“Jesus Christ deliberately passed over those who were aristocratic and influential. He chose men from the lower class of society.”
Oh, balderdash! There was no aristocracy then, comparable to the great land-owners in later Europe. The Bible says that Jesus himself was of the ”lineage and house of David,” which is deemed something special, and as close to aristocracy as you could get. His father was in our tradition a “carpenter,” although the Greek word means “builder,” which probably put him in the upper ranks of tradesmen. Jesus was able to spend years in the synagogue, apparently in traditional study. The poorest people could not do that.
Jesus visited in the homes of people who were apparently quite wealthy. The fishermen he attracted were not poor men, by the standards of the day. They abandoned their nets and boats and other expensive gear to follow Jesus, but they were not poor.
I think that it is a mistake to try to fit Jesus into the notions of economic class which saturate modern thinking. He blessed the poor in spirit (those free of arrogance), not merely the poor in an economic sense.
The parables are full of descriptions of the economy of the day, often with paradoxical examples to make a point, but there is no attack on the generally accepted customs of the time, including the economic arrangements. So much for Jesus the “revolutionary.”
Jesus said explicitly that his kingdom was not material. There is good evidence now that Jesus favored the older Jewish traditions, and was opposed by the established clerics of Jerusalem, who came from the tradition of the returnees from Bablyon.
It is interesting that Jesus was criticized for paying attention to lowly people and even sinners (such as tax-collectors — nothing new, eh?). The criticisms came from some of his upper class followers. For Jesus, class did not matter, and that was the lesson. So why is much made of this now?
All through the short ministry of Jesus, and in the parables and other teachings, I detect a sense or urgency, and a wish to teach the people a lasting message. Jesus knew, or at least sensed, that his hour was coming. It was all building to what we celebrate in Holy Week.
I recently read Colin J. Humphreys’s “The Mystery of the Last Supper.” (Don’t let the title put you off! This is a serious book, not like the DaVinci Code nonsense.)
Humphreys appears to have solved the chronological problems in the history of Holy Week. Everything fits rather well under his simple but elegant explanation. He also mentions that the most modern astronomical calculations, possible with modern computer technology which was not available until recently, show that there was, indeed, an eclipse of the sun visible in Jerusalem at the time following Jesus’s death on the cross, in accordance with the descriptions in there Bible.
I find this an amazing confirmation of the scriptural accounts. There are many stories in the Bible, particularly in the Old Testament, that are tales to make a point, or illustrate a truth. But the Easter story I believe is Truth, and historical fact, as well as a junction and focal point of all history.
Happy Easter!
I was taken a little aback at your attitude of ‘balderdash’; didn’t think it was called for.
The part that stuck with me on this writing was:
“God chooses the humble, the lowly, the meek and the weak so that there’ll never be any question about their source of power.”
Source of power indeed.....
I think the Contra-postitive in this case would have been “what would have been the effect of Jesus’ ministry had he been promoted by Caiphas or even Herod or Pilate?”. Suppose that earthly persons of influence, authority and power had anointed him as a Prophet even a Messiah, would his death in history have ever had an effect? He could have been perceived in history by nonbelievers as having power from earthly authority and having fallen afoul of that earthly authority been deemed guilty of inciting violence and thereafter executed.
It is interesting to contemplate how God willed the associations that Jesus had. Had God willed that Caiphas promote Jesus and his ministry, there would likely never been a confrontation of conflict with Caiphas. Still the insurrections and violence of zealots would have caused a Roman crackdown and Jesus being a spiritual leader that people flocked to and promoted by the Sanhedrin would naturally come into focus by the Roman procurator and an execution may still have occurred.
So in contemplating how the script was to be written, we must know why God chose the high ranks of the Sanhedrin to pronounce Jesus as a heretic and blasphemer and to lobby the Roman procurator to execute him.
Perhaps the answer is that a judgement and execution attributed solely to the Romans would have left a history that this was a simple conflict between Rome and Jerusalem rather that a conflict among members of the human family.