January 8, 2012

Allanah Church

Epiphany 1     Mark 1:1

From the dusty pages of this ancient Biblical text, we are introduced to an opening story of epic proportions. The Gospel writer of Mark wants his readers to know that something of enormous significance is happening here. He calls it “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ, the Son of God”. This account of the Baptism of Jesus is the first framework story of the writer of Mark’s Gospel. He also includes a number of other accounts of epiphanies of Jesus in his gospel. His writings maybe saying about his own epiphany. Each of the epiphanies he describes, serves his purpose in declaring his own conviction that Jesus Christ is the Son of God. Of course, he was not alone in this understanding. Many of the Gospel narratives have been overlaid with the Gospel writer’s own interpretations of the events in Jesus’ life, each serving a particular purpose. The writings reflect the understandings of the early Christian believers following the death of Jesus. We need to remember that these Gospels were written retrospectively, decades after the death of Jesus.

How believable is it for us now; for those of us who come to this story from the viewpoint of contemporary Biblical scholarship? This is a question we need to keep coming back to as we explore the Biblical text more closely.

The Gospel writer places the opening scene down by the River Jordan. We know this story only too well… Here we find a rugged-looking character called John the Baptist; an Elijah look-alike, whose preferred diet is locusts and wild honey. People are flocking to him to repent and receive a purification process called Baptism. Jesus of Nazareth was known to be a follower of John the Baptist at this time, and it is to John, that Jesus comes to be baptized. The Gospel writer tells us that at the moment of his baptism, the heavens are torn apart and a voice thunders out these words “this is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.” It is described as if God has been let loose in this event… there’s no gentle music playing in the background of this scene. The Gospel writer wants his readers to grasp the concept that all that separated the realm of God from the realm of humanity up until now, no longer exists! The heavens are now torn apart, there is no going back. The Son of God has appeared! Later in the Gospel we have an another account of an epiphany, where,at the time of Jesus’ death on the cross, the veil of the Temple is said to be torn apart and a soldier nearby cries out ‘truly this is the Son of God”.

As we take up this Biblical text and examine it more closely, we find ourselves having to wrestle with what we now understand about Jesus of Nazareth, in the light of contemporary Biblical Scholarship. In Mark’s Gospel, the earliest of the (canonical) gospels, we discover how the historical material that existed about Jesus, begins to merge with an overlay of the early Christian movement. Viewed retrospectively many decades after the death of Jesus, they began to see Jesus more and more as the Son of God, indeed, the Messiah. Unless we come to terms with how the Gospels came to be written and for what purpose, these gospel narratives will continue to be a source of misunderstanding and misinformation. (1) Critical Scholars have to work their way back through the layers of writing that have evolved around New Testament literature.

For almost 17 hundred years, Christians have regarded the Biblical texts as records of what actually happened. We have held the conviction that Jesus said and did everything the Gospels have him say and do, when he lived upon Earth. When we became aware of this newer world of contemporary critical historians working with these texts, it opened up a world of controversy, as well as some amazingly new Epiphanies a world apart from those recorded in the Gospels… revelations of a more authentic Jesus Tradition. Serious questioning of traditional beliefs can be disturbing, confronting and challenging for some of us. It can be hard to extricate ourselves from our old theological positions and our long-held traditional beliefs. More than likely, these have shaped our faith journey from the beginning. There will be some among us, for whom these discoveries are still, understandably, very troublesome and even threatening. Some will come to the water’s edge with trepidation, because it is a quest without absolute certainties and it is filled with controversy and contradiction. Others of us are excited and challenged by a fuller immersion into the world of critical scholarship.

Marcus Borg, in his recent text, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary, (4) makes the point that for Jesus to go to a figure like John the Baptist, was more dangerous than it sounds. In this act, Jesus appears to be seeking out a movement of protest and renewal. John was a man who had no institutional standing. He was an anti-establishment figure. When he preached a baptism for the forgiveness of sins, such a message countered the Temple’s claim to be the mediator of forgiveness. Thus John was also seen as an anti-Temple prophet. The encounter that Jesus had with John at his baptism is therefore decisive. It helps us understand more clearly, Jesus’ intentions for his own mission (2). Soon after his Baptism, Jesus parts company with John. Feasting and celebrating are more his style than fasting. Jesus never called his followers to repent and he did not baptize. It is unlikely that Jesus saw himself as the Son of God or the long-awaited Messiah who was to save Israel. So what happened to the understandings about Jesus after his death? The believing community wanted to propagate its faith by making it appealing to others. They wanted to market the messiah. There was a gradual elevation of the status of Jesus. This was done by a series of stories about epiphanies such as the one we read about today in the Gospel of Mark. It is unlikely that Jesus saw himself as the Son of God in this way, and it is unlikely that he saw himself as the Messiah, as the one who was expected to save Israel. It seems was not concerned with status and titles in any way. Amongst the early Christian community, there was also a tendency to make Jesus’ wisdom conform to popular expectations, to assimilate his vision of God’s Kingdom in which compassion through justice-making was so much the heart of his teachings. Through the development of this process, there was a loss of the immediacy of the Kingdom of God. The cutting edge of Jesus’ life and mission was slowly domesticated and became weakened. (3)

As compelling as Marcus Borg’s perspective is, we know that his understandings about Jesus are but one among many Biblical Scholars, who are doing serious and reliable work, from many different approaches. However, we have no reason to doubt that Jesus was an historical figure, that he was a Jew who lived in 1st Century Palestine, that he taught in parables, that he spoke about God’s reign and that he was crucified in Jerusalem. Beyond that we run into controversy and contradictions. This is not surprising, there has always been radically different takes on Jesus and there probably always will be. One contemporary Professor of Theology puts it like this… trying to find a definitive answer about who Jesus is, from within the world of Biblical Scholars, is a bit like shovelling frogs into a wheelbarrow-they keep coming out even as one is trying to shovel more in!” Will today’s consensus be tomorrow’s memory? If we are holding our breath waiting for a consensus of Biblical Scholars, he says wryly, we may very well pass out! However, he goes on, we may consider it better to live with uncertainty, than to live with a closed mind! (4) Critical enquiry has a profound value especially when it invites and compels us to exploring new evidence with honesty, whatever the outcome.

I am drawn to a gripping proposition which Marcus Borg explores when he considers the idea of Epiphany (5). He suggests that authentic Epiphany may lie in the very life and being of of Jesus himself. That Jesus embodies a revelation of what the love of God is like. His glimpse of the vision of the Kingdom of God, where the poor, the suffering, and the marginalized are included, where compassion is practised and experienced? This is nothing like an other-worldly, super-human, super-Saviour sort of manifestation, but rather, Jesus’ life and being provide a particular context for what the love of God is like? A life and love that did change lives, a love that is like no other. A love that continues to provide the fuel and the inspiration for many ongoing epiphanies wherever compassion is practised… in human rights movements, in the Movement for the Abolition of Slavery, in the Civil Rights Movement, in the Anti-apartheid movement… countless revelations of Compassionate love at work in the world…

We could return to some Baptismal imagery here…when serious Biblical Scholarship throws up new reliable information, new revelation, new epiphanies, do we keep watering it down and try to make it fit somehow within the traditional versions? Do we sprinkle a few new possibilities around and leave it at that? Or do we jump in the deep end, allowing ourselves to become fully immersed in an ongoing quest for truth…!? Or to put it another way… is an unexamined Jesus worth anything at all?

Whose Jesus will baptize our theology? In keeping with the questing tradition of the Progressive Christian approach… I know I want to keep jumping in the deep end… even if it means coming up gasping for air from time to time. It continues to be a most compelling, invigorating and inspiring experience, and, yes, with many epiphanies along the way… A happy Epiphany Season to you!

1. Funk, Robert, Honest to Jesus

2. Borg, Marcus, Jesus: Uncovering the Life, Teachings and Relevance of a Religious Revolutionary.

3. Funk, Robert, Honest to Jesus

4. Allison, Dale, The Historical Christ and the Theological Jesus

5. Borg, Marcus, Jesus, A New Vision – Spirit, Culture and The life of Dicscipleship