Tuesday, February 05, 2008

Conversation at Panera About Jesus

I can't believe its a whole month since I last blogged on this site.

I had a conversation this morning with a friend at Panera Bread about Jesus. We got talking about a comment a rabbi had made that Jesus came for the Gentiles, but that God's people were still waiting for the Messiah.

What struck me as interesting in such a comment is that historically Jesus was Jewish and his mission was to the House of Israel (the mission to the Gentiles did not begin until about 20 years after Jesus ministry, death and resurrection).

However, the most enlivening part of our conversation was in discussing whether Jesus was just for Christians, or whether Jesus was for all humanity. Though numerous religions give some kind of assent to Jesus as a prophet, the scriptures teach that God came to dwell amongst humanity and the way God did that was in the person of Jesus, son of Joseph, the Christ.

If this is indeed true, as I believe it is, then Jesus came not only for Christians, but Muslims, Jews, Buddhists, Hindus, Agnostics, Atheists, Animists, etc. Jesus came for all people in order to bring all humanity into a relationship with God who created us.

So what do we do with this understanding? One is that we need to begin to see Jesus not just through western Christian eyes, but also through middle eastern Jewish eyes, middle eastern Islamic eyes, eastern Buddhist eyes, Indian Hindu eyes, African eyes, Asian eyes, etc. God is for all humanity. Jesus is God for all humanity.

In this way Jesus cannot be seen just as another religious figure, competing for religious significance. Jesus (God incarnate as a human being) is God who has come to be with us to draw us all back into relationship with God who created us all.

The Story we have in the Hebrew and Christian scriptures is the Story of God engaging humanity through one people and then through a community not limited to one people but open to all ethnicities, all genders, all statuses, all humanity.

How are we then to live in the world to reveal this Jesus in the midst of a broken world?

Roland