The blessing and the curse of every religious message are that they are entrusted to human beings. A great religious message comes alive in human hands as it is applied to real situations in real lives. The message evolves in human hands. And since we humans are fallible, sometimes we wittingly or unwittingly damage the message.

John Dominic Crossan identifies the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in 312 as a key moment of damage to Jesus' message. Crossan quotes this description from Eusebius of an imperial banquet celebrating the Council of Nicea's conclusion a few years later:
 

Detachments of the bodyguard and troops surrounded the entrance of the palace with drawn swords, and through the midst of them the men of God proceeded without fear into the innermost of the Imperial apartments, in which some were the Emperor's companions at table, while others reclined on couches arranged on either side. One might have thought that a picture of Christ's kingdom was thus shadowed forth, and a dream rather than reality.[1]

What a different image from that of Jesus flouting the conventions of his time by sitting down to a simple meal with other peasants, tax collectors, women and maybe even prostitutes! The tables have been set up again. Crossan writes:
 

The meal and the Kingdom still come together, but now the participants are the male bishops alone, and they recline, with the emperor himself, to be served by others. Dream or reality? Dream or nightmare?[2]

One can imagine that if Jesus walked into that imperial apartment, he would have been tempted to overturn the tables yet again. I think the words Jesus might have uttered if he walked into Constantine's inner apartment might be something like this: "You have completely missed the point! My message was certainly not about imperial power. It wasn't even about me. My message was about God. Don't worship me! Worship God! And you worship God by being good to your neighbors--these servants for example. Remember what I said about the last being first? Well, these servants will be first in God's realm, and you will all be last!"

I'm not sure we Unitarian Universalists do much better. My sense is that many of us can't get past our negative experiences of the church to discover or rediscover the truths contained in the Jesus story. We have thrown the baby out with the bath water. Others among us make the mistake of locking in on only one aspect of the Jesus story. For example, some of the rationalists among us lift up the historic Jesus and completely ignore the mythological Jesus. Rather than being a living mythological presence, Jesus is a historical personage who lived, had more or less an effect on history, and died. End of story. Or some of us focus in on Jesus as teacher and miss the truths of the story expressed in the concept of Jesus as the--or a--Son of God.

In the first sermon of the series, I talked about the basic riddle of Jesus' identity. Was he the Messiah, or Christ? Was he the incarnation of God, paradoxically fully human and fully divine? Was he the Son of God? Was he a Son of God? Was he a wise sage? Was he a healer and exorcist? Was he a magician? Was he a prophet? Was he a spirit person, a shaman? Was he the Son of Man, or in the intriguing inclusive translation of this title, the Human One? Is he someone who is a living presence today? Who was Jesus?

I believe that the answer to the riddle of Jesus' identity is "All of the above." Strands of the story support each of the identities. No single identity captures the whole, complex story. It's kind of like the legend of the blind men and the elephant. Each of the blind men tries to generalize about the elephant based on the part he touches. One touches the trunk and says the elephant is like a snake. Another touches the ear and says the elephant is like a fan. Another touches the tail and says the elephant is like a piece of rope. None of the descriptions come close to capturing the whole elephant. Similarly, the meaning of the Jesus story resides in the whole, not in the individual identities. We do justice to the complexity and paradoxical nature of the story only if we approach it as a whole. Many of us Unitarian Universalists and many fundamentalist Christians make the same mistake: we pick out one strand and ignore the rest.

All of us should pay more attention to the story itself. We keep losing the story in theology and dogmatism and ideology and politics. Where is Jesus? He is in the story. The Gospel of Mark begins in Galilee. If you take out the last part of the final chapter--which most scholars believe was a late addition to Mark--the gospel ends with a youth wearing a white robe, sitting in the empty tomb. The mysterious youth talks to the three women who come to anoint Jesus' body. The youth says:
 

'Fear nothing; you are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified. He has been raised again; he is not here; look, there is the place where they laid him. But go and give this message to his disciples and Peter: "He is going on before you into Galilee; there you will see him, as he told you."'[3]

Where is Jesus? He's back in Galilee, where the story starts and where most of it takes place. You want to find Jesus? Mark asks us. Go back to the beginning of the story and start over. That's where Jesus is. The whole gospel is a big loop.

The message of Jesus is also to be found in the story itself. My Jesus has four principal messages. The first is a warning against all forms of idolatry. The Oxford American dictionary defines idolatry as making a person or a thing the object of intense admiration or devotion. The Jesus story is rife with criticisms of idolatries both confined to his time and timeless. For Jesus, idolatry happens whenever something unworthy is made the object of intense admiration or devotion. Only one thing or being is worthy of being the object of intense devotion: God. Any substitute for God is an idolatry. I have a sneaking feeling that Jesus would be disturbed by those who focus so much on him as the Christ. In doing so, they all too easily substitute Jesus for God. Jesus wants people to have a direct relationship with God. They don't have to go through the Temple or the priests or the Christ to get to God.

Jesus warns against many idolatries. For example, he consistently challenges the idolatry of wealth and property--an idolatry at least equally prevalent in our own time. Jesus says to his disciples:
 

I tell you this: a rich man will find it hard to enter the kingdom of Heaven. I repeat, it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.[4]

He urges his followers to put God and not money or possessions at the center of their lives. Jesus lived the message by devoting his ministry to the poor. As Henri Nouwen points out, Jesus did not come just to console the poor; he was himself poor.[5]

Another idolatry Jesus attacks repeatedly is the family. Some of his attacks on the family are so harsh that they are startling. The companion class to this series struggled with this passage from Luke:
 

Once when great crowds were accompanying [Jesus], he turned to them and said: 'If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be a disciple of mine. No one who does not carry his cross and come with me can be a disciple of mine.[6]

Members of the class couldn't believe that the word "hate" was in this passage. I checked other translations and found "hate" to be a consistent translation. What did Jesus mean by asking his followers to hate their families? I believe in part he was warning against those who make an idol of the family. People then (and now) make a mistake when they make their family the center of their devotion. The family is important, but not that important. It's not enough. The family is not God. What a tremendous insight for enmeshed families where the family is of such paramount importance that members of the family have no lives or identities independent from the family. And what a shock this part of Jesus' message must be to the Christians in our society who have so much to say about "family values".

The second message I find in the Jesus story is that suffering--sometimes horrible suffering--is part of the fabric of human life. The story ends--well, almost ends--with this son of God dying on the cross. What a profound acknowledgment of the presence of suffering and evil in our world. Among the world's religions, I can only find as compelling of an acknowledgment of suffering in Buddhism. As Henri Nouwen observes, the Jesus story says that to live a spiritual life, one must have "direct, uncushioned confrontation with the reality" of suffering and death.[7]

 In such moments of intense suffering, we may, like Jesus, feel alone and forsaken.[8]

 The story has a healing answer to this feeling: God is our companion in suffering. We are not truly alone.

The third principal message of my Jesus is the healing message of unconditional love, compassion and justice. This message is what I talked about last week. I think that Jesus teaches that the Kingdom, or Realm of God is potentially here and now. You don't enter God's Realm by uttering pious words or by talking about compassion and love or by dying and going to heaven. You enter the Realm by living the message. You enter the Realm by trying as hard as you can to act justly and compassionately, by trying as best as you can to love unconditionally.

This is not an easy way to live. As Jesus knows, loving unconditionally means loving not just those who love you, but loving your enemies. Jesus tells his followers on the Mount:
 

'You have heard that it was said, "You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy." But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be children of God who is in heaven; for God makes the sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you salute only your neighbors, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? You, therefore, must be perfect as [God] is perfect.'[9]

Be perfect as God! That's one tough message! This is where the fourth message of my Jesus comes in. This final message is about the presence of grace and forgiveness in our universe. You see, for Jesus judgment is not the last word. Grace is. This is the meaning of the parable of the prodigal son. Not only was the son not perfect, he messed up in every way imaginable. In spite of it all, his father welcomed him back with open, loving arms. Rather than dwelling on all of the son's mistakes, they sat down to a feast and celebrated.

This is the message of my Jesus: beware of idolatries; acknowledge honestly and grapple with the suffering inherent in human life; strive to be just, compassionate and loving; and celebrate God's grace and forgiveness.

I believe that the story of Jesus--like any great story--comes alive when we engage the story not only with our intellect and not only with our feelings. It truly comes alive when we engage the story with our imagination. This is when the story transcends Galilee and makes its way into our own lives.

The Unitarian Universalist minister finally finished the last sermon of the series on Jesus. Some in the congregation were relieved; others were sorry. As the congregation sat in silence after the last lines of the sermon were uttered, a dirty, poorly dressed woman slipped quietly into a seat in the back row, by the name tags. The woman's skin had a Mediterranean complexion. People around where she sat shifted almost (but not quite) imperceptibly away from the ragged visitor.

She sat without moving as people shared their responses to the sermon. A few shared memories brought to mind by the sermon; a few asked questions; a few others shared insights from their own thinking and experience. The minister replied to most of the responses, once or twice perhaps with a hint of defensiveness. Mostly, the woman observed, he stayed in his head. The woman got the impression that this was a group that liked to talk and think, but might be a little short on action. While people were mostly dressed informally, she noticed that no one was dressed quite like her. She noticed that most of the people looked remarkably alike.

The service ended, and a few people came up to greet her. Though friendly, these people seemed a little bit uncertain. The conversations were brief. They invited her to sign the guest book and look over information about the congregation. They offered her coffee. She declined the coffee and left after a few minutes, hurriedly shaking the minister's hand on the way out.

She walked through the light snowfall to the homeless shelter. As she entered the shelter, she noticed a small group gathered together in the common area. She recognized the runaway teen and the prostitute and the gambler she had met the day before. She noticed right away that her darker complexion would not stand out as much in this group as in the congregation she had just visited: there were three or four whites, an African American, a Hispanic and a Chinese American. They were listening to the prostitute read from one of those recovery meditation books. "These are my people," she thought as she sat down with them.

They talked about the meditation reading and about their lives for hours. She shared many insights from her own journey with them. Her sharing touched each one of them deeply. Finally she got up as if to leave, but they pressed her. "Stay with us, for evening draws on, and the day is almost over." So she went to stay with them. They invited her to join them for a simple supper of bread and soup. And when she sat down with them at table, she took the bread, and said the blessing; she broke the bread, and offered it to them. Then their eyes were opened, and they recognized her; and she vanished from their sight.

All scriptural readings are from the New English Bible unless otherwise noted.

Bertschausen, Roger, "Turning the World Upside Down" in Unitarian Universalist Christian, vol. 46 (3-4), Fall/Winter, 1991, pp. 49-59.

Borg, Marcus, Jesus: A New Vision (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987).

_____ Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994).

Crossan, John Dominic, The Essential Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994).

_____ Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1994).

Jefferson, Thomas, The Jefferson Bible (Boston: Beacon Press, 1989).

Johnson, Luke Timothy, The Real Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1996).

Mitchell, Stephen, The Gospel According to Jesus (New York: HarperCollings, 1991).

Neusner, Jacob, A Rabbi Talks With Jesus (New York: Doubleday, 1993).

Nouwen, Henri J.M., Letters to Marc About Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1987).

Sanders, E.P., The Historical Figure of Jesus (London: Penguin Books, 1993).

Schweitzer, Albert, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., 1968).
 

Copyright 1997 by Roger Bertschausen. All rights reserved.

[1]Eusebius, Life of Constantine 3.15 quoted in Crossan, John Dominic, Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography, p. 201.
[2]Crossan, p. 201.
[3]Mk. 16:6-7.
[4]Mt. 19:23-24.
[5]Henri Nouwen, Letters to Mark About Jesus,p. 45.
[6]Lk. 14:25-27.
[7]Nouwen, pp. 29-30.
[8]Mk. 15:34.
[9]Mt. 5:43-48 (Inclusive Lectionary version).