Oh Lord, Please Don't Let me be Misunderstood

Oh Lord, Please Don't Let me be Misunderstood

~ The Animals

Almost thirty years ago, Dominic Crossan wrote a ground breaking work called The Historical Jesus.  Using a postmodernism-infused system of literary analysis, Crossan presents Jesus as Mediterranean Jewish peasant with a Marxist flare.  According to Crossan, Jesus challenged the status quo of the temple system by forgiving sins directly.  He challenged the Roman system of privilege by treating all people as equal, and by modeling communal living. 

For Crossan, the Kingdom of God came when the people around Jesus sat together at an open table and joined in the subversion of hierarchy: political, social, religious, and even cultural.

While Jesus was having dinner at Levi’s house, many tax collectors and sinners were eating with him and his disciples, for there were many who followed him. When the teachers of the law who were Pharisees saw him eating with the sinners and tax collectors, they asked his disciples: “Why does he eat with tax collectors and sinners?”  (Mark 2:15-16) 

People don’t “get” Jesus, and sometimes people don't want to get Jesus.  There's less responsibility if we're skeptical, perpetually seeking, "spiritual but not religious."  It's totally okay to be uncertain. It is good to seek truth.  If we're actually seeking.  If we're forever seeking and never finding, Jesus said, well, it's fair to question intentions.

The true light, which gives light to everyone, was coming into the world.  He was in the world, and the world was made through him, yet the world did not know him.  (John 1) 

The teachers (the teachers!) don’t get it. They don’t recognize.  They don’t accept.  They have been studying messiah their whole lives.  This man can't be it.  But Aslan is not a tame lion.  

Three times, and from three perspectives, the darkness, the world, and his own people, John says most people just won’t get Jesus: 

• John 1:5: The light shines in the darkness, but the darkness has not understood it.
• John 1:10: He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him.
• John 1:11: He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him.

The realm of darkness will never understand Jesus.  The world doesn't recognize him.  Philosophy itself is humanity's effort to make sense of reality independently of God.  And when he stood there in front of them, even his own people failed to receive him. 

They all were looking for a King

To slay their foes and lift them high

Thou cam’st a little baby thing

That made a woman cry. 

~ George MacDonald

His own people didn't receive him.  Even Christians don’t get Jesus.  If only we could co-opt Jesus for our own politics, our own ideology, our own country.  Follow Jesus seriously and he’ll challenge every assumption we have about following him. 

Follow Jesus and people may not “get” you either.  And you may pay, sometimes dearly.  Just try to make sure that it's because you're like Jesus and not because you're just a boneheaded doofus.