He Was Never a Christian
HE WAS NEVER A CHRISTIAN!
His name was Yeshua, the legitimate, not immaculate,
scion of a young Jewish couple named Miriam and
Yosef and surely an olive-skinned, brown-haired, brown-eyed
Middle-Eastern man of medium height, raised in the traditions of
Abraham and Moses, David and Solomon and the way of the shepherd,
seeking the guidance of a merciful God
Neither king nor messiah but carpenter, mason, teacher,
philosopher, humanitarian, agitator, an itinerate rabbi with a small
group of friends, Galilean, crude-speaking, intense and rabid, adoring
and faithful, not cloistered or withdrawn like an Essene community,
apocalyptic and dark, suspicious of the spirits of comfort and joy but more
like a spontaneous “Reform Congregation” sure that the future of the Hebrew
condition in the land of Judea, a dangerous place in a dangerous world, lay
not in the power of the secular state nor the rigorous rituals of religion and law,
but in the everyday practice of kindness and service, taking care of one
another in the presence of Yahweh, in the deserts, the meadows, the clear
running streams and for better or worse, the imperial cities of one empire or
another, but free of the burdens of ceremony and doctrine and the hierarchical
structure of temples and sects
He was a Jewish agitator who preached until he couldn’t among
the tribes that he knew! Betrayal and crucifixion, though not in his plan,
were calculated risks and normal responses to his subversion of power
and wealth and tradition and continuing narratives in the
evolving sad stories of the ancient and Judean blues!
The crazy complexities and the fictional trappings of global
Christianity and its evangelical offspring in America today (…arrogant,
political, militant and righteous, vindictive and cruel; addicted to the
concepts of conquest, conversion and relentless litigation for religious
control of our nation and state, of our bodies and minds; to the
gut-wrenching image of the impossibly delicate crucified figure,
to the Scandinavian good looks of Christ in a portrait or among
his disciples…) are OUR crosses to bear in these precarious
times, but believe me when I tell you they have nothing to do with
the clear moral teachings, the spiritual transcendence or the
common sense sermons, bathed in poetics both Aramaic
and Hebrew, of Yeshua of Nazareth: Galilean,
Israeli, softly serious and warm, a cool Hebrew dude
we could all get behind!
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