Sunday, January 23, 2011

Saving Jesus

In Sunday school this morning, we started a new series called “Saving Jesus.” The idea is that the way we now perceive Jesus has come a long way from where he started, to the point that he would not be able to recognize himself today. We watched a film in which bunches of experts commented on His metamorphosis into so many things. One theologian said Jesus came to bring the Kingdom of God to earth and what he got what the Church.

It was the formalization of the church under the Emperor Constantine that led to the Nicene Creed, our statement of beliefs, a shift from early Christianity, which was more about what we practiced than what we believe or think. The discussion got into certitude (politically left and right), original sin, then homosexuality in the church and the church versus science. In fact, a good bit of the discussion in class after the film was about science and religion, ending with an episode of Krista Tipett’s show on NPR (formerly Speaking of Faith) in which a renouned scientist likened quarks to God. (We cannot see quarks and we can’t see God but it’s an explaination.)

Then Josh Taylor made a comment about all of the “underbrush” that had grown up around Christianity. These distractions, unrelated side discussions that keep us from the true example set for us by Jesus.

I’d been thinking something similar. As a group of people, we had commented and prodded almost every expert/priest/theologian, except for this one woman, who turned out to be Sister Helen Prejean, the real life nun in the film “Dead Man Walking.” Her message, lost in the sex appeal of the above hot-button topics, was simply love and compassion.

I raised my hand and said so, adding that I wasn’t certain, but it seems like on the worship front, all I recall Jesus saying was that we practice the Eucharist. Take, eat, this is my body, do this in remembrance of me. This wine is my blood, whenever you drink it, remember me. Obviously not the exact words.

So when he said “remember me”, did he mean when you’re thinking about me, pick and choose who you love? Was that the message? Did he say love those who agree with you and omit the others? Or love the righteous but hate people who are greedy or judgmental or self-centered?

I don’t know because I wasn’t there. But I cannot believe if Christ came to earth to bring us the Kingdom of God (not a political kingdom, but God’s Kingdom), I can’t believe that he meant for that love to have any boundaries, that our compassion be limited and that we fallible humans pick what kind of suffering deserves our prayers and attention.

If indeed Jesus broke down social barriers and saw the whole world as sacred, saw that each of us, no matter how flawed, imperfect or even downright bad, is created in the image of God, if he died a painful horrible death as a sacrifice for us, that we might be forgiven our sins (however small and insidious or extreme and magnified), then nothing is nearly as complicated as our petty arguments.

I think if we all spent more time working to increase our love and compassion, if we paused a moment to understand and digest the hope that comes with redemption and forgiveness, if we each personally walked around every each day seeing and treating each person we come into contact as being created in the image of God, there’s no telling what might happen next, none at all.