Lent #4: What Jesus Wasn't Part 2

#2: Jesus Was Not Harry Houdini

A couple of years ago, I saw young Australian comedian Josh Thomas appearing on "Good News Week", as he does often, and, in the segment where they take news stories that make them angry and throw them into a furnace on the stage, Josh expressed, in his usually demure voice, that he was "sick of hearing about Jesus". Why? "Well, I know that he died for our sins and everything, but really that just meant moving into his father's freaking awesome house. And I've done that three times. Where's my book?"

Now, to most Christians, that brief statement would be intensely offensive. And rightly so, I suppose. But why? Is it because he is ridiculing something that is most precious to us? Well, yes. That much is clear. But I suspect that his words reveal a flaw in our own theology that we ourselves aren't aware of.

You see, to a lot of us, there's an element of truth in what Josh is saying. I know that for years I was troubled by the thought that Jesus' death wasn't such a sacrifice since he knew how it would all end and did, after all, come back to life at the end of it - as if it would only have been a real sacrifice if he himself didn't know what how it would turn out in the end.

Now, this is completely wrong, but I don't think that we're necessarily aware all the time of the reasons why it's wrong. This morning my flatmate and I discussed how this is another example of the latent docetism (see my last post for what this means) in the church today. We think of Jesus floating a little bit above the ground for most of his life, with a halo over his head and his hands lifted about six inches apart on either side of his head, not really feeling or experiencing much and just generally being like a fairly relaxed holy Ninja. Or, to use the analogy of my subheading for this post, being an amazing illusionist who can disappear or saw his wife in half on stage because he knows it's all an illusion and that, after the illusion is revealed, he'll be able to stand up before rapturous applause and say, "Thank you, thank you very much" to it all.

And this is completely wrong, for two reasons that we forget to our peril:

1) Crucifixion was intensely, intensely painful. I remember reading once that the pain was so bad that a new word had to be invented to describe it: excruciating, a word we now misapply to situations that are simply annoying or that cause our selfishness or craving for comfort to rise to the surface in profound ways. ("It was excruciating waiting for that train"; "My wife's/husband's complaining last night was excruciating".) No, excruciating meant the pain that could essentially only be derived from the cross. There are some fairly intense medical accounts out there of the effects that crucifixion had on the body. They are easy enough to find if you haven't come across them before. What they prove is that, regardless of the end result, Jesus had to endure, for several hours, a degree of pain that most of us will never encounter in our lives.

2) Jesus bore the rejection of the Father. Now, when we feel rejected by God, there are several ways that this is different to what Jesus experienced. First of all, we deserve rejection, whereas Jesus didn't. Secondly, we have never known the total unity with the Father which Jesus knew, making the rejection all the more crushing. Thirdly, we are never as deeply rejected as we feel. Jesus truly was. When he prayed, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" he prayed it with an earnestness and intensity that no human before or after could ever pray. He truly was forsaken, because he had, for that moment, become sin itself for us (2 Corinthians 5:21).

And so, the enormity of his sacrifice only makes sense if we grasp the fact that, when Jesus was on that cross, he felt every second of the pain with every bit as much intensity as you or I would, and also that he experienced, that day, the total wrath of the Father in a way that spared any of us who believe from knowing precisely what we most deserve to know. For that moment, the saw went right through Jesus' body, without a second of illusion. It was no magic trick, because he was no magician. He was God in human flesh. And that is why the pain he suffered for us was no glorious hoax, but the beginning of the most glorious truth the world can ever know.

Lent #3: What Jesus Wasn't Part 1

In the early days of the church, there were two major heresies which, at times, nearly ruined orthodox Christianity. They were called "Docetism" and "Gnosticism". Now, for many years I felt that "Gnosticism" must have something to do with those little Italian dumplings made out of potatoes (it doesn't), and "Docetism" - well, that wasn't a term I discovered until quite recently. But it may surprise you to hear that, while these heresies were countered decisively many, many years ago (the Apostles' Creed, which many churches say each week, was one way in which this was done), both are still alive and well in the church, and in the world around us. The shock of "The Da Vinci Code" was because Gnosticism pervades how many people think about our world and God's relationship to it, both in and out of the church. But there are other, subtler ways that we are threatened still by these heresies. Allow me to point out one:

1) Jesus was not a Zen Master

"No," you will almost certainly say, "we knew that. But thanks for telling us." And then you will proceed to look up another blog which specialises slightly less in the bleeding obvious.

But is it so obvious? I remember a few years ago talking to an unusual guy at a party who had come to the conclusion that Jesus went to India (apparently well-documented in a book called Jesus Lived In India) and there learnt to "transcend the physical". Interestingly, he spoke of this process of Jesus transcending the physical as if it were a well-attested fact which even orthodox Christians would have to affirm. At the time I dismissed it, but more recently I have begun to realise that he has a point: not that Jesus did learn to transcend the physical, but that we often, unknowingly, believe He did. And Lent seems as good a time as any to point out that this is a load of unmitigated rubbish.

First, why do we think this? When we think about disciplines like fasting, of which Lent is an extended period, we generally imagine that, at the end of it all, we will gain a kind of hallowed glow around us, rather than, as is more natural, feeling really, really hungry. Now, it might be helpful to point out that, when Jesus fasted for forty days, at the end of it He was so hungry that Satan was able to tempt Him to bow down and worship him, in exchange for food. Obviously Jesus did not give in - the Church would be in a fair amount of trouble if He had. But there's something really important to note here: that Jesus was tempted to do so. And what does this tell us? That there's a fair chance He was hungry, not, I suspect, a sign that, at that moment, He had "transcended the physical".

Now, the Buddha - so the story goes - was troubled by human suffering, and so fasted and fasted until he was barely alive. And then he had an epiphany. That epiphany formed the basis of what is now, in various forms and mutations, a highly popular religion. Let us note a key difference here: Buddhism views the physical as corrupt and needing to be overcome; the Christian God viewed the physical as something worthy of His Son to inhabit.

So, in conclusion: how then should we think of fasting, or self-denial, as we reach the halfway point of Lent? Should we be looking in the mirror for signs of a halo developing? Should we be expecting that we are starting to feel somehow more than human, somehow less dependent upon food? Far from it. Fasting is not, I must admit, something that I factor immensely into my theology, and I'm working on it being more and more something that I tackle. But it strikes me that, if I am to do so, it needs to be with a right view of - to risk a cliché - what it is to be human: not something innately flawed that needs to be overcome (that's the sin nature, not the very fact of being human), but something good which God came to redeem.

Lent #2: Once and For All, To the End

My grand intentions of blogging regularly during Lent have been somewhat taken over by my attempt to write roughly one poem for each day of the season. This has been a difficult enough discipline by itself. I mentioned in my first Lent-related post for the year that I have not felt especially ready for Lent this year, and the feeling continues. Each morning as I work through John's narrative of the Passion, each evening as I work back over past chapters of John's Gospel to guide my poems, I find myself not wanting to think about this story that is at the very heart of my faith. Is this an normal enough experience? Perhaps, though I am grieved that this is the case for me. I wish I felt differently. I really do.

But all this serves to remind me of something that I badly need reminding of: that none of this is about me and what I can bring to God, not emotionally, not spiritually. It isn't about how disciplined or focused I can be during this season; it isn't about how much I grieve, how much I weep, how much I rejoice. It is about Jesus who died and rose again.

I am reminded of the letter to the Hebrews, which speaks of Jesus' death being sufficient in and of itself, with no need to be repeated, unlike the old sacrificial system which needed regular updating: "those sacrifices", the writer notes, "are an annual reminder of sins, because it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins" (Hebrews 10:3-4). But Jesus' death was enough, once for all time; it had the power to take away sins and not let them go back. It was this knowledge of what Jesus' death achieved, I think, that prompted the writer earlier to use the image of crucifying Jesus over and over again by falling away from God and trying to return to Him: "It is impossible for those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, who have shared in the Holy Spirit, who have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the coming age, if they fall away, to be brought back to repentance, because to their loss they are crucifying the Son of God all over again and subjecting him to public disgrace." (Hebrews 6:4-6). Jesus' death was enough just once for the rest of time; why, then, would we want to receive His death, then give it up, then receive it again?

And I am reminded then of how in some cultures and traditions re-enactments of the crucifixion are a feature of this season, and I wonder how they understand the warnings against re-crucifying Christ, or the writer to the Hebrews' declaration that one crucifixion of Christ was enough for the rest of human history. And I wonder then if there is some vestige of this thinking in the way that I try to enact the right cycle of emotions each time, re-enacting the grief of crucifixion in some attempt to better attain its benefits.

There is rarely enough grief or mourning in how the Western evangelical church thinks about Lent. In some churches, Good Friday is just an awkward Other Easter Sunday; no-one really knows how to be mournful, so it becomes another celebration. But it is no better to swing too vehemently the other way, to make Lent into a sanctifying ritual of mourning. That puts the focus far too much on our own religious observance and far too little on the sufficiency of what Jesus did.

This Lent, I hope to learn to be more balanced. But, thank God, even if I don't succeed, His grace is sufficient for me. For His power is made perfect - amazingly - in our every weakness.