The Pre-Easter Jesus
There was to Jesus a spirit dimension, a wisdom dimension, and a political
dimension
-Marcus Borg
Marcus Borg offers three summaries of the pre-Easter Jesus which:
a.. Draw on cross-cultural study
b.. Use typology of religious personality
c.. Are different versions of the same understanding
Summary in three strokes
Jesus was:
a.. A Jewish mystic and healer
b.. An enlightened wisdom teacher
c.. A social prophet
There was to Jesus a:
a.. spirit dimension
b.. wisdom dimension
c.. political dimension
Summary in five strokes
Jesus was a:
Jewish Mystic / Spirit Person – One of those figures in human history who
had frequent and vivid experiences of the sacred.
Jewish Healer – The historical evidence that Jesus performed paranormal
healings is very strong; he must have been a remarkable healer.
Jewish Wisdom Teacher – He taught a subversive and alternative wisdom.
Jewish Social Prophet – Jesus stands in the tradition of the great social
prophets of ancient Israel who challenged social systems.
Jewish Movement Founder / Initiator – A movement came into existence
around him which embodied his alternative wisdom.
Summary in one minute and 15 seconds
-from Marcus Borg’s appearance on the Today Show
He was a peasant, which tells us about his social class.
Clearly, he was brilliant. His use of language was remarkable and poetic,
filled with images and stories. He had a metaphoric mind. He was not an
ascetic, but world-affirming, with a zest for life.
There was a social-political passion to him. Like a Gandhi or a Martin
Luther King, he challenged the domination system of his day.
He was a religious ecstatic, a Jewish mystic, if you will, for whom God
was an experiential reality. As such, he was also a healer. And there
seems to have been a spiritual presence around him, like that reported of
St. Francis or the Dalai Lama.
And I suggest that, as a figure of history, he was an ambiguous figure.
You could experience him and conclude that he was insane, as his family
did, or that he was simply eccentric, or that he was a dangerous threat,
or you could conclude that he was filled with the Spirit of God.
Questions to ponder…
How do you summarize the pre-Easter Jesus?
The focus here is on the historical Jesus, Jesus of Nazareth, the man who
lived and taught in Galilee in the first century.
What three or five points would you use to summarize his life?
If you only had one minute and 15 seconds to describe Jesus, what would
you say?
Discussion
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