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Following Jesus in nonviolent struggle for justice and peace, we love our neighbors and enemies as God loves us all, becoming a peace church to share in God’s work to save the world.

Jesus and World Religions: The Persistence of Hope

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JESUS, ANTHROPOLOGY AND WORLD RELIGIONS
Some Good News

by John K. Stoner

7th of 7. For the full series, start at the beginning, click here http://www.ecapc.org/jesusandworldreligions.asp

7. The Persistence of Hope

    Hope is persistent because Jesus is insistent.

    Not in some irritating or demanding way, but in an invitational way which has resonated in the souls of people from every imaginable land and culture and religion.

    One of the reasons that Jesus is good news is that his life and teachings come to us not as something alien and accusing, but as something familiar and affirming. If this sounds flip or corny, so be it. Just check it out before you throw it out.

    Check first whether your reluctance to cut Jesus some slack, i.e. a fair shake in the contest of world religions and religious leaders, might be growing out of either a seriously flawed understanding of how Jesus truly lived and taught or a mistaken identification of Jesus with people who since his time have claimed to speak for him. If you have ditched Jesus for either of these bad reasons you’ve shot yourself in the foot--or maybe the head.

    Jesus comes to us with strong words--strong words of affirmation. Calling himself “the human one,” or “the son of man,” he claimed far more to be truly human than to be truly God. Now, there, I’ve offended some of the orthodox, but so be it. Jesus also offended the orthodox. Life is more than orthodoxy. Straight thinking is something, but it’s not everything, I say in resonance with Jesus himself.

    The affirming word which Jesus speaks to us is something like “peace to this house” (Luke 10).   The shalom, wholeness, be-all-you-can-be words which he spoke were rooted in a history which was so rife with failure that the “worst” of us can see ourselves in it, and so brimming with grace that the “best” of us are surpassed by its characters. Jesus, in other words, was connected with, and connects us with, human history as it is, its warts and its wisdom in full measure.

    As a guide in our search for ourselves and for God, Jesus helps us to sort through the profoundly checkered history of his tribe (and in that, all of our tribes), keeping some and throwing out a lot more. If we can’t admire him for anything else, we can respect his angry and compassionate assessment of his own religious tradition. What will you give anyway for a leader who is incapable of self-criticism, or a religion which lacks honesty about its own failures?

    When Jesus welcomed people who were social outcasts, encouraged people who were down on themselves, and forgave people who were condemned by society and themselves, he spoke to possibilities which those people sensed in some deep part of themselves, but had lost or forgotten in the crush of life. Maybe somebody else could have done that for them just as well, but the point is that he did it, and they recognized it. He gave them hope.

    Moreover, what he did for people he taught and insisted that they could do for one another. And this, not in some small or token way, but at the very deepest and most profound levels of life and death. Maybe that’s why he talked about life and death, and asked questions like “Is it lawful to do good or go do harm, to save life or to kill?” In your religious system, on your sabbath, how do you answer those basic questions?    He was constantly drawing people into solidarity with himself. He did that by assuring people that he was like them, a human one. He was sharing life and death with them.

    And when he did the other thing, claiming some unique identification with God, his posture of solidarity with every man, woman and child around him meant that he was claiming the same thing for them, i.e., some unique identification with God. His words were, “whoever welcomes you, welcomes me. And whoever welcomes me, welcomes him that sent me.” You do the math. When you identify “You” with “me” and “me” with “God,” you have identified “you” with “___.”

    At the heart of the way Jesus lived was compassion and forgiveness. He forgave sins, he forgave people. He assured them of his welcome and acceptance, and asserted that this represented God’s welcome and forgiveness. Then he went on to say that this way of compassion and forgiveness was to be the way of his followers. They would create and maintain (their) human community with a process of welcome and forgiveness (Matthew 18)   He lived and taught this as a clear and deliberate alternative to the world’s (the Roman empire’s, at the time) effort to create and maintain human community on the basis of coercion and violence. That this was a conscious and intentional alternative to the prevailing mode of social organization is clear by the term he used to describe his message and mission, the kingship or reign of God. Kingship was the name of the world’s way of social organization. He claimed that God did it a different way, with the power of love operating through power and forgiveness. This, he said, is the way, the truth, and the life.

    It has made sense to a lot of people who have tried it. They’ve said, I think we can do this. It gives them hope. --end
Send comments to jstoner@ptd.net

This is my concluding daily ECAPC commentary, as I end my year as a consultant with ECAPC and formally retire. For something on the origins of ECAPC and my role see http://www.ecapc.org/articles/article-12312.htm
   Questions and suggestions for ECAPC can be directed to Diane Ford Jones, National Director dfordjones@ecapc.org

Comments

John and ECAPC,
Thank you so much for your thoughtful commentaries. I'm saddened that you are retiring, and I already feel a void from not having the daily commentary for almost 2 weeks. Diane, how can we keep this commentary going?

psb

Posted by: Pat Brady

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