Jesus: The Main Event

Jesus is both a person and an event in history. He happened at a certain time, at a certain place in Galilee of the late 20s, yet he is still happening today. You might ask, how is that possible?

Jesus’ Kingdom is already but not yet. By being the Kingdom of God in the way he walked, talked, healed, and prayed in Galilee in the 20s, he created the Kingdom everywhere he went. When he walked among his apostles, followers, and objectors he breathed the disruption of the Kingdom of God into the lives of everyone he touched. Most everyone was intrigued, but generally, those with power and status feared and challenged him while those without power and status listened, followed, and rejoiced in the Good News he preached.

In practical terms, while the man of Jesus began teaching his difficult message of the Kingdom to the enslaved Jews in the 20s, Herod Antipas and other Roman leaders couldn’t have known or cared less about him. They just wanted to continue a peaceful rule, complete their grand construction projects, and have their taxes paid to fund the projects. Crossan calls this situation “urbanization for commercialization.” Meanwhile, in Galilee, however, the farmers, peasants, and fisherman bore the brunt of this Roman commercial vision and were painfully moving from being poor to destitute. Jesus the man offered a socio-economic alternative: “Come follow me” - - an invitation to hear him, share fellowship, and embrace hope in the Kingdom event he spoke of happening in their daily lives right now! (It was a message of hope and light in the vein of what later became called, Liberation Theology, centuries later, as African Americans and the Salvadorans in the 1980-1990s came to know it.) In concrete terms, Jesus’ most receptive audience in the 20s was the poor. The poor really “heard” the gospel (e.g. “Those with ears to hear, should hear”). Those with a radical need, the begging & prayerful, connected with the radical message of Jesus and the Kingdom more easily because they had less to lose and everything to gain.

So how could Jesus be both a man and an event, or a man and a Kingdom? To borrow a phrase from Clayton Christensen, Jesus was/is a “disruptive technology.” As Jesus’ contemporaries discovered, yes, Jesus was a man. Yes, he was a Jew. Yes, he was the son to a man named Joseph and a woman named Mary - - yet he was also a radical and a revolutionary to some - - while being a troublemaker and blasphemer to others. As defined, disruptive technologies are innovations that improve a product or service in ways that the market does not expect (Wikipedia). They are particularly threatening to the leaders of an existing market, because they create competition coming from an unexpected direction (Wikipedia). This is exactly the effect that Jesus had on the places he lived and preached in Galilee in the 20s. He was unexpected, threatening, and created competition for the Jews and Romans in power at the time. Who was this “disruptive technology” called Jesus? No one seemed to know for sure at the time:

- Who did the people of his hometown say he was? “Is this not Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How can he now say, 'I came down from heaven (John 6:42)?” Where did this man get all this (Mark 6:1)?”

- Who did the people in other towns and villages say he was? “John the Baptist; and others say, Eli'jah; and others one of the prophets.” (Mark 8:27)

- Even John the Baptist himself asks who he is, "Are you the one who was to come, or should we expect someone else?" (Matthew 11:3)

- Finally, Jesus poses the question to his disciples, and asks, “Who do you say I am?” (Matthew 16:15), and Peter responds by saying, "You are the Christ, the Son of the living God." Jesus replied, "Blessed are you, Simon son of Jonah, for this was not revealed to you by man, but by my Father in heaven.” (Matthew 16:16-17)

So, Jesus and his message of the Kingdom is the “disruptive technology” of his time and, as a result, people across the board want to know who he is and why he is. To the poor, oppressed and outcast Jews under the Roman rule of Herod Antipas, his disruption is welcomed (e.g. show us the way and save us from our oppression and poverty), while those Jews and Romans in positions of power and status question and reject him (e.g. thanks, but no thanks Jesus, we like things the way they are). Finally, in speaking to the apostle Peter in the quotation above, Jesus acknowledges the “assist” that the Holy Spirit is giving Peter to help him “make the leap” in knowing who he is and what he is about. This is a leap that others, “without ears to hear,” have trouble making.

Jesus is both a person and an event because he disrupts the societal norms of the time with his message of the Kingdom, which is often told through parables. He disrupts the status quo by healing the sick, eating with sinners, and telling radical parables that flip the expected storyline on its head to challenge the listener to look at and live in the world in a completely different way. His parables startle and jolt the listener into thinking differently, challenging them to take an imaginative leap into the metaphorical while they might otherwise be more comfortable resting in the safety of the literal. It’s not a comfortable message, yet it isn’t meant to be. It’s not a cosmic message that is meant to happen somewhere “out there,” it’s a personal message that’s meant to happen “in here.”

Listening to and truly hearing Jesus’ parables demands a change of heart, a change of mind, and a changed action. Parables like the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan shake our personal foundations if we let them (Ludwig, page 12). These parables portray the undoing of a myth, and, if taken seriously, can undo our reality (e.g. “Really, the Samaritan is the hero, and the Prodigal is received by the father with open arms? Why? That’s not the way things work in our world. Why would God think and act differently? That can’t be!). As such, the parables are more than the moral lesson or example story they appear to be on the surface, they point to the painful proposition that if we (and Jesus’ contemporaries) are to become the person of Jesus today and bring the event of Jesus’ Kingdom to our daily lives, we need to humbly adopt a change of heart, mind, and action. We “get ahead” in this world by “getting behind” the man of Jesus and his ridiculous, challenging parables, and by doing so we can participate in the event of Jesus - - the Kingdom of God - - in our daily lives.