Celebrating the Real Jesus

We all want to experience change in our lives. However, we hope that change will somehow instantaneously materialize without any effort on our part. Perhaps, that’s because we grew up with Disney where magic just happens!

Change only follows on the heels of effort born of a real determination to change.  It starts with desire. I was confronted this week by the question: do I really want to change?

My employer secured the services of a hypnotherapist for those who wanted that extra boost to shed a few pounds or quit smoking: a generous offer. I decided to take the plunge. I entered a dimly lit office and was asked a few questions by the hypnotherapist about what I considered to be my barriers to weight loss and came to an epiphany of sorts; I didn’t really want to change! My desire for ice-cream is greater than my desire to lose weight!

So it was at the time of Jesus. People were looking and yearning for a Messiah to come and save them but the trouble was they didn’t really want to change.

An unlikely hero

Nevertheless, Jesus changed everything by how he lived.  He changed the world. This is surprising when you consider the most basic facts of his short life. Think about his unlikely birth – his mother could have been stoned for bearing an illegitimate child, Herod could have killed him. On the day he was crucified, a punishment reserved for slaves and criminals, no-one could have guessed he would become the dominant force that has changed human history throughout the world. He didn’t do it with sweeping armies, like Rome. On that fateful Friday his beleaguered, confused, negative, see-sawing disciples had scattered.

He is the world’s most unlikely hero. So what was his secret and where did his power come from that allowed him to transform civilizations? His secret was that he was ALL IN for God and us. He didn’t compromise. He always loved and he loved everyone.

An explosive truth

His teachings challenged the world he lived in and over time would cause people to think and act differently.

“In Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith….There is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, nor is there male or female, for you are all one in Jesus Christ.”

To understand how explosive and counter culture that statement was you have to understand Roman and Greek society. Jesus was born a Jew but Jews were living in Roman society and were impacted by that. They yearned for a King or Messiah to deliver them.

Today, we recognize Jesus as Christ, the Messiah, even if you don’t personally believe in him. But at the time Jesus didn’t conform to people’s notion of a Messiah; as a deliverer from Roman rule. He challenged social norms in dramatic and unconventional ways. He talked about a Kingdom not of this world. He was not a political leader. He was ALL IN and in your face, especially if you were a Pharisee.

A law that pointed to love

Jesus changed people’s concept of the value of a human being by how he lived. He related to others very differently from the average person of his day. Think about Rome. Children had no rights and if you were born a girl your chances of survival were slim in comparison to boys. In the city of Delphi, out of 600 known families only 6 had more than 1 daughter. The practice of “exposure” – leaving a newborn to die if it were deformed or a girl – was common. Consequently, in the ancient Greco-Roman world there was a great shortage of women. There were about 140 men for every 100 women. A similar gender imbalance is true today as well, in Asia (China, India and elsewhere) where there are 163 million more men than women. Jesus confronted this lack of understanding of the value of the lives of children when he chastised his disciples, commanding them to allow the children to come unto him. Today, that seems like an unremarkable moment but in Jesus’ day it was extraordinary gesture.

Jesus broke the conventions of his day. He lived valuing all people. He healed the sick – people that society left to die in leper colonies. He taught and travelled with women at a time when “respectable” women stayed indoors. His message was for all people.

It’s interesting to note that the majority of the early church consisted of women and slaves; the attraction being that finally their value as a child of God was recognized. One church in Cirta was seized during persecution in AD 303. Archeologists recently found on that site 16 male tunics and 82 women’s tunics, 38 veils and 47 pairs of slippers – the gender imbalance in reverse!

Jesus challenged the strict legalism of Judaism all the time. He affronted a dinner host when he had the audacity to heal one of the guests on the Sabbath.  The Jewish leaders kept trying to trap him by exposing his lack of strict adherence to the letter of the law. They attempted to judge him but each time they ended up being judged themselves by the quality of Jesus’ heart.

Jesus insisted that the law pointed toward love, and love means seeing and valuing the worth that God bestows on each and every human life. Ironically, we are obsessed with worth – our net worth, and our social worth but miss the point on where our real value comes from.

Jesus revolutionized the world by teaching that God loves us. Each person has value because they are loved by God in an intimate, personal way. God counts the hairs on your head. He knows your inner most heart. This is not something the Greek and Roman Gods did – they were petulant, jealous, and often involved themselves in sexual trysts. Jesus was unlike anyone they had met, and spoke of a very different God.

There was inclusivity in Jesus’ spirit that drew people in and continues to draw people in today.

He taught that all people, slave or free, men or women, have value and this pivotal notion impacted societies all over the world. Think Magna Carta…. Declaration of Independence.

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Jesus changed the world when he inspired people with the notion that we are one family under God and as children of our Heavenly Parent, we have absolute, eternal, unchanging value. We don’t need the Bible to tell us this; it is self-evident when we search inside our hearts.

The power of love in the early church

Jesus modeled loving everyone; not just the widow and orphans but the lepers and sick – people who were usually ostracized. His simple acts of sensitivity to others left their mark on his disciples and somehow catapulted Christianity onto the world stage. One of the primary reasons that Christianity spread is the impact that caring for the sick had on the broader culture.  The Jesus movement became known for how they cared for the “least of these” at the cost of their own lives.

By the 4^th Century Emperor Julian the Apostate was frustrated because the Christians were putting Rome to shame by not just taking care of their own sick and downtrodden but the Emperor’s as well.  He was miffed because he was shown up by a rag-tag group of people who burned with the love of God. This growing assembly was threatening the reputation of the Empire. The Christians honored that everyone was made in the image of God and deserved care. They didn’t lead with theology; they lead with love.

The early church brought to life the words of Jesus:

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat. I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me. I was sick and you looked after me….truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

Radical Forgiveness

While Jesus practiced Radical Forgiveness, Rome practiced fierce loyalty to friends and encouraged vengeance upon one’s enemies.

In Mathew 5:43 Jesus said:

 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’

You might wonder why Jesus said, “You have heard it said…hate your enemy.” A common practice of the day was to get even on a Curse Tablet. The basic formula was to write the name of the person, the offense, and what you wanted the Gods to do them in retribution. A curse tablet was excavated from a site in Rome that stated:

“I invoke you holy angels, and holy names…tie up, block, strike, overthrow, harm, destroy, kill and shatter Eucherios the charioteer and all his horses tomorrow in the arena of Rome. Let the starting gates not open properly. Let him not receive the honors… Let him not come from behind and pass but let him collapse, let him be bound, let him be broken up and let him drag behind. Both in the early races and the later ones. Now! Now! Quickly! Quickly!”

You definitely don’t want to get on the bad side of this guy! I say guy because women weren’t taught to write in Roman times.

In contrast to the practice of the day, Jesus taught:

“But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, ⁴⁵ that you may be children of your Father in unrighteous. ⁴⁶ If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? ⁴⁷ And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? ⁴⁸ Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

John Ortberg in his fascinating book, “Who is this man?” pondered what a Blessing Tablet might say had the man met Jesus:

“Eucherios hurt me badly, would you deliver me from my prison of hatred and resentment: would you help Eucherios to find genuine repentance, would you forgive his sin and mine, would you heal our relationship?”

People weren’t ready for the kind of change Jesus was talking about. Nevertheless, his influence reaches down to us through the centuries and expands out throughout the world.

How many curse tablets have we written in our minds and how much happier might we be if we made a practice of always writing a Bless My Enemy Tablet instead?

Loving the ‘other side’

Jesus was ALL IN to love everyone – even the people on the other side! You may remember the story of Jesus preaching on the shores of the lake. After speaking to a large crowd he told his disciples he wanted to go to the other side of the lake. Now that may seem an innocuous request except they knew that meant going to Decapolis. The ‘other side’ included ten cities where the 7 nations of Canaan, historical enemies of Israel, were settled.  Jesus had no concepts. He came to reach everyone. He lived outside the limitations of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

We tend to be dividers – we take sides, magnifying the goodness of “us” and enlarging the shortcomings of “them.” We accept ‘us versus them’ as human nature but we are called to a higher nature – one that includes everyone, and loves all.  But we have proof it can be done in the incredible life of Jesus.

“True love can be compared to sunlight. There is no place upon which the sun cannot shine, and the sun is always shining eternally without rest. Similarly, true love is a comprehensive love, given to all humankind as well as all things. All created beings are object partners of true love, and nothing in the Universe is excluded from the realm of true love. Love was sometimes taken as the intimacy between people, but true love is a love given to all humankind, including enemies and also to all things.”       Unification Thought.

Love as God intended

Perhaps the greatest teaching Jesus gave us was about marriage as a spiritual journey which is something we emphasize in the Unification movement through the Marriage Blessing.

We think of the idea of reserving sexual intimacy for marriage as old-fashioned – something that was so, way back when, but not true now. On the contrary, fidelity in a monogamous relationship is a newer concept than you might think.  It was not uncommon in ancient societies for men to have multiple wives and concubines. Sexuality wasn’t necessarily tied to religion, except as fertility rites. It’s true that some religions and philosophers frowned on lack of sexual self-control but historically marriage has been primarily an economic relationship with, for some, a political dimension.

The teachings of Jesus on marriage and relationships were drawn from Judaism and were very different from the outer Roman world. Jewish Rabbis noticed that the first commandment in the Torah was not “love God” but “Be fruitful, multiply.”

Marriage has a spiritual dimension. In the Bible, in Genesis, Ephesians and Mark it explains how God created us in the image of God: male and female.  We are also told that that for this reason a woman leaves her father and mother to become one with her husband.  The very purpose of marriage is to enable two to become one, reflecting the nature and essence of God. That is a far cry from hooking up.

People sometimes say we don’t need a piece of paper…. but marriage is more than a piece of paper. It’s a covenant in the sight of God to love as God intended: to transform one’s heart, to become one with this other person, to create a new entity as a couple in the image of God, male and female.

Christian or sacred marriage is different from an economic or politically grounded relationship. It’s a promise freely offered, fully embraced, and joyfully witnessed by the faith community. Marriage is a sacred journey and Jesus, through his teachings, brought this wherever Christianity left its foot print; love as God intended.

The promise according to Jesus was not just to avoid adultery or divorce but a quest to pursue oneness on every level: physical, intellectual, and spiritual – a oneness that doesn’t diminish the individuality of the other but makes it flourish.

Shakespeare talked of such a love:

“So they loved that love in twain, Had the essence but in one; Two distinct, division none; Number there in love was slain.”

Jesus’ impacted can be traced not just in religion but in culture and how we think and act. How many Christian marriages have been celebrated to date based on a teaching that wasn’t even written down when first given, but has nevertheless endured the test of time. It’s a miracle, a Christmas miracle.

Love desires eternity 

The greatest contribution that our founders, Rev and Mrs. Moon, have made is to share the Marriage Blessing which binds us not “till death do us part,” but for eternity. True love desires eternity.

If two are to become one, as it says in the Bible then it doesn’t make sense to say we are to become one through marriage, and then separate after death. Love is eternal in nature and life’s quest is to become one in the image of God through the Marriage Blessing, celebrating an eternal love that spans the physical and spiritual worlds.

As we celebrate Christmas and we think of Jesus let’s really appreciate him for who he is – not some sanitized saintly image, but the real, edgy, daring, uncompromising, unconventional, confronting and above all else, the loving man that he is. Thank you, Jesus.