4.16.2008

The Reality of Jesus' Humanity

"Divinity and humanity were mysteriously combined, and man and God became one. It is in this union that we find the hope of our fallen race." (Ellen G. White, in Signs of the Times, July 30, 1896)

The union of divinity and humanity in Jesus is an empowering symbol for all human beings. The good news is not only that God was in the one man Jesus Christ but that through him we see God in and with all human beings. As one theologian has said, "To be human is to be with God" (Karl Barth). Ultimately, there is no secular or autonomous man for in God "we live and move and have our being."

Jesus is the God-man and the man-God. The good news of Jesus is not only that God came down to embrace humanity but that humanity is elevated with God. Human nature itself was taken up and exalted. Human beings are in this way empowered and not oppressed! This is in stark contrast to the way elitist leaders of all stripes have treated human beings through the ugly centuries of human history. Take for example, ancient Babylon's (the archetypal human empire and thus the mother of all abominations) concept of human beings.

"You are the womb-goddess (Mami), creator of mankind!
Create primeval man, that he may bear the yoke!
Let him bear the yoke, the work of Ellil,
Let man bear the load of the gods!"
(Atrahasis Epic, Babylon, 1700 BCE)

"Let me (Marduk) create primeval man.
The work of the gods shall be imposed on him,
and so they shall be at leisure.
(Epic of Creation, Babylon, 1000 BCE)

Apparently being a god is hard work! So hard to that human beings had to be created to do the work so the weary gods would have time to play. Unfortunately that story wasn't just a Babylonian counterpart to a Saturday Night Live skit. Such oppressive ideology was ultimately used to justify the institution of slavery. Obviously, if human beings are slaves by nature then those that rule in the name of the gods must honor that divine order by subjugating the people. Maybe that is why the people of God celebrate the fall of Babylon in the Apocalypse (Rev. 18)!

The good news of Jesus stands in contrast to every form of oppressive theology that strips humanity of its power and dignity! To the parent that crushes the spirit of a child to the interrogator torturing an enemy, the incarnation of Jesus sounds a loud and clear "No!" The words of God in the great liberation story still ring in our ears from the distant past, "Let my people go!" The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the God of Jesus has come to lift us up and not to beat us down!

Jesus came, not to exalt just one of us or a few of us, but to lift up every human being! Such a radical idea calls into question all our human strategies of exlusion. The friendliness of God toward us, all of us, knows no limits and no boundaries!

"One thing is sure, that there is no theological justification for setting any limits on our side to the friendliness of God towards humanity which appeared in Jesus Christ." (Karl Barth)

4.11.2008

The Mystery of His Deity

"The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ, the Son of God." (Mark 1.1)

"Whereas Providence has adorned our lives with the highest good: Augustus, and has in her beneficence granted us and those who will come after us a Savior who has made war to cease and who shall put everything in peaceful order, with the result that the birthday of our God signalled the beginning of Good News for the world because of him, herefore the Greeks in Asia Decreed that the New Year begin for all the cities on September 23 and the first month shall be observed as the Month of Caesar, beginning with 23 September, the birthday of Caesar." (Roman Decree in honor of Emperor Augustus in Asian Temples)


We often think of the deity of Jesus Christ as a religious statement. And it certainly is that! However, it is much more than that. Mark's gospel refers to Jesus as both "Christ" and as "Son of God." As Christ he stands in opposition to the religious elites ruling in Jerusalem. As Son of God he stands in stark opposition to imperial Rome. Mark is engaged in an ideological war with both the Jewish hierarchy in Jerusalem and their Roman overlords. As Mark tells the story, Jesus has come to bring a new kingdom, a kingdom of God that challenges the supremacy of the ruling powers! But who is this Jesus to make such an audacious claim? Well, Mark says, he is "Christ" and "Son of God." And for the orginal hearers that was a potent and dangerous claim and a powerful and radical statement. Is it for us as well?

The Christian terminology of "good news" regarding the "Son of God" is a radical symbolic counter-claim to the imperial veneration of the Roman Emperor. It is anti-imperial rhetoric in the service of a subversive counter-claim, a claim calling for the veneration of a humble Jewish man named Jesus. Who is the true son of God? Augustus on his imperial throne or Jesus hanging on the imperial cross? How would we have answered that question?

In Mark's gospel it is no less a figure than the Roman centurion, that said of Jesus, “Truly this man was the Son of God!” (Mark 15.39) How ironic! Think of it. A soldier of the imperial armed forces testifies that Jesus is the Son of God. This was a man that had been brought up on the ideology of empire in which the Emperor Caesar Augustus was God and his reign the beginning of good news for the world! As the divine Son of God the Emperor was destined to establish the kingdom of Rome in the world. However, at the cross of Jesus this soldier realized that his Emperor had no clothes. And thus the centurion committed blasphemy and treason by daring to name another as Son of God, a victim of imperial violence no less!

I wonder if we really realize what it means to call Jesus the Son of God. It is much more than just a nice devotional exercise. It is nothing less than a subversive claim that can get an individual in trouble with the powers that be in any society. To call Jesus the Son of God effectively strips all other leaders, both political and spiritual, of ultimate authority. To call Jesus the Son of God is the beginning of a life of freedom from all forms of imperial domination. Such freedom ultimately puts us in opposition with all the many forms of unfreedom in our world. Do we understand what such freedom entails and if so do we actually desire it?

4.04.2008

Who Was Jesus?

"We can relate to God as human beings because God is truly Human." (Walter Wink, The Human Being, 42)

I came across an interesting fact about Jesus a number of years ago that has stuck with me. I'm not certain about the meaning of its significance yet but it has become something of a fixed point in my thinking about Jesus. Jesus referred to himself using the phrase "son of man" more than any other title. Interestingly, the original disciples rarely used that term for Jesus and the church has used it even less, both groups preferring the title "son of God." However, the fact stands that Jesus's favorite designation of himself was "son of man" (the phrase is used 84 times in the gospels).

What does this mean? Was Jesus more comfortable with his true humanity than those that followed him? Do we tend to ignore Jesus's human nature because we are so preoccupied with his divinity? Does our concept of Jesus's divinity tend to obscure the reality that he was a finite human being subject to the same limitations as all other human beings? These are all good questions that deserve careful consideration. In fact, that is what the quest for the historical Jesus has been doing for over the past two hundred years. Since the Enlightenment scholars have been attempting to understand something of the human Jesus. Such a quest may lead into some scholarly dead ends but the quest itself is certainly important, especially if Jesus truly was the "son of man." His humanity cannot be simply absorbed and overshadowed by his divinity, because that would be to make of Jesus another false christ!

Consider these two important texts about the phrase "son of man." First, Psalm 8.3-6, "When I look at your heavens, the work of your fingers, the moon and the stars that you have established; what are human beings that you are mindful of them, the son of man that you care for him? Pay attention to the parallelism of Hebrew poetry, "human beings . . . son of man," "mindful of them . . . care for him." The plural "human beings" is equated with the singular "son of man." From this we begin to see that the "son of man" is not strictly an individual but a symbol of a larger group. Second, carefully study the vision of Dan. 7.14 where the "son of man" appears as an individual with the interpretation in vss. 21-22, 27 where the kingdom is given to the "holy ones," the "people of the Most High." "His kingdom" in vs. 14 is "their kingdom" in vs. 27. Again we see a collective dimension of the "son of man" symbol. The "son of man" is more than just a single individual.

What does all this mean for us? The "son of man" is a liberating and empowering symbol. It is also the antidote for the imperial "son of God" christology that has dominated the church since the time of Constantine. The church has often used its image of Jesus as "son of God" to force believers into submission to the will of a dictatorial leadership. It has taught that human beings are ignorant and cannot be trusted to think for themselves. That human beings are faithless and must be coerced with rules and regulations to act responsibly. In short, the imperial "son of God" of the Constantinian church has been used to beat people into submission to church traditions rather than to liberate them into the spiritual freedom of the children of God!

Jesus is the head of a true and new humanity. As "son of man" he does not wish to subjugate us as other imperial leaders, both secular and religious, seek to do. Jesus wants to liberate us from all forms of imperial power and to empower us to resist such power by assisting in the work of his kingdom. Through the "son of man" we are given "glory," "honor," and "dominion" in an "everlasting kingdom" that "shall never be destroyed."