The One Year Bible: In with the New

A still from the episode in The Chosen where Jesus turned the water into wine. The representation of Jesus by Jonathan Roumie in The Chosen is hands-down my favorite.

 This past week I began reading in the New Testament. I guess the NT is supposed to be "easier" and more palatable than the wrathful Old Testament.  But I'm not sure that the point of the Bible is to be "easy" and palatable. And while I do believe Jesus is the clearest picture of who God is and what He is like, that doesn't mean that Jesus is any "easier" to understand.  

There is the Jesus we've created that serves our cultural tastes and preferences, that fits with our denominational church traditions.  And then there is the Jesus found in the Gospels.  The two don't always line up the way we might wish.

But before we get too excited about Jesus the countercultural iconoclast, defying "the culture" and "the world", take note that Jesus's harshest criticism wasn't against the culture--it was against the church. In our culture, we love the rebel--the guy who stands up to the evil Empire. But the problem is that as Christians we want it both ways.  We want control of the culture, but also rebel against it (In fact, the so-called rebellion is usually about getting back control of the mainstream that we feel has been unjustly stripped from us by "the world"). In these cases the harm to us in "rebelling" and "refusing to bow to the world" is minimal--mostly derision from people we don't like or respect anyway. Meanwhile the bug--or dare I say, the feature-- of this rebellion is that harm to some undesirable outcasts is great.  I think we will find that this approach is decidedly un-Christlike.

There are highlights of this week's reading--all taken from the early chapters  of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  There were lots of familiar stories from this week's readings including:

• The Birth of Jesus
• The One Story of Jesus' Youth: 12 Year Old Jesus Teaching the Teachers
• Jesus's Baptism and ensuing Temptation in the Wilderness
• The Calling of the First Disciples and the Miracle of the Nets Filled with Fish
• The Wedding at Cana
• Early Healings: The Man Let Down through the Roof and the Healing of a Leper
• Jesus Cleanses the Temple for the First Time
• Jesus and Nicodemus
• Jesus and the Samaritan Woman at the Well

For this blog post, I'd like to focus on two major differences found in the Gospel accounts and two major ways in which Jesus proves to be different than we might expect.

The Differences

"Results Show You Are the Father"

If I hadn't been doing this One Year chronological reading of the Bible, I probably would never have noticed this major difference between Matthew and Luke's recording of the genealogy of Jesus (Mark and John don't bother with genealogy). All those Hebrew names just blend together for me, and if I hadn't read the two accounts back to back I likely would have never noticed that the genealogy of Jesus from David to Joseph is completely different.  This not a case of a few names being different--none of the names match up! Matthew reports Jesus as having come through David's son Solomon, while Luke reports Jesus has having come through David's son Nathan. What gives?

I did some research and found that Bible scholars aren't in total agreement on the explanation for this discrepancy.  Some suggest that of Heli and Jacob (the two different men listed as Joseph's father), one was Joseph's biological father, the other was Joseph's legal father--a second husband who married Joseph's mother after the other man died.  Another theory is that Luke's genealogy which goes all the way back to Adam, is actually Mary's lineage and Heli is Joseph's father-in-law (Mary's dad).  I'm kind of partial to this explanation, because of the differences in purpose each author had in providing the genealogy.  Matthew wanted to prove Jesus royal lineage and used the man recognized as Jesus earthly father.  Luke, also verifies Jesus' royal lineage but puts less importance on Joseph's ancestors since he wants to highlight Jesus supernatural origin.  Luke gives a nod to Joseph as having come from David's line but his genealogy is focused on Mary--to show that for those who fully accept the virgin birth, Jesus still meets the requirement of being of David's line.

"But Where are You Really From?"

The other major discrepancy I came across is in the recording of what happened after Jesus's birth  in Matthew and Luke (again, Mark and John skip over all this) and what it seems to imply about Jesus' hometown of Nazareth.  Matthew says nothing about a journey to Bethlehem because of a census. If all we had was Matthew's gospel account we would likely assume that Bethlehem is simply where Mary and Joseph were living at the time Jesus' was born.  There is no inn, no stable, nothing.   What we do have is the account of Herod's attempt to find and kill Jesus, and His family's escape to Egypt.  Matthew places Jesus in Nazareth when Joseph and Mary came back from Egypt after Herod died.  They were wary of Herod's son who had now taken the throne and opted for the backwater Galilee as safe from his notice.

Luke on the other hand has the more familiar Christmas story (minus the wise men), with the journey to Bethlehem, the stable and the shepherds and so on.  However, Luke records no threat from Herod.  Jesus young parents travel to Jerusalem to present the Baby Jesus to the Lord at the temple.  He is prophesied over by both Anna and Simeon, and then the family simply returns to Nazareth.

Countless Christmas programs have seamlessly blended the two accounts (usually by omitting the visit to the Temple) and I don't think that's wrong.  It's just, if you read the Bible accounts it's not quite as smooth a transition as it seems in the scene changes at the school Nativity play.

What's clear is both gospel authors felt a need to explain how Jesus was from Nazareth, as everyone at that time knew, but also fulfilled the prophecy of being born in Bethlehem. It's interesting that it was government action in Matthew that led Jesus to Nazareth and government action in Luke that led Jesus to be born in Bethlehem.

"Get Used to Different"

Jesus Was Not a People Pleaser

As a life long people-pleaser, I'm continually baffled by Jesus utter disregard for what would make people happy.  It's not that He went out of His way to upset people (well, not all the time any way). It just wasn't a factor in His decisions. As a result, Jesus often went from hero to zero with the fandom. Particularly notable was the way He basically talked Himself over a cliff--literally.  In Luke 4:16-30, Jesus returns to His hometown of Nazareth and He stands up to read the Scriptures on Sabbath morning at church. He reads Isaiah's messianic prophecy and proclaims that it has been fulfilled.  The crowd goes wild. Already "praised by everyone" coming into Nazareth, now the people of his hometown join the chorus. "Everyone spoke well of him and was amazed by the gracious word that came from his lips."  That's the sweet spot right there! Where I always long to be--spoken well of by all and doing  the right things.

And then Jesus goes and ruins it. Instead of accepting their adulation, He basically says "I know You want to see miracles here, like you've heard about in other places but that's not going to happen." Jesus goes on to argue that a prophet is never welcome in his own hometown. He illustrates his thesis by pulling several Old Testament examples of prophets who were sent to foreigners rather than to the people of Israel. Jesus so enrages his Nazareth neighbors with this rebuke that they hustle him to the edge of a nearby cliff to throw Him over the side.  Jesus slips away and heads off to another, perhaps more receptive Galilean town.

One of my favorite texts about Jesus is found in John 2:24 (NLT though the nuances in other translations are just as good):

"But Jesus didn't trust them, because he knew all about people. No one needed to tell Him about human nature, for he knew what was in each person's heart." 

Jesus understand that people's are fickle and he knew that constantly trying to stay on their good side would be futile.  Jesus understood that you can never please everyone, so you might as well please the Father. 

And Jesus wasn't willing to accept flattery.  I'm personally inclined to accept flattery without comment, and privately remind myself of dangers of  believing one's own press.  But Jesus didn't do that.  If people's hearts towards Him weren't sincere, He'd call them on it. Every time.

Jesus Was a Terrible Marketer

Jesus did not take opportunities to "promote his brand." I finally understand Jesus' strange response to his mother at the wedding feast at Cana.  When she approaches him about the wine running out, He responds "How is that my problem? My time has not yet come."  I realize now that Mary was nudging Jesus to "make His move" now by conducting a public miracle. Indeed, I think what Jesus was really saying to His mom was: "This problem is not my opportunity, like you think. Today is not about me."  Mary got the message that Jesus would fix the problem, but not in the way she had hoped.  His miracle goes unnoted by the crowd and the only reason we even know it happened is because John and a handful of other disciples were there to witness it (along with a few servants that nobody ever talks to or listens to anyway). 

Instead of actively marketing His ministry, Jesus encouraged people to be quiet.  He told the leper not to tell anyone that he had been healed, and even the demons Jesus cast out where muzzled. It's worth nothing that the demons were quite eager to spread the word far and wide as they driven out of their victims about who Jesus really was.  Clearly getting the word out was the devil's plan, not God's. 

Unlike many of us today, Jesus did not see the value in "influencers." Jesus did not seek to cultivate relationships with the powerful and influential.  Indeed if there is anyone Jesus went out of His way to annoy it was the very people who had the most power to hurt or help him--the religious establishment. If it had been me when the paralytic was let down through the ceiling to be healed, I would have simply told the man to get up and walk.  Another win for Jesus!  But instead Jesus, chose to publicly forgive the man's sins first.  When the church leadership in attendance were appalled, Jesus called them on it--making an argument that would never fly an Adventist church today.  Which is easier?  To say "Your sins are forgiven, or to say "Get up and a walk." To prove His Godly authority to forgive sins, Jesus did the impossible. He healed the man. And in the process earned the ire of the leading lights of the Establishment.  If I had been Jesus, I would have worked to secure dinner invitations to the homes of these men instead of dining with Matthew the tax collector and his unsavory pals. If I had been Jesus, I would have worked to build bridges with those in power rather than burning them.

But I'm not Jesus, and thank God for that. God's heart has always been for the oppressed, the powerless, those on the margins and there's nothing new about that in the New Testament.  Jesus sought out the same people God has always had His eye on.  The challenge for us Christians is whether we have done the same as the Man we claim to follow.