Nine Kinds of Jesus

How did Jesus perceive himself? As we read the New Testament we can find hints of at least nine possibilities. The difficulty we face, however, is that the nine cannot be reconciled into a single big picture -- the apocalyptic preacher who believes the end of all history is days away would not then call for the overthrow of a government. So is any of the following authentically Jesus' own self-understanding?

1. The Apocalyptic Preacher. The world has gone to hell in a handbasket, is beyond redemption, and the role Jesus assumed was herald of the end. His listeners could do nothing now but repent and hope it was enough to get them through the judgment that was about to begin.

2. The Revolutionary. The kingdom of God is to be played out within history as well as above it. The role Jesus assumed was to announce and launch the overthrow of the powers -- Roman and Jewish -- that stood in opposition to God's rule.

3. The Social Reformer. The ancient world did not see government as the guarantor of human rights and social justice. The role of Jesus was to summon the wealthy and powerful of the world to cancel debts, return ancestral property, and release the prisoners.

4. The Religious Reformer. The Judaism around Jesus was many things, and many -- most -- perhaps all of them were wrong. The role of Jesus was to summon the world to a true religious practice, where Temple sacrifice was no longer practiced, and God was addressed in personal terms.

5. The Martyr. To be faithful to God in this world was to lose one's life for God's sake. Such a path may not seem to bear fruit -- the powers of the world continue to rule, the poor continue to suffer, wars continue to rage -- but the death of the faithful bears witness to the true ruler of the cosmos and earns one a place in the age to come. The role of Jesus was to enact the martyr's path, and summon others to follow him.

6. The Divine Messenger (The Prophet). Many had carried word from God into the world before -- the Prophets of Israel had spoken God's anguish in the face of faithlessness of his people and the oppression of the poor, and call the nation to renewal. But many in Israel had assumed that the age of the Prophets was in the past. The role of Jesus was to speak that message again into this new moment.

7. The Divine Messenger (The Mystery). Physical reality itself seems to be filled with an inevitable emptiness. Billions live lives of toil only to die. Some few, however, sense that there must be more. The role of Jesus was to carry a message from God from beyond the physical realm -- perhaps word from a God beyond even what the Jews had imagined -- that the true nature of a human being is a divine light, attached to and destined to return to the realm beyond all physical existence.

8. The Atonement. According to the philosophical vision of "Divine," the perfect justice of God cannot abide dangling injustice. There are no degrees of imperfection -- the injustice of a white lie merits destruction as much as the imperfection of, say, cannibalism. But the role of Jesus was to suffer the destruction each of us deserves, allowing us to pass into the glory of God's presence.

9. The Incarnation. There is an inherent injustice in the notion that God destroys an innocent human in place of a guilty one. Nor is the injustice resolved by blaming the Romans or the Jews, as the death of Jesus was, according to Christian tradition, demanded of Jesus by God. Another problem is that God in the Hebrew Bile (Old Testament) told his people that they simply needed to turn to him when they have sinned, and he would wash them white as snow. God is forgiving - why would he stop now?

The belief that Jesus was God-in-the-flesh is the result. The suffering of Jesus was seen, therefore, not as God demanding another's suffering, but rather God absorbing the suffering that would have destroyed humanity and kept us separated. Essentially, the role of Jesus was to be God's declaration that human sin and weakness would not be the final word. As "Father," God would not let anything pry his children from him.