Jesus Brand Spirituality

Sample chapter

I had a painful epiphany a couple of years ago. I had been invited to a retreat hosted by the Harvard Center for Health and the Global Environment and the National Association of Evangelicals. The participants included thirteen of the top environmental scientists of our time, including E. O. Wilson, a world-famous biologist, and Jim Hansen, a NASA expert on climate change. Mixing it up with them were fourteen religious leaders like myself, though most were academics, unlike myself. We were to discover together our common ground: concern for the earth-the bewitched, bothered, and bewildered earth, that is-suffering a growing environmental crisis.

I was deeply moved by the scientists’ missionary zeal to protect the environment. They had a message of alarm and hope. Many of them felt a mystical connection with the subject of their study. Their concern extended across a broad horizon, such as the threat to earth’s vast biodiversity and the effects of global climate change, with the poor in underdeveloped nations bound to suffer more than the rest of us if current trends continue. They perceived these conditions as a moral crisis calling for a vigorous change of heart and will.

Yet many of the scientists assembled claimed no religious commitment, preferring to describe themselves as “secular,” which means “of this world.” They tiptoed around God-talk as though handling a newly discovered radioisotope. Nevertheless, out of love for the world, they agreed to speak again of nature as “the creation,” a decidedly unsecular term. Why? To reach out to my community, the faith community, the community claiming to represent Jesus, who was God’s gift to the world for love of the world. Because we somehow had become the part of the population most resistant to their concerns for the world.

There’s a 1990 movie that didn’t make much of a splash at the box office, but it made a big impression on me. It was called Flatliners, the improbable story of medical students who induce cardiac arrest in each other (one at a time) to effect near-death experience. During these temporary death spells, these students are disturbed by visions of regretful acts they had committed. Sitting there at the retreat, I had a little version of that.

I saw the rolled eyes of faith comrades (not those at the retreat) at the shenanigans of the “tree huggers,” the knowing glances exchanged in response to the “environmental wackos.” I saw myself mirroring this shameful posture at times. I felt the subtle contempt, the feeling of moral superiority aimed at “secular” science and, when my little flashback was over, I kid you not, I felt the wrath of God in the form of tribal shame—shame on behalf of my religious tribe, that is.

This is an example of trademark infringement on the Jesus brand. Religious contempt toward those who care passionately about the environment has nothing to do with Jesus, but it has found a way into much of the religion that bears his name. I hope and pray this is changing, but when an environmental scientist encounters contempt, the scientist often assumes the contemptuous person also carries the name Christian. Some of this is media stereotyping. But I mix and mingle with a lot of Christians, and I can tell you it’s not just a stereotype.

Too many people who claim loyalty to Jesus have been taking their cues from voices on the radio or cable television, voices of self-professed “news entertainers.” All someone has to do is wrap himself in the flag and build a powerful enough media platform, and we hang on every word he speaks as though it were the gospel. Often, the media is just feeding us a party line that may or may not have anything to do with Jesus.

In time this too shall pass—is passing, I trust— and the most prominent mixed loyalties will be of another sort. But in the meantime, we have to look out for trademark infringement wherever it occurs.

This would be a good time to think of Jesus as the attractor buried in the messy field of religion. Since religion can both illuminate and obscure Jesus, sometimes we need to dig to find him. A good place to dig is the Gospels. Here we find Jesus on a mission from God to repair the world. In his glance, we catch an invitation for us to join him.

JUSTICE FOR THE OPPRESSED

After an extended period of solitude in the Judean wilderness, Jesus returned with the clarity and conviction that only the desert can bring. Like the prophets of old, he had wrestled with God and heard his voice, and the words of God burned within him. Jesus went into the north country of Israel, a nation under Roman occupation; he went to the region he knew well, having grown up there. He came to Nazareth, his hometown. Nazareth is close to Sepphoris, where it’s likely Jesus and his father,

Joseph, worked as carpenters on the theaters and entertainment centers built there by the Roman occupiers. We know that in Nazareth, a large number of Jewish insurrectionists were crucified by the Roman occupation force, their corpses left hanging by the side of the road leading out of town. This took place when Jesus would have been a child.

Jesus entered his hometown synagogue on the Sabbath and was honored by an invitation to read from the sacred Torah scroll.

Unrolling it, his eyes fell on the words of the prophet Isaiah, which he read to all assembled:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners and recovery of sight for the blind, to set the oppressed free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”
(Luke 4:18–19)

He then sat down, taking the posture of the teaching rabbi, and announced, “Today this scripture is fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21).

This is the seminal address of Jesus’ public ministry, containing the seeds of all that would follow. It functioned as an inaugural address as well, for the beginning of his reign was at hand. The application, of course, was original, but the language was not. Jesus was using the justice motif of the Hebrew prophets to frame his message and mission. Good news for the poor. Freedom for the prisoners. Release for the oppressed. (1) The beginning of the year of Jubilee, when all debts accumulated by those who couldn’t bear them were to be canceled. (2)

Jesus was intending to right wrongs and to deal with the oppressive powers-that-be so the downtrodden of this world could be lifted up. This would be better for all of us, because things would be as they were meant to be if God were in charge. Jesus was intend¬ing to exercise God’s authority in ways it hadn’t been exercised before. He was making what can only be understood as a power move.

When Jesus went from village to village declaring, “Repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand (Matt. 4:17 NKJV),” he wasn’t just talking about the need for individuals to clean up their moral act. He was speaking, like the prophets before him, to the nation as a whole: repent, turn from your current course as a nation, and recognize God’s authority now at work in your midst. He was reshaping Israel’s national agenda. (3)

Jesus began to do something that would have been perceived as a threat to the vested powers of the day. He gathered the poor and oppressed in large crowds and announced their new empowerment: blessed are you; the kingdom is yours for the taking (see Matt. 5:3). What all this meant wasn’t immediately clear. His disciples were hard-pressed to keep up with him, let alone fully grasp his message. The Roman overlords kept a cautious eye on him through the religious leadership who served at their pleasure. Those in the power centers of the nation sent observers to question him and report back. Jesus was making a lot of people nervous.

But the people who were getting a raw deal from the current system delighted in him. Whoever he was, they knew he was on their side.

In the ancient world, it was understood that the powers-that-be had a spiritual as well as a this-worldly aspect. (4) Rome was in power because the Roman gods were a force to contend with. Israel’s lack of political standing wasn’t just a disgrace to national pride; it was a shameful reflection on Israel’s God. When Jesus went about healing the sick and exorcising people caught in the grip of demonic powers, people didn’t think of him as a religious showboater performing onstage to gather the gullible; they saw him as a person of authority tangling with the powers that influenced powers-that-be. Whatever Jesus was up to, everyone understood that he was a force to contend with.

How did Jesus exercise this authority of his, and to what end? To the end of helping people, empowering the disenfranchised, healing the sick, bringing relief to the tormented, feeding the hungry—to the end of showing Israel a different and better way to be Israel. (5) How was Israel supposed to respond to the Roman occupation? What was Israel’s role in the world? The healing and empowering deeds of Jesus were all very personal, but the movement he was generating—the crowds, the message spreading through the nation, the speculation about where it was all headed—had a much bigger feel than a charismatic self-improvement guru coming to a local large venue for a weekend of religious entertainment.

Several years ago, my wife and I were just getting to know another young couple. Brian was a professional engineer who was being treated for a psychiatric disorder, which was well managed with medication. His wife, Angie, was a fun-loving, idealistic social worker with a passion for helping people in need.

Horribly, Angie was shot and killed in her own home by her husband, Brian. Making sense of a senseless act is a fool’s errand, but in the days immediately following her death, it became known that Angie’s husband had become delusional. He had been laid off from his job at a small engineering firm and had lost his health insurance. He stopped taking his medication and quickly deteriorated. He became mental, unbalanced, fearing that he and his wife would become homeless, and in a confused state, inexplicably, he shot his wife while she lay napping. He made no effort to cover up the crime and, when he realized what he’d done, felt the most profound remorse for it.

We used to sing a song at church that troubled me. Every time we sang it, I thought of Brian and Angie. The refrain of the song went, “God is in control.” I understand that there is a long tradition in the Jesus movement that accepts this as a given, but to my way of thinking, God was not yet in full control when Angie’s husband killed her.

At best, God is still in the process of gaining control, but until we all learn to cooperate with him a little more, it’s not quite accomplished yet. Whether or not it’s inevitable is another question, but it’s certainly not a fully realized present condition.

Jesus said, “The kingdom of God is at hand” (Mark 1:15 NKJV).

At hand. On the way. Coming. In some sense here, but not quite yet. He will bring it, but we all have a part to play in its arrival. We’re to get with the program so the kingdom may come, so his will may be done on earth as it is in heaven.

What would it take for Jesus to redress the wrong done to Angie and to all those who mourn her, to make up for all the ways the world will not be the place it might have been if she had been here longer? We know that forgiveness is of high value to Jesus. Jesus extends God’s forgiveness to sinners. Saul of Tarsus, who later became known as St. Paul, with intention, planning, malice, and in possession of a sound mind, participated in the murder of an early disciple of Jesus. Paul was forgiven. But forgiveness and mercy extended to Angie’s distraught husband is only part of what needs to happen to right this wrong.

Jesus brings a kind of justice that cares about the broad social issues contributing to a person on the edge losing his equilibrium. I worked as a registered nurse in the field of community mental health and know that some psychiatric medications should not be abruptly discontinued. Something is wrong when people in a nation surrounded with good health care don’t have access to it. (To say nothing of the unavailability of even the most basic health care in other parts of the world.) That’s a wrong that needs to be righted. Inspired by Jesus, we could lend a hand to that effort. I have a friend, Linc, whose nonprofit company is working to find solutions for a health-care system in the United States that leaves millions of people uninsured. He and his company are doing the Lord’s work. We should talk to the Lincs of this world and find out how we can help.

The religion of Jesus put a premium on caring for the most vulnerable among us as the sign of authentic religious practice (see James 1:27). (6) In the New Testament era, the paradigmatic group of the most vulnerable among us was “the widows and the orphans.” It’s not too great a stretch to think that the “widows and orphans” of our day include single moms and their families, raised without the help of husbands and fathers. Inspired by Jesus, we who are men could do everything in our power to stay connected with our children and the mothers of our children. Societal structures that make this more difficult could be wisely adjusted. In the meantime, communities of faith promoting the cause of Jesus could help him exercise more control in the world by creatively caring for single moms and their families, leveraging the resources of the community to do so.

My wife, Nancy, leads a ministry in our church to offer support to single moms and their families. We host a moms’ night out once a month during which we care for and feed the children of the single moms while serving the moms a gourmet dinner. Not lousy church potluck fare, but a meal prepared by skilled chefs and served by uniformed wait staff. Our goal is to make the moms feel pampered so they are encouraged in their difficult task. The evening facilitates relationships that further support the moms. Other sup¬port also flows from that base, including a car repair ministry. Caring for the most vulnerable isn’t a matter of compassion alone; it’s a demand of justice and the sign of true religion.

Well and good. But now the hard part: Angie herself. What can be done to right the wrong done to her? I take comfort in the hope that Angie’s disembodied spirit is being comforted in the arms of a loving God in heaven. But that doesn’t satisfy my longing for justice for Angie. Something was lost to Angie that needs to be restored, and until it is restored, justice will not have been done. Angie needs her vivacious, pulsating, material-spiritual human-in-the-image-of-God-on-God’s-good-earth life back.

This is where the empty tomb of Jesus comes in, for without it, there is no ultimate justice for Angie. The canonical Gospels and the movement from which they emerged bear witness that Jesus of Nazareth, crucified, dead, and buried, rose again on the third day into a transformed material-spiritual, human-in-the-image-of-God existence that prefigures a new creation to come. (7) Admittedly, this is a wildly audacious hope, but it is the hope that fueled the movement that led to our having a conversation about Jesus in the first place. If it’s a vain hope, so is the hope that “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.” (8)

You will have to decide for yourself whether this is a hope worth holding on to. It took time for the earliest disciples to overcome the shock of it enough to make sense of it and to understand its significance. We’re granted the same space to poke and prod before coming to our own conclusions.

The case against resurrection is the sheer improbability of such a thing ever happening. But one also has to consider the improbabilities on the other side. The early disciples of Jesus were shown to be normal, fear-ridden individuals. How did they find the courage to proclaim a risen Savior if the sealed tomb wasn’t found to be empty with Jesus appearing more or less as the Gospels describe it?

The later, so-called Gnostic gospels, such as the recently discovered Gospel of Judas, take the path of least resistance: Jesus lives on in purely spiritual, disembodied existence, just as the Greeks taught we all will. Not exactly a faith to turn the world upside down. (9) How does that fit with the audacious, earthy, provocative Jesus who is such an arresting figure in the Gospels? What’s the gut-wrenching drama in a Jesus who dies a martyr’s death and then simply lives on in collective memory? Something got this powerful movement started that continues today despite all our efforts to undermine it. (10)

In the end, we can read the accounts that lie closest to the events in question, asking ourselves whether they bear the ring of truth. We can explore, consider, open our hearts (without shutting down our minds), and maybe even ask for some help from God to understand—and then proceed accordingly.

So yes, there are things to believe or not about Jesus. But the primary context for faith to emerge isn’t a class on Christian doctrine taught by an expert. The context is an active engagement with the world in need of repair.

As pilgrims drawn to the center, we can take one step closer to knowing Jesus by listening to his teaching on God’s coming reign of justice and finding needs around us to which we can lend a hand, informed by his perspective. As we engage with the realities that engaged Jesus’ attention, we’re more likely to encounter him.

BREAKING THE CYCLE OF VIOLENCE

My oceanographer friend, the one who describes himself as secular in outlook, was able to see through all the off-putting distractions of what passes for Christianity to understand that Jesus introduced the counterintuitive notion of loving one’s enemies. He describes this as facilitating what he has come to understand through the science of biology—that all life is related. (11) This is why he counts Charles Darwin and Jesus as his two heroes.

You got that right, Doctor. Jesus wants us to love our enemies (Luke 6:27, 35). Not only this, but one could also say that the entire Jesus movement is to be organized around love of enemies. Jesus is the expression of God’s love for all of us who have opposed, through the failings of our lives and perspectives, the coming of God’s kingdom here on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus taught us only to expect God’s forgiveness inasmuch as we are willing to extend it toward those who trespass against us (Matt. 6:12). (12) And Jesus advised Israel that their approach to Roman occupation—violent resistance—would lead to destruction unless they began to practice love of enemies. (13)

The message Jesus brings is meant to be like a stone dropped in a pond that causes a ripple effect. (14) The transformation begins in our hearts, affects our relationships, and extends outward to address our most pressing global concerns. The gospel is a message with a personal, social, and global reach. If it’s not good news at all these levels, it’s not good enough.

On the personal level, what marriage can long survive, or failing that, what divorced couple can cooperate in the care of their children, without the power of forgiveness rooted in love for those who harm us? How do we overcome the poison of hatred at work in our own souls without learning to love our enemies?

How do we reconcile within ourselves the wrongs done to us by others absent the power of this message?

On the social level, Mohandas Gandhi led a nonviolent resistance movement to overthrow the occupation of India by the British army; he was inspired by the teaching of Jesus in the gospel of Matthew regarding love of enemies, the power of turning the other cheek, and going the extra mile.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., inspired by the success of Gandhi, implemented a similar strategy to overcome the evil of structurally embedded racism in the United States. The African American churches of the time were the foundation for this movement. Is it a mere accident of history that both leaders lost their lives by assassination, as did the one who inspired their deeds?

On the global level, as we watch the Middle East conflict spill over into a form of tribal warfare that threatens every nation on earth, can we afford to ignore the message of Jesus to learn how to love our enemies before it’s too late?

Could we learn from the example of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work in South Africa after the overthrow of apartheid? (15) Led by Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the commission came up with a way to respond to the evil of apartheid. Those who committed crimes during this era were invited to receive pardon, but only after public acknowledgment of the wrongs done and willingness to face the victims of their crimes. This approach is credited with breaking the cycle of violence in that country.

What if the followers of Jesus in the United States called a unilateral end to the so-called culture wars pitting people of faith against “secular humanists”? It seems that many people of faith consider it a religious duty to bare their fangs in response to those with whom they disagree, forgetting that each time they do, they distance themselves from the God they are seeking to defend.

Consider this modest proposal: Christians who object to the teaching of evolution in the public schools could observe a one-year moratorium on attempts to overturn the teaching of evolution in the schools; the effort expended would then be directed toward volunteering to help public school science teachers with any classroom needs they might have. When the year of service is over, Christian leaders with concerns about evolution could gather with leaders in the field of evolutionary science simply to understand each other’s conflicting perspectives. Their aim would not be to debate the issue, but to grow in understanding of the other side’s view. Once each side was able to accurately restate the other side’s views, tentative explorations of common ground could be undertaken. (16)

The Monty Python movie Life of Brian includes a scene in which Jesus is preaching, but his voice is too faint to be heard at the back of the crowd. (17) He says, “Blessed are the peacemakers.” Some older women are heard to be saying, “What’d he say? I can’t hear ’im very well.” A younger person answers solemnly, “He said, ‘Blessed are the cheese makers.’” This sets off a round of, “Why is he saying that? What’s so special about those people? Why is he playing favorites?” Perhaps it’s time we all got a little closer and listened to what Jesus is really saying.

TENDING THE GARDEN

One of the greatest global threats we face is the growing environmen¬tal crisis: air and water pollution, ecosystem collapse in developing countries, an alarming increase in the extinction rate of animals and plants (and with the latter, the loss of potentially disease-curing drugs), and the threats associated with climate change. Because the poor are less protected from the vagaries of the natural environment, they are especially vulnerable to the harm caused by environmental degradation. The environmental crisis, therefore, is a matter of acute concern to the God whose heart is especially tender toward the poor.

Judging from his many citations, Jesus was fond of the book of Genesis, first among the books in the Hebrew Bible. One of his sayings harkened back to Genesis: “From the beginning, it was not so.” In the gospel of John, the resurrection account harkens back to the Genesis garden and forward to a new creation. Jesus appears near the empty tomb early in the morning on the first day of a new week. Mary Magdalene encounters him and mistakes him for the gardener. This is John’s way of emphasizing the resurrection as the beginning of a new creation.

Jesus isn’t just about helping us get to heaven when we die. He didn’t teach us to pray, “Get us out of this mess on earth and let us into heaven!” The destiny of the disembodied soul after death is at best a minor theme in the New Testament writings, which focus instead on God’s kingdom coming to earth. Jesus said, “When you pray, say . . . Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Luke 11:2 NKJV). Jesus is about the renewal of the earth, which has already begun.

Those who follow him are to act as though the earth is the Lord’s, because it is. There are plenty of reasons rooted in self-interest and power politics and the powers-that-be to keep us from not caring about the earth as though it were the Lord’s. Much in our society leads us to treat the earth as a disposable resource, caring little that we are using it up for future generations.

Here in the United States, we use quite a bit more than our fair share of energy. We account for much more than our fair share of carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere from the burning of fossil fuels; these emissions are known to be an important factor in the climate’s warming, leading to harmful effects for centuries to come because a large percentage of the carbon remains in the atmosphere for hundreds of years. The fuel we burn also pollutes the air we breathe and the water we drink. The coal we burn to generate electricity releases mercury into the atmosphere, which gets into the food chain so that pregnant women who eat too much fish endanger the health of their unborn children. Asthma rates are on the rise, especially in our urban centers, among the most vulnerable.

These are wrongs that need righting, problems in our world that need fixing. The message of Jesus addresses these concerns if we have ears to hear. These are complex problems that can only be solved by extraordinary cooperation—cooperation on a scale never before required of humanity. We need good science to help fix the problems created by the technologies we adopted without counting the cost of their adoption. We need action by individuals and governments and cooperative actions among nations. We need wisdom. We need help.

We can’t get there from here without a shared concern for justice, rooted in the hope of a better world. We can’t get there from here without learning to get along across political, cultural, social, religious, and geographic divides. We can’t get there from here without a substantially increased capacity to practice love, including love of our enemies and those with whom we don’t easily get along. Jesus could be a source of leadership and inspiration as we tackle these problems together.

At the retreat I attended with those scientists regarding the environment, James Gustave Speth, the dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, the first scientific adviser to the U.S. president on climate change, stood up and said, “I used to think if we threw enough good science at the environmental problems, we could solve them. I was wrong. The main threats to the environment are not biodiversity loss, pollution, and climate change, as I thought once. They are selfishness and greed and pride. And for that we need a spiritual and cultural transformation, something we scientists don’t know much about. Maybe it’s time for us scientists, including those of us who are not religious, to work together with people of faith to help that along.”

Or as Jesus would say, “Repent, believe the good news. The kingdom is at hand.”

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1. The sacred text that informed Jesus always understands poverty in the light of oppression. For example, Psalm 12:5 says, “Because the needy are oppressed and the poor cry out in misery, I will rise up and give them the help they long for” (The Book of Common Prayer).

2. Bible scholars believe “the year of the Lord’s favor” in Luke 4:19 is a reference to the Jubilee, a practice referenced in the law of Moses calling for the canceling of debts every fifti¬eth year, though there is no evidence that it was ever practiced in ancient Israel, making Jesus’ announcement even more significant.

3. For an expansion on this perspective see N. T. Wright, The Challenge of Jesus (London: SPCK, 2000).

4. For an understanding of the worldly aspect of the biblical view of the powers-that-be, see Walter Wink, The Powers That Be: Theology for a New Millennium (New York: Galilee Trade, 1999). For an understanding of the spiritual aspect of the biblical view, see Charles Kraft, Christianity with Power: Your Worldview and Your Experience with the Supernatural (Eugene, OR: Wipf and Stock, 2005).

5. See N. T. Wright’s The Challenge of Jesus (London: SPCK, 2000) for an understanding of the message of Jesus in historical context.

6. Intriguingly, this letter may have been written by James, the brother of Jesus and leader of the church In Jerusalem. Its tone certainly resonates with the timbre of Jesus’ prophetic voice.

7. One could think of this as analogous to a “phase change,” as when water at a certain atmospheric pressure and temperature suddenly undergoes a phase change from liquid to gaseous form. (For more on this analogy, see John Polkinghorne, Quarks, Chaos, and Christianity [New York: Crossroad, 1994], 82–83.) The resurrection body of Jesus is understood in the New Testament as in some sense continuous with his body before death and in another sense discontinuous with that body, in the way that a plant is continuous and discontinuous with the seed from which it springs forth. All this is implied in the phrase “a transformed mate-rial-spiritual existence.”

8. A favorite quote of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., famously used in his “God Is Marching On!” speech, March 21, 1965, Montgomery. Full text available at http://www.stanford.edu/group/King/publications/speeches/ Our_God_is_marching_on.html (accessed October 23, 2007).

9. For the most exhaustive case for the resurrection of Jesus argued from the standpoint of historical evidence, see N. T. Wright, The Resurrection of the Son of God (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 2003).

10. I refer to the misguided efforts of practitioners, not skeptics.

11. See Carl Safina, “Something New Under the Sun,” www.expedition.com.

12. This would include, if not define, our enemies.

13. This is the import of Jesus’ teaching in the Sermon on the Mount to “turn the other cheek” (Matt. 5:39) and “walk the extra mile” (Matt. 5:41). Both of these would have been understood as a counterintuitive response to Roman occupation.

14. I’m indebted to Tri Robinson and Jason Chatraw, coauthors of Saving God’s Green Earth: Rediscovering the Church’s Responsibility for Environmental Stewardship (Norcross, GA: Ampelon, 2006), for this image.

15. See Desmond Tutu, No Future without Forgiveness: A Personal Overview of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (New York: Random House, 2000).

16. As part of this yearlong suspension of hostilities, people of faith would boycott any media voices who use contempt toward those with whom they disagree, as a kind of “love your enemy” fast.

17. I’m grateful to Carl Safina for pointing out this scene to me.