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Jesus teaches about the God he knows. He offers a kind of “soul language” that makes sense to as many people as possible. Many of the citations he uses are from extra-biblical sources, aphorisms, legends, and stories. He takes wisdom from wherever it comes. When he does quote scripture, the only Hebrew Scriptures that he quotes are those that move toward mercy and justice and inclusivity. There are scriptures that present God as punitive, imperialistic, or exclusionary, but Jesus never quotes them in his teaching. In fact, he speaks against them.
The longest single citation of Jesus according to the Gospels is in Luke 4. He went into the synagogue and unrolled the scroll of the prophet Isaiah and “found the place where it was written, ‘The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed, to proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.’ And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down” (Luke 4:17-20). Wait a minute! Jesus stopped reading before he finished the text! Isaiah 61:2 actually says: “to proclaim a day of vengeance from our God.” Jesus skips the last line because he isn’t here to announce vengeance. He has a completely different message, and thus critiques his own scriptures. This is quite telling.
Jesus creates stories to communicate that God is good, faithful, and merciful (i.e. the Good Samaritan, the Prodigal Son, and the Publican and the Pharisee). Jesus exemplifies biblical faith, which is not trust in ideas; it’s trust in a person—God, his Father, whom he trusts so much he calls him Abba, Daddy, Papa. Jesus knows that God is always with him and in a caring way.
Jesus was not changing the Father’s mind about us; he was changing our mind about God—and thus about one another. If God and Jesus are not hateful, violent, punitive, torturing, or vindictive, then our excuse for the same is forever taken away from us. Maybe we do not really want such a God?
Adapted from
Hierarchy of Truths: Jesus� Use of Scripture
(CD, MP3 download)
and Dancing Standing Still: Healing the World from a Place of Prayer, p. 72
Gateway to Silence:
I am a hole in a flute that the Christ�s breath
moves through—listen to this music.
—Hafiz
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