The authentic Jesus

I’ve written about this before but hardly a day passes without my thinking of how Jesus as portrayed in in a more careful reading of the gospels differs from Jesus in the minds of the local church goers.  Let me know if my perception is faulty but I think the average audience sees Jesus as a king and sympathetic man who speaks rather softly and always has something positive to say. He is kind and thoughtful and, if I may add this one physical item, he parts his long hair in the middle. Then reading slowly, looking for anything unusual about the man I find a person quite different from the accepted model of the Biblical Jesus. Let’s look at the account in which Jesus is telling his disciples about difficult it is for a rich man to go to heaven and how many who are first will become last (You will find it in the fourth gospel; John 10:22-39).
       One day Jesus got cornered in the temple area by some irate Jewish leaders who demanded to know to whether or not Jesus claimed to be the Messiah. Jesus told them that he already had and they didn’t believe him. The clerics didn’t believe because they weren’t one of his followers. When he told them that he and the Father were one they were furious and started to pick up stones to kill him. Picture the scene: Jesus, a wandering country preacher telling the religious authorities of the day that he and God the Father were one! Now that is blasphemy! They were so offended by that blasphemous assertion that they started to pick up stones to kill him. And what did Jesus do? Undoubtedly he would look for some way to escape. They were all mad and apparently he was alone. However, instead of that he looked straight at them and said, “You have watched me do a lot of good deeds, so “for which one of them are you about to stone me?” (John 10:32). Jesus was absolutely fearless, and that’s the first thing about this “different than thought of” Jesus.
      A second thing about Jesus was that he pointed out how unreasonable they were in their decision to kill him for doing something good. His question put them on the defensive:  “For which of them are you about to stone me?” (John 10:32). It’s Jesus, country preacher, versus a whole camaraderie of legal experts on a mission to maintain the supposed purity of their religion. Not only was Jesus fearless but he was perfectly able to win the case against his learned opposition. The “discussion” now turned into accusation: “You are a blasphemer and therefore you must die.” When logic fails turn to declaration. Jesus stands his ground and argues his case very convincingly. He points out that in scripture, which they accepted as being without error, God called people “gods,” so why shouldn’t he be able to use the term? (10:36).
      As the encounter grew increasingly sensitive, Jesus continued to stand firm as an informed adult against the out-of-control clerics who now “tried to arrest him.” At that point he “escaped out of their grasp” (v. 39). He was in serious danger, but he trusted his Father to deliver him. He trusted Him without reserve.
So the four qualities that we see in Jesus are
   1.  His lack of fear,
   2. His ability to speak up when appropriate,  
   3.  His ability to reason logically, and
   4.   His trust in God the Father.
 
A different man, to be sure. This story shows Jesus not as a gentle and quiet preacher, but as a strong and fearless man who could face his opponents and argue his case with the best of them and then leave it all with God.