“Rescuing Jesus from Literalism”
William Sasso
January 11, 2004

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I begin this morning with a story from the Gospel of Luke [2:42-47], the only story of Jesus’ childhood that the canonical Gospels (that is, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) tell. As I read this, let me ask you, “What does it tell us about Jesus?”

And when he was twelve years old, they went up to Jerusalem after the custom of the feast.
     And when they had fulfilled the days, as they returned, the child Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem, and Joseph and his mother knew not of it. But they, supposing him to have been in the company, went a day’s journey, and they sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance. And when they found him not, they turned back again to Jerusalem, seeking him. And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions. And all that heard him were astonished at his understanding and answers.

Sermon

I have to admit, the story we have just heard -- the story of Jesus staying in Jerusalem, hanging out in the temple with the rabbis and priests, discussing the Scriptures with them on equal terms -- was always one of my favorite stories about him when I was a child. Perhaps it was because I was a book-lover as a child, and I liked the idea that Jesus, like me, liked ideas and thinking. Perhaps it was because the Gospels don’t tell us any other stories about his childhood, and I just wanted to know more about who he was as a person. Or perhaps it just seemed so strange that Mary and Joseph would forget to check whether their child was somewhere in the group they were traveling with . . . I can’t say exactly why, but I found this story very appealing to me in terms of its portrayal of the preadolescent Jesus.
      I know, too, that this story resonates with Kahlil Gibran’s poetic meditation on the relationship of parents and children -- that “. . . they come through [us], but not from [us] . . . . [that] they have their own thoughts . . . . [that] their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow, which [we] cannot visit.” 
     And I know that I like the fact that Luke, whose Gospel tells this story, is willing to suggest that a 12-year-old -- albeit a divine one, from his perspective -- can hold his own in theological discussion with the elders of the temple. We have some 12-year-olds downstairs that might illustrate that fact, too! And I also like to think that, at least as I envision the conversation that Jesus had with the temple elders, Jesus was questioning some of the common interpretations of the Scriptures, and suggesting some new ones. As the story tells us, people were “astonished” by his answers. And certainly the work of his life, as told by the writers of the four canonical Gospels, did challenge the Jewish religious establishment and its conventional interpretations of scripture.
      Throughout the Gospels, the religious authorities of his time -- priests, scribes, pharisees, lawyers -- try, again and again, to use the Jewish scriptures and religious laws in order to trip Jesus up. In response, Jesus, when confronted with the Scriptures in a context where he doesn’t agree with the “obvious” literal interpretation, tends to respond with one of four strategies:

1. He cites in his defense another, a more fundamental, teaching of the Scriptures.

2. He suggests that common sense, rather than religious teaching, may be more appropriate as a guideline in the particular context.

3. He evades offering a direct response to the question itself, although usually the evasive technique he uses can be related to some principle or teaching.

4. He claims the authority to re-interpret the doctrines himself.

Consider, for instance, the following example . . . [Luke 6:1-5].

Consider another example (also regarding a possible transgression of the rules against working on the Sabbath) [Luke 6:6-10].

 Here, Jesus confronts the regulations against working (and healing others, even with the help of one’s superhuman healing powers, was considered work) with a larger law of doing good to others. Is it more important to follow the rules and laws, or to act in the service of the good? Jesus proposes that acting for the good is more important, and his opponents do not appear to question this (at least, as the story is told here).
      Sometimes these episodes almost remind me of some form of theological one-upsmanship, of guys arm-wrestling to prove who is more “macho” in a bar that celebrates the sport of theology, but I believe that the authorities were really hoping to get Jesus into a situation where he couldn’t answer their question. I think that they really wanted to pin him. to put him where he would have to admit that he had no response, where he would have to question the religious authority that he found within himself. The canonical Gospels were written by Jesus’ followers (or more likely, the followers of his followers). Perhaps because of this, they never tell the stories of the times when Jesus may have been caught at a total loss for words (if there were such times).
      And as we read these Gospels, we need to remember that they are their own genre of religious literature. They do not conform to our standard categories of literature. They are not histories, or biographies, or theological texts (at least not in the sense that we use any of those terms today). One writer has said, speaking of Jesus, “His true picture has never yet been drawn . . . For each of his biographers has merely painted a flattering picture of himself [sic] and labeled it Christ” [Thomas, p. 36]. There is a sense in which each who looks at Jesus finds in him that which they seek to discover, and the fact that the Gospels are a genre unto themselves is part cause of this phenomenon. The other part is probably human nature itself.
      These Gospels are neither fiction nor non-fiction. They are intended to be educational and they are intended to be persuasive. As a literary genre, I would put them closest to “folk legend.” They are sometimes striking in their imagery and poetry, and they can raise powerful ethical and moral questions.
      And these Gospels -- whether we consider them divine revelation or folk legend -- are important. They deserve our attention and our study because they are an essential part of the Bible, the Good Book, the religious compilation that remains the most powerful source of moral authority in our society today. Whether one likes it or not, that is the place that the Bible holds in America -- our society’s ultimate moral measure is created from its texts. For instance, John Buehrens, a Unitarian Universalist minister (and former President of the Unitarian Universalist Association), puts it in these words:

 And that’s one reason why I find it educational to consider how Jesus responds when representatives of the religious establishment of his day try to bludgeon him back into submission with the scriptures of that time. Here’s another example, which may be familiar to some of you . . . [John 8:3-11].

 The situation poses this dilemma: God’s commandments, as both Jesus and the scribes understood them, stated both that “Thou shalt not kill” and “Thou shalt not commit adultery.” But there was also a lesser known scriptural injunction to the effect that those guilty of adultery are to be stoned to death [Lev 20:10 and Deut 22:20-21]. So the scribes bring the question to Jesus. Should we follow the law that adulterers are to be stoned (and break the commandment not to kill) or should we obey the commandment not to kill (and break the law that we are to stone those who commit adultery)? And how does Jesus respond?
      I’m glad that he doesn’t just say “Go ahead -- stone her” which would probably have been the most popular result indicated if he had taken a poll of those present. And he doesn't try to get into a doctrinal argument about whether one of the Ten Commandments “trumps” an ordinary Deuteronomic law (of which there were thousands, including the dietary restrictions against eating unclean animals, etc). And he doesn’t inquire into the nature of the evidence, the proof of her guilt. He doesn’t attempt to re-hear the testimony and re-try the case.
      What does he do? He squats down, and begins to write in the sand. In Nikos Kazantzakis’ novel The Last Temptation of Christ, Jesus writes in the sand because he doesn’t want the crowd present to read his bewilderment in the expression on his face. His love and compassion make it impossible for him to endorse the stoning, yet he cannot simply say “Oh, adultery is no big deal -- just let her go.” Perhaps, as he writes in the sand, these are some of the thoughts that go through his mind.
      And in his own time, he responds to the question with his own challenge: “Who among you has never sinned? Let that one cast the first stone.” He doesn’t say that she shouldn’t be stoned, but he questions the right of those present to do the stoning. He demands a very high standard, a superhuman standard, of the one who would throw that first stone. Those who would undertake the punishment of another on behalf of God’s law had better be perfect in both their understanding and their respect for it!
      And when all else have left, and only Jesus and the woman remain, he counsels her gently, and bids her return home, and “sin no more.”
      In my opinion, the Jesus of the canonical Gospels embodied the values of love, compassion, justice, faith, and “common sense.” And, I almost forgot, inconsistency. The Jesus of the Gospels is certainly not a consistent figure, and I know that, and I admit that, but that’s not my focus today, so let’s go back to the first list: love, compassion, justice, faith, and “common sense.” I would say these values form his “ethic.”
      When Jesus deals with an ethical situation and the applicability of the Scriptures of his day to that situation, his interpretation of those Scriptures and his analysis of the situation is conditioned on his own ethic. When he tells his followers a parable, or comes out with one of his zen-like aphorisms --”Let the dead bury their dead” [Luke 4:60] or “Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves” [Matt 10:16], he challenges his audience to find their own meaning, one that reflects their own values, the values they embody.
      The Jesus Seminar is a group of Biblical scholars who have worked to study the Jesus of the Gospels in the context of the findings of modern historical research and biblical scholarship [see Moredock]. Marcus Borg, a member of the Jesus Seminar, puts it in these words:

 . . . as a wisdom teacher, Jesus used aphorisms and parables to invite his hearers to see in a radically new way. The appeal is to the imagination, to that place within us in which reside our images of reality and our images of life itself; the invitation is to a different way of seeing, to different images for shaping our understanding of life. This emphasis on seeing runs throughout his message. There are those who have eyes and do not see. There is a blindness that afflicts the sighted. And how one sees makes all the difference, “for the eye is the lamp of the body.” How we see determines the path that we walk, the way that we live. [Borg, p. 74, emphasis in the original]

As participants in a religious tradition that values freedom, reason, tolerance, and love, we can each have our own perspective on who Jesus was and what he stood for. There are those -- mainly folks more theologically conservative than we are -- who assume that they know who he was, and that their understanding is the “true” one. Jesus himself, in all the Gospels, spoke out against the use of Scripture to oppress and enslave the people. We, too, can speak out, explaining the Scriptures as we understand them, challenging those who claim to know the answers. As we do so, we continue the free and responsible search for truth and meaning, and we carry on our traditions of freedom, reason, tolerance and love.
      We have it within our power to rescue Jesus from literalism. I think it’s what he himself would do.

Sources

Borg, Marcus J. Meeting Jesus Again for the First Time: The Historical Jesus and the Heart of Contemporary Faith. Harper San Francisco: 1994.
Buehrens, John A. Understanding the Bible: An Introduction for skeptics, Seekers, and Religious Liberals. Beacon Press, Boston: 2003.
Moredock, Will. “An Essential Correction: Unitarian Universalists and the Jesus Seminar.” World (now UU World), November/December, 1997.
Spong, John Shelby. Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism: A Bishop Rethinks the Meaning of Scripture. Harper, San Francisco: 1991.
Thomas, Henry. The Parade of the Sword and the Cross: A Catalogue of Kings, Philosophers, Conquerors, and Cut-Throats (Volume II). Haldeman-Julius Publications.