Posted on 11/23/2016 7:05:18 AM PST by Salvation
If we could travel back in time to 30 A.D. and meet the Lord Jesus as He carried forth His public ministry, we might be quite surprised by what we saw. I say this because many of us are heirs to a rather filtered description of Him that is both Western and modern.
Most picture Jesus as fair-skinned and slender, with long, straight hair and a gentle beard. This physical reimagining of Him began rather early, gathered steam during the Renaissance, and has come to our day. I will not dwell here on His physical traits in this post, as I have written in detail on them elsewhere: What Did Jesus Look Like?.
As for His mannerisms, most imagine Jesus as gentle, kind, soft-spoken (except to mean people like the Pharisees), and “loving” in the modern sense. Images of him welcoming children, being the Good Shepherd, speaking of the lilies of the field, and forgiving the woman caught in adultery (but not the part when He tells her to stop sinning), predominate. Many modern people default to or strongly emphasize these images (rather than consulting the fuller text of Scripture) in interpreting Jesus. For many, the preferred images overrule the Sacred text, no matter how voluminous those balancing texts might be.
And thus if the Church, or a priest, or any Christian says anything that seems “hard” to modern ears, many will retort that Jesus is love and would never talk like this. Some years ago, after preaching a sermon on Hell and the need to be prepared for judgment, a woman in the parish I was visiting said this to me: “I didn’t hear the Jesus I know in your words today.” I replied that I was quoting Jesus Himself (the gospel of that Sunday was about the narrow road to salvation and the wide road to Hell). She was not fazed, and simply replied, “I know He never said that.” Her personal image of Jesus overruled even the sacred text. This is common today.
This is why I think the real Jesus, as described in Scripture, would surprise many modern people.
Surprise #1: His physical vigor and stamina
A mere consultation of the map reveals an enormous and diverse terrain where Jesus, His family, and His apostles routinely walked. Each year, Jesus journeyed on foot approximately 70 miles south to Jerusalem and then back again. His daily journeys took Him throughout the whole of Galilee and as far as 35 miles to the north (Tyre, Sidon, Caesarea Philippi). The terrain in the area was difficult, hilly (even mountainous) areas alternating between fertile lands and deserts within mere miles.
Jesus climbed the hills around the Sea of Galilee and mountains as high as Tabor. He, His family, and His followers often trod long journeys of many days. Travels could be dangerous because brigands and thieves lay in wait for opportune moments. The availability of lodging was unpredictable and many nights had to be spent out in the elements.
In His final journey to Jerusalem, Jesus took the desert route that went through Jericho. It is a howling desert that descends more than 800 feet below sea level. His climb to Jerusalem (more than 2500 feet above sea level) was more than 3000 feet up. Despite this difficult journey, He was the guest that very evening at the house of Martha and Mary, where He was anointed by Mary with costly nard.
Most moderns know little of such vigor and stamina. Many of us become winded by a mere hill; the thought of walking 70 miles would seem almost impossible to us. Those who go to the Holy Land today and follow the paths of Jesus usually do so in air-conditioned buses and complain of the steep hills that must be climbed on foot in Nazareth, Ein Karem, and Jerusalem.
These were hardy people, not the slight figures that modern artists often depict. It does not mean that they were extremely muscular, but they were used to hard physical work, long walks, and the sorts of hardships that would discourage many of us.
Surprise #2: His loud and challenging preaching
In those days there were no microphones or amplification of any kind. Preachers of that time did not (could not) use a gentle, suggestive tone. They had to shout out their message. Town criers were called such for a reason. Even indoors an elevated tone was required because crowded rooms muffle sound.
Jesus often preached outdoors, sometimes to crowds of thousands. Consider again His stamina and that such sermons were more of a shout than a mere discourse or exhortation. This would likely be challenging to us who are used to the more discussion-like quality of the preaching in the last hundred years.
A number of years ago I gave a talk on the Sacrament of Holy Matrimony to a large church gathering. For some reason the public address system was not working. Now I have a loud voice, but projecting it in such a large venue required a near shout. I tried to mitigate that by interspersing humor and other disarming methods, but about half of the audience indicated (on the evaluation forms they filled out) that I seemed angry or harsh. I was certainly not angry, and although the message of traditional marriage is challenging to modern notions, the emphasis was that grace assists fidelity and the forgiveness that is necessary for lifelong love.
A further surprising note on Jesus’ preaching is that he preached while seated. The sacred text affirms this tradition in many places. All the ancient rabbis preached while seated, it was a sign of authority.
Surprise #3: His uncompromising stance
Jesus was in the mode of the prophets, and the prophets were never ones to soft-pedal, compromise, or be vague. Any analysis of Jesus’ true message (not the selective and filtered modern version) shows that He made expansive, uncompromising demands on any who would be His disciples. We must repent and believe His Gospel. We must clearly accept that He is the only light, the only truth, and the only Son to the Father. We are to love no one and nothing more than we love Him. This includes our very family as well as the things most essential to our physical survival, such as career and livelihood. If we do not do this, then we are not worthy of Him. We must take up our cross daily. We must be willing to suffer even unto death for Him and what He teaches. It is not enough to love our neighbor; we must love our enemy. It is not enough to avoid adultery; we must have a comprehensive sexual purity that excludes all forms of sexual activity outside of biblical marriage, even impure thoughts. We must forgive others who have hurt us or else the Father will not forgive us.
Time and time again, the real Jesus warned of Hell and the necessity to be sober and serious about judgment. Jesus was not some angry preacher. Jesus, who loves us, warned that many would be unable and unwilling to enter Heaven on its terms; few would take the narrow road of the cross. Not all who say, “Lord! Lord!” will enter heaven, but only those who do the will of the Father. Many will hear from Him, “I know you not. I know not from whence you come. Depart from me.”
There is no compromise, no third way. We cannot serve two masters, God and mammon. A friend of the world is an enemy to God. He would say that no one who sets his hand to the plow and keeps looking back is fit for the reign of God. To our excuses and pleas for time in “getting our act together,” He might say, “Let the dead bury their dead, but you go and proclaim the Kingdom!”
There is little we can call gentle or soft in the mainstream of Jesus’ preaching. Though He invited His disciples to discover Him as the true shepherd, the true lover of our souls, who can give us the true Bread for which we hunger and lasting water to quench our thirst, He wants us carrying our cross, not reclining on our couch. Jesus healed many, but He insisted on faith being operative prior to performing miracles.
Jesus’ plan for us involves deep paradox; He challenges our every expectation. He does not apologize for offending our notions. He declared that if anyone was ashamed of Him and His teachings, then He would be ashamed of that person on the Day of Judgment. There is to be no compromise with the wisdom of the world.
All of this, though recorded clearly and consistently in the biblical record, is conveniently forgotten by. Most modern people prefer nuance and/or euphemisms; they prefer a suggestive and inviting tone. But Jesus, like the prophets of the day, combined a searing judgment on worldly ways with an uncompromising insistence that we choose sides.
Surprise #4: His urgency
Jesus had a determination that a lot of us would interpret as a kind of inflexibility. We like to discuss things; we celebrate collaboration and team work.
Jesus doesn’t fit in this box at all. He knew exactly what He wanted to do. He sent missionaries ahead of Him into every town and village. He accepted no correction from those objected to His course or to the fact that He ate with sinners. When the crowds objected to Jesus’ teachings (such as His teaching on the Eucharist at Capernaum), He did not reconsider His words or go out and hire a public relations firm to improve His image. He did not conduct focus groups to test out His words and ideas. No, Jesus doubled down on disputed teachings and then asked His disciples if they were going to desert Him. He had an urgent mission to convey the truth, not debate it at length with detractors.
Jesus was on the move and urgently pursued His task. He told His disciples that He must work while it was still day because the darkness was coming when work would cease. In his final journey to Jerusalem, it was said that Jesus “set His face like flint,” an expression that conveys firm resolve. He set out on the journey, fully knowing (and announcing) that He would suffer at the hands of men, die, and rise.
Jesus’ own apostles balked and resisted, wondering why He would go there knowing that the leaders sought to kill Him. When Peter tried to dissuade Him, Jesus turned to him angrily, challenged his worldly thinking, and called him Satan.
No, Jesus would not turn back. At one point, He rebuked the weak faith of the Apostles, saying, “How much longer must I tolerate you?!” He also warned, “He who does not gather with me scatters.”
So Jesus was urgent and unstoppable. Meanwhile, His apostles vacillated between resistance to the looming danger, denial, and avoidance. More than once, the sacred text indicates that they were afraid to ask Him any more questions.
Nothing would stop Jesus. Even at the Last Supper, as He arose to go forth to His Passion, Jesus said, “The world must know that I love the Father and that He sent me. Arise. Let us go hence.”
Only briefly (in the garden) did Jesus express even the slightest doubt. Quickly it was resolved: whatever the Father wanted would receive His assent. We are saved by the human decision of a divine person.
Why this urgency? It was to save us! “What should I say? ‘Father save me from this hour?’ No, it was for this hour that I came into the world” (John 12:27).
I am convinced that all of this urgency would surprise us. We are more comfortable with a Jesus who wandered about blessing people, telling stories, and who only at the very end fell into trouble. Nothing could be further from the recorded history of the sacred text. Knowing everything that would take place, Jesus set out manfully to His goal and would allow nothing to stop or sidetrack Him. This was His Father’s will and He was urgent.
Yes, I suspect that most of us would be surprised if we encountered Jesus back around the year 30 A.D. For those who have not internalized the biblical texts and have substituted a modern image far removed from the recorded truth, Jesus might seem overbearing and even impatient. They would see Jesus speaking broadly—even bluntly—in the mode of the prophets. Would there be nothing of the gentle Jesus that so many prefer? Of course there would, but not in the exclusive amount that many moderns prefer.
Perhaps I do well to finish with the words of Ross Douthat, who in his book Bad Religion, summarizes this well:
Christianity is a paradoxical religion because the Jew of Nazareth is a paradoxical character. No figure in history or fiction contains as many multitudes as the New Testament’s Jesus. He’s a celibate ascetic who enjoys dining with publicans and changing water into wine at weddings. He’s an apocalyptic prophet one moment, a [careful and] wise ethicist the next. … He promises to set [spouses against one another and] parents against children, and then disallows divorce; he consorts with prostitutes while denouncing even lustful thoughts. … He can be egalitarian and hierarchical, gentle and impatient, extraordinarily charitable and extraordinarily judgmental. He sets impossible standards and then forgives the worst of sinners. He blesses the peacemakers and then promises that he’s brought not peace but the sword. He’s superhuman one moment; the next he’s weeping.
The boast of Christian orthodoxy, as codified by the councils of the early Church and expounded in the Creeds, has always been its fidelity to the whole of Jesus. … [Where heresy says which one] Both, says orthodoxy …. The goal of the great heresies, on the other hand, has often been to extract from the tensions of the gospel narratives a more consistent, streamlined, and noncontradictory Jesus [1].
Totally agree!
But the priestly garb was for the Jews - and most things Jewish were superceded by the spiritual reality that came with Christ.
Intimately familiar with the OT priestly garb (AND Tabernacle and TEmple) that God gave to the Jews.
Everything Jewish was outward and physical - an outward demonstration of a spiritual reality in the heavenlies.
Sadly, the Jews missed the spiritual reality that everything symbolized, and became a dead, God-rejecting people who were sticklers for the details of the outward while totally contradicting the spiritual reality. That is clear in all of Christ’s words to them and their leaders.
When Christ came, He did away with outward and external (see St. Paul’s epistles) and replaced it with the spiritual reality - stating many times that the external show was irrelevant, and the inward spiritual reality was what counted in the eternal and spiritual realm.
So many evidences of this - a major one in how He dressed Himself, and his choosing his disciples from the lowly.
The external requirements for the Jews were never passed on to the Christians. See Acts 15 for example. The whole of the NT is an emphasis on spiritual reality, not external looks.
Not wishing to argue, just sharing my (and that of millions of others) view........
Affirmative sir. The one thing, however, that I think is really a mortal sin of sacrilege, is the fact that they don't have French dressing. All they have is Caesar's and Thousand Island, so I am forced to suffer for Jesus, without it. 😆😎🇵🇭
quote-I’ve always wondered why the new year doesn’t start December 21/22, instead of January 1.
After all; that is when the winter solstice occurs.
Those in power must have had a reason.
Yes Elsie!
The answer is Rome trying to fit The Old Testament law into their December 25.
January 1st is the ‘8th’ day from December 25.
That is when Christ was to be circumcised according to law. (8th day for Jewish boys)
On the Father’s calendar, when one is born on the ‘New Moon Day’ (1st day of the month) , the 8th day is holy- It is the weekly 7th Day Sabbath- another appointed day He taught Israel. (ezekiel 46:1 template)
What’s interesting is ‘40’ days from December 25 is another ‘holiday’ on Rome’s calendar:
February 2nd- certainly secular here in the US known as Groundhogs Day, but in Rome, it is the commemoration of the presentation of Jesus in the temple, after the 40 days of Mary’s purification, according to law.
Rome knows ‘Torah’- (so does satan)so, Rome’’s calendar fits the ‘template’ but has changed/substituted His ‘days’ and ‘times’ for their own. ‘Changed times and laws’ (Daniel 7:25)
And Rome can do that because the world runs on the pope gregory calendar. They set the premise for the world.
Rome’s
-December 25
-January 1st
-February 2nd
vs. Bible
-New Moon Day- 6th month- Summer (August/September)
-Weekly Sabbath(ps- need not be on a Saturday-news to Jews)
-Day of Atonement(10th Day of 7th month-40 days from His birth)
how hard would it be for Christians to abandom that tradition?
very difficult when some are fighting to put Christ back in Christmas - not knowing He was never in there- according to His Word and His Creation.
only according to Rome is He there..and we are Roman citizens whether we know it or not.
It was my understanding that the Old Testament said He would be rather unassuming looking. But I also thought there was a New Testament reference to the fact that he was striking in appearance and that there was something magnetic about him.
I thought striking might have meant that he was taller than the average man of the time and unusual in some way.
David may have been a ginger. He was “ruddy and beautiful to behold, and of a comely face.”
Since Mary and Joseph were both descended from David, Christ was both legally and biologically descended from David.
It would be like God to make Christ a physical throwback to David or Moses or Abraham. I thought I had read somewhere that Christ’s hair had red/gold highlights in it.
This was not what I expected. Usually an article about “the real Jesus” departs entirely from the biblical texts. Large portions of this could be, or perhaps should be, written in the present tense, because Jesus is not just a figure of history. He lives and rules to all eternity. Introduce second person voicing and it becomes a sermon of substance.
There is also this to consider:
“While reviewing the evidence of the Shroud in 1999, Dr. Gilbert Lavoie presented another intriguing discovery, that the body had light blond hair.”
http://www.holyspiritinteractive.net...oudofturin.asp
Also:
Another unearthed description by Publius Lentrelus describes Jesus’ eyes as bright blue.
http://www.thenazareneway.com/likene...ur_saviour.htm
http://www.angelfire.com/nv/TheOliveBranch/book6.html
http://www.mariavaltortawebring.com/...Appearance.htm
Also:
There is another physical description of Jesus in a letter by Pontius Pilot in which Jesus has “golden colored hair” and “blue” eyes. In 1964, a tablet from Pontius Pilate to Tiberius Caesar was recovered in a archeological find (a copy of this letter is in the Congressional Library in Washington, D.C.) which describes Jesus’ physical appearance. It describes Jesus as having golden colored hair.
http://www.scribd.com/jakedp/d/91888...iberius-Caesar
http://newsgroups.derkeiler.com/Arch.../msg00408.html
http://mtshastaportal.blogspot.com/2...n-legends.html
http://www.fathersmanifesto.net/wm/wm0010.htm
I had a friend once who had medium brown hair but when she stood in the sun, it blazed a sparkly gold. I picture Him that way. He looked like He had brown hair until he stood in the sun preaching; then He glowed with zeal.
Sorry, only the angelfire link is working.
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The Acts were massaged by Eusebius long after they were recorded.
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Me: "Amen."
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Blessings upon blessings to you, Elsie, on this grace-filled day.
Play name games, call others ignorant, and pretend you haven't blasphemed the Holy Spirit by throwing a large portion of the Bible in the garbage can because you trust Pharisee Rabbis more than you trust Christ. None of that changes the fact that you're following those Rabbis rather than Christ.
Actually, he is a sycophant of Michael Rood. That is all one needs to know to ignore ES posts in the religion forum. You two deserve each other ...
Then we have some PROOF; right?
Like REALLY old ACTS that are NOT massaged??
Ditto.
I have often said the same thing — just not as eloquently as the tenacious one, here.
...but if you are comfortable taking Rome’s teaching and practice into eternity, so be it.
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Oh, good. So I suppose that means that you are going to stick with your own religious beliefs and practices and leave us Catholics to our beliefs and practices. Your baying and ridicule will now stop? Wonderful.
Agreed!
Thanks, Salvation.
Oh no. I’m going to sound the alarm and spread the truth as long as I have breath.Rome doesn’t have a saving gospel and souls are at stake. As long as papists propagandize for Rome, I will step in and counter when I can. If you and the regular papal brigade here want to stake your soul on the Roman doctrine, so be it, but others must be warned they are in grave danger. If I didn’t care about the souls of men, even yours, I wouldn’t waste my time.
The Bible says “The fear of the LORD is to hate evil...” All religions that take away from or add to Christ are evil. Rome does both.
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