..obsession

Over the last few days I have been obsessed with Jesus, or more specifically the fact that he seems to be the object of so much obsession within Christianity.   Thinking about the the bigger biblical story, what it says as a whole, and what that means for me today involves Jesus,  but much less ubiquitously than an Evangelical sermon or dogma session would make you think.  I suppose I am annoyed when the entirety of the Bible is unnecessarily warped to Jesus, as though every part of the text is pregnant with him and he is just waiting to be discovered behind all of the verbiage.  

What I am not saying is that the purpose, place, and life of Jesus are inconsequential or are not profoundly pivotal in the Biblical story.  The incarnation, life, ministry, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus are the details of the Christian narrative that embody the hope of redemption, wholeness, and healing found in the Kingdom in a profoundly loving and humble way.  That in the story of Jesus we find one of the most tangible and authentic manifestations of the love God extended to humans in our brokenness, and I do not believe that should be diminished.

What I am saying is that "it's" not actually all about Jesus.  All of the Bible is not about Jesus, all of theology should not be only about Jesus, and my faith should not entirely orbit around a bleeding Jesus on a cross.  Even though the lure of simplifying my faith to be "only about Jesus" has a certain streamlining appeal to it, engaging in that limited perspective of God's interaction with humanity and the world leaves me with a blunted and brittle understanding of God's history with people and what the future of the Kingdom looks like.

For example:  I went to a Christmas Eve service at my parents church.  It is located in a suburb of Seattle and would be considered solidly Evangelical by most standards.  Going to the service I anticipated that it would be about the coming holiday, how Jesus chose to become a shitty human being and how that was pretty cool.  After I ate my cookie and sat in my chair for a few minutes, the prelude started and the pastor walked to the front of the church.  He welcomed everyone and then proceeded to let them know that Christmas wouldn't be meaningful to them if they didn't know Jesus and ask him into their hearts.  So he lead everyone in a "sinner's prayer".   In this moment, the sequential life of Jesus (in which the sequence of events may have significance) was disregarded and an unborn Jesus was nailed to the cross in a confusing way (perhaps some sort of Evangelical abortion, but I won't go there), completely omitting his life and his teachings from the importance of his incarnation and death, let alone the grander purpose for his actions.  The resurrection was never mentioned, but I suppose that's what Easter is for.

And while the case can be made that Christmas should be about Jesus, the significance of Jesus' incarnation and birth was overshadowed and devalued when Jesus' death was superimposed over it.  The significance of the story of Jesus does not rest upon his death, it rests in the totality of his incarnation, human experience, death, and in his resurrection.  And not only that, but the purpose his life, death, and resurrection only makes sense within the broader story and hold hollow significance without the binding of a narrative.  To only understand Jesus as a God-man on the cross is to devalue the rest of his existence and purpose.

But the same skewed theology can develop when all of the Bible is highjacked and told as a story about Jesus.  Rather than viewing Jesus as an amazing tool for God to accomplish a bigger plan (the healing of people and the restoration of the Kingdom) he is viewed as the end all, be all of the biblical story, making you wonder what exactly the point is of everything besides the Gospels.

I believe that Jesus is who he says he is, and I believe that he is fully God.  But he is not God in God's entirety and creating a theology that only orbits around him ignores the dynamic and active nature of God in many other ways.  Jesus plays a role in the Story of God and humanity and his life is the most explicit example we have of Kingdom living, but he is a part of the whole, not the whole.