The ways we have gotten Jesus wrong
REV. SHEA THOMPSON
What have we done to Jesus? Why did we make the gospel the complete opposite of what it was supposed to be? Is it possible that we have made Jesus a mascot and Christianity a sport? How can the church repent of the image of Jesus Christ we have presented, which is vastly different than the Jesus we read about in the Gospels? These are the questions I have wrestled with since I began my graduate studies in theology at Boston University School of Theology. Even now, these questions have resurfaced as we are living in catastrophic times.
As a Chrisitan, I wholeheartedly believe that “Christianity begins and ends with the man Jesus—his life, death, and resurrection. He is the revelation, the special disclosure of God to man [humanity], revealing who God is and what his [God’s] purpose for man [humankind] is.”1 And I believe that “In his birth, life, and death on a cross, Jesus cast his lot with the oppressed.”2 Yet, I assert that we have gotten Jesus wrong in many ways.
Jesus never wanted to be labeled with all the things modern Christianity has labeled him with; instead, Jesus sought to liberate his people, enduring Roman oppression and showing them why they can not behave or “think” like the Romans. This is why Jesus told his disciples the following: “Do not take the road leading to gentiles, and do not enter a Samaritan town, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel” (Matthew 10:5-6).3
Nowhere in the gospels do we find Jesus stating where he wanted to be called “king”, “messiah”, or even “the Christ”. Jesus was not given these labels until years after his lynching, and what we have done to Jesus is not only utterly wrong but overwhelmingly offensive. Jesus himself combated against the things people described him as.
Take, for instance, the confrontation between Jesus and Pontius Pilate. Pilate asked Jesus whether it was true that Jesus was the king of the Jews, and Jesus rebuffed him, proclaiming, “You say that I am” (Matthew 27:11). This example demonstrates why Jesus rejected the titles society would later thrust upon him; The church is guilty of doing the same when we focus too much time on “worshiping” Jesus but we do not follow the social praxis of Jesus and strive to follow this method for social change.
Howard Thurman would put it like this: “The Christian Church has tended to overlook its Judaic origins, but the fact is that Jesus of Nazareth was a Jew of Palestine when he went about his Father’s business, announcing the acceptable year of the Lord.”4 So in essence, we have offended Jesus. We offend Jesus when we call him, “king”, when Jesus did not wanted to be called “king”; we offend Jesus when we worship him but don’t follow him; we offend Jesus when we attempt to make him an American and try to make the cross equivalent to the American flag, and we offend Jesus when we refuse to clothe the naked, fed the hungry, give water to the thristy, vist the sick, and welcome the stranger.
We must understand that “The personality of Jesus, as portrayed in the Gospels, is so vivid, his individual characteristics are so lively and unmistakable, he stands out so distinctively himself and not anyone else, that the story leaves the intense impression of a real man, dealing with real people, in an actual historic situation.”5 The only way we can fix this offense is by returning to the true nature of Jesus, and I am convinced that we do not want to do the work Jesus left for us; instead, we want to sit on the shores of comfort. The gospel is not about making one comfortable; it must make one uncomfortable, just as Jesus did. If we are serious about this, we would aim to undo the wrong, and once this happens, not only will churches grow, but our communities will improve. Just as Jesus sought to save his people from the Roman empire, we must seek to save our people from this American empire.
Let us get Jesus correct and repent for offending Jesus.
1
James Cone, Black Theology & Black Power (New York: Seabury Press, 1969), 34.
2
J. Deotis Roberts, A Black Political Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1974), 130.
3
Came from the New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition
4
Howard Thurman, Jesus and the Disinherited (Boston: Beacon Press, 1949), 6.
5
Harry Emerson Fosdick, The Man From Nazareth (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1949), 17
