Should we modernize Jesus?

When we read the Bible, we are reading old material? The material was written in settings that are very different from 21st century America. Consider the material that we read in the first four books of the New Testament. They are about Jesus from Nazareth, an insignificant and dying village in northern Palestine. Jesus lived his life apart from the social, religious and economic elite. He was born into a lower class family. This is not a good match with modern America.

Much of the New Testament was written in pigeon Greek. It was the kind of Greek that was spoken by lower class, illiterate people. Translating this kind of Greek into English is not easy without losing some of the message. An even more serious challenge is to translate the messages of Jesus from an ancient, low-class society into the society of the richest, most powerful nation the world has ever known

Some have dismissed the challenge altogether. It has been all too easy for some Christians to reduce the Gospel message to the virgin birth, the crucifixion of Jesus for the sins of the world, and his resurrection from the dead. By this formula, those who “believe” in Jesus are safely headed for heaven. All is well.

Another approach is to read modern life back into the Bible material. The dangers are great. Rather than allowing the Bible to speak, many liberal Christians stuff words and meanings into the pages of the Bible that would be foreign to the original writers. In the name of being modern, words are put into the mouth of Jesus that make him comfortably modern. He becomes a psychologist and a sociologist ahead of his time. Most of my liberal Christian friends have lost their grip on the power of the Gospel in the name of being modern.

I would argue for a third approach. The dangers of not modernizing are too great to leave the job undone. To modernize the words and messages of the Bible is hard work. The first step is to be a truly serious student of the Bible, and as best we can, understand the setting, the context, and the concerns of the Bible writers. For Christians, understanding the teachings of Jesus is a special challenge.

In my effort to understand the teachings and actions of Jesus from Nazareth, I am profoundly indebted to Dr. William Herzog, now Academic Dean of Andover-Newton Theological Seminary in Boston. I have known Bill for 40 years. He has spent his entire academic/teaching career studying the parables of Jesus. He has written three highly regarded books on the subject of the parables of Jesus. I gladly sit at his feet.

From Dr. Herzog I have learned a significant lesson. Jesus from Nazareth was just as interested in politics, economics and social structures as he was in religion. The people who crowded around him were living their every day lives under the influence of the political, economic and social structures of 1st century Palestine. To deny Jesus these interests is to ignore the stories that he told and retold as a traveling teacher. In order to grasp the teachings of Jesus, serious students must not only study his parables, but must also attempt to clothe themselves in the skins of the peasant population that followed him and hung on his every word.

The stories Jesus told were about real people in real circumstances. Every recorded parable of Jesus takes us into the living realities of his day. Read the parable of the day laborers working in the vineyards as recorded in Matthew 20:1-16. Who were these laborers who hung out waiting to find a little work so that they could feed children, wife and self? The followers of Jesus knew who they were. They were expendables about whom few cared whether they lived or died. They were the men standing on an Anchorage street corner with a sign that reads “will work for food.” Understanding who the laborers were and how they ended up without resources only magnifies the insistence that every laborer be paid a full day’s pay.

To understand the story of Lazarus and the rich man, the reader needs to understand the enormous wealth of the rich man, his arrogant style of life and his disdain for the poor to get the point. Reread the parable as told in Luke 16:19-31. Spend a little time in the skin of Lazarus, begging in order to survive. Even slip into the skin of the rich man. The issues were economic and social. In the story Jesus assigned the rich man to the fires of hell, not because incorrect theology but because he was cold-hearted and arrogant.

The parable of the unjust steward, as found in Luke 16:1-9, is even more challenging. There are three characters in the story. First, there were the tenant farmers. They had fallen into debt so deep that they could never escape a life of poverty. Next there was the steward who had been hired to make forced collections from impoverished tenants. Third, there was the absentee owner who was living well in a city some distance away. All the tenant farmers despised the absentee owner. The steward had been one of the tenants but now was escaping poverty by being the strong arm enforcer for the absentee owner. The tenants despised him also. They probably saw him as a traitor. Even so, the tenants recognized a good deal when it was offered. In their poverty, they took the special deal. It is a story of complex lives that were driven by fear and hatreds. Jesus knew about the real world.

The Bible and the Jesus of the New Testament are ancient. However, if Bible students take time to understand what they are reading, the messages become very modern. As Christians do we dare to be less involved in politics, economics and social structures, as was Jesus?

The Rev. Howard Bess is pastor emeritus of Church of the Covenant, an American Baptist church in Palmer. His email address is hdbss@mtaonline.net.