JESUS WASN’T, AND ISN’T RELIGIOUS

 

There’s a wonderful story in Jewish tradition about an old Rabbi and his disciple Moshe. ‘Rabbi, the disciple said. ‘Why do you teach that God is closer to sinners than to the perfect ones?’

‘Well’, the old rabbi explained, ‘every time we sin we break the thread that ties us to God. Every time we repent, God ties it up again. And every knot shortens the thread.’

The theology might not be well founded, but there is something about the record in the Christian Gospels of the latter years of the life of Jesus that could easily give the impression that he loved bad people more than he loved good people. He didn’t, but neither did he love them less.

Having said that, when you look at the lifestyle of Jesus, it’s hard not to question the very basis of organised religion as we know it. For example, his choice of friends would be considered dubious to say the least; he was comfortable in the company of prostitutes, he was a friend of social outcasts, and the religious rulers scathingly called him a glutton, a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors – those at the bottom of the social pile – and sinners.

Jesus’ harshest words were reserved for the religious elders and the rich. The religious elders he called a generation of vipers, sons of the devil, whitened sepulchres. He called them hypocrites; ‘... you cross land and sea to make one convert, and then you turn that person into twice the child of hell you yourselves are!'

And he had plenty to say of the rich people too; ‘...it is hard for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven,’ he said, while as he saw it, the poor in spirit would inherit the earth.

It could be said that the reason behind the tendency of today’s religious people, to sanitise Jesus as they do, is that they still do not approve of the way he carried on.  I would go further and remind us that it was not the Romans who crucified him, nor was it some band of wicked men who did the foul deed. No, it was the religious leaders who even as Pontius Pilate appealed to them, ‘Why don’t I release him. He has done nothing wrong,’ they shouted him down: ’Crucify him! Crucify him! We don’t want this man to rule over us!’ – odd that, for Jesus never did want to rule over anyone, he wanted to free them from their 600+ laws replacing them with one; ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and your neighbour as yourself.’ Trouble is that when you want to live at the top of a pecking order there’s not much room for selfless love, is there?

The understanding that it was the religious establishment who choreographed the crucifixion of Jesus has the potential to change your life forever, because the next step is to ask why they did it, and the next is to see that nothing much has changed... except that rather than crucifying him these days we sanitise him, and to sanitise him is to portray him as a grotesque caricature; gentle Jesus meek and mild! – when was Jesus ever meek? Or mild?

So why did they do it? They did it because the entire structure of their lives and their bureaucratic organisation was based on rules, rules that facilitate the distinction between the powerful and the powerless. It’s what gave the Pharisees their status, but it was completely contrary to the message contained in the life of Jesus – ‘...don’t let anyone call you “Teacher,”’ he said, ‘for you have only one teacher, the Messiah... the greatest among you must be a servant.’

Thus he turned their whole raison d’être, their reason for being, on its head. And perhaps a quarter of a century later his message was echoed by the apostle Paul, ‘... don't put up with anyone pressuring you in details of worship services, or holy days. And don't tolerate people who try to run your life, ordering you to bow and scrape...’ But that was too radical for them, so they had them both extinguished.

So what’s the conclusion? Simply this; Jesus wasn’t, and isn’t religious. And if he’s still alive, as Christians say they believe he is, and if he’s not religious, as he so obviously wasn’t, then could it be that the church has some rethinking to do?