Читать книгу Jesus - Volker Schunck - Страница 7

I ask “Who are you, Jesus?” That is at least just as difficult to answer like “Who are you, Volker?” or “Who are you, Paul?” or “Who are you, dear reader?” “... dear Abigail, dear Olivia, dear Victoria, dear Ralf, dear Jack, dear Bill - or whatsoever is your name?”

I was born and grown up in a pretty pietistic area (Siegerland). If I asked someone after the service of an evangelical church “Who is Jesus?”, they would gave me the answer: “That is yet written in the Bible!” Certainly. At that time I wouldn’t be able to give another answer. But you have to look closer.

The bible is not a constitution or statute of a fishing or a camping club. Indeed Jesus sent his disciples as “fishers of men”, indeed Paul’s main occupation was tentmaker, but for both it was about something superior than fishing and tents. Of course! For both it was about God. And the bible developed over centuries by vocally passed on stories and collected traditions and letters and not like a statute of a club written by a handful guys at the weekend in the club home.

I guess nearly everybody knows that the bible didn’t come out of the blue but is originated by different handwritings which were stored as papyri in clay jugs or were duplicated and passed on. Let’s assume the only clay jug with stored every letters of Paul, with the important Romans and Galatians, were suddenly lost in the 2nd century before their content could be duplicated. I know this thought is absurd but just simply take part in these thought experiment. Also two other vessels, one with the “ur”-Hebrew (not written by Paul), the other one with the gospel of John were lost. We “only” would have the synoptic gospels Matthew, Mark, Luke. What does that mean concretely? We would have as “original” words of Jesus the Sermon on the Mount, parables of Jesus, the discussions with the pharisees and the few last words on the cross and after the resurrection.

You haven’t necessarily to be a theologian to be able to understand the “Sermon on the Mount” of Jesus’ parables.Trivial stories for simple people, migrant workers, tax collectors, prostitutes. For the righteous and the sinners.

We can’t witness the miracles first hand, but the stories by Jesus are simple and understandable for those who listen to them with open hearts. Unfortunately we have to miss the charisma of the storyteller Jesus. I only can imagine how he betokened with shining eyes and a burning heart, with wide arm movements, the greatness of God’s love and mercy, how he sat to the feet of the poorest, and how he draw with his fingers pictures in the sand to make his stories more vivid.

When we don’t understand his stories today anymore, or when we mean, that we still haven’t understood them, may be the reason, that the truth in this stories is too easy, too trivial: The realm of heaven is like a treasure in the acre. “So?” - Stories, which we know by heart, which are more boring for us as the fifth repetition of a thriller in TV.

Can’t you already imagine, because you are sitting the whole day at your desk, as it is to dig over a stony acre for hours and days, who isn’t at all your own but you have to pay for it a high rent? As it is, when you can feel the accusing and red-cried eyes of your wife in your neck, without looking, because you know her, your wife, who hungry is nursing the baby, and you are still not through with the acre, because every fibre of your worn out body hurts and your breaks always are becoming longer, because you are done? As it is than, when your shovel suddenly is striking something hard, you haven’t still looked exactly, because you are so tired, but it sounds somehow different, hollowly. You are so in extasy, that you are now on your knees and with breaking fingernails, no... that can’t be... oh God...

The people at the time of Jesus probably understood such a story much deeper as we can today. Such precious is the realm of heaven, like a treasure in an acre! When we read the parables and sermons of Jesus in the New Testament, we will be surprised.

What does Jesus do in his sermons? Or what is his intention in his sermons? You can read for yourself in your own bible in the synoptic gospels. What I noticed is this: Jesus proclaims the realm of God, which arises just now among the humans and request the humans to change. And what is very important: He has the power to forgive sins. Who has permitted it to him officially? Nobody. And that is naturally a surprise in a society, which religious upperclass has become fat through a complicated repentance and sacrifice business on the back of the poorest.

Jesus simply comes along, a wandering preacher with dusty feet and unwashed hands and forgives sins. That he does with God’s power. And everything what he is doing becomes to a sign as God means it with his humans. Jesus sees the essential, because he knows God’s heart. The dirty hands during the meal don’t make the human impure, but what comes out of his mouth, bad words out of a bad heart, they make the human impure. The commandments are for the humans not against them. Therefore he heals at the Sabbat and picks with his disciples grain from the field. The theologians haven’t the last word, but let the little children come to me, for they understand God’s realm.

With Jesus everything suddenly becomes quite simple. Love God and your Next like your Self. That’s it. Even a faith as small as a mustard seed can set mountains. Don’t worry about tomorrow, but trust in God. The human does not live by having many goods.

Jesus you dreamer! Wake up finally! Reality is something else. The lilies of the field don’t still my hunger, a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. First comes a full stomach, then comes ethics. Jesus, where are you living? Life is no bowl of cherries.

But at the end of the day we know that he is right. Maybe “right” is the false expression. On a normal human level we still experience for ourselves that money alone doesn’t make you happy, the rich billionaire sits alone in his luxurious villa because he can’t trust nobody, because everyone is only after his money, or he is believing this. We know how overworked CEOs die at the vacation of heart attacks because they can’t relax anymore. How hard is it for a rich man to go to heaven!

And so many stories take place in the daily milieu of the small people; the poor widow, who gives more as the rich, who gives a multiple. For God's standards are other than material. He sees the heart of the human. The poor Lazarus goes to heaven, the stingy rich goes to hell. That are stories of the Jewish daily piety, which Jesus heard by the folk or which he has thought of by himself. To start from such a story a discussion about whether there is a hell or not, completely passes the story. Jesus wasn’t a socialist, a dreamer or an idealist but a realist of faith. He himself was deeply anchored in the Jewish piety. He knew God as a son knows his father.

What did I notice in comparison to the in the 2nd century “lost scriptures”? These uber important and central synoptic gospels with authentic words of Jesus (ipsissima vox) don’t content statements about the doctrine of justification! Wouldn’t one expected just here statements about Jesus or by himself, which interpret his death in a salvific way? Bible passages like in the Gospel of John, e.g. John 3:16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” (Roman 5:8) (Roman 8:32) (1 John 4:9) or the popular verse John 10:11: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.” Or also the elaborated doctrine of justification of the Jewish pharisee and scribe in the Epistle to the Romans. Here a first grade theologian is at work, who tried by his interpretation of Christ’s death the balance act between the Jewish religion and Christ*, but who also made out of a small group, which was originally seen as a small sect inside the Jewish religion, a world religion.

(* keywords Law and Gospel; the theology of today knows how problematic (up to false) the partition between OT (old covenant) = law and NT (new covenant) = grace, is.)

Without wanting to play off Jesus against Paulus, for both never met each other personally, but if both discussed in a talkshow with each other, would they even understand each other? (I know, such a weird question only comes into the mind of a theologian.) Or would they talk at cross purposes? Jesus, the carpenter and mystic, the man of the small people, yes, the Son of God, wouldn’t he recognize in the argumentations and thoughts of the Romans still too much Paul the pharisee and teacher of the law but the redeemed follower of Christ? Aren’t Paul and Jesus much closer together in the 1 Cor 13 (“If I don’t have love, I have become sounding brass, or a clanging cymbal.”) as in the Epistel to the Romans? Jesus, who has God in his heart and who sum up the highest commandment with “Love God and your Next...”?

Let me summarize: the bible isn’t originated monolithic like a modern club constitution or appeared as a “Holy Book” from nowhere. Therefore we take it too easy, when we answer the question: “Who is Jesus?” with “That is yet written in the Bible!” It stands out that we have seen and understood Jesus over the centuries rather from a point of view of a jewish-christian interpretation (keywords: antique sacrifice idea, atonement, revenge, rage, blood price, an eye for an eye, doctrine of justification), than from the sermons of Jesus in the synoptics.

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