Computerized reconstruction of how the historical
Jesus may have looked based on a first century Palestinian skull.
Fr. Tony’s Letter to
the Trinitarians
June 2018
Ordinary Time and the
Historical Jesus
We have just entered
into what liturgical scholars call “ordinary time,” the lengthy period from
Pentecost in late spring to the beginning of Advent in late November. Because of its length and the liturgical
color we use during this time, some call it “the Great Green.” Most of our Sunday Eucharistic Lectionary
Gospel readings during this time come from the ministry of Jesus and focus on
his teachings and miracles. Where readings
in the other seasons focus on the fulfilment of prophetic vision in Christ
(Advent), the incarnation (Christmas), penitence (Lent), or the breadth and
depth of the Universal Christ (Easter), ordinary time acquaints us with the
earthly Jesus, the Synoptic Gospels’ various portrayals of him.
Matthew, Mark, and
Luke all give different views and interpretations. But these divergent stories track closely
with each other. This divergent
similarity provides us with the raw data we can use to reconstruct the words
and actions of the historical Jesus, using the various tools of modern Gospel
scholarship: textual, source, form,
redaction, and rhetorical criticism.
Thus separating the Christ of Faith from the Historical Jesus is
important if we are to have clarity in our faith and understanding: what the
man Jesus actually said and did is important if we follow the Church’s faith
the Word of God was made flesh and dwelt among us and that Jesus was not half
divine and half human, but rather fully God and fully human.
A rigorous method of
establishing whether the historical Jesus said something put on his lips in the
gospels is broader than identifying simply things you doubt the Jesus of your
modern progressive imagination would have said. There are several rules of thumb that help
us establish this with some degree of objectivity.
One such rule is dissimilarity, whether the saying at
issue differs from the sayings of the Jewish religion before Jesus and the
faith of the Church after him. Another
rule is multiple attestation: whether
the saying is found in numerous separate traditions in early Christian writings
(such as Mark and how Mark in used in Matthew and Luke, the non-Marcan shared
material in Matthew and Luke, the Johannine tradition, St. Paul, and the later
Gospel of Thomas that has a few sayings that seem to go back to an earlier
period). Coherence with what we know about Jesus—that he was a marginal
follower of John the Baptist and that he was put to death by the Romans for
political rebellion—as well as how a saying fits in with other sayings that are indisputably from Jesus, is another rule of thumb, as is embarrassment—the difficulties that a saying would have caused for
church leaders, who thus had little reason to invent it.
When we do this
necessary work of sifting and reorganizing the material, we see often that
sayings of and actions by the historical Jesus are taken up and reinterpreted
by the Gospel writers. Such a
repurposing of Jesus’ words is seen often in Matthew. The best example, I think, it the parable of
the bad personnel policy, where workers hired at different parts of the day
under the press of needing to get the crops in receive the same wage because
the landowner can’t be bothered to pay on a pro-rated time basis the
below-living wage pittance he gives his day laborers, causing a revolt of sorts
by those who bore the heat of the day and worked long hours. On the lips of the historical Jesus, the
parable asks us to consider what is fair, and what is just. It is part of the historical Jesus’
revolutionary critique of Imperial society and oppression of common people that
ended up getting him killed by the Romans for insurrection. But in Matthew’s Gospel, it becomes an
allegory about the relationship of Jewish Christians and Gentile latecomers,
and casts God in the role of the landowner, asking us to accept his abundant
grace to others who may seem less deserving than ourselves.
Much of the modern
work of the Church in social justice issues is based on a firm foundational
understanding of the teachings of the historical Jesus: the Reign of God
preached by Jesus is still preached by the Church today. This is not a “Kingdom in Heaven” with “Pie
in the Sky, by and by,” so much as a vision of what it means to have God fully
in charge, right here, right now. God’s
Reign is the opposite of Caesar’s Imperial Rule. “Jesus is Lord” denies any claim that “Caesar
is Lord.” This is the theology behind
the “Reclaiming Jesus” affirmation of faith by Christian leaders including our
own Presiding Bishop Michael Curry, in response to the current political
climate of our nation. During June and
July, as we begin our readings about Jesus in ordinary time, we will be having
Bible studies and discussions at 9:00 a.m. on Sundays in the Parish Hall on
“Reclaiming Jesus.”
Grace and peace,
Fr. Tony+
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