10. The Stories of Jesus

John: Being independent of the Jewish community has its advantages. We are free to develop our own way of life without worrying about the dead traditions and rituals of the Jewish community.  But it has its disadvantages, too. We had to face a problem of identity.

Ananda: A problem of identity?

John: Yes, an identity crisis. If we are not a part of the Jewish community, then who are we? That is a question many of our people have been asking. Answering this question was the main intention of some of us in writing the story of Jesus. The one in the name of Mark is the one written first.   

 Ananda: I had the opportunity to read this book.

John: The identity of our community-- that is Mark’s concern. I shall make this question clearer. Recently there occurred a division in the Jewish community. It was split into two. It may mean that one group is following the right path and the other has deviated from it. The Jewish religious leaders accused Jesus and his followers to have deviated from the right path. Mark took it as a challenge. He tried to prove that Jesus had not deviated from the Jewish religious tradition, but only tried to restore its true spirit. In order to prove it, Mark showed that the events in the life of Jesus are in parallel with those of the old Israel. About one thousand and five hundred years ago, our ancestors were slaves in Egypt. After about five hundred years of slavery, they gained freedom under the leadership of Moses. On their way to Palestine, they had to cross the Red Sea, and then, travel in the desert for forty years. Finally they crossed the River Jordan and entered the land of Canaan. Jesus took baptism in the river of Jordan from John. Then Jesus spent forty days in a desert, which is similar to the time our ancestors spent in the desert. At the time of baptism, Jesus heard from God: "You are my son, whom I love." This is similar to what God says about old Israel as recorded by prophet Hosea: "When Israel was a child, I loved him, and out of Egypt I called my son."  Israel had twelve tribes in the names of each of the twelve sons of Jacob. To match with that, Jesus chose twelve disciples for his new Israel. When they were in the desert, they were fed miraculously by God with bread from heaven. Similarly, Jesus fed the people who came to listen to him miraculously.

Later Matthew wrote his story of Jesus expanding the theme of Mark further. He has quoted innumerable passages from the Holy Scriptures to show that the teachings and activities of Jesus were not against the scriptures. He has included the story that Jesus was born of a virgin to claim that it was the fulfillment of a passage from Prophet Isaiah. He has included the story that Jesus was born in Bethlehem to claim that it happened to fulfill a prophecy by the prophet Micah. The story that Jesus’ parents took him to Egypt and brought him back after a few years is to balance it with the life of the ancient Jewish people in Egypt. The story of Herod’s killing all children below the age of two in order to trap Jesus is similar to what happened in ancient Egypt at Moses’ time. Here, Matthew presents Jesus as the new Moses. Just as Moses led the old Israel out of bondage, Jesus, the new Moses, brought the new Israel out of bondage. Matthew presents Jesus as giving the rules of the kingdom of God to his disciples on a mountain, which is in parallel to what Moses did, who climbed up the Mount Sinai to receive the commandments of God for the old Israel.

The attitude of Jesus toward the scriptures is presented clearly by Matthew. He quotes the words of Jesus: "Do not think that I have come to abolish the law and the prophets. I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them." "Law" means the first five books in the scriptures, and "prophets" means the books of prophets. This statement is followed by some examples of how Jesus interpreted the scriptures meaningfully, and contrasts it with how Jewish teachers interpreted them. Jesus interpreted all the rules and rituals based on their original purpose, but the Jewish teachers interpreted the laws according to the letters, words, and grammar of the sentences.

Matthew gives great emphasis to the idea of the kingdom of God with the help of a large number of parables told by Jesus. When Jesus was born, three wise men from the East come to Bethlehem asking for the one who was born as the king of Jews. According to the genealogy given by Matthew, Jesus was born in the line of David, the great ancient king. Matthew presents the kingdom of God as a slow and steady process which began in Jesus, and which will envelope the whole of the world.

Luke expanded Mark’s book from a slightly different perspective. Luke accepted the main theme of Matthew and Mark, that we are the new Israel. He expands the theme further by asking more questions. What are our responsibilities being the new Israel? Does that place us at a higher level, with a higher privilege? Does that make us superior to others? Can we look down upon others? These are some of the questions Luke is concerned about.

By being the new Israel, we have to serve the whole of the humankind. We are more responsible than others. We are not in a position to gain more favor from God because God’s love is the same for all. Those who are branded as sinners are dear to God, and the poor are God’s dear children in the same way the rich are. We cannot buy God with money, nor can we please God with our good deeds.

Luke writes about how God’s unconditional love was exhibited in the deeds of Jesus. Jesus was a friend of the poor and the sinners according to Luke. Jesus was born as the son of a poor, humble woman.  It was in a cattle-shed that Mary gave birth to him. Those who came to see the infant were poor shepherds. He grew up in his family helping his father, who was a carpenter.

Luke narrates several stories related to being compassionate to the sick, poor and the outcast-- the story of the good Samaritan, of the loving father and the two sons, of the rich man and Lazarus, and of the prayer of a Pharisee and a tax collector.

Luke tries to explain how our attitude toward human life and relationships differs from that of the Jewish community. Our religion consists of faith in a God with unconditional love toward all. It gives us a strong basis to our way of life. It helps us love the unloved, and be good and kind to all. Their religion consists of faith in a God with conditional love. They try to please God and gain his love by being and doing good, but not willingly. Religion is a burden for them, but for us, it is something that makes our life happy and easy.

What remains now is the story of Jesus written by me.  I wrote it basically with the same purpose --to explain what our faith is.

Ananda:  But I have noticed a difference in form. You present your ideas in the form of conversations between Jesus and some others. As a background to each discourse, there is an incident, usually a miracle of Jesus.

John: Your observation is true, but basically it is also in the form of a story like the others. Jesus has done hundreds of miracles, but I have chosen only a few just to serve as a background to the conversations that follow them.

Most of the conversations explain the religious meaning of certain terms as opposed to their everyday meaning. Each word can have different meanings, and the same meaning can be represented by different words. There is no one-to-one correspondence between words and their meanings. So the meaning of a particular word depends on the context. We speak about spiritual matters using the same words we use in our everyday life, but with different meanings. It needs some training to understand the language of spirituality. Jesus used expressions like new birth, life, and light with special meanings, but the listeners found it difficult to comprehend the meanings. When Jesus told Nicodemus that he needed to be born again to attain eternal life, Nicodemus asked how he could enter his mother's body once again. Similarly when Jesus told a woman at Samaria about the water of life, she thought he was talking about some kind of magical water that would quench her thirst forever.

I use the word light to mean the inner light, the light of realization which eradicates the darkness of ignorance. It is ignorance that makes us reject the unconditional love of God. I use the word life to mean a higher level of qualitative life. It is a life of joy, peace and love. It cannot be attained by amassing wealth, or by pursuing pleasures, or by acquiring positions of authority. The condition for life is light. To attain a life of joy and peace, we need to realize the truth of God and of ourselves.

The most misunderstood term used by Jesus is the Kingdom of God. People understood it literally. However hard Jesus tried to explain what he really meant by that term, people were always expecting him to rule them as a real king. It was this misunderstanding which made people shout, "Crucify him!" They thought that they were cheated by Jesus. Even today most of the people in our community believe that some day Jesus will establish a kingdom literally and become its king. That is why I have included in my book this dialogue between Pilate and Jesus. Pilate asked, "Are you the king of Jews?" Jesus replied, "My kingdom is not of this world. If it were, my servants would fight to prevent my arrest by the Jews."

I wrote my book for a wide range of readers, including those with a Jewish cultural background and those with a Greek cultural background. I have used the term "word" in such a way that it would mean different things to those from these two cultural backgrounds. To those from the Jewish background, as I have already explained, the word is the creative word of God. But to those from the Greek background, the word is the creative spirit of the universe. Thus, both the Greek and Jewish readers find themselves at home in this book. The same historical Jesus flowers into two mighty symbols.

The other three authors, who wrote the life of Jesus, presented him as the new Moses, and the church as the new Israel.  But what I see in Jesus and the church is not merely a new Israel, but a new creation. That is why I wrote my book in the background of the creation story in the first chapter of Genesis, using it as a model. Here is the creation story in a nutshell. There was earth, but formless and empty. God comes there, gives it form, and fills it with all sorts of living beings. The world is compared to a farm there. God, like a typical Jewish farmer, works there for six days and rests on the seventh day. What implement does God use? God’s word. God gives orders like "Let there be light," and immediately it happens. In my book I say that Jesus is God’s creating word, and his activities are God’s creative activities. I have presented six miracles of Jesus to match with six days of God’s creation.  On the seventh day, Jesus rested inside the tomb, and on the first day of the next week, he rose again to continue his creative activities.

I have chosen the miracles of Jesus included in my book very carefully to match with the creation story. Jesus heals a blind man-- light replaces darkness. He creates wine out of water to match with the second day's creation-- of the world out of water. The sixth mighty deed of Jesus was the raising of Lazarus. It matches with the sixth day’s creation--of human beings. Of the six miracles, four are done just by the words of order. One of them is specifically notable. A sick boy was healed from a distance by an order from Jesus, and it was verified that the sick boy was cured exactly at that moment. This matches with the way in which God creates in the creation story. The way Jesus cured a blind man, by placing mud on his eyes, matches with how God created Adam, the first man-- with mud. You might have noticed that I call them signs. Signs of what? That God is at work. When some Jewish leaders complained against Jesus for healing sick people on Sabbath, Jesus replied: My father is always at work to this very day, and I too am working.


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