I find myself stumbling over what the church (or the general culture) has tried to teach me about Jesus – things that everybody knows about Jesus – but that I just don’t find a lot of convincing evidence for when I read the Bible.
This spring/summer, we spent three months reading 1 Peter. (The “we” is a study group in the Presbytery of East Iowa, working with Nikki Collins MacMillan to explore stepping outside the walls of our church buildings.) I spent most of the summer angry, recalling comments I’ve heard stating that oppressed and marginalized folks should be glad to suffer, if that’s what God wants, because that’s what Christ did, suffered for other’s sins. I would have problems with that statement almost no matter what, but I especially had problems since that’s NOT what 1 Peter says.
For some perverse reason that I don’t quite understand, I’ve been including readings from 1 Peter in worship since the beginning of July, though I’ve only managed one sermon on it that whole time. But this week I got stuck on 1 Peter 4:1 – learn to think like Jesus. (Have the same intention, the same attitude.) What a difficult thing that is. We have his words, reported by other people, but not the thinking behind his words. The gospel lesson, the last parable in Luke 12, ends with one of those hard sayings of Jesus that just doesn’t seem to jive with the standard story about Jesus as the eschatological judge. I can imagine it, though, as a glimpse into his own thoughts about who he was – a faithful steward might have filled the bill just as well, maybe better, than the image of a son: “From the one to whom much has been entrusted, even more will be demanded. “
I think a lot of people today want to learn to think along these lines, both inside the walls and out.