Re-Thinking Jesus

 

John 2: 13-25                 Richard C. Hulbert                  June 27, 2010 

 

            I was startled about a week ago when the Helena Independent Record published a front page article about the trend referred to as “dry camping”. This phenomenon involves the heavy use of Wal-Mart parking facilities for overnight camping in motor homes and other RV’s (recreational vehicles). The article states that more campers are using Wal-Mart parking facilities than KOA nationwide! Reasons provided for this development in “camping” are convenience (easy to find, access to shopping for resupplying campers), safety and other very practical considerations such as costs. Wal-Mart is free whereas some KOAs have pretty steep fees for parking RVs. In disbelief, I drove out to Wal-Mart one evening and found indeed a significant number of RVs – some quite elaborate motor homes.  Now I am not a camper nor do I own an RV so this is a development to which I had not paid attention. As I thought about this, I wondered what happened to the serenity of camping in the woods, campfires, relaxing to the melodies of the crickets, frogs, birds. When did that get replaced by urban, asphalt camping in the parking lot of a big box retailer? However, and whenever this occurred, what is now clear to me is that some serious re-thinking of camping has occurred right under my nose in response to some set of circumstances. What was a mystical experience captured by “Walden Pond” has been replaced by an urban, nomadic and almost sterile road warrior type of camping experience.

 

            Today we are rethinking everything:

·        Education in an age of technology

·        What is marriage: man and /woman, two men, two women? 

·        Use of marijuana as medicine

·        Sex education in the schools

·        Drilling for oil: should we, where, where not?

                                    The list goes on.

 

            This morning I looked at the front page of the Independent Record as an experiment. I wondered how much of what is reported could be viewed as an example of re-thinking. I was startled to discover that each front page headline provided an example of re-thinking.

·        One article addressed the Helena Trolley – should it be continued? Can we afford it?

·        Another addressed Northwestern Energy’s consideration of electric rate increases (rethinking how much is charged).

·        I read where Montana is re-thinking how it advertises itself by placing large advertising about Yellowstone National Park on Chicago city transition buses.

·        Believe it or not, one headline read “Tornado gives Billings (Montana) the opportunity to re-think METRA (future role and construction of the severely damaged convention center).

 

            The re-thinking we do today determines the lives we live tomorrow. This is true for all generations. All generations have rethought everything.

            The re-thinking by past generations determined the lives we live today. 

Consider:

·        Slavery was re-thought

·        Apartheid was re-thought

·        Women’s rights were re-thought

·        Employee rights were re-thought

·        Civil rights were re-thought

·        Routine space exploration today is the result of re-thinking of the past about Space and our access to it

·        Modern conveniences we enjoy today are the result of re-thinking of the past

                                    And that list goes on also.

 

             Re-thinking is the means by which humans evolve, cultures, evolve and the world evolves.

            If Darwin was correct, that we are the product of continued adaption to the circumstances that we face, then re-thinking is the process by which we adapt and evolve into creatures and societies those past generations would have thought impossible.

            And if Darwin was correct, failure to adapt generally means physical extinction. Following that line of thinking, is it possible that spiritual extinction can also result from failure to rethink and adapt spiritually?

            It was Albert Einstein who said that “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. As a species humans have not met that definition of insanity because we are constantly re-thinking all aspects of our lives in an effort to get better results. 

 

            Re-thinking is, or should be, a faith exercise as well.

            We humans are in the process of evolving to higher and higher levels of God-consciousness, but there will never be a point in this life where we can say “now I fully understand”. Central questions will continue to be shrouded in mystery: Who or what is God? What is the significance of Jesus? What is the purpose of live? What is the meaning of Eternal Life?

            We are trapped in our own limitations and thus on a perpetual journey to understand life, death, human potential, why bad things happen to good people, why good things happen to bad people.

            Many of us meet each challenge we face in life by re-thinking our assumptions about these things and in that way, in response to each circumstances, we gain a small amount of additional understanding. But we never seem to fully understand.

            I said “many of us” meet challenges by re-thinking matters of faith and life,   However, some of us –maybe all of us at times-draw a line in the sand when it comes to rethinking matters of faith.

            Some of us who are quite willing to re-think all other areas of our lives, in matters of faith we seem content to rely on the knowledge and understanding of much more primitive people 2000 years ago and earlier. We seem to have decided that what they understood about faith and life is all the understanding we need. And to justify our unwillingness to rethink matters of faith, we have developed concepts like the “inerrancy of the Bible” or “infallibility of church leaders. We seem to think that the thinking of those who went before us many centuries ago is good enough for us today. 

            As we grew up, we sang the song first sung at a camp meeting in Lexington, South Carolina in 1889:

               Give me that old-time religion

            It seems that in our faith lives, re-thinking is most difficult, as somewhere in our growing up we learned that changing our belief structure is tantamount to denying God.

            But, from the beginning of time man has revised its understanding of God as man has learned more about life, the world, science etc. I have often thought that the placing of a back cover on the Bible is one great disservice to people of faith, as it implies that within these covers is all we need to know. In truth, however, the bible is a record of re-thinking matters of faith that that re-thinking has continued to this very minute and will continue as long as humans exists.

            Within the covers of the Bible, we can see a number of examples of how ancient faith evolved in response to new circumstances and knowledge. Take for instance, the concept of where God meets man- more specifically the evolution of the Temple concept.

 

            As you know, for the ancient Israelites, there were three Temples in Jerusalem. One built by King Solomon was destroyed by Babylon. A second was authorized by the Persian Cyrus the Great upon allowing Israelites to return from Babylonian but was subsequently destroyed. Finally King Herod rebuilt the Temple that we read about in the New Testament. But then Rome destroyed the temple in 70 AD.

            The Temple was then and is now the permanent home of God, and until it is rebuilt, God has no home- the orthodox Jewish point of view.

            But long before Solomon built the first Temple, the meeting place between God and man was a temporary tent called a tabernacle under which the Ark of the Covenant was placed, which contained the stones on which Moses received the Ten Commandments from God. And so the Tabernacle was temporary housing for God and it moved around with the nomadic Israelites.

            Then after the Temple was destroyed in 70 AD, when John wrote his Gospel, we read Jesus making a startling statement about the Temple. In John 2: 13-22 we read where Jesus speaks of himself as the Temple. “Destroy this Temple and in three days I will raise it up”. So here we see Jesus saying He is the new Temple. This is a total rethink of the temple concept, a total re-think of where the presence of God is found. In fact, we see from the days of the Tabernacle, the concept of the meeting place between God and man evolving from a tent, to a magnificent building, to a human being.

 

            I want you to notice two things about the re thinking of the Temple concept. 

            First, we see that over thousands of years the faith people of the bible re-thought the concept of the Temple in response to changing circumstances. For example:

            Initially, the Temple was a fixture of nomadic life. Since the nomadic Israelites moved about, so also did God. So the temple was a tent that could be assembled and disassembled in order to travel with the worshippers.

            Next, when the Israelites found a permanent home in the Promised Land, they decided it was time that God too had a permanent home. Although David designed it, his son Solomon built it. That permanent home was destroyed twice and rebuilt twice. Today all that is left is a wall and the orthodox Jews wear black until it is once gain rebuilt.

            Finally, in John, we see the abandonment of the concept of a temple as something extern al to human beings – a tent, a building – in favor of describing the Temple as a man, a human life.

            About this, Bishop John Shelby Spong, our 2010 Expanding Faith Lectures guest Speaker, says the following:

            So rethinking matters of faith is Biblical – for those of you who need a biblical basis for rethinking faith. And each successive generation seems to have re-thought the principles that prior generations held as true and constant.

            The Second thing that I want you to notice is a subtle but dramatic shift in the understanding of Jesus from the days of his birth, life, and ministry recorded in Matthew, Mark and Luke to the latter part of the first century when John wrote.

            Until John, we read about a human-like individual who is the emissary of a remote God sent by God to earth to somehow save a lost creation. This was the disciples’ expectation of Jesus and when he was executed like a common criminal they struggled to understand how it could be that he was killed by a world he came to save. 

            So they reverted to their own traditions to make sense of what had occurred. Their search took them to their own Passover observance where a lamb was killed and its blood placed on the door knobs of the faithful so the angel of death would Passover these houses and spare the first born within them. So they came to understand Jesus as the lamb who was killed so that others could live. This is the genesis of the understanding of Jesus passed down though many generations – that is, the lamb whose blood has saved us. Or, we are “saved by the blood of the lamb”.

 

            Another tradition they thought about was Yom Kippur. In this observance, a perfect lamb is selected by the priest. The lamb was perfect with no blemishes. In the ceremony, the priest verbally loads on the back of the lamb the since of the people. And then, the lamb is turned out into the wilderness never allowed to return. For a brief moment, therefore, the sinless people were at one with God, for the lamb took away the sins of the world. Hence it is sung even in Christian traditions today, Jesus, the lamb, “that taketh away the sins of the world.”

            These Jewish understandings of Jesus are, interestingly, the doctrines of how Jesus saved an errant world that have shaped our own understanding of Jesus today

            However in John we witness a re-thinking of Jesus. God takes up residence in a human, not a tent or building. 

·        What does it mean that God takes up residence in a human?

·        What does it mean that Jesus is the new Temple?

·        What does it mean when John’s Jesus says “I came that you may have life and have it abundantly”? Is this not a re-think of the previous concepts of Jesus as an emissary from a remote God to save people from destruction in this life?

·        What does it mean when John’s Jesus says “you have seen me, you have seen the Father?” Is this not a re-think of the concept of Jesus as the suffering servant son of a remote God?

            There is some serious re-thinking of Jesus going on in John. And, it is exploring this rethinking in light of what we know about life, and the world in 2010 that is the subject of the 2010 Expanding Faith Lectures by John Shelby Spong.

            Re-thinking Jesus is essentially the focus of the lectures. These lectures are intended to help us realize a higher level of understanding of Jesus, God and human life.

            You may want to consider missing these lectures because re-thinking faith can be scary and threatening to us.

            However, on the other hand, you dare not miss these lectures as re-thinking faith is the way we grow into a higher level of God-consciousness just as re-thinking is the way that we and the world evolve to a higher level of life.