a mixture of both the Gospel of Matthew's and the Gospel of Lukes mythic tales.  Both the tale of Jesus birth in Matthew and Luke are accepted as one tale from two perspectives thus forming the mythos of Jesus' birth. This is reflected in creche scenes around the world Mary and Joseph with Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes lying in a manger with with cattle, donkeys, shepherds and sheep, wise men presenting gold, frankincense, and myrrh with an angel or two hovering overhead and the star shining in the background.  It has all become one piece, one story derived from two mythic interpretations.  

The mythos' initial intent is to define Jesus as the son of God from the moment of his conception and birth.  In the Christian mind today, is added the mystic mythos of John's Gospel; that what is laying in that manager is the Word made flesh.  God's very self in God's only begotten son or the Incarnation Mythos.  The Gospel of John has greatly influenced Christian understanding of Jesus' birth without mentioning any of the details found in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  John presents what has come to be known as the Cosmic Christ which is outlined in the first chapter of John's Gospel.  I will come back to the Gospel of John as it presents different understanding of Jesus and serves a different purpose than what one reads in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, as noted in the second article of the Nicene Creed at the start of this post

In my next post, we will examine the meaning of this mythos for today's world.

Until next time, stay faithful.

 

 

     

 

THE PRINCE OF PEACE WHO OFFERS NO PEACE - A Homily

 This homily was delivered on June 25, 2023 at Christ Episcopal Church in Yankton, South Dakota.  

May the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable to you, O Lord, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

* * *

“Whoever denies me before others, I also will deny before my Father in heaven.

‘Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.  For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother… and one’s foes will be members of one’s own household.  Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me; and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.’”   Matthew 10:32-36

New Revised Standard Version Bible, copyright 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA, 

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Wow!  That is a lot to take in!

Such passages makes one wonder why those trying to ban books that seemingly attack family values haven’t pushed to ban the Bible s from public libraries and schools?   In the conflicted  political and social climate of today ’s world might not Jesus’ saying, “I have not come to bring peace, but a sword” be considered a radicalizing enticement to violence?  In fact, there are reports of movements to ban the Bible from public schools  in places like Utah, Texas, and other states; in part, as pushback against people who would ban books, old and new, that talk about race and gender identity.

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Setting such issues aside, there does seems to be something off about Jesus in today’s reading from Matthew.  It prompts one to question if Jesus actually said this, given his Sermon on the Mount and his parables like, the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan.  We can never be certain about what Jesus actually said or in what the context he originally said it.  Knowing when something was written, along with textual hints, offers some insight into why something like today’s reading is found in both the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.  

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A pivotal time in the history of both Christianity and Judaism was the destruction of the Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, which marks the approximate point at which Christianity and Judaism went their separate ways.   The Gospels of Matthew and Luke, where Jesus says he came to cause division in families is found, were written some ten to twenty years after the Temple was destroyed.  Interestingly, the Gospel of Mark, which was written ten to twenty years before the destruction of the Temple, mentions nothing about Jesus bringing a sword and not peace or causing divisions within families.  

In last Sunday’s Gospel from Matthew, Jesus tells  his followers they would be persecuted and flogged in the synagogues and dragged before governors and kings.  While this sounds like prophesy, the time in which this was written suggests that is what was happening at that time.  It accounts for the strong language we hear Jesus using about being denied by Jesus if they denied him.   Matthew uses it to address the problem Jewish Christians being enticed to deny Jesus as the Messiah.

* * *

Today it is established mainline churches that are increasingly experiencing division, throwing out members who challenge long held doctrines and practices as such individuals no longer see their relevance in a changing world.  On the other hand, some are leaving their church because their denomination has changed,  having become less doctrinally rigid and more inclusive to a diverse population with diverse needs.

For Example, the Southern Baptist Conference recently voted to remove one of its largest congregations, The Saddleback Church in California for ordaining women.  Churches like our own Episcopal Church are becoming increasingly concerned about following what Jesus taught; his inclusive way of unconditional love and seeking reconciliation with all of God’s children; especially the dispossessed and those living on the fringe of society.  Of course this has led some members and congregations to leave it, not only for ordaining women but also for ordaining openly LGBTQ priest and bishops.

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When I look at today’s reading from Matthew, what comes to my mind is the paradoxical nature of God;  the God to whom dark and light are both alike (Psalm 139:12) and who causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust (Matthew 5:45).   What comes to mind is the paradoxical symbol of the cross representing both the inescapable finality of death that is essential for the emergence of new life. 

* * *

In today’s reading, the Prince of Peace did not come to bring peace.   He did not come to remove that which would disrupt or disturb our personal comfort.   Jesus’ teachings of love and reconciliation remain disturbing and disruptive within the world of our making, where might makes right and forgiving and loving one’s enemies is seen as a losing proposition.   

Today, denying oneself and taking up one’s cross has more to do with refusing to be lured into accepting a false image of who one should be, an image that others will try to impose on a person.  

To pick up one’s cross is being your authentic self, recognizing oneself as a child of God; a unique creation.  

To follow Jesus is to experience God by living into being the child God created one to be and to enter into the paradox of God, where there is neither male nor female, Jew nor Greek, slave nor freeman, where all are one in Christ (Galatians 3:28); the perfect peace which passes all understanding (Philippians 4:7).

Amen.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm

THE MYTHIC JESUS - AN INTRODUCTION

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ, the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, of one Being with the Father.  Through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he came down from heaven:  by the power of the Holy Spirit  he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary,  and was made man.  For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered death and was buried.  On the third day he rose again  in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead and his kingdom will have no end.    

The second article of the Nicene Creed

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Nothing encapsulates the mythic portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth better than the second article of the Nicene creed.  Jesus of Nazareth, the eldest son of Joseph and Mary, would be totally missing from one's awareness if one was not familiar with the Synoptic Gospels of the New Testament.  The Jesus of the Nicene Creed is the Jesus portrayed in the Gospel of John where Jesus is described as the Word Incarnate and the only-begotten Son of God.   Throughout the past eighteen centuries, the vast majority of Christians have been saying this creed as if it is an irrefutable fact.  The fact is that very little of the second article is fact.

What is likely to be factual is that Jesus had a mother named Mary and that Jesus was crucified on the order of Pontius Pilate, died, and was buried.  Beyond that, everything else is a matter of what people believe about Jesus based on teachings passed along through the centuries.  Setting aside the likely, leaves what can be identified as the myth based teachings about Jesus; namely, that Jesus is the only Son of God, eternally begotten of the Father, God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God, of one Being with Father.  Through him all things were made.  For us and for our salvation he come down from heaven, by the power of the Holy Spirit he became incarnate from the Virgin Mary. (After being dead and buried for two days) he rose again in accordance with the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father.  He will come again in glory to judge the living and dead and his kingdom will have no end.

Before proceeding further, I need to be clear by what I mean by myth.  What identifies a story as a myth is a lack of provability as a story that can be replicated as a fact.  That does not mean that myths are lies.  On the contrary, myths are used to expose truths for which there is little to no concrete evidential data or proof to support them.  Mythic truths are distilled and established into archetypal stories that offer meaning and context to the experiences we encounter.  All myths serve that purpose.

If you are a Christian, you are probably aware that there is a bias against the notion that myths exist in the scriptures of the Holy Bible.  This is due in part to both the First and the Second Letters to Timothy, where myths are said to be clever lies.  There is also a history of insisting that stories about Jesus are factual in spite of their lack of provability or possessing an ability to be replicated.  As a result the mythic stories about Jesus are taught as either concrete facts or as mysteries of faith.  I would suggest that mystery is a term used to bypass the notion of myth.  Whereas myths are stories told to bring meaning and understanding, mystery is a term used within Christianity to claim something is beyond comprehension and therefore must be accepted as a matter of faith without question.  

Personally, I prefer mythic explanations over unexplainable mysteries.  Faith is not enhanced by defining something as unexplainable that must be believed if there exists the possibility of a  mythic explanation.  The irony of things deemed to be a mystery in Christianity is that they are often connected to the mythic stories about Jesus. 

The myths of ancient Greece and Roman have influenced Western culture as they are archetypal stories that help us identify why we are the way we are and what we frequently struggle with as humans.   The same could be said of the myths found in both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  That they are not used in the way ancient Greek and Roman myths are used is due to the religions which are based on them insisting that they are not myths but are factual events.  This was probably true of the the Ancient Greek and Roman myths at the height of their polytheistic religious views.   The irony is when the ancient religions were supplanted in the late Roman Empire by Christianity their myths remained as guide into to the human psyche.  

The mythic imagination is evident throughout both the Old and New Testaments of the Bible.  What makes the Holy Bible unique is its blend of the mundane and the mythic.  Jesus as an itinerant rabbi who interpreted the scriptures of Judaism in new and meaningful ways possessed a mythic imagination as evidenced by his use of parables, which he used to enhance the meaning of what he was preaching.  The authors of the Gospels used their mythic imaginations to give context and meaning not only to Jesus's teachings, but also and more importantly, to his life and death.  

The question then becomes, what are the mythic stories of Jesus?  The following is a cursory list of stories in the Gospels that are myths or contain mythic elements.  

MYTHIC STORIES

1. The virgin birth of Jesus 

2. Jesus Baptism in the Jordan 

3. Jesus' temptations in the wilderness

4. The feeding of the four and five thousand 

5.  Jesus walking on water 

6.  The story of the Transfiguration 

7. Jesus calming the stormy Sea of Galilee 

8.  The resurrection and ascension of Jesus 

9.  The Gospel of John  

This list may be strike some as shocking as it contains some of the most important "events" found in the Gospels; particularly, the story of Jesus birth, resurrection, and ascension, which are all central to Christian belief and teachings.  I've included in this list the entire Gospel of John, which I have explained in other posts is a work of theology, but John also employees and engages a mythic imagination regarding Jesus.  I left some questionably mythic stories out such as the raising of Jarius' daughter, the raising of widow's son from Nain or the casting out of demons from the Gerasene demoniac and other healings as these are events that have possible factual explanations and are not trying to convey a meaning beyond Jesus being a healer.  

In the posts that will follow this one I will address each of these mythic stories.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm     

  

ON READING THE HOLY BIBLE - Some Thoughts.

I have often thought, if offered the opportunity, how I would teach a class on The Holy Bible to a diverse group of Christians, non-christians, agnostics, and atheists.  It might easier to teach a class primarily consisting of non-christians, agnostics, and atheists simply because they would be more likely to approach such a class with a questioning and healthy skepticism which would allow for a critical, open-minded approach to its content.   Before one can study the Bible, one has to know how to read and identify its diverse literary styles. 

For Christians this could be a struggle who are given to understand it as a cohesive narrative about God.  Most Christians read the Bible through the doctrinal and dogmatic lens of the denomination they belong to.  Bible studies conducted in any number of churches rarely spend time talking about how to read the scriptures they are studying.  As such, Christians will vary on how they understand the Bible.  

If one believes The Holy Bible is God's Word one is likely to revere it as inviolable, directly inspired by God, and inerrant to the extent that it not only purveys God's truth but is also historically factual; that what it says happened has happened and what it say will happen will.   The problem with this perspective is the Holy Bible, itself, demonstrates through the narrative of its prophetic history that people rarely understand or accept what God is saying through the prophets and, in that sense, the Holy Bible becomes a narrative about how we humans react to prophetic insights about ourselves in relation to God and our frequent reluctance to embrace and understand them. 

The  Bible establishes the ineffable nature of God; that one cannot imagine God, much less, figure out God or make an image of God in stone or in words.  The ineffable nature of God is something Christianity has largely shoved aside in the New Testament through the auspices of the Gospel of John where Jesus states that if a true Christian "knows" Jesus then they know God, because Jesus and his "Father,"God, are one.  This is a major point of divergence between what Christians consider the Old and New Testaments as, in the Old Testament, God is ineffable, but in the New Testament Christians see God in the face and being of Jesus. The result is that Jesus eventually became understood as the second person in the tripartite God of the 4th century creeds.  [I have and will continue to offer a different understanding of Jesus of Nazareth that I believe is more consistent with the Holy Bible as a whole.]

To read the Holy Bible critically and from a fresh perspective, most Bible-reading Christians will have to let go of the indoctrinated lens they have been reading the scriptures through since their time in Sunday school or catechism classes.  The difficulty indoctrinated readers will face is becoming comfortable with questioning what they are reading.  From personal experience I can attest to the difficulty one has in picking up details of the Biblical narrative that are easily glossed over because they have been and are largely ignored in the Bible classes one has attended or the sermons one has heard. 

For many Christian; especially, Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, and Pentecostalist, the Bible is approached as something to be believed as literal fact.  Another approach is to read the Bible as a seeker of truths regarding God and humanity's relationship with God.  A third approach is to read and study the Bible as one would any other form of literature, which means being able to identify the type of literature one is reading, as the Bible contains a diverse amount of literary types.  The term, Bible, is by definition a collection of books and writings on related topics.  In that sense, the Holy Bible is unique amongst the literary holy books of the world's religions.  This third approach is what I believe is necessary to fully appreciate what the Bible has to offer. 

TRANSLATING A TRANSLATION

Having a good translation is important.   When obtaining a Bible, one must be able to differentiate between a translation and a paraphrased or amplified Bible which will present a biased theological or doctrinal viewpoint.  For English readers of the Bible, the King James Version, the Revised Standard Version, The New Oxford Annotated Bible, and The New Jerusalem Bible are helpful.  I have found the King James version to be the most reliable when I find discrepancies between other translations.  Every language in which the Bible is translated from its original Greek and Hebrew sources will encounter running into difficulties trying to capture the flavor of the original texts.

One of the difficulties with studying the New Testament, for example, is that it was originally written in Greek.  Greek was not the language Jesus spoke.  Jesus spoke Aramaic.   Languages are extremely nuanced  and in many cases it is difficult to translate an original comment or thought precisely into another language.  The Synoptic Gospels are largely a translation of a translation of the Aramaic language Jesus spoke into Greek and through the additional filter of peoples' memory of what Jesus said and taught.  Since Jesus never wrote anything down, the authors of the New Testament had to rely on their sense of Greek terminology that best captured Jesus' use of his native Aramaic.   

It is always wise to keep the problem of accurate translating in mind when studying the Bible.  As such, we should have a healthy sense of curiosity when it comes to what we are reading; particularly, if something one reads doesn't make sense after reading different translations of a  passage.  The probability is that it reflects a difficulty in translation. That would be a good time to research the original language on-line or through a lexicon to see if there exists other ways to translate a particular passage.

IT'S LITERALLY LITERATURE

For the past two hundred years, most Christians have been taught to treat the Holy Bible as the literal Word of God.  In fact, many mainline Christian denominations, even those who don't take a literal view of the Holy Bible, like to end a Scripture reading with the words, "The Word of the Lord" to which the congregation is prompted to respond with, "Thanks be to God."  Viewing the Holy Bible as the inspired Word of God can cause a listener or reader to become wary about questioning something one does not understand or that sounds a bit off.  To obtain a fuller appreciation of the Holy Bible is to read it literarily, as literature, in order to grasp a fuller meaning of what one is reading.  

The Holy Bible contains a variety of literary types; such as, full-blown metaphorical stories and myths, historical and legendary narratives, poetry, prophetic writings, wisdom literature and apostolic letters.   Certain books of the Bible contain multiple literary types.  It is inadvisable to ascribe anything written in the Holy Bible as literally being God's Word, as God's Word, as described in the Bible, is the very creative force of God and cannot be seen or heard in its purity.  It is the idea of God that is the inspiration that guided humans to write the Bible that, however, does not mean what is written within its pages reflects direct dictation from God.  The Bible is completely written through an intuited and inspired human perspective.    

IS IT ALLEGORICAL, EDITORIAL, METAPHORICAL, OR  MYTHICAL?

By and large most Christian readers tend to avoid identifying whether something is a myth or an editorial comment (something non-christian readers are likely to have a problem with).  Biblical literalist are particularly obstructed by their literal understanding of the Bible when they take editorial comments and myths to be fact.   Nevertheless, it is of utmost importance that one is able to identify allegory, metaphor, myth, and editorial comments in Scripture.  

It is also important to have a historical understanding of the times and culture in which the various "books" of the Bible were written.  Much of the Bible was written in times different from the time in which the events described took place.  As such, they often reflect an interpretation of an event placed in a past time based on the perception of the times in which such an event was being written about.  

It is important to keep in mind that while an historical understanding of when something in the Bible was written may seem unimportant to some (as they consider the Bible history in its own right) the Holy Bible's purpose is not to provide an accurate, unbiased, historical account of events that took place since the dawn of time.  It can, at times, be very biased about certain subjects that may conflict with a more unbiased perspective today.  

Editorial comments like, "Jesus said this" or "did this to fulfill what was written in the scriptures" are editorial comments.  Editorial comments of any kind are always biased comments forwarding a particular agenda the writer or author is promoting.  When encountering an editorial comment, try avoiding the conclusion the writer or author is offering and see if there is another reason why Jesus or anyone else in scripture did something that merited an editorial explanation.  If you can think of one, stick with that understanding for a while to see if it holds up.

The Bible offers a unique account of our evolving relationship with God and one another. One can trace an evolving understanding of God; from a god who is personal, family god, like the God of Abraham to the God above all other gods and from a mountain top God to the God of all creation.  To that end, it relies on allegory, editorial comments, metaphor, and myth to discuss such truths it attempts to reveal.  

UNDERSTANDING THE HOLY BIBLE IN LIGHT OF THE TIMES IN WHICH WE LIVE

The Holy Bible, like all literature, is written from an anthropocentric perspective. The ineffablility of God is countered by imbuing the creative force we call God with human traits to make God relatable to our human experiences, thus God is depicted at times as being good, angry, vengeful, compassionate, remorseful, caring, forgiving, patient, faithful, etc., just as we humans are.  Yet the ineffable nature of God is underscored at various points within scripture to keep us mindful that what we describe as God is beyond human description and comprehension.    

The Holy Bible depicts and promotes an evolving understanding of God as it addresses the human experience in the light of God's being in each and every age through its narrative, whether it is the telling of historical events, its myths, its allegories and metaphors.  In turn, the events of each and every age offer a new perspective to what is written in its pages.  These perspectives are part of the process of an ever-evolving understanding of God and human nature.  It is this sense of an ever-evolving understanding of God that maintains The Holy Bible's relevancy in each age because each and every age brings new understanding of it garnered from our accumulative experiences that are encountered in the times in which we live.  

As such, the Bible, allows us to examine the human experience set against the paradox of the ineffable.  Trying to pin down God, even within the pages of Scripture, is an ever-elusive undertaking.  God is whatever God is or God will be what God will be as Moses discovered in the allegorical mythic story of his encounter with a burning bush that was not consumed by its fire.  On the other hand, we humans, with all of our abilities and disabilities, potential creativity and destructiveness, and our strengths and our weaknesses, are on full display set against the consistent paradox of God in whose being we experience our being. 

As with any well-written pieces of literature, there is a timelessness to the Holy Bible.   It has  maintained its relatability because of its applicability to the human experience of God on which it is based.  A question this raises is how each age has influenced an understanding of the Holy Bible.  As some will note, one can find anything or something within the Bible to justify the current behaviors or reactions to human behaviors or our time.    

We live in a much different age than when the books of the Bible were written.  Today, we know more about our historical and scientific beginnings than at any other time in history.  As in the relatively recent past of the last two or three centuries, there has been push-back by Christian denominations against the discoveries in both history and science that conflict, not so much with the scriptures of the Bible themselves, as with the traditional doctrines and dogma that theologians and doctors of the Church have derived from their understanding of scripture. 

The Church as a whole, as I have describe in past posts, continues to struggle with how to deal with long-standing doctrinal positions that are increasingly challenged by recent discoveries in history and science.  For example, where do the discoveries of lost Gospels and other Christian writings find a place within the discussion of Christian faith?  Do we continue to ignore them or do we study them and consider their value in understanding the Christian experience?  

What of the increasing number of scientific discoveries regarding the universe in which we live which seemingly contradict the Biblical accounts of past events?  What about the progress made in scientific technology and medicine; such as, the potential use of AI and nuclear fusion?   What impact does such discoveries have on our understanding of Bible as opposed to what impact that Bible has on our views of them?  Have we learned anything from past regarding the Church's persecution of those whose discoveries, thoughts, theories were seen as a threat to the Christian faith; such as, those made by Galileo, Giordano Bruno, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin?

Currently, within the United States, there is a persecution of literature itself with the banning of certain books in schools and public libraries, a mere step away from actual public book burnings; all in an effort to erase certain aspects of modern history on the ironic premise of keeping children from being indoctrinated and traumatized by indoctrinating them as to what literature they and their parents should consider dangerous.  Given the literature and rhetoric found in the Holy Bible, it is remarkable that it hasn't been banned.  Given the current political temperature regarding literature as a whole, it is important for readers and students of the Holy Bible to maintain an open and skeptical mind regarding its depiction of our relationships to each other in the light of an ineffable God whose only applicable description is not that of a noun (a thing, in and of, or unto itself) but a loving, enlightening, and creating verb, BEINGNESS, that sees only the goodness of that which is created.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm 

RECLAIMING JESUS' HUMANITY

Perhaps the worst things that happened to Jesus’ legacy is that we Christians turned him into a god as in the second person of the Triune God.  

That may strike Christians as being totally heretical, but I ask that you bear with me.  What Christianity is largely based on is what others have said about Jesus throughout the centuries, beginning with the First Century.  As I have said in recent posts, Jesus understood as “true man and true God” is true only to the extent that such a claim can be made about all of us; in that, according to Genesis, all of us are created in the image of God.  To that extent Jesus is no more or no less divine in nature than the rest of us.   As I have mention in many homilies and posts, what is true about Jesus is true about us and what is true about us is true about Jesus. 

The idea that Jesus is the only-begotten Son of God is rooted in polytheism, where gods and goddesses were know to have sexual intercourse with mortals and produced demigods who could eventually aspire to being worshiped as immortal gods and goddesses.  In Jesus' case this became even more convoluted as Jesus is the product of a supposedly sexless encounter with the spirit of God "overshadowing" a virgin who remains a virgin when giving birth to Jesus.  As a one-off birth, this is not a miracle, but rather an asexual fantasy. This is not to say that God's spirit wasn't active in Jesus' birth because the spirit of God by having breathed the first humans to life in the creation myth is active in every birth - what is true for Jesus... .  

If it were an asexual miracle Jesus could not be a true human.  Theoretically he may have acquired the physical features of a human through Mary's genes, but he essentially would have been  a divine being, more so than the demigods of ancient Greece.  This divine Jesus is portrayed in the Gospel of John as taking on our physical nature without really being one of us.  That Jesus is nothing like the rest of us humans.  On the other hand, Jesus as portrayed in the Synoptic Gospels (SG) of Matthew, Mark and Luke is someone who is human and easier to relate to, if one ignores the editorial commentary regarding his divine parentage.  

As I have noted in a previous post, the editorial comments in Matthew and Luke  miss the point of Jesus being a direct descendant of King David.  Jesus could not have been considered an heir of David if Joseph, his "so-called father" in Luke 3:23, was not his biological father or if, according to Matthew 1:25, Joseph refrained from any sexual encounters with Mary until after she had given birth to Jesus.  Such editorial comments were inserted to promote the idea that Jesus was the biological Son of God, an utterly nonsensical notion that detracts the value of Jesus' teachings, which are the essential Gospel message.  

This is largely the result of the portrayal of Jesus in the Gospel of John where there is no mention of Jesus being baptized or being led by the spirit into the wilderness to be tempted.  Rather, Jesus is depicted as omniscient; as  knowing what is about to happen before it happens. Even the crucifixion is depicted as knowing act, stripped of it human horror by Jesus' super-human willingness to accomplish his purpose, in John, of atoning for the sins we were and are supposedly incapable of doing.  In John, Jesus crucifixion amounts to a disrobing Jesus of his human flesh and taking on a divine physicality that retains the imprints of human wounds - the trophies of his divine love for his creation. 

The 11th century Archbishop of Canterbury, Anselm, wrote a treatise on why "God became a human" which solidified the teaching that Jesus was the only truly begotten offspring of God, contrary to everything else scripture says about the rest of us humans and Jesus' own teaching in the SG.  At best the Gospel of John is speculative theology about Jesus aimed at comforting Jewish Christians who were being thrown out of the synagogues after the Fall of Jerusalem because they were preaching about Jesus.  At worst, it is a fictional fantasy meant to accomplish the same purpose.     

So much of Christianity is shaped by the Gospel of John that we can't read the other Gospels without seeing them through its lens as the last word about Jesus in the canonical New Testament.  Christians love the Gospel of John because it is written for them and about them without giving much thought to its darker side, the immediate condemnation of those who don't believe Jesus as the only-begotten Son of God.   The idea that Jesus is the eternally creative Word of God that brought all things into being, in essence, makes Jesus God, which is precisely the point of the Gospel of John is making at the expense of other possibilities.  

The creeds do nothing to change that analysis, no matter how many times they insist that Jesus is true God and true man.  That mankind is created in the image of God does not mean that humans are God, even though some, throughout history, have believed themselves to be, and at times have acted as if they were God.  The belief that Jesus is God is increasingly becoming a problematic issue for mainline Christian churches that continue to insist that Jesus was sent to earth to become a sacrifice to atone for the sins of humankind.  More and more Christians are finding the idea of God sacrificing his own son a barbaric notion; that a loving God and father would never do such a thing.  Certainly this is not how Jesus understood God, in spite of the New Testament writers' attempts at suggesting that Jesus was sent to be a sacrifice.

The idea or fact that Jesus was no more and no less, like the rest of us, purely human has long been treated and suppressed as a heresy by mainline Christian churches for close to eighteen hundred years. Personally, I suspect that this is being re-evaluated by theologians and biblical scholars in mainline churches.  The problem they face is how to present this without causing a major walkout of those who have been indoctrinated from the moment of their baptisms to believe that Jesus is God, a belief that has defined Christianity for two thousand years.   

Being an Episcopalian, where the creeds are said almost every service, I haven't been saying them for some time.   During this past Lenten season, I've noticed that the Gospel of John, although read, was not being used as text for sermons in major cathedrals here in the US or in the UK.  Rather it was the prophets the clergy opted to preach on.  I sense there is a general discomfort with the Gospel of John and as there is with the creeds.  Our Presiding Bishop, Michael Curry commented on the Nicene Creed during a sermon at Trinity Wall Street on September 12, 202, "I love the Nicene creed.  I don't understand everything, but I love it."  

What our beloved Presiding Bishop underscored in his comment is the problem mainline denominations have; an attraction to tradition over reason in the face of a looming theological crisis.  He also stressed in his comments a fear that he and other clergy have in moving too fast in the direction of challenging long held beliefs that are entrenched in the beliefs of most people sitting in the pews of their churches.  The Nicene Creed is an eighteen hundred year old document written to define the Christian God in order to bring universal order amongst Christians in Constantine's empire who were quickly becoming the dominant religious group within Roman empire.  

As a whole, the Christian Creeds are rather vacuous in both meaning and application and yet they remain the central pillar around which the oldest mainline denominations conduct their worship services and guide their theological discourse.  Christianity, more than ever, is faced with a renewed challenge regarding the essential question Jesus posed to his disciples about himself that was never fully answered, apart from the editorialized account in Matthew where Peter declared that Jesus was the Messiah, the son of the living God.  Despite being praised by Jesus for being inspired to make such a statement (although not highly praised in Luke and Mark), who is Jesus has re-emerged as the essential theological question for Christians in the 21st century. 

As such, one can appreciate and understand people two thousand years ago thinking of Jesus as being a god-like spotless sacrifice to atone for the sins of humanity, who was born of godly human woman, Mary and thus the divine Son of God.  Being a mere mortal was not going to make a dent in the mindset of the cosmopolitan world of the Roman Empire where the meaning of Jesus was up against and endless array of mono and polytheistic religions deeply rooted in the the idea of the divine.  To get any part of Jesus' message across he simply couldn't remain a man from Nazareth in Galilee, he had to be more; a Messiah. Eventually he had to be more than that. He had to be God and so his followers declared him to be that and it would take and Roman emperor, Constantine, to set that belief in stone through his calling the first ecumenical council in 325 at Nicea.

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To say that Jesus is purely human may sound like simple solution to who Jesus is, but it is not as simple as it sounds because we are not simple as that sounds.  Being human is anything but simple.  We are complex creatures who, for the most part, have little appreciation for the gray areas of life.  We want to know.  Not only do we want to know, but we also want to be certain about what we know.  For the most part we humans have little tolerance for paradox.  We tend towards discrimination and differentiation as a way to navigate through the paradoxical conundrums we create and find ourselves in.  

Jesus was a unique human being as portrayed in the SG; selfless to a fault, patient, loving, inspirational and intuitive with an uncanny compassion for those living on the fringe of society.  He was loved deeply and was deeply loved by those who knew and followed him; so much so, that Flavius Josephus, in his account of the Fall of Jerusalem noted that the followers of Jesus living in Jerusalem at the time loved him.   

What was so unique about Jesus is that he showed us what is so unique about us.  That each of us is a child of God, capable of loving everyone we meet, forgiving the wrongs done to us, and to be a healing presence to those who are suffering.  Jesus felt God in his very being, but that doesn't mean he claimed to be God.   

We too carry the image and being-ness of God in our being.  The intimacy Jesus felt with God is not beyond any of us feeling such intimacy.  The point of Jesus being called God's beloved son in whom God was well pleased was not to keep such good news to himself but to be awakened to the truth that every person Jesus would meet was a child of God just like him.   This is embodied in his proclamation of the Kingdom of God being at hand, to awaken to a reality of God  that encompassed and subsummed the reality of our making. 

According to the SG, Jesus intended to redeem this sense of being children of God in his fellow Jews and to proclaim that the Kingdom of God was not something to wait for, but rather that they were, in the midst of God's Kingdom, even though Judah was being occupied by the imperial army of Rome.  For Jesus, the Kingdom of God was something that has existed since the dawn of time.  "The Earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" was an undoubtedly familiar Psalm (42: 1-2) to Jesus.  When Jesus talked of repentance because the Kingdom of God was at hand, he was asking people to wake up to what is present already and to reach out and grab it.  The reality of the transient world of our making is only a small shadow compared to the cosmos of God's creating.  

In the world of our making, things rarely are what they seem to be.  Jesus attempted to alleviate the sense of panic we often feel when it comes to the problems we face.  He did this by setting an example for us to emulate in our lives.  He advanced the Golden Rule to its highest level - the love of one's enemies.   Goodness and mercy outweighed bitterness and vengeance.  While Jesus did not answer all the question or solve all our problems, he provided us with an ethical template to address them, which has yet to be fully implemented.

The closest humans, after Jesus' time, ever came to collectively implementing the teachings of Jesus was in the peaceful protests started by Mahatma Gandhi,  Martin Luther King Jr, and the Peace and Reconciliation Movement headed by Desmond Tutu in the Union South Africa.  It took two thousand years for Jesus' teachings to bear some evidence of it truthfulness.  What didn't free India, promoted the civil rights of Black in the United States, or healed the racial wounds in South Africa was telling people that Jesus died for their sins.  Rather it was taking to heart Jesus' teachings about the Kingdom of God; whose only directive  is to love God by loving that which God loves. and the the path to realize this love is to enact justice through peaceful means and patient persistence, seeking opportunities to forgive, practice humility, and show mercy. 

Jesus lives through his teachings.  If the resurrection story means anything beyond the possibility, if not the probability, that there is more to life than this life, it is that it demonstrates that importance of Jesus' life-giving teaching in this life.  

Our understanding of what theistic religion refers to as God is always evolving as we learn more of the macrocosm and the microcosm of the cosmos we are part of.  While the tribalism of nationalism continues to threaten our existence as a species, Jesus' teachings and ethical approach to life serves as a guide to seeing beyond the mere moral values and barriers we create in God's name, in order to allow us to embrace the one and only judgment God has made regarding what God from the very beginning created, that it was very good.  That we are "very good" and "well-pleasing" in God's sight is something difficult to grasp when much of the evidence in our daily lives argues against that judgment, but that eternal judgment, made at the Alpha of time resonates through time to the Omega of time.    

Jesus, as depicted in the Synoptic Gospels, understood that.  It was what allowed him to approach lepers, the foreigner, and the social outcasts of his day.  It is what exposed the hypocrisy of the religious leaders of his day and our day.  Reclaiming Jesus' humanity is vital to understanding the Gospel message, the Good News that God sees our goodness even when we don't; that we can live into being the children of God called us to be just as Jesus lived into being the son God called him to be.

In future posts, we will examine the importance of this totally human Jesus which is a gleaned from the Gospels.

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Until next time, stay faithful.

Norm