Matthew 9:9
As Jesus was walking along, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth; and he said to him, "Follow me." And he got up and followed him.
Think about it – is there any place in the scriptures that tell us about the life of Jesus here among us where he tells those who follow him to “worship me?” Instead, what does Jesus actually tell them to do?
“Follow me...walk my path”
How did we get from walking long dusty miles with an itinerate Jewish preacher, listening to his deceptively simple teaching stories and feeling compelled by our own hearts to keep on walking and listening – how did we get from that to sitting in a building one day each week, singing songs of praise to a wonder-working God, listening to readings from the “holy book,” and reciting written prayers? Where did we get the idea that this is what we are called to do?
“Follow me...?”
I have a lot of questions in this message today and I don’t have too many ready answers, so maybe we can think about them together.
Regarding my first few questions, the entirely human Jesus we meet in the three synoptic gospels is a very different person from the Christ we find in John’s gospel and the various letters that were composed and circulated years after Jesus’ life here. I find it easy to picture Jesus, the itinerate Jew, as firmly anchored to the earth he walks upon, laughing and occasionally joking with those around him, lending a hand with the fishing, just like those he calls to walk with him.
The Christ of Christianity’s later years, however, appears to be always at a slight remove, somehow shining in his spotless white robes. It is hard to imagine him ever sweating. He has become divorced from this earthly setting that we inhabit and is now a majestic entity residing in the heavens.
Before going any further I want to be clear that I am not against worship, nor singing hymns, not any or that. I am a church minister, after all. I am simply curious about how we got from there to here.
I was set off on this train of thought by a meme that was floating around the internet a few weeks ago. It’s a quote from Robin R. Meyers, writing in his book, Saving Jesus from the Church. In a passage where he had been referring to the Sermon on the Mount, he writes:
Jesus, the wandering Jewish sage, followed the Old Testament prophets in recognizing that our deeds do not always match the words and actions we claim. It is our actions, more than our words. that best announce who we truly are.
The teachings Jesus brought us were about empowering the powerless, caring for the poor, building and demanding justice where in-justice was the norm. His words and his actions were about lifting up those who tend to be bullied by the world at large, and building a new world of caring and justice for all God’s people – these were the things that God desires from us.
Jesus’ teaching was filled with action verbs – Go, Do, Feed, Care – and, yes, believe in and honor God and follow God’s laws. And yet, in the first two or three hundred years after the death of the human Jesus, the church that rose around his memory was much more concerned with gaining its place in heaven. The early creeds rarely, if ever, speak about justice and appear to focus on following the rules that will earn us eternal life.
The biggest shift we find after those few hundred years is that the church was well on its way to becoming a seat of worldly power – a movement that always requires accommodation of the world’s ways. The human person who walked all those dusty miles in order to share his stories no longer fits here. Instead, he is replaced by the shining and glorious Son of God, radiant on his throne.
I’ve been reading Robin Meyers’ book, the one the quote about the Sermon on the Mount came from, and a little further on there is another line that snagged my thoughts:
As I said at the beginning here, I have lots of questions today and few hard and fast answers -- so I’m not saying any part of this is right or wrong, but, do we ever ask ourselves how we got from there to here, and if anything of importance might have been lost along the way?
“Follow me...walk my path”
How did we get from walking long dusty miles with an itinerate Jewish preacher, listening to his deceptively simple teaching stories and feeling compelled by our own hearts to keep on walking and listening – how did we get from that to sitting in a building one day each week, singing songs of praise to a wonder-working God, listening to readings from the “holy book,” and reciting written prayers? Where did we get the idea that this is what we are called to do?
“Follow me...?”
I have a lot of questions in this message today and I don’t have too many ready answers, so maybe we can think about them together.
Regarding my first few questions, the entirely human Jesus we meet in the three synoptic gospels is a very different person from the Christ we find in John’s gospel and the various letters that were composed and circulated years after Jesus’ life here. I find it easy to picture Jesus, the itinerate Jew, as firmly anchored to the earth he walks upon, laughing and occasionally joking with those around him, lending a hand with the fishing, just like those he calls to walk with him.
The Christ of Christianity’s later years, however, appears to be always at a slight remove, somehow shining in his spotless white robes. It is hard to imagine him ever sweating. He has become divorced from this earthly setting that we inhabit and is now a majestic entity residing in the heavens.
Before going any further I want to be clear that I am not against worship, nor singing hymns, not any or that. I am a church minister, after all. I am simply curious about how we got from there to here.
I was set off on this train of thought by a meme that was floating around the internet a few weeks ago. It’s a quote from Robin R. Meyers, writing in his book, Saving Jesus from the Church. In a passage where he had been referring to the Sermon on the Mount, he writes:
- Consider this: there is not a single word in the Sermon on the Mount about what to believe, only words about what to do. It is a behavioral manifesto, not a propositional one. Yet three centuries later, when the Nicene Creed became the official oath of Christendom, there was not a single word in it about what to do, only words about what to believe!
Jesus, the wandering Jewish sage, followed the Old Testament prophets in recognizing that our deeds do not always match the words and actions we claim. It is our actions, more than our words. that best announce who we truly are.
The teachings Jesus brought us were about empowering the powerless, caring for the poor, building and demanding justice where in-justice was the norm. His words and his actions were about lifting up those who tend to be bullied by the world at large, and building a new world of caring and justice for all God’s people – these were the things that God desires from us.
Jesus’ teaching was filled with action verbs – Go, Do, Feed, Care – and, yes, believe in and honor God and follow God’s laws. And yet, in the first two or three hundred years after the death of the human Jesus, the church that rose around his memory was much more concerned with gaining its place in heaven. The early creeds rarely, if ever, speak about justice and appear to focus on following the rules that will earn us eternal life.
The biggest shift we find after those few hundred years is that the church was well on its way to becoming a seat of worldly power – a movement that always requires accommodation of the world’s ways. The human person who walked all those dusty miles in order to share his stories no longer fits here. Instead, he is replaced by the shining and glorious Son of God, radiant on his throne.
I’ve been reading Robin Meyers’ book, the one the quote about the Sermon on the Mount came from, and a little further on there is another line that snagged my thoughts:
- Before there were bishops lounging at the table of power, there were ordinary fishermen who forsook ordinary lives to follow an itinerant sage down a path that was not obvious, sensible, or safe. He might as well have said, “Come die with me.”
As I said at the beginning here, I have lots of questions today and few hard and fast answers -- so I’m not saying any part of this is right or wrong, but, do we ever ask ourselves how we got from there to here, and if anything of importance might have been lost along the way?
RSS Feed