Gentle Jesus Meek and Mild?

Who was Jesus?  In the course of my theological studies I have needed to find a response to this question.  My understanding of who Jesus was has inevitably changed since when I was a child.  (I'll post my journey some time in the future. ) At the moment though, I recently presented the following piece as a sermon at my local church.  It is the culmination of a number of years of thinking and owes much to the influences of Living the Questions, a course I first led at my local church and then critiqued whilst completing my BTheol at Murdoch University.  Anyway I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts on the subject ...

A commonly promoted perception of Jesus’ life, and at times quite accurate if the stories and accounts of his life recorded in the Gospels are consulted, was a way of peace, compassion, forgiveness and love.  Unfortunately such images have become unbalanced as they appear in the words of the Charles Wesleyan hymn that became a prayer that many of us learned and uttered as children … 

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild,

Look upon a little child;

Pity my simplicity,

Suffer me to come to Thee.

Lamb of God, I look to Thee;

Thou shalt my Example be;

Thou art gentle, meek, and mild;

Thou wast once a little child.

It seems incredulous that such images – child-like images of innocence, gentleness, meekness and mildness – would engender the hate, persecution and death that Jesus endured.  Human nature does not tend to regard such innocent characteristics with fear and suspicion and so I would like to take a short journey through the life of Jesus and see how his message would have been perceived by the authorities of his day.

I would like to suggest that far from a life and message that is imagined as ‘gentle Jesus, meek and mild’, the life and message of Jesus was closer to ‘abrasive Jesus, radical and wild.’  When we consider the peaceful and compassionate actions of Jesus within the social context of first-century Judeo-Roman world, we will better perceive them as revolutionary and subversive and, in that respect, dangerously in need of eradication by the authorities. 

Abrasive Jesus – The Challenge to Rome 

The era into which Jesus was born was an era of political turmoil.  Judea and Galilee were administered by the Herodian kings, disliked by Jews and Romans alike.  The Roman State had just entered a new era; the emergence of empire following the collapse of the Roman Republic with the death of Julius Caesar.  The new Caesar to assume power was Octavian, who upon the death of his adopted father performed a number of rituals that saw Julius deified through a burial ceremony known as an apotheosis.  An image of Caesar was burned and an eagle let loose to ascend with the smoke symbolising the transport of Julius’ soul to the gods.

The appearance of a comet in the sky at the time of the games commemorating Julius death was taken by Octavian as a sign that Julius had been received into heaven as a god.  The event was depicted on a commemorative coin that stated Julius was divine.  This divinity then passed to Octavian, as the son of God, who was ascribed the name Augustus meaning the ‘revered one’. Many leaders in the ancient world used the phrase ‘Son of God’ to justify their political authority and to receive the reverence and worship of their subjects.  Augustus instituted a state cult focused on worship of the emperors.  Temples were erected and emperor worship was enforced.  Worship of the emperor, like the adoration of any ruler be it Henry VIII, Adolf Hitler or Mao Tse-tung, reinforces the power and authority of the state.

Towards the end of his life, Augustus had the achievements of his reign inscribed onto bronze pillars that were placed outside his tomb.  The text of these achievements entitled, the ‘Res Gestae divi Augustus,’ (Acts of the Divine Augustus) was published throughout the Roman Empire.  Augustus was called Divine, Son of God, God, and God from God, his titles were Lord, Redeemer, Liberator, and Saviour of the World.  A later-written story of divine conception recorded by Cassius Dio appeared to support his position.

Many people think that those titles were originally created and uniquely applied to Christ.  But before Jesus, all those terms belonged to Caesar Augustus.  For Christians to proclaim them of Jesus the Christ was thereby to deny them of Caesar the Augustus.  They were taking the identity of the Roman emperor and giving it to a Jewish peasant.  In the words of Dominic Crossan, ‘either that was a poor attempt at satire, or it was what the Romans called majestas and we call high treason.’ 

When we have this background understanding we can read the stories of Jesus in a different light.  Probably the best-known incident about Jesus and Caesar is retold in the narrative of Caesar’s Coin in the Synoptics.  The Jewish leaders, Pharisees and Herodians, were seeking to trap Jesus and deliver him to the Roman authorities for seditious behaviour.  We are told they posed a question, ‘Is it lawful for us to give tribute [pay taxes] to Caesar or not?’  Jesus requested a coin and asked, ‘Whose inscription and likeness is this?’

Now it is only when we understand what the inscription on the coin would have read that we can fully comprehend Jesus’ next statement.  The coin would most probably have had upon it the bust of Tiberius Caesar and the inscription would have read, ‘TI CAESAR DIVI AVG F AVGVSTVS’ – Tiberius Caesar, Son of the Divine Augustus.  On the reverse side it would have said, ‘PONTIF MAXIM’ – Pontifex Maximus, meaning the highest religious office in the Empire.  The inscription on the coin was not simply the designation of a ruler but it was a statement of divine religious status.

Perceived from this understanding, Jesus’ response to his interrogators is not a clever, conciliatory response about paying takes.  It is an abrasive and seditious comment that attacks the authority of Rome which presumed its emperors were divine.  The response was strong and may be imagined, ‘Whose head and inscription is on this coin?  A person who claims to be God.  Listen, give Caesar his due as a leader, but don’t presume he is God.’  It was a less-than-subtle attack upon the presumed divine status of the emperor, ‘Render to Caesar the things that are Caesar’s and to God the thing that are God’s. Caesar is not God!’  The answer silenced his inquirers because being monotheistic Jews they believed the same thing.  The answer also went to the heart of Roman emperor worship.

To declare Jesus as God was to overtly and directly challenge the authority of the emperor – to rival the imperial authority.  For the early church, prior to Constantine, declaring Jesus as Son of God deliberately and intentionally subverted and opposed the domination of the Empire.  To be a Christian was to be a counter-cultural revolutionary who pledged one’s allegiance to Jesus and God’s kingdom rather than earthly powers.  It was an act of treason and was punishable by death. 

Jesus’s message went against the grain of the accepted political status quo.  Far from being gentle, it was seditious and abrasive.

Radical Jesus – The Challenge to Judaism  

We should not presume though that simply because the Pharisees agreed with Jesus over the deity of Caesar that they were in total agreement, nothing could be further from the truth.  If Jesus was abrasive towards Rome, then he was radical when it came to the religio-cultural world in which he lived.  This radical behaviour set him against the religious authorities of his day not only because he was of a backward Galilean heritage and dared to challenge the Judean Pharisaical elite but because he consistently set himself against the accepted standards of religious propriety.  By the first century, Judaism had evolved into a strict system of rules, the keeping of which guaranteed one’s righteousness.  Righteousness in turn resulted in reward – both in the present life and, in some sectors of Judaism, in the life to come.  Jesus, as he is depicted in the Gospels, challenged this system radically and consistently.  A few examples …

The religio-cultural status of women in first-century Judaism was that they were regarded as inferior to men.  They were generally regarded as incapable of the level of intellectual ability achieved by men and they had the simple duty of child-bearing and child-rearing.  While upper class women had greater liberties, lower socio-economic classes did not experience this independence.  Women were the property of their husbands.  Judaism had laws restricting the movement and activities of women.  Women who were menstruating had to be confined to avoid contact with men.  Women needed to have their hair covered in public or be presumed to be of questionable character.  Foreign women, such as the Samaritans and Gentiles, were despised. 

Jesus showed such people compassion but it was not a peaceful, placid, patronising compassion, it was an overtly radical compassion that challenged the cultural standards of his day.  Jesus spoke to Samaritan and Gentile women, alone.  Jesus allowed menstruating women to touch him.  Jesus did not condemn the sexual advance of a woman who let down her hair and washed his feet.   He did not condemn to death the woman caught in adultery.  Jesus radically challenged the status quo of Judaism about women on almost every occasion that is remembered about this life.  He spoke with them and taught them.  He raised their status to be equal to that of men.  This was a dangerous realignment of the Jewish religious social order.

Jesus also radically challenged the purity laws by touching lepers.  He elevated the poor over the rich, he overturned the theology of physical disability resulting from disobedience, and he welcomed children, who were considered less than women.  He associated with sinners and the despised tax collectors.  He broke the Sabbath rules of eating and working.  He didn’t discriminate between Jews and Gentiles.  He spoke out against injustice, violence, bigotry and discrimination. 

What we read about Jesus’ compassion and love must be read in the context of its extremely radical nature.  Jesus tore down the social fabric that held legalistic Jewish culture together – on every side.  His actions were those of a revolutionary – not those of a meek, subservient weakling.  His actions led to his death and the persecution of his followers who sought to emulate his ways.

Jesus’ words and actions challenged the socio-cultural status quo. Far from being meek, they were revolutionary and radical.

Wild Jesus – The Challenge to the Temple 

We come to a final consideration of the message of Jesus and his disciples.  This I have called the wild Jesus and it finds its expression in his anti-temple stance.  Not only did Jesus subvert Emperor worship in the Roman State, he also challenged the holy, sacrificial means of salvation espoused by Second Temple Judaism.  Righteousness for first-century Judaism came about through the observance of temple ritual and sacrifice.  The temple was the agency through which Jews could be reconciled to God but Jesus spoke against the temple and its efficiency.

Each of the Gospels records the baptism of Jesus at the hands of John the Baptist.  For decades I had read these accounts with their differing nuances and the underlying theme of the inauguration of Jesus’ public ministry.  More recently the full import of the event in the light of Second Temple Judaism came to my attention.  In John’s preaching, forgiveness of sins was no longer offered through temple sacrifices but through baptism.  John was proposing an alternative system of salvation that flew directly in the face of Temple requirements.  Jesus’ acceptance of this means of salvation thrust him headlong into an anti-temple confrontation.

The Gospel of John continues with Jesus wildly cleansing the temple.  It is the preeminent act following the miracle of turning of water into wine.  In John’s mind it is the essence of Jesus’ message – a challenge to the authority of the temple and the rituals that it represented.  Jesus’ actions protested against the Temple as the center of an economically and politically oppressive domination system.  Throughout the gospel memories, Jesus speaks out against the Temple; declaring it will be destroyed; not a stone will be left upon another stone. 

His temple-cleansing actions are remembered in the Synoptics as following his journey to Jerusalem, and in anticipation of his death.  Mark’s Gospel tells us that when the chief priests and scribes heard of the cleansing, ‘they kept looking for a way to kill him.’  The power of the temple is also symbolically destroyed when the curtain separating the Holy of Holies from the sanctuary is rent asunder at Jesus’ death.   

Jesus’s anti-temple message was iterated by his followers. Stephen’s speech in Acts 7 declared,

But it was Solomon who built a house for him. Yet the Most High does not dwell in houses made by human hands; as the prophet says, ‘Heaven is my throne
and the earth is my footstool. What kind of house will you build for me, says the Lord,
or what is the place of my rest?  Did not my hand make all these things?’

‘You stiff-necked people, uncircumcised in heart and ears, you are forever opposing the Holy Spirit, just as your ancestors used to do.  Which of the prophets did your ancestors not persecute? They killed those who foretold the coming of the Righteous One, and now you have become his betrayers and murderers. You are the ones that received the law as ordained by angels, and yet you have not kept it.’

Stephen was stoned to death following this speech.  Again we can see that the actions and words of Jesus are not placating platitudes but they are inflammatory, subversive and wild.  They excited those most threatened by them to anger and violence.  In his 4-volume series, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, New Testament scholar John Meier writes,

  

By the time [Jesus] died, he had managed to make himself appear obnoxious, dangerous, or suspicious to everyone from pious Pharisees through political high priests to an ever vigilant Pilate … A tweedy poetaster who spent his time spinning out parables and Japanese koans, a literary aesthete who toyed with 1st-century deconstructionism, or a bland Jesus who simply told people to look at the lilies of the field – such a Jesus would threaten no one, just as the university professors who create him threaten no one.  The historical Jesus did threaten, disturb, and infuriate people.

Jesus’s message was threatening.  His actions in opposing the temple and in cleansing it were not timid.  Far from being mild, Jesus’ actions were passionate and wild.

Imitating Jesus – The Challenge to Modern Christians 

Re-envisioning Jesus is a necessary message for modern Christians to hear.  It presents us with a challenge to our complacency.  If Jesus was abrasive, radical and wild how can we emulate this while maintaining the balance of compassion, peace, justice and love? 

It starts with the recognition that compassion reaches to the unlovely, the despised, the rejected, the dispossessed in our society – 

• When we show the fringe-dweller, the unemployed, the refugee, the homosexual, the ex-prisoner, or the Muslim; the love and compassion that Jesus showed the outcasts, we will be perceived as abrasive by the powerful. 

• When we permeate our politics with social justice rather than the race to achieve success and prosperity, we will be abrasive.

• When we transform hate and phobia into genuine loving concern we will upset intolerant religious leaders who aspire to purity but retreat into bigotry.

• When we transform our churches from institutions embracing their own self-righteousness into communities of compassion that embrace fringe-dwellers, we will be radical.   We will be persecuted and even excommunicated.

• When we re-orientate the focus of our faith from belief in a set of dogmas that seeks to guarantee immortality and instead focus on living kingdom of God values in the here and now, it will be wild. 

• When we move from orthodoxy (belief) into orthopraxy (practice), not as a means to ensure salvation but as a way of life, we will be revolutionary.

• When we destroy the temple of intellectual assent to post-biblical propositions and seek to rebuild our faith founded on following the example of Jesus, we will be branded heretics and despised, and if we lived a few hundred years ago we would have been killed.

The example of Jesus comprises living a live of peace, justice, compassion and love.  Living such a life will make us abrasive, radical and wild and we will pose a threat to political authorities, religious leaders, and established belief systems.   

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild – or abrasive Jesus, radical and wild?