Jesus - Man of Action

Jesus was not a theoretician.  He did not dispense a lot of ideas and leave His followers to sort out their application. His goal was never to leave behind a great catalogue of sermons.  Yes, Jesus was a great teacher, but He never wanted people to make a list of things He said and then debate His teaching points.  In other words, Jesus' goal was not to teach and leave us to figure out what to do next.  Jesus acted and taught with action in mind so He could teach people how to act. 

Jesus often did His teaching with actions, which said more than any sermon ever could. Take the story of Zacchaeus, the little tax collector from Jericho was was too short to see Jesus, so he climbed a tree.  Jesus could have turned up in Jericho, preached a sermon on repentance, and then left.  But instead of preaching that kind of sermon, He saw a guy in a tree and invited Himself to his home.  Some of the the people around Jesus were disturbed that Jesus would enter the home of a low life scumbag like Zacchaeus, a tax collector. 

But during the course of this visit, Zacchaeus stands up and says:
"Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount."  Jesus said to him, "Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. For the Son of Man came to seek and to save what was lost"  (Luke 19:8-10).

The actions of Jesus in Jericho speak so much more loudly than any sermon ever could.  He chose one of the worst guys in Jericho, a Chief Tax Collector, went to his house, spent time with him, ate with him, and probably had some good conversation.  Zacchaeus knew about Jesus, otherwise he wouldn't have been climbing a tree to get a better look at Him.  I don't imagine that Jesus really had to say loads and loads.  But in the course of the visit Zacchaeus spontaneously turned away from all his corrupt ways and decided to give money away and pay back the folks he had cheated.

There is no real sermon recorded by Luke.  All Jesus says is, 'Salvation has arrived in this house.  Zacchaeus is a son of Abraham, a child of faith.'  Not much in the way of sermons.  But the last part of what Jesus says is the best: 'See this everybody - this is exactly why I came.  I came so that people who are far from God like Zacchaeus can come close to God.  This is my purpose.' 

Jesus, the Man of Action, demonstrates the heart of the Good News - that God wants to come live near us and in us and have us be close to Him.  Very literally, God asked Zacchaeus to let Him into his life.  When Zacchaeus let that happen, Jesus showed everyone the result  - a drastically changed life.  Jesus left a reminder for the people of Jericho in the form of Zacchaeus' new way of life, a concrete reminder that God changes lives.  In my opinion that is much better than any sermon on repentance than Jesus could have ever preached.

the nature of Christ

The following passage is something I read yesterday in one of my VLI textbooks. This passage is fantastic. It is in a section dealing with the person of Christ, and specifically the fact that he is both divine and human:

"None of us is humanity as God intended it to be, or as it came from His hand. Humanity was spoiled and corrupted by the sin of Adam and Eve...The question is not whether Jesus was fully human, but whether we are. He was not merely human as we are; he was more human than we are. He was, spiritually, the type of humanity that we will possess when we are glorified. Jesus most fully reveals the true nature of humanity...As the image of God, humans are already the creatures that are most like him" (p. 239, Introducing Christian Doctrine, by Millard Erickson).

Putting this passage with some other things I've been learning, reading and thinking, here are some thoughts:

• There have only been 3 'real' people in the history of the world - Adam, Eve, and Jesus
• They alone were what humanity was meant by God to be
  
• Our sin nature is not humanity's original nature
• Adam and Eve traded some part of the image of God, their humanity, for something less than what they were meant to be
  
• Jesus in his perfection is left then as the one True Man, the sinless one
  

Why does all this matter? Jesus is changing us and making us into what we should be, bearers of God's image. He is what we will become. Or as the Eastern Orthodox tradition states: 'He became what we are so we can become what he is.' This all matters because God's desire is to restore what was lost by changing us so we can be like Jesus. He is making all things new, including us!

recommended reading

Anne Rice is one of my favorite authors. Her Vampire Chronicles books are some of the best books I've ever read. For most of her writing years she has been identified with the horror genre of literature because of these books. In the past few years she had a conversion experience and started following Jesus. In light of this, she decided to write a series a fictional novels about Jesus called Christ the Lord, quite a departure from the Vampire Chronicles.

In the first book, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt, we find Jesus and his family in Egypt and follow them as they leave Egypt to return to Nazareth. Rice imagines how the events of Jesus' late childhood and early adolescence might have unfolded. The second book, which I just finished yesterday, is called Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. It picks up way after the first on left off. It skips to the adulthood of the the carpenter Jesus of Nazareth and the story goes on from there. It takes us from the days just before Jesus started his public ministry up to the beginning of his ministry.

The thing I love about these books is the way Rice portrays the humanity of Jesus. These are fictional accounts based on her research and study, but are also products of her imagination. So they and may not be accurate at all, and that's okay because they're works of fiction. But what she's doing is helping us imagine what Jesus' life on earth might have been like while he was working, laughing, dancing, crying, hungry, thirsty, etc. She does a good job of portraying the tension of his human and divine aspects without taking anything away from either either of these aspects of his being. So here are two more books to put on your summer reading list.

And finally just for good measure here is an absolutely hysterical Snickers ad featuring Mr. T. Apparently, its been banned:

Warner Sallman and Jesus art

This painting of Jesus has to be one of the most iconic American paintings ever. Anybody ever seen this one hanging in a church or at your grandmother's house? How many people think of this very image when they picture Jesus? I do, or at least I did in the past. Anyways, I was curious to find out who painted this. Turns out that this was painted by a believing artist named Warner Sallman. Wikipedia says this about the man and the painting:

"Warner Sallman (1892 - 1968) was a Christian painter from Chicago. He worked as a freelance illustrator. His portrait of Christ, The Head of Christ, of which more than 500 million copies have been sold, is better known than he is, however the New York Times in 1994 called him the "best-known artist of the century". He also created commercial advertising images." (read the rest here).

There are lots of other visual representations of Jesus, some of which are really awesome, and some of which are really cheesy. In the category of 'awesome', a guy named Matt Stone has a whole host of paintings of Jesus and other Christian themes on his blog. They are paintings from many different cultures around the world. Its so neat to see how the rest of the world envisions Jesus.To the right is one really cool one of the baby Jesus and Mary his mother (try to guess what country its from).

There are other things out there however that I just think are cheesy like the paintings at www.art4god.com. The art itself is good, but come on, Jesus as a boxer? Jesus as a greaser? You be the judge.

And lastly (in my opinion), the most ridiculous and cheesiest of all Jesus art is a line of statuettes called Jesus is my Coach. You can get all the regular sports like basketball, football, and baseball, but you can also get Jesus the Martial Art Instructor, Jesus the Ski Instructor and even Jesus the Ballet Instructor. If you haven't seen these yet, you've got to click through and check them out.