Sermon 7-8-07
Jim Burklo
Re-Imagining Jesus
There was a rabbi named Jesus who preached and was said to be a healer. He was crucified by the Romans.
There you have it: that’s the only really reliable information we have about the historical person named Jesus. It’s the only information we have about him that is supported by a first-century source that was not part of the early Christian community. The early Christians, who wrote the four gospels, almost certainly embellished the story of Jesus to create the accounts of him that we see in the Bible. Along with virtually all academic historians who have studied the historical Jesus, I assume that anything we see in the four gospels that refers to something miraculous is probably mythological.
The Jesus Seminar, headquartered up the road from us in Santa Rosa, is a large group of academic scholars of the Bible who have voted on what they think the historical Jesus is most likely to have said and done. They have color-coded the gospels accordingly: red for highly likely, pink for somewhat likely, grey for unlikely, and black for very unlikely that the historically real Jesus said it or did it. Not too surprisingly, very little of the gospels is in red, and not that much is in pink, either.
But the myths in the Bible about Jesus, and the words put into his mouth by his later followers, are still very important and contain much spiritual truth. Just because something didn’t really happen doesn’t mean it isn’t true, in the sense of truth that applies to matters of the heart and soul. The early Christians had important spiritual reasons for coming up with these myths and these words which they attributed to Jesus. The un-historical Jesus is just as important as the historical Jesus. That was true 2000 years ago and it is true today.
Because the story of Jesus isn’t over. We get to embellish it, too. That’s part of being Christian: we get to figure out who Jesus was, for ourselves.
Now there are plenty of Christians who would argue these points. In the past week, for some reason, I got a flood of hate emails from Christians around the US who objected to Pluralism Sunday, which I coordinated nationally for The Center for Progressive Christianity. They objected vigorously to the idea that other religions might be as valid as Christianity. Their arguments were based on a literalistic interpretation of the Bible. They believe that the Bible effectively dropped down from the sky all at once, as we know it now, with one portrayal of Jesus shown to us intact. Unfortunately there is no factual basis for this assumption. The Bible turns out to be vastly more interesting than they suggest. It has layers and nuances and contradictions, opening up all sorts of interpretive possibilities.
There are plenty of folks who would deny it, but let’s face the facts: there are a lot of Jesuses to choose from in the Christian religion. And there is room for even more. Which Jesus do you prefer? That may sound outrageous, even here in a liberal, progressive church. But it really is an okay question to ask. Which image or understanding of Jesus helps you best to come into communion with God? You do have a choice, so why not be conscious about it? And why not be creative about imagining Jesus?
The bulletin cover today is an image of Jesus blessing the children, from a story in the gospels, when he said to his disciples, suffer not the little children to come to me, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven. The image of Jesus is a poster picture of Ingrid Bergman, the famous actress of the 40’s and 50’s. The image was put together by Karen Whitehill, who is an artist in North Carolina who reads my weekly blog online. She has a large collection of these collages which she has created, all of them famous images of Jesus in different situations, with his face and body replaced by those of poster images of famous actresses. They’re far-fetched, yes – but since we have no idea what Jesus really looked like, they are not that much more far-fetched than the best-known images of Jesus. Karen’s collages remind us of just how much freedom we really have to re-imagine Jesus.
And I think it matters to re-imagine Jesus, because we are human beings trying to connect with God, who is beyond description and comprehension. We need bridges between us and the divine, pathways that lead us into communion with God. Devotion to a figure like Jesus is a powerful means to this end. It’s a universal impulse in spirituality around the world, in many religions. In India, this kind of devotion is called “bhakti yoga”, the practice of adoring a figure or personage or a small-g god in order to come into intimate connection with the capital-g God. Many Indians have an almost rapturous, ecstatic love affair with Krishna. That doesn’t mean that they necessarily think that God is a purple guy who plays a flute and likes to steal butter. Rather, their adoration of Krishna mystically transports them into oneness with the one cosmic divine entity that Krishna represents and to which Krishna and all the many other Hindu gods point.
Adoring Jesus is a beautiful spiritual practice, opening up the heart and delivering the soul into the presence of God. In the process of that adoration, you and I get to imagine Jesus for ourselves – imagine what he looks like, imagine how he sounds, imagine what he did and what he still does.
Here’s my creative interpretation of what Jesus looked like. It’s based partly on historical possibility, but I recognize he’s still a figment of my creative imagination. I imagine him as a dark olive skinned guy, short, with very Jewish features, and weathered skin. A tough, sinewy looking guy but with a gentle demeanor. I imagine him with a wise and knowing grin. I imagine him chuckling at a lot of what he sees, lovingly but with a good sense of humor, with crows’ feet wrinkles around his eyes from squinting as he laughs. I believe that to be wise is to be happy, and so I imagine him as being both.
I imagine him boggling people’s minds with his words and actions, by turning their ideas and categories and opinions on their heads, over and over. I imagine him getting lots of people to laugh at themselves, but I also imagine him ticking a lot of people off, not because he means to irritated, but because he won’t affirm their assumption that their way is the only way to see or do things. I imagine him to be intensely compassionate, sitting in silence alongside sick or troubled people for long periods, sometimes weeping with them or for them, sometimes soothing them. I imagine him hanging out with all sorts of people, including the untouchables, unlovables, and unmentionables of his day. I imagine him sitting in the desert in the shade of a stone cliff in prayerful meditation, listening to birds, watching lizards, gazing into the sky, muttering ecstatic sounds and chants as he communes with God, sometimes laughing, sometimes weeping, his face glowing with rapturous feeling.
What are your images of Jesus?