Jesus - Unique in Showing Us What God is Like

In this final post on the uniqueness of Jesus as seen through the eyes of Albert Nolan in his book, Jesus Before Christianity, I will go to the last chapter of the book in which Nolan highlights Jesus' divinity and argues that if we truly believe that Jesus is God, then we must accept that what we see in Jesus' life is exactly what God is like...

Speaking of the early church's response to Jesus after his life and death and resurrection, Nolan says, "...Everyone felt that despite his death Jesus was still leading, guiding and inspiring them...Jesus remained present and active through the presence and activity of his Spirit...Jesus was everything...Their admiration and veneration for him knew no bounds. He was in every way the ultimate, the only criterion of good and evil and of truth and falsehood, the only hope for the future, the only power which could transform the world...Jesus was experienced as the breakthrough in the history of humanity. He transcended everything that had ever been said and done before. He was in every way the ultimate, the last word. He was on a par with God. His word was God's word. His Spirit was God's Spirit. His feelings were God's feelings...

"To believe in Jesus today is to agree with this assessment of him...To believe that Jesus is divine is to choose to make him and what he stands for your God...By his words and his praxis, Jesus himself changed the content of the word 'God.' If we do not allow him to change our image of God, we will not be able to say that he is our Lord and our God. To choose him as our God is to make him the source of our information about divinity and to refuse to superimpose upon him our own ideas of divinity...Jesus reveals God to us, God does not reveal Jesus to us...if we accept Jesus as divine, we must reinterpret the Old Testament from Jesus' point of view and we must try to understand the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the way in which Jesus did..."

Nolan sums up the implications of Jesus being God: "We have seen what Jesus was like. If we now wish to treat him as our God, we would have to conclude that our God does not want to be served by us, but wants to serve us; God does not want to be given the highest possible rank and status in our society, but wants to take the lowest place and to be without any rank and status; God does not want to be feared and obeyed, but wants to be recognized in the sufferings of the poor and the weak; God is not supremely indifferent and detached, but is irrevocably committed to the liberation of humankind, for God has chosen to be identified with all people in a spirit of solidarity and compassion. If this is not a true picture of God, then Jesus is not divine. If this is a true picture of God, then God is more truly human, more thoroughly humane, than any human being..."

Oh Lord, Your gospel is the everlasting good news for all peoples in all places of all generations! You have shown the Father to be approachable, desirable, serving, tender towards weak and fearful humans; You enjoy us and want to be with us. We would never have dreamt that God could be this good and kind - help us look at Jesus and believe and be healed by Your full acceptance of us...and then in turn share this good news with those You place us among. Thank You! We worship You now and forever!

Jesus - Unique in Resisting Pressure to Use Violence to Establish God's Kingdom

In chapter 15 of Jesus Before Christianity, Albert Nolan speaks of how Jesus was tempted to bring about God's kingdom on earth by violent means. He points out two incidents close to the end of Jesus' life where it seems apparent that Jesus was tempted to accept the pressures on Him to the kingship of Israel. The first temptation came through a crowd of 4-5,000 men and the second pressure through Peter.

Nolan interprets the story of Jesus' feeding the 4-5,000 men as a gathering that was likely organized purposely to try to persuade Jesus to take on the powers and become king of Israel. Although this story became popular because of the miracle of the loaves and fishes, Nolan proposes that phrases from the different scriptural accounts about this incident hint that this crowd had gathered with the intention of making Jesus king (Mark 6:30-44; John 6:1-15)...

"He (Jesus) was a Galilean, a prophet and a wonderworker with a natural talent for leadership and he had recently made a name for himself by defying the authorities in Jerusalem and 'cleansing' the Temple. There may even have been some rumors that he was a descendant of David.

"Jesus was not unsympathetic toward their aspirations, their desire for liberation and their need of a shepherd. But he tried to persuade them that God's ways were not the ways of human beings and that the 'kingdom' of God would not be like the usual kingdoms of humans...

"But his teaching and the miracle of sharing only made them all the more convinced that he was the Messiah, God's chosen king. Before the situation could get out of hand he forced his disciples to leave in a boat and dispersed the crowds. He then felt the need for solitude, reflection and prayer.

"The second temptation came from Peter...Peter, on behalf of the other disciples, declares that he looks upon Jesus as the Messiah. Jesus responds by giving them strict orders not to say that about him to anyone and then he begins to tell them that it will be his destiny to suffer rejection. Peter takes Jesus aside and rebukes him but Jesus in his turn rebukes Peter...

"This must have been a very serious quarrel. Peter was angry with Jesus for talking about rejection and failure when the opportunity was there to seize power and become Messiah. Jesus was angry with Peter for playing the role of Satan, the tempter, and thinking as men usually do in terms of the power of force.

"We should not underestimate the reality of this temptation for Jesus. (see Lk 4:5-8; Mt 4:8-10) ...Jesus had to struggle with this temptation to seize power, to accept the kingship and to rule over a new empire - 'all the kingdoms of the world'. Would this not be the best way of liberating the poor and the oppressed? Could he not exercise authority as a service to all people after he had seized power by force?...

"Jesus was not a pacifist in principle, he was a pacifist in practice, that is to say, in the concrete circumstances of his time...The 'kingdom' of total liberation for all people cannot be established by violence. Faith alone can enable the 'kingdom' to come."

Teach us, Jesus, how to walk in the ways of the Father in the midst of a world that operates on the principle of violence and force to get things done. Help us trust that Your ways really do work and give us the courage to walk in them...

Jesus - Unique in Loyalty to God's Political System

In this small series of posts (starting here), I am attempting to show the uniqueness of Jesus as borne out in Albert Nolan's book, Jesus Before Christianity. In his study of Jesus and how he lived His life as a Jewish man in the midst of the religious and political systems of his day, Nolan shows that Jesus was a highly political figure in that he was unswerving in his loyalty to God's kingdom, refusing to live according to the values of worldly systems (money, prestige, power). Surrounded by adherents of a variety of religious and political parties, Jesus was loyal to one kingdom only - God's kingdom - and this made him a dangerous revolutionary:

"Jesus' social mixing with sinners in the name of God and his confidence that they had God's approval while the virtuous did not were the 'violation' of all that God and religion and virtue and justice had ever meant. But then Jesus was not busy with a religious revival; he was busy with a revolution - a revolution in religion, in politics and in everything else.

"It would have been impossible for the 'men' of Jesus' time to have thought of him as an eminently religious man who steered clear of politics and revolution. They would have seen him as a blasphemously irreligious man who under the cloak of religion was undermining all the values upon which religion, politics, economics and society were based. He was a dangerous and subtly subversive revolutionary.

"Jesus disapproved of Roman oppression just as much as any Jew did, albeit for different reasons. He disapproved of their way of 'making their authority felt' and their way of 'lording it over their subjects.' But he envisaged changing this by changing Israel so that Israel could present the Romans with a living example of the values and ideals of the 'kingdom'...

"However, Jesus did eventually feel that it would be necessary to confront those Jews who collaborated with Rome: the chief priests and elders, the leaders of the people, who belonged to the party of the Sadducees. Up till now Jesus had criticized the 'men of religion', especially the scribes and Pharisees; now he must confront the 'men of affairs', the Jewish authorities in Jerusalem. Not so much because they collaborated with Rome but because they exploited the poor...(it was this confrontation) which brought him to a violent death."

Do what You need to do, Spirit of God, to sever the loyalties that we Your church have with worldly political systems. Give us fresh leadership that understands the seductiveness of worldly systems, be they religious or political, and put in us the unswerving loyalty that Jesus had to God's kingdom.

Jesus - Unique in Passing the Test

Continuing on with looking at Jesus' uniqueness in His way of dealing with His trial and crucifixion (see here), Albert Nolan says the following of the persons/groups that were tried and tested:

"Pilate, firstly, was tried and found wanting. Jesus' silence took him by surprise. He probably did hesitate for a moment...But because he was not, and had never been, concerned about the truth, he went on to do what political expediency seemed to demand...Pilate was guilty of a lack of interest in the truth (John 18:37,38).

"Caiaphas and his associates were still more guilty...even if Caiaphas had been open to the truth and had come to believe Jesus, what could he or should he have done in order to secure peace with the Romans? Perhaps, we can say, he should have risked his own life by resigning as high priest, joining Jesus in hiding and working with him to spread faith in the 'kingdom.' This is a tall order and one wonders how many men in his position would ever have been so concerned about truth and honesty...Caiaphas was not able to live up to the challenge with which Jesus presented him. Which one of us would want to throw the first stone at Caiaphas?

"The death of Jesus was also a judgment upon the scribes, Pharisees and others who knowingly rejected him. If they had accepted him and believed in the 'kingdom' of the poor, that 'kingdom' would have come instead of the catastrophe. They were not different from so many men and women today...

"Finally the disciples themselves were being put to the test. It was a severe test, a test of their willingness to die with him for the sake of humankind. But Judas betrayed him, Peter denied him and the rest fled.

"Jesus himself was also tried and tested. He sweated blood over it and told is disciples to pray that they would not have to be as severely tested as he was...Jesus did not want anyone to be put to the test. 

"But the crisis came and the test was severe. Jesus alone was able to accept the challenge of the hour. It set him above everyone else as the silent truth that judges every human being. Jesus died alone as the only person who had been able to survive the test. Everyone else failed and yet everyone else was given another chance. The history of Christianity is the history of those who came to  believe in Jesus and who were inspired to take up the challenge of his death - in one way or another."

Work in us, Spirit of God, to be able to recognize the daily opportunities to be loyal to Jesus to the point of 'death' in our personal lives, and work in us as a collective people to be loyal to Jesus in the face of religious and political pressure to do the expedient thing. Thank you that in Your endurance and passing the test, Jesus, You have given us a second chance...

Jesus - Unique in Not Defending Himself

In this third post (see here and here) about Jesus as presented by Albert Nolan in Jesus Before Christianity, we look at His trial before His crucifixion. Nolan observes the following:

"The most remarkable thing about the trial itself, the one thing about which we can be absolutely certain and yet the one thing that is frequently overlooked, is that Jesus did not defend himself. Throughout all of the proceedings, no matter who accused him or what they accused him of, Jesus remained silent...

"The suffering servant in Isaiah 53:7 was silent before his accusers - like a lamb before its shearers... Remaining silent before his accusers is exactly what we might have expected Jesus to do. He had consistently refused to produce signs from heaven; he had never argued from authority; he had refused to answer questions about his own authority; and now he refused to defend or justify his behavior.

"In other words, Jesus stood there without a word, putting everyone else to the test. The truth of the matter is that it was not Jesus who was on trial. His betrayers and accusers were on trial before him. His silence puzzled, disturbed, questioned and tested them. Their words were turned back at them and they condemned themselves out of their own mouths..."

Breathe on us, dear Fire of Jesus, till we Your people are purged of all need to be understood or to defend ourselves and are nobly silent in the face of others' accusations, trusting our reputation into Your hands completely...