Bearing Faithful Witness

The Christian faith is a historical faith which emerged from a historical person: Jesus of Nazareth.

History has always informed the Christian faith. Creeds, councils, and developing traditions over the centuries have led to the many present day christian belief systems. Who was the historical Jesus, this man from Galilee and how did he become "the face of God" as Paul describes him in 2 Corinthians 4:6?

God is real. The Christian life is about a relationship with God as known in Jesus Christ. It can and will change your life. How we think about Jesus will very much affect what we think the Christian life is most centrally about.

To take Jesus seriously, as the image of God, to see the historical Jesus as having a

• spirit dimension
• wisdom dimension
• political dimension,

Spirit, compassion, and the quest for justice are at the center of a Christian life that takes Jesus seriously

How does your image of Jesus affect your life?

A life centered in the spirit

centered in God

in the same spirit Jesus knew in his life.

God is all around us

and has been in relationship with us

whether or not we are aware of it.

A life that flows from

taking Jesus seriously
as a spirit person
is centered in spirituality:
becoming conscious and
intentional about a
relationship with God.

For Jesus, God was an experiential reality, not simply an element of belief.

Life centered in the spirit also means life lived in accord with the alternative wisdom of Jesus rather than the conventional wisdom of culture.

Jesus as alternative wisdom teacher

Jesus invites his hearers to leave conventional wisdom behind in order to live by an alternative wisdom.

Jesus' wisdom teaching takes two forms:

Aphorisms:

Great one-liners
Short, pithy, memorable sayings
Crystallizations of insight that provoke and invite further insight

Examples:
"If a blind person leads another blind person, they will both fall into a ditch."
"Leave the dead to bury the dead."

Parables:

Short stories
Invite the hearer to enter the world of the story and to see differently in light of the story

Example: story of the Good Samaritan (Luke 10:25-37)

Both aphorisms and parables are evocative and provocative forms of speech. Most importantly they are invitational forms of speech invitations to see something you might not have otherwise seen invitations to see differently. Jesus spoke his aphorisms and told his parables many, many times. No great speaker of one-liners tells a great one-liner only once, no great teller of great stories tells a great story only once. The gospels are plot summaries.

Jesus' invitation to see differently

Seeing is central to the wisdom teaching of Jesus. There are many sayings and healing stories about seeing. How you see makes all the difference.

• What does Jesus invite people to see?
• What is this new or different way of seeing like?
• What is the different vision of life to which Jesus points and to which he invites his hearers?

Jesus' alternative wisdom teaching undermines and subverts the social boundaries generated by the conventional wisdom of his day and ours.

Jesus' wisdom teaching points to the world of conventional wisdom as a world of blindness. His aphorisms and parables invite us to see differently.

Conventional wisdom	Jesus' alternative wisdom
God is punitive lawgiver and judge	God is gracious
A person's worth is determined by measuring up to social standards	All persons have infinite worth as children of God
Sinners and outcasts are to be avoided and rejected	Everyone is welcome around the table and in the kingdom of God
Identity comes from social tradition	Identity comes from centering in the sacred, from relationship with God
Strive to be first	The first shall be last...; those who exalt themselves will be emptied...
Preserve one's own life above all	The path of dying to self and being reborn leads to life abundant
Fruit of striving is reward	Fruit of centering in God is compassion

A life whose fruit is growth in compassion

Jesus teaches: "Be compassionate as God is compassionate"

Love and compassion are the primary fruits of the spirit. To take Jesus seriously is to embody his example and vision of compassion and inclusiveness.

A life with a social-political imperative. Political consciousness raising about the way political structures profoundly impact human life.

Jesus was a social prophet:

• in the tradition of the great social prophets of Israel
• with passion for a just and compassionate social order

God cares about human suffering and the causes of human suffering. Bad political structures are the single greatest source of suffering in human history. Wars, starvation, brutality, etc. are caused by unjust human social structures.

One can make a very good case that Jesus was killed because he stood against the domination systems of his day and advocated an alternative social vision

To care about human beings means to care about devising more humane and just and compassionate social structures.

During his lifetime, Jesus attracted a following of people who were captivated by his alternative wisdom and alternative social vision.

Jesus' social vision is seen most clearly in his open table fellowship. He ate meals with tax collectors, sinners, outcasts, untouchables. For Jesus, or for any public religious figure, to eat with untouchables is to make a very sharp edged social statement.

It is deliberate, intentional, and is meant to embody the egalitarian, inclusive social vision of Jesus.

The path Jesus travels, and invites his hearers to travel, is a way radically centered in God and not in culture.

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